This ebook will be completely free all you will need to do is sign up to my list to receive it, simple!  The ebook is not quite ready yet, however I hope to have it all sorted and formatted within the next two weeks.  I will publish a post when it is ready for sending.

So do keep an eye out for the release or alternatively subscribe to my blog updates by popping your email address in the form on the right and you will be automatically notified when a new update is posted to this blog.

PS – If you are looking to start a blog then I have a pretty cool and bonkers blog offer running at the moment!

PPS – If you want to see any videos on a specific topic on Wordpress please leave a comment below stating what you are looking to learn

It’s Deal Time

How does this grab you?  A fully hosted and installed Wordpress blog complete with a domain name of your choice* for £50, Yes I did say £50.  No I am not mad, I just want to introduce people to the world of blogging without them having to spend a fortune.  Lets face it if you buy it and find blogging is not for you, it has only cost you £50.

Simon, This is Insane What’s The Catch?

No catch at all, you will get a domain name of your choice*, 1yrs hosting for your blog, Wordpress installed and configured and a free theme of your choice from a list of thousands.  Nice and simple, you can’t really go wrong.

Simon, I’m In What Do I Do Next?

I have made it really easy.  If you want to take up this sensational offer, all you need to do is simply click the “add to cart” button below and checkout using paypal.  I will then be in contact to find out your domain name choice so that I can get that registered.  I will then get your blog set up and configured.

Wait One Of Those Bonus Thingies!

Before you check out, I have a small bonus.  Now, I am not the type of guy that just installs a blog, takes your money and leaves you with a blog wondering what the hell you do with it.  Nope, not me! The bonus is 30 mins of skype/telephone consulting to give you the basics on how to use your blog.  Add posts, pages and images etc etc.  A blog installed and some of my time to help you get going.  I told you it was bonkers.

Buy It!

Not So Small Print

What I won’t Do

• Migrate you old blog to a new blog.  Nope, this is for a brand new blog install only
• Design and build a custom theme, this is not a design service.  The blog package includes a choice of free themes.
• Register a premium domain name.  If you want sex.com or some other name that costs millions, forget it.  This offer includes a normal domain that costs about £8-£10. Do check the name you want is available before ordering, I would hate for you to be disappointed.
• Provide on going support.  If you need ongoing support you can use my Pay As You Blog Service
• Give refunds, If you have a change of heart after buying then please don’t expect a refund

What I Will Do

• Register a domain name
• Setup your domain on my web hosting. 1Yr hosting included. £20 per annum after the first year
• Install Wordpress
• Add useful plugins
• Add a Free theme of your choosing
• Give 30 mins consulting to get you started

Blog appearance, something that seems to fixate people.  Seriously the hours that I have spent with people with blogs who stress over a font or colour is nobody’s business.  Now I am not suggesting that you get a blog and run with some shitty theme.  Yes, of course the look has some importance, but it really is not a priority and moreover it should not be so important that it detracts from the quality of the content or worse stop you creating any content.

The great thing with Wordpress, assuming you are using Wordpress and if you are not then you really should!, is that its really, really easy to change a theme if you decide that you don’t like what you already have or get bored with it.   There are an absolute ton of great looking free themes which are perfectly adequate to allow you to get up and running with a nice looking blog and if several months down the line you fancy a change or want some added functionality you can just change it over. Alternatively you may want to switch over to a custom designed or premium theme, either way you have a multitude of choices.

This is all fine if you are running a stand alone blog but if you want to run your blog as part of your current website and make it look like your website then the choices can be limited.  In this respect I would personally get your web designer to pull a design together for you and make it look the same as your site.  It will save you hours of hacking a free theme apart to try and make it work.

So my advice is to get your blog up and running with a tidy and functional theme, concentrate on the content creation and as you progress with your blogging adventure take some time down the road to review and make changes as you see fit.  Remember, your blog will evolve as you progress so don’t spend to long at the beginning fussing over the look and feel.

To finish, here are some great free and premium themes. NB – Some links are affiliate links, you pay the same price and I get a little in return for the referral. After all it helps keep the fires of this blog burning.

Free Themes

Twentyten - The default Wordpress 3.0 theme.  It’s functional and simple enough to make some basic changes to the look and feel.  I like this theme!

Mystique – The theme of choice for “Social Media Experts”.  Feature rich and easy to customise.

Atahualpa - The theme that nobody can pronounce!  Chock full of customisation options and easy enough to use.  I like this them!

ChocoTheme – Not everyone’s cup of tea but I like it.

For the full list of themes click this little link

Premium Themes (The ones you have to shell out for)

Thesis – My favourite theme/framework.  Full of customisation options and easy to use.  The  newly released v1.8 is awesome, so much so that it gets my awesome badge!

Woothemes – Big collection of premium themes and a membership option.  Personally I have not used these but they do look pretty cool

Studiopress – A complete Wordpress framework that is gaining huge momentum with some high profile bloggers using it such as Chris Brogan

So what have we got in this installment of “Simon Says”, a bit of a mixed bag really some direct posts and some general sites that I have come across during my internet travels. So lets get started

• 6 Online Marketing Mistakes that Will Kill Your Business – A post on Copyblogger a great read for anyone involved in Online marketing and possible making a complete dogs dinner of it (Don’t look at me!)
• 3 pricing mistakes that cripple your sales – If you have never heard of Dava Navarro (aka the lauch coach) you really should check his blog out. Has some fascinating stuff and has a bunch of free stuff that is highly useful
• 10 Freelancer Mistakes that damage your success – One for the Freelancers from one of my most favourite blogs, Men with Pens. There is some great content on this site (yes I know I have said this before) please do check it out.

And now for some general sites to check out.

• Crimson Leaf – A site by my good friend Paul Dean. Paul is a copywriting and marketing marvel and throughly decent bloke.
• Internet Marketing Highway – A site run by Suraj Sodha. SEO and Internet Marketing without any of the usual bullshit. Great bloke and he really delivers great results.
• Jonathan Volk – One for the readers interested in Affiliate Marketing. Great site crammed full with great information on Affiliate marketing. Jonathan is the author of the Facebook Ads guide which I reviewed in this post

Well that is that for now, actually I have more but will save that for a future post. Thanks for stopping by and if you have any other sites that are worth sharing then please do leave a comment below listing them.

Thankyou

• Can you change the font to this
• Can you make that a different shade of blue
• You get the picture?

Firstly, before I proceed this post does contain links of the affiliate variety.  You pay the same and I get a little in return to help keep the fires of this blog burning

Facebook it is everywhere and lots of people are using it, well 500 million or so at the last count.  It has an advertising platform! Happy days for affiliate marketers or in fact any business that is looking to tout its wares to this audience.  Now, to the outsider this probably seems like advertising/marketing heaven.  500 million pairs of eyes, heavily engaged sending gifts on Farmville or some other such activity and the ability to shove an ad right in their faces.  To a degree they would be right, well that is what I thought.  Lets face it;  it has to be easier than the nightmare that is Google Adwords, right? well sort of.  I jumped in and started some campaigns running

A couple of weeks later….

And…..

Some $500 in losses later, I was starting to wonder if it was indeed possible to make a single pound/dollar with facebook.  See, the thing with Facebook ads is that its quite complex to get to grips with. Personally I have never found facebook intuitive to use (probably why I have never bothered with it much). Facebook also manually approve ads and boy can it be a royal pain in the ass getting your ads approved.  Oh, and good luck in making head or tail of the advertising guidelines.  The upshot being, Facebook advertising and I decided we were not made for each other.

Wind the clock forward a couple of months…….

I am not a huge fan of the Affiliate marketing e-books or guides that seem to crop up with alarming regularity.  Seriously, most of them are worthless and have one goal in mind to make the author richer and sell you false hope.  One evening  I was aimlessly browsing the web, as one does and I headed on over to a blog run by a guy called Jonathan Volk whom I have followed for a while.  Jonathan is an affiliate marketer, a successful one at that.  I am not the kind of person to start quoting any figures, but lets say he has made a dollar or two from affiliate marketing.  Oh and the nice thing with Jonathan is he is actually one of the affiliate marketing good guys.  At  the time he had just released a new guide to Facebook Advertising as an ebook.  I duly parted with $97 dollars (against my better judgement, I may add!) and whilst on holiday sat down and had a good read.  Typically with ebooks, especially internet marketing ebooks, I read them and then just file them away never to be opened again.  However on this occasion I actually

1. Found the ebook useful – It is full of information that helps get your campaigns running.  Like how to get ads approved
2. Found it easy to follow – Its not full of jargon or makes things seem difficult to implement – no voodoo!
3. lastly, decided to use it as a reference and guide for future facebook campaigns.

Does it work?

Ok so here is the thing.  The ebook will not make you rich instantly, but it will help you make better decisions about the campaigns you are running and more importantly help you create better campaigns which should actually help turn a decent profit.  It is not an ebook that promises that you will be able to follow the system and make a ton of money and spend the rest of your life sitting on a beach sipping Pina Colada’s (mores the pity).  It does however provide you with a solid amount of information to get you started on the right foot and prevent you making some of the mistakes that I did when I started.

To answer the question of does it work, well yes it has for me.  Recent campaigns since using the ebook as a guide have been turning profits of between $30-$60 dollars a day (case studies on these are coming soon).  For sure some of the campaigns I ran have bombed, but that’s the affiliate business for you.  Yes it helps and for $79 (offer price at the moment) its a good investment and if you are looking to get involved with Facebook advertising as an affiliate or even for your own business then you really should go and buy a copy.  After all, it will be cheaper than the money you will burn by scratching around experimenting with facebook ads.

Go buy it by clicking this link

I would like to thank Jonathon for producing this guide and preventing me from losing my backside on Facebook advertising – Thanks!

OK, you’re back.  The question was asked today by a friend of mine who is very good at breaking Wordpress “How do I get a toolbar like that on my blog?”  actually I am lying the exact question was “Ok I want that bar thingy on the bottom on nostalgic“   Nostalgic being a new wordpress blog that does not know what has hit it!!!  So I thought I would add this post as a little guide on how to get a cool toolbar or bar thingy onto your Wordpress blog.

The toolbar is provided by a company called Wibiya who to quote them:

Wibiya provides a web toolbar that enables blogs and websites to integrate the most exciting services and web applications into their blog or website.
Our platform is a one-stop shop for fully customizable, easily manageable third part web applications that can also be tracked for statistics.

Adding the Wibiya web toolbar will allow you to choose from a great variety of tools and features including facebook and twitter integration web applications, Google Buzz, Smart Share, Real Time Notifications and Statistics, 3D picture galleries, 3D YouTube video galleries and much, much more

It’s completley free to use although do have some “Pro” packages which add a whole bunch of additional features.  However I have stuck with the basic free version as it seems to offer all that I need at this stage.  Just as a side note, don’t dispair if you do not have a Wordpress blog.  The Wibiya toolbar will integrate with  the following services

• Blogger
• Drupal
• Joomla
• Typepad
• Ning
• Static HTML sites

I have only done this with Wordpress so I cannot comment on how easy it is setup on these other platforms.

To get started you will need to have the following

1. Your Blog URL
2. RSS Feed Address – If you want to use the RSS features
3. About 20 mins of time

Head on over to the Wibiya site and sign up for a free account.  Once signed up and logged in you can start to customise the toolbar.  There are a whole host of applications that you can add to your toolbar and it’s all easy to do as the Wibiya interface is nicely deisgned and you literally just select the app you want and click add.  If you are adding the RSS feed app you will need to imput your RSS feed URL so that it all works correctly.

Here are some of the available apps

• Facebook Like Button
• Youtube Gallery
• Photo Gallery
• Twitter
• RSS Feed
• etc etc

You can change the look of your toolbar so that it matches the design of your site.  Once you have configured the toolbar and made it look funky you then need to install it on your blog.  For Wordpress users you can either install a plugin provided by Wibiya or add the code provided directly into your wordpress template.  I opted for the latter as I find that plugins can make for a slower site and you can never be sure how they interact with other plugins.  That is all there is to it, simple

Special Offer

I really like this toolbar and can appreciate that some of you might not want to start messing with your wordpress blog.  So if you want me to install a Wibiya toolbar onto your blog and do all the geeky stuff then all you need to do is send me a message via my contact form located here with the subject “Funky Toolbar” and I will set it all up for you for FREE, yes for FREE.  This offer is only open to the first 10 people who respond and you must have a self hosted Wordpress blog not wordpress.com

Photo Credit – Ario_

M8YZ8BDCA6VB

So, what I have decided to do is put the question out to the readers of this here blog:

Has the A to Z of Blogging been useful so far?

If yes – In what way?

If no – In what way?

Honesty is key to this little exercise as I want the answers to shape how the rest of the series goes.  You might think the content needs to be more detailed or less detailed, maybe you want specific areas covered.  Essentially let me know what hits the spot and what does not and I can then tailor this series in a way that gives you what you need.

Pull The Trigger!

There we go, I have asked the question and now I need some feedback.  All you need to do is leave me a comment below with your feelings, simple it should not take you to long to do.

Unfortunately I cannot stretch to giving away iPads or iphones in return for your feedback but rest assured I will be very, very grateful for any feedback – good or bad.

Thanks for your time in advance and I look forward to receiving your responses.

Remember, if you find the stuff I write on this blog useful please do subscribe (it’s free) to my “Updates By Email” feed thing, by simply entering your email address in the box over on the right and click subscribe.

Photo Credit Joel Mark Witt

I is for Interact

Having the ability to interact with other blogs and bloggers is a necessary component of a successful blog.  However, it is often overlooked.  Lets face it you have enough on your plate trying to produce and publish unique content for your blog and/or run your business, before you know it time to do all the interacting just seems to have passed you by!  Do not fear we all experience this, me especially.  It’s perfectly normal, but when you break it down it really does not need to consume vast amounts of your time and more importantly when you do start to interact you will be surprised at how much of a boost it can give to your blogging adventure!

So, what do I mean by interact?

To me, interact can be split into two distinct areas:

1. Interact with your blog readers (regardless of how many you have)
2. Interact outside your blog with other Blogs and Bloggers

Interacting With Your Readers

This is essentially, warning cliché alert, entering in with the conversation that is going on in and around your blog.  This could be in the shape of:

• Responding to comments on your blog posts (If you are not doing this, your really should be!).  If you have not got any comments on your blog, don’t worry I will get to that soon!
• Interact on twitter and other social networks.  If your followers tweet your post out then thank them
• Monitor your brand/yourself by using Google Alerts (If you are not sure how to set up Google Alerts check my post “A To Z Of Blogging – Part G”)
• Email your readers – Give them stuff for free to build trust and raise your profile
• If you network offline then ask for feedback on your blog posts, you might be surprised at the feedback you get. In fact this whole A To Z of blogging series came about as a result of a chat with someone during a networking meeting.

This is fine, but what if I don’t have people leaving comments etc etc?

Good question and one that comes up frequently.  I used to stress myself out over the whole lack of comments thing.  But recently I have struck on a useful thing and it is so simple and bloody obvious.  Are you ready for this most secret of blog secrets……….

Ask for comments!

Yes, that is the secret to getting a few more comments.  I tried this on my last post which was entitled “When did you last leave a Blog comment?” and within 3-4 days I have 20 comments on that post, which is way more than I usually get.  All because I finished the post with this

When did you last leave a blog comment?

&

What holds you back from leaving comments?

Leave your answers below by leaving a……..comment

A simple question, but as the old saying goes “If you don’t ask you don’t get”.  Do not be afraid to ask for feedback/comments.

Interacting Outside Your Blog

So, you have started to interact with your own blog and it’s readers but what about broadening your horizons?

Interacting with other blogs is one of the most effective way to:

1. Raise awareness of your blog
2. Raise your profile
3. Get new readers/subscribers to your blog

So how do you interact with other blogs?

The first stage is to compile a list of blogs that you like to read or provide you with useful information.  Check my post “5 Blogs for Bloggers post” for a good list of Blogs.  Add these sites into your RSS feed reader or subscribe to their feed by email.

• Read the content that is published on these sites and where applicable leave your comments/point of view.
• Read other comments.  See what others are saying about the content
• Link to these blogs from your blog posts if necessary
• Connect with these bloggers on Twitter/facebook etc
• Offer a guest post (My advice would be to start with the smaller blogs before trying to hit the A listers!)
• Join forums that are in your chosen niche

The list goes on an on, but I think that you get my drift!

The bottom line is, the more you interact the more trust you build, which should result in more traffic and readers for you and your blog.

What about time?

Time, time, time!  Yes time is limited and this may seem that you have spend hours interacting with people.  The reality is, with careful planning you can pretty much do this in no more than 20 mins per day.   Personally I allow 30 mins a day to do my blog comments, respond to other comments and do the twitter/linkedin thing!  and I find that is more than enough time to get everything done.

I have more to say on the whole time issue in a future A to Z of blogging series post so to ensure you don’t miss it please subscribe to my updates by popping your email address in the box on the left called “Updates by email”