How To Make Money Online » Blogging Tips

The Best Way To Learn How To Use WordPress

Garry Conn — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:49:16 +0000

Often I receive emails with readers asking me for advice with problems or tips related to their WordPress blog. I want to help as many people as I can with individual questions; however, I know that at times this simply isn’t possible. This post is aimed at providing you with some excellent resources towards learning more about WordPress.

The first thing I would recommend is purchasing a book. I don’t know about you, but I do know that I have a lot of trouble soaking in information when it is being viewed on a computer screen compared to reading material in a book. I don’t read as often as I would like to; however, when it comes to learning things, I always enjoy reading a book compared to getting the information on the Internet.

If you are looking for an excellent book to help you learn more about WordPress, I recommend a book titled, WordPress For Dummies. You can order it on Amazon.com or find it in just about any book store. I own the book myself, and I know that it will help you.

Aside from having a good book, it is a great idea to have some excellent sites saved in your favorites. Here are a few sites that I visit often when I need to learn more, attain code, or aim at tweaking things.

WordPress.TV – This is a newly added bookmark of mine. This site is maintained by the WordPress team and dedicated to providing WordPress bloggers with a huge online video library of tutorials.
WordPress Lessons – This is a very large section found on the official WordPress site. It contains a very excellent source of lessons and tutorials.
WordPress Troubleshooting – THis is yet another large section found on the office WordPress site that gives you quick access to some of the more common problems bloggers face with WordPress.
WordPress Hacks – This is a blog owned by a long time blogging buddy of mine, Kyle Eslick. Kyle is super talented and brings amazing advice, tips and tricks to the table.
WordPress Forums – Kyle Eslick is the owner of an amazing WordPress support forum as well and is quickly becoming the key guy to go to with all levels of WordPress support.

My advice to you if you are interested in taking blogging to higher levels is to invest some time each week into learning more about WordPress. It is also important to invest time into gaining basic skills with CSS, HTML, and PHP.

Additionally, it isn’t a bad idea to have a general understanding of MySQL. All of these elements can be learned simply by investing less than $100 dollars at your local bookstore or online at places like Amazon.com.

What Is The Best Way To Learn How To Use WordPress?

Garry Conn — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:59:13 +0000

I received an email from a reader of mine, David Valentine, who explains that he has quite a bit of experience as an investigative reporter and has had an excellent time using these skills towards publishing weekly ezines and even an eBook. He wants to take his talents further but doesn’t have much experience with blogging, HTML, and things like that. Here is a copy of his email.

Am a writer and retired investigative reporter. Have zero skills in setting up websites. Have been writing a weekly ezine for a bit over a decade( now via icontact). Also have one ebook. The person who has been doing my websites is uncomfortable with setting up blogs. Have hosting with GoDaddy which has some kind of facility for webhosted blogs. I prefer not to have one of the free blogs.

What instructional material (pdf and video preferred) do you recommend?

I really know nothing about html, meta tags and uploading. Am well versed in a variety of Keyword programs to a point where I am doing Keyword research to help friends. I am using a combination of free tools and Micro Niche Finder (have a beta copy of their new upgrade).

Although only having discovered you in the past month; your blog has been down to earth, intelligent and significantly helpful.

David Valentine

Very simple answer to this one. Caroline Midddlebrook and Jennifer Ledbetter. These two are skilled and have a lot of material that can help you. You can of course search my blog for information related to learning, but these two sites have a much higher concentration of it.

I believe Caroline has a free eBook that teaches how to set up a WordPress blog from start to finish. She then has other premium material available such as The Blogger’s Bible. Jennifer is a very organized and detailed minded individual and someone who you can trust. She has many premium grade articles and material as well. She started from the ground up without any prior skills or knowledge and currently today she is quite successful with online business.

Have You Checked Out BloggingQuestions.com?

Garry Conn — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:00:19 +0000

I have a new blog that I launched towards the end of November called BloggingQuestions.com. This is a community driven blog where bloggers can come to ask questions and find answers about blogging. The site is a cross between being a blog and a forum, it is really cool.

Here are some really amazing stats that I want to share with you. Since the day of the launch, the site has 188 posts with blogging questions all sorted by 400 tags and contained within 8 categories. The absoulte amazing part here is that the blog has over 1080 comments that provide answers to the questions being asked. That means on average, each question receives close to five unique answers.

At the moment the community blog has 126 registered members, 80 FeedBurner subscribers and 9 Aweber mailing list subscribers. I think these are amazing numbers for a blog less than 90 days old. Needless to say, I really like the site a lot and I am putting a lot of my energy and time into it. I would love it if you joined. One thing for sure is that it will help you become a better blogger.

One of the items that I have taken the most pride in developing is the FeedBurner RSS Feed. Once you subscribe to it you will soon see how beautiful it is has been set up.

Here is a screen shot of a post in Google Reader:

The feed is very cool because each post shows a picture of the person who wrote it, secondly, it shows three other posts related to it, thirdly it provies tools for sharing and forthly it is lightly monetized with Google AdSense. All in all, I think that the feed looks amazing. I am very happy with is and so must other people because the RSS subscription numbers are constantly increasing. If you have any questions related to blogging, you should register for a free account and post your question live on the blog. Don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed, if you prefer you can get updates by email instead. Here is a quick snapshot of the 50 most recent questions asked. Test your knowledge and see if you can answer a few of these yourself.

Basic Customer Service Skills Can Make Your Blog Better

Garry Conn — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 05:00:20 +0000

Prior to going self-employed, I worked as a regional manager and one of my focuses was training store level managers on the importance of providing excellent customer service. When a customer walked into one of my 13 stores, I wanted them to feel very welcomed and appreciated. I focused on the little things because I feel that the little things are what make a big difference.

If you visited one of my 13 stores, you’d quickly see that there was coffee and light snacks available. You’d see that the bathrooms were extremely clean. Prior to that you’d quickly discover that my employees were always available to help you with anything you needed, but also too they would never be breathing down your neck, nor would they pressure you into purchasing anything. If you were a customer in one of my 13 stores, you’d feel like a million dollars coming in and you’d feel like ten million dollars coming out. Also, and most importantly, you would be very likely to return and purchase from one of my stores again in the near future.

Running a blog isn’t much different than managing one or more retail stores. In order for a retail store to be successful, the store needs customers. Repeat business is very important towards the long term success of the store. In order for a blog to be successful, the blog needs readers. Regular readers is very important towards the long term success of the blog. Do you see where I am going with this?

Treat people with respect and treat people who read your blog exactly how you would want to be treated yourself. What can you do on your blog to give your readers the “WOW!!!” experience? Secondly, what can you do to convert your window shopper traffic into repeat buyers (aka regular readers)?

Share your thoughts in the comments. I’d like you to tell me ONE thing that a blogger can do to make the viewing experience better for a first time reader? Obviously you can’t provide first time readers with coffee and snacks, but what can you do differently to give your readers the WOW!!! experience?

Learn The Success Stories of 40 Bloggers in One Book

Garry Conn — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 05:00:06 +0000

Stephane Grenier contacted me by email a few days ago explaining that he is published a book. Not an eBook, a REAL book. The book is called Blog Blazers and it tells the success stories of 40 very well established and popular bloggers. The book can be purchased directly from the web site, but to illustrate the fact that this is a REAL and high quality book, you can even find copies for sale on Amazon.com. I would recommend purchasing direct on the web site though because if you do, you can get a free eBook bundle.

The cost of the book is $16.95 and inside you will learn the stories behind 40 popular and successful bloggers. Some of the bloggers you can read about include Aaron Wall, Seth Godin, Yaro Starak, and Neil Patel. You can read the complete line up on the Blog Blazers Bio page.

The author of the book, Stephane Grenier is the nationally known founder and CEO of LandlordMax Software Inc., a longtime builder and promoter of numerous blogs, a seminar speaker for “Website Promotion and Traffic Generation”, and the author of the critically acclaimed ebook, How to Generate Traffic to Your Website.

His passion for helping businesspeople maximize the power of their blogs and web sites is the driving force behind Blog Blazers: compiling the proven best practices of the most successful bloggers in the world. You can learn more about Stephan Grenier by visiting his web site FollowSteph.com.

I Learned A Few Things From My Last Two Posts

Garry Conn — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:42:23 +0000

The last few posts were pretty explosive with feedback. For that I am very thankful. I have learned a few things after reading the feedback provided to me from these two posts. For one, I am not an Internet marketer. An Internet marketer is one who is skilled in sales. I never worked on a car lot, never sold houses and all my previous day jobs were technical related. I am not good in sales.

I am a guy who has found a really cool way to make money online. As I have mentioned many times in the past, there are multiple ways to profit from the Internet. The methods I use, might not be right for you.

With that said, I am usually eager to share what I have learned with people. I think that is just in my nature. Doing so at times causes frustration, because I commonly expect to get a different reaction than I usually do. Over time, I am trying to learn how to accept that. Sometimes that is hard to accept.

At home, surrounded by family and friends, people tell me that doing what I do and the knowledge I have is invaluable. I share my thoughts, provide advice and even from time to time provide professional services for friends of friends. For that, I am compensated very well. Trying to do the same on the Internet though is a different story.

There is something about the Internet and something about this blog, where people feel and at times expect everything to be free. Also, writing on my blog has at times become almost predictable with the reaction I receive. If I write something that involves my readers spending money, I get little to no reaction. If I write something that offers something of value for free, I get a good reaction, but the reaction is one that gives off the feeling as if I were EXPECTED to write what I wrote.

The problem though is that I don’t really want to be expected to help people anymore for free. I don’t mind it when someone sends me an instant message and asks me for some form of advice. I think helping people is great. But, I guess what I mean to say is that I think many people who read my blog, some how over time have started to EXPECT me to hold their hand and give them the answers for free.

There is a difference between expecting help and appreciating help that you never expected to receive. Sometimes I get some really cool emails. I have the most fun when someone gets the nerve to send me an email asking for help. I can tell in their email they are a little nervous emailing me, but they want so badly to figure something out.

When I reply and provide them with the information that they need, they are just dumbfounded that I took the time to not only reply to their email, but also provide them with the information they needed and then some. Needless to say, they appreciate my help very much and never in a million years expected to receive the email response. Experiencing this is just amazing for me. I feel appreciated. I know of only one other feeling that feels better than being appreciated and sometimes the two go hand in hand.

I think it may be time for me to change things up a little bit, maybe stir the pot. The problem is that I don’t know quite how to do that. Late last month, I had talked about wanting to help new bloggers with blogging tips. Since then a reader of mine talked with me offline and suggested that I keep that topic for BloggingQuestions.com and not to do it on GarryConn.com. I think that was good advice and I decided to keep that topic separate from this blog.

With that said, I’ll admit, I am struggling to figure out what I should do. I enjoy the business I have created for myself very much. I enjoy talking about it and sharing that information a lot. But then I get torn after doing it when I don’t get the reaction I expected to receive.

Strangely, the word expectation continues to come up. I as the owner of this blog expect one thing, while you as the reader expect another. I don’t know, perhaps just writing this post in itself has allowed me to learn even one more thing.

Perhaps, I should get off my high horse and deliver what is expected. I remember last year when Wendy Piersall shared a story about a blog she owned. Long story short is that she had created a blog with one intention, but as the blog got more popular the readers expected something else. Her choices were to either deliver what the public wanted, or basically shut the blog down. She chose not to shut the blog down.

I’d like to be able to provide you with great posts. I’d like to be able to share information with you while not feeling regretful or angry for doing it. I think I have a new way I can do that. I think I have a new way I can share information with you and feel good about doing it. So with that said, I guess stick around for a little bit and let’s see what I can do.

How To Use The Fear of Rejection To Your Advantage

Garry Conn — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:50:33 +0000

Commenting is a great way to score traffic to your blog. The more you comment the more online contacts and friends you will make. As aggressive as you may be with commenting on other blogs, you need to be equally aggressive with asking people for requests. As a blogger, you should have a good handful of online contacts but I understand that is may be difficult for you to ask for requests by email or with using instant messenger simply because you are nervous about having your request rejected.

Having online contacts is very powerful and for every favor you ask of them, you should be prepared to return TWO, and do so without being asked. When you ask online contacts for favors, their immediate reaction needs to be,

“I should probably do this for him. If I don’t then I may risk losing a great resource and contributor of my own blog. He always stumbles and Diggs my blog posts when I ask, I’d really hate to lose that if I say no to his request”

You should have so much kindness with your friends that when you do make a request, it will NOT be denied. Here are my thoughts about “The Fear of Rejection.”

Instead of fearing rejection yourself, turn the tables around and pass the fear of rejection back to other people. In other words, offer your online contacts with a lot kindness and become someone of great value to them. If you do that, then when you ask them for a request it will cause them to consider the “Cause and Effects” of what will happen if they say no and deny your request.

If you become a very strong contributor of their blog (i.e. always comment on their posts and submit their post into the social networks, etc…) they will then stress more over deciding whether to “Grant” or “Deny” your request than you will. Fear of rejection is only an emotion that can easily be transferred out of your mind and into the minds of other people.

Here is an example of how you could ask an online contact for a request,

“Hey Bob… As bloggers, you and I both know that finding great material to write about can be a challenge. Over that last few months, I really have enjoyed talking with you, getting to know you better and I absolutely enjoy reading your blog. I am usually always the first to vote for your posts in StumbleUpon and Digg. My question for you is would it be possible for you to write a review about my blog? I would really enjoy reading about your perspective of my blog.”

It never hurts to ask! Asking for things can be as difficult or as easy as you make it. The worst thing that can happen is people will say no. There is not a lot at risk with asking a request. If the person says no, you’re not going to die and you’re not going to lose your job, so what’s to fear about. If they say Yes, then you win, if they say No, you have lost nothing.

Need Traffic? Forget Google and Just Become a Dennis To Society

Garry Conn — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:03:46 +0000

So everyone and their grandmother has already wrote this post once before INCLUDING MYSELF. But something tells me that not many people follow this advice. Do you want traffic to your blog? Do you want to score traffic quickly and not even have to depend on a search engine, such as Google, to supply it?

Are you ready for the magic trick?

Commenting…

hmm… what a concept.

If you comment on other blogs, such as my blog (hint hint) you will get traffic to your blog.

Dennis Edell is a prime example of a blogger who takes FULL ADVANTAGE of this tactic. Truly this guy is a class act.

Many bloggers understand that traffic can be had when you comment on other blogs. So many blogger do just that, but their comments totally suck! I mean, the comments are on the verge of being classified as spam.

“Hey, nice post… this is my read of the day!” Is an example of a low grade comment that doesn’t contribute anything and clearly the purpose of the comment is to just leave a URL behind. I can’t stand comments like that. It is clear that the person who left the comment cares NOTHING about the article, my blog or the community within the blog.

Then you have the rare bloggers such as Dennis Edell. This dude, I don’t know what he does, or how he does it. But if you surf around a lot of the make money online blogs, Internet Marketing blogs and general blogging tips blogs, you’ll quickly see that he is usually top of the commenting list.

And there is a difference between Dennis and other bloggers who are trying to score traffic. The key difference is that people like Dennis deserve the traffic because they are working their ass off to score it.

Every comment that Dennis has left on my blog either contributed to the quality of the content on the page, sparked up additional interest among readers, thus creating more comments, or provided me with feedback or infromation that leads me to add to the discussion myself.

In other words, Dennis actually reads the articles prior to commenting. It’s amazing really. He must be a super fast reader, very organized, a robot, or all of the above.

Now I haven’t talked to Dennis about his traffic stats or things like that, in fact… he has no idea that I am even writing this post, but I’d like to beleive that his blog has totally increased traffic a lot over the last 30 days. And if you’d like my guess, I would attribute a lot of that increase to how much he stay involved with other blogs.

So with that said, if you want traffic to your blog, leave a comment on the blogs that you read. Also, its one thing to work on getting traffic to your blog, it is a complete different ball game KEEPING TRAFFIC.

If your blog isn’t ready to accept people, then don’t waste your time marketing it until its ready to be seen. You can get all the traffic in the world to your blog and it won’t matter one bit unless you can KEEP THE TRAFFIC.

Write excellent posts, be accessible to your readers, visit the blogs of your readers, etc… you do all these things and a few more, then you’ll start to see the ball rolling.

Anyway, I want to thank Dennis for all the hard work he has done commenting on my blog, if you need a good blog subscriber, be sure to check out his blog titled, Direct Sales Web Marketing and tell Dennis that you’re looking for a good commenter for your blog and I’d bet the farm that Dennis will become your #1 reader and subscriber.

P.S. Dennis, you should write an eBook titled, How To Become Top Commenter and Win the Blogosphere Over in 30 Days and then sell it on ClickBank for $19.95.

Learn How I Made $1,634.06 Using Google AdSense

Garry Conn — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:13:11 +0000

Did I reallly make $1,634.06 yesterday using Google AdSense? In this post you are going to learn a lesson that will really help you wise up when you are deciding on who you trust with teaching you how to make money online.

Commonly, one of the first programs that bloggers discover is Google AdSense. As you know, this is one of the most popular problems people use towards making money online.

People who claim that they make a lot of money online usually try to prove their level of credibility using screen shots. In most cases these people complete fakes and don’t really make money online, but they want you to think that they do.

Their goal is to make you believe that they make a ton of cash on the Internet, that way they can have a better chance at selling you products that claim to help you start making money online yourself.

“The Proof is always in the screen shot! Experts always provide screen shots of their stats and their income earnings.”

The most common way to prove credibility is displaying screen shots but don’t believe the hype! Most of the screen shots you are viewing are totally fake!

Now, as the title of this post suggests, I am claiming to have made $1,634.06 yesterday using Google AdSense. Here is my screen shot that seals the deal. This is my screen shot that shows you that I am a Google AdSense Expert!

The above screen shot is obviously fake and it was very easy to make. If I had not wrote the words, “This Screen Shot Is Fake“, many people would believe that this claim was true and would want to know how I made so much money!

A screen shot is a very influential tool that people use towards gaining trust. When a person is successful gaining trust, they can make sales. Be aware of this tactic and don’t believe the hype.

How Did I Make This Screen Shot?

Making the screen shot was very simple. I logged into my Google AdSense account, loaded the page that had my earnings for the day before and then typed this code into the address bar.

From there, I was able to edit the entire page how I wanted. I tried to take an extra moment to make sure my math was correct when I was falsely changing the numbers.

I use Windows Vista, so I loaded up the Snipping Tool and took a screen shot. From there, I loaded the screen shot into Photoshop and used the Blurring tool to fade out the Clicks, Page CTR, and Page eCPM.

At that point, I could have been done! Instead, I took an extra step and added the text that reads, “This Screen Shot Is Fake.” All in all, It took me less than five minutes to create this fake screen shot.

This is the same five minutes that crooks invest towards making thousands of dollars online while successfully being a fake and stealing your money.

The lesson for you to learn here is to not believe people because they show you really appealing screen shots.

Garry Conn Will Start Helping New Bloggers Find Success With Blogging

Garry Conn — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 03:25:02 +0000

Reflecting on how I have been running my blog for the past two year leads me to realize that my blog doesn’t really cater to new Bloggers. That isn’t cool at all. My articles and content are really far to advanced for new bloggers to understand. There is nothing wrong with that, but I feel like I am not providing an effective service to people who want to start blogging and secondly who have an interest in eventually making money online with their blog! I aim to change that.

Over the weekend I have spent quite a bit of time searching around the Internet – places like Twitter, Yahoo! 360, etc. – and I quickly realized that there are thousands of people who need help with blogging and they simply don’t know that I am willing to provide them with advice, tips and tricks on becoming a successful blogger.

So with that said, I am going to be adjusting things here on my blog and I am going to start producing more content that new bloggers can find useful. For the majority of bloggers who read my blog already, I am sure that you guys and gals won’t learn much from this content, but you can actually help me by providing supportive and postive comments to the new people that will be surfacing here on the blog. Also, for many, this could prove to be an excellent blog tips refresher course!

This will be your time to shine as a GCDC reader and show these new readers who you are and how you can help them as well. With that said, I am really looking forward to making the minor adjustment in my writing topic, and you can still count on me helping you with advanced blogging tips and advanced strategies with making money online. Even more a reason to join my mailing list. (hint)