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Value of Marketing

Lucian Apostol — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:42:07 +0000

Marketing is not easy. You have to test and test to see what works for your business. If you do not invest enough time in testing, you may leave out a lot of valuable marketing opportunities just because you heard that it is hard or that it does not work. There is no universal advertising strategy, for some websites, adwords is a great fit, while for others can be a pain.

Big companies are spending a lot of money ( because they have enough ) on marketing campaigns with a bad ROI. But in most cases, they can’t know this because they have a good branding and other marketing strategies that works great. If you are a small company, you can’t afford having bad ROI campaigns and you have to test and accurate track the results until you find those strategies that work.

Here is an infographic that will let you understand value of marketing better.

value of your eco friendly promotional products

WordPress 10th Birthday

Lucian Apostol — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:54:26 +0000

On 27 May 2013, WordPress will celebrate 10 years of existence. WordPress became popular as a blogging platform very fast. In 2005 I created my first wordpress template for a client. Despite wordpress was used only as a blog, starting with 2007 it was also used as a content management system. In 2006, I coded something for wordpress multi-user for the first time.

For me, the move to wordpress from simple html/php sites or from Joomla was a very good move. I was able to to bigger things with much less time. Joomla is another content management system, they have some built-in features but if you want to get out of their box, it is very hard. I like to think outside the box and WordPress fit just right with my mentality. Today, I can’t imagine my work without wordpress.

There will be many anniversary meetups dedicated to wordpress, if you wish to join. Also, there are anniversary clothes for this special moment. You can check more on this official post.

Social Games, From Real Life to Computers and now to Smartphones

Lucian Apostol — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:38:36 +0000

In the first quarter of 2013, tablets and smartphones sold more units than desktop and laptops. 20 years ago, we played all the social games in real life: chess, cards, poker, blackjack, etc. 10 years ago, all the social games moved to our computers. Starting with zone ( microsoft owned game rooms ), continuing with yahoo games provided us great support to play any social game with our friends or with anyone in the world.

Today, we are moving from computers and laptops to smartphones. We can play games when we wait for the bus, or when we wait to meet with a friend, or in any other moments when we are unable to to something else. This will definitely led us to play more and more.

If you wonder where is the social gaming and casino industry right now, you must know that most casinos that were available on the computer few years ago, are now available on Apple iPhone or Google Android. These are two of the most used smartphone and tablet operating systems. Naturally, people want comfort. If we remember the good days when we played poker or chess with our friends on a bench or something, we used to play the whole day. We was unable to realize that time was passing so fast.

Well, now, if we start playing games on the computer it is very hard to stop. So, why to play poker whole day on a chair with the hands hanging, when you can play it in the bed or on the couch ? We have the phones everywhere. This is another great advantage of mobile phones or tablets over classic desktops. Even if the computer software who allow us to play will recognize us on different devices, it is much better to play it on the same device. We have the smartphone with us at work so we can play a quick game in the lunch break, we have our smartphones when we wake up, we have our phones when we go out.

Among us there are many conservators, who says that tablet games and apps will never replace desktop games, but since the tablet and smartphone market is getting bigger and bigger, I can see only one result: mobile games will be more popular. For example, if you want to play casino games on your iPad, here is a great place to start: http://www.iPadcasino.ca .

The Pros and Cons of Online Data Backup

Lucian Apostol — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:53:13 +0000

Options for backing up data have greatly increased in the last few years. As storage demands become greater, some business owners have begun to turn to online services rather than trying to do it all themselves. This form of data storage can be advantageous to business owners, although it may not be the best option for everyone.

Why online backup is a good idea

Until just a few years ago, companies had no option but to use their own equipment and software to store data. Online backup services provide several advantages over this traditional method of backing up data.

*Online backup services provide increased reliability. If the company’s own data-storing hard drive fails, that information may be hard to retrieve or even gone forever. When it’s stored online, that information can easily be downloaded, getting the business back up and running quickly.

*If the business has employees that travel frequently or work from home, online backup services offer them the ability to access the data from any location at any time as long as there is an Internet connection. In addition, these services work across all platforms, allowing workers to access the backup up material using a personal computer, smart phone or tablet.

*Backing up information in-house requires an employee to remember to do it on a regular basis, as well as take the time to accomplish the task. Online backup services can be set up to do so automatically, freeing personnel to perform other duties.

*Owners can safely budget for costs associated with backing up data when using an online service. Those providers charge a monthly fee and there are no surprise purchases to worry about from equipment failing. In addition, if the company suddenly needs more space, expansion is easy online and again does not require the purchase of new machines.

Why online backup may not be a good idea

Online backup may not be the best solution for every business. There are some issues that should be considered.

*While the data may be encrypted during and after transmission, there is still the small possibility of the system getting hacked by someone. That could make the stored information vulnerable.

*While connectivity through a website allows for easy access, it also makes the company reliant on the Internet. If the company’s connection fails then the business will not be able to reach the data it is storing. Large amounts of data can also take longer to transfer to or from an online server than with a connected hard driver in the office.

*There is some loss of control over digital files. Since the provider is constantly backing up the files it is storing as a safety precaution, when someone deletes a file there is the possibility a backup may still exist in the system without their knowledge.

Online services provide an easy and inexpensive way to backup data. There are some issues that should be considered first, but the ease of use may outweigh any negatives for most businesses.

This is a guest post from Lucy Matthews on behalf of a site that has more advice on online backup and how to choose a service provider.

Using the Internet to Fund Your Kids’ College Education

Lucian Apostol — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:16:21 +0000

One of the things that every parent worries about is “am I really doing everything I can to ensure that I am properly planning for my child’s college education?” College is incredibly expensive. Even the state/publicly funded schools that used to be an affordable route for nearly everyone now cost upwards of $20K a year for tuition, fees and living expenses. Not everybody (in fact, hardly anybody) is able to afford that outright. So what can you do?

Getting Creative

These days one of the best ways to bring in extra money is to set up a website. The great thing about starting a website and using it to earn money is that this is something that you can do in your spare time while spending time with your family.

The easiest type of website to set up is a blog. There are lots of free blogging platforms out there to choose from (we, obviously, like WordPress the best). You simply choose a name, password, input some basic information and viola! Your very own website.

Blogs are great because they have so many different avenues for monetization:

You can sell sidebar ads
You can sell advertising in the headers and footers of individual posts
You can get people to sponsor individual posts
You can sell ad space in your blog’s header and footer space.
You can put paid links in the text of your regular posts.
You can create products that relate to your blog and sell them.

The best thing about blogging as a platform is that it is so versatile. Thanks to free content management systems like WordPress you can set your blog up to be pretty much whatever you want. You could even set your blog up to function as the landing spot for a web based business.

For now, though, let’s focus on the blog.

You can focus your blog on a single topic (make sure it’s something you care about so you’ll be motivated to write) or you can generalize and make the blog more of a lifestyle oriented site.

What matters is that you choose something about which you are already enthusiastic. This way you will want to work on your site. You’ll want to do the research. You’ll want to do the link building and networking. Readers can sense enthusiasm and they are more likely to respond to it than to something someone is obviously creating with the sole purpose of making money in mind.

So: what do you love? When you do have a moment of free time, what do you choose to do with it? What subjects do you gravitate toward? The answers to these questions are where you should start when you’re trying to figure out what to blog about.

As long as you are passionate about it and work hard, you should be able to start making money via your blog within a few months.

There are other things you can do, of course—other affiliate marketing and internet marketing methods you can use to earn extra money. The blog, though—the blog is the best place to start.

Best Related Posts Plugin for WordPress

Lucian Apostol — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:01:19 +0000

Since I started working with wordpress more than 7 years ago, for most of the blogs and website I created I needed an option to show related posts at the end of every article. The default is a list of 4 or 5 posts related to the current post, shown at the end of the page. The engine that tries to match the related posts is important, but it is not a visible feature.

Recently I have tested some plugins that will achieve this and I found Related Posts from Zemanta to be the best so far.

I consider it to be the best because:

The design is nice and there are images shown with every related article.

The admin panel shows me the click trough rate of related links.

There are many different display options both for mobile and desktop display.

Top 3 Genesis Child Themes

Lucian Apostol — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:26:53 +0000

Genesis from StudioPress is one of the best WordPress theme framework developed so far. There are already over 86,000 blogs who use genesis framework, despite that it is not free. People chose Genesis because it provides a lot of custom features that can be changed from admin panel, extra security, built-in SEO optimization, etc. Genesis framework can work standalone, but it also supports child themes. If you want to build your design from scratch, you can easily do it on genesis, but Studiopress also provide quality child themes for their framework.

I have selected 3 best Genesis child theme designs for you.

Corporate

Corporate child theme is perfect for your company website to feature the services your provide, or for your product website to promote the features and try to make some sales. The theme comes with a nice design and 2 main navigation menus. All the pages are completed, to spread the impression of perfection, and that nothing is left unfinished. It is well polished and comes with 6 different layouts for your homepage and blog posts.

Education

Education Child theme has, in my opinion, the best design from all Genesis child themes. Despite it is built for education sites, especially universities or schools who want to promote their services, classes, admissions, it can be used for many other businesses. For example, for local shops or other venues to promote their business location and services. It comes with 6 color styles and 6 layouts for your choice.

Lifestyle

Lifestyle child theme has a clean design and bright warm colors so you can inspire freedom and relaxation to your readers. While it might be unfit for technical blogs, it is a best choice for most, for exampel travel, personal, lifestyle, education, etc. Only looking at this theme and you feel much better.

The best way to paste code into a wordpress post

Lucian Apostol — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:35:40 +0000

If you maintain a blog about web development or programming, or another type of blog where you have to show some code to your readers, you already faced problems trying to paste code into wordpress text editor. If the piece of code is not deleted by the editor filters, it will be screwed up by changing the tags.

The best solution I found for this is to use pastebin. pastebin is a web application that allows you to share code or any other data with others. After you create your “paste”. Then, you can embed it using an iframe into your post. That’s it!

How to add Google Maps to your website

Lucian Apostol — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:12:59 +0000

Google maps provide a very good API so you can show google maps on your website. Most webmasters are using google maps to help customers find the location of their business ( usually on contact pages ). Others are building full applications based on google maps. It is very easy to implement google maps on any website.

Reading on Google Documentation website may be confusing. I will compile few easy steps to get started with your first google maps application. First, you need a Google Maps API key, that you can get from here ( you need a google account for this ). Select “services” from the left, and browse to google maps api v3. Activate the service and agree to the terms and conditions. Then, go to “API access” and there you will get your API key.

Now you have to add the code that will display the map on your website. Use the following example, and add your API key.

Now you have your map. You can center it by changing the latitude and longitude. Now, let’s add a marker to the center of the same map.

Add the above code inside the initialize function and you are done.

Plugins I use for every newly created website

Lucian Apostol — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:33:16 +0000

Whenever I make a new website, I don’t like to stuff it with all the plugins that I think that the website will someday use, or with all the plugins that I use on another websites. I like to start clean and to install only what is needed. As you may know, every plugin you install will eat up processing power whenever a page is loaded.

But, there are few plugins that I install on every website from the very begining.

1. Akismet.

Akismet is an anti-spam plugin, that is already installed and you only have to get an API key and activate it. Don’t skip this step because once search engines discover your website you will start getting a lot of spam messages delivered directly to your inbox.

2. Contact Form 7

The necessity of a contact form is a long debate. I will just say this: how do you expect to be contacted by possible partners, or potential sponsors ? I use contact form because it is simply to use. Recently I started to install a complementary plugin to prevent contact form spam messages: “honeypot for contact form 7″.

3. Yoast SEO.

Any website, of any size and type, can’t ignore the traffic received from search engines. Even if there is no effort involved in search engine optimization, good and rich content will bring you visitors from search engines. If you want to improve the number of visits you receive, then it is a must to install this plugin. When I first started building WordPress sites I was using All in one SEO pack, but today I find Yoast SEO plugin much better.

4. User Locker.

If you don’t want to get your website hacked sooner or later, you have to be protected from brute force. Brute force means repetitive tries to guess your password. A script can run on your login form trying passwords until he gets in. This plugin will block the user after few failed login attempts, and will unlock it after a certain period of time passed. Don’t worry about locking you out of your admin panel, as you can easily reset if from cpanel. If it is your site, then you have access to cpanel in a way or another.

These are the plugins that I install on all new websites. On an average wordpress website I own or maintain, I have 10 to 20 plugins installed at any given time.