In this post we’ll look at 9 options for creating your own social network. Some are free options, and others are paid options that may be more appealing depending on your situation.

Ning

With Ning you can create your own social network very quickly for free. If you’re serious about building the site into something significant you can upgrade to a paid version with more features.

BuddyPress

For WordPress users, BuddyPress may be an attractive option. With BuddyPress you can turn a WordPress MU installation into a social networking site.

Pligg

Pligg is a common choice (open source)  for social news sites, such as Sphinn and Design Float. Pligg gets criticized frequently for the poor security at Design Float, but the site doesn’t show any signs of being actively managed, so it’s hard to blame Pligg for that.

KickApps

KickApps is a paid option that will allow you to build a social network with a lot of features. Pricing starts at $39.95 per month for the smallest plan.

CrowdVine

CrowdVine allows you to create a simple networking site for your group or organization. There are both free and paid options available.

CollectiveX

CollectiveX will allow you to create a social site for your group, organization or association. There are several different packages available including a free plan. Paid plans start at $9 per month and there are several premium features that you can add on for an additional fee.

Drupal

Drupal is a popular open source content management system that can be used to create social networking and social media sites. Design Bump, a social news site for the design community, is built on Drupal. There are a number of modules that can be used for building a social networking site with Drupal, here is a list.

Elgg

Elgg is an open source option that was created specifically to power social networking sites.

Dolphin

Dolphin is another free, open source option. It includes features like photo sharing and video sharing, among others.

What’s Your Experience?

If you have any experience working with any of these options, please share by leaving a comment.

There are a few different ways that premium theme marketplaces can sell their themes. Most sell themes individually and you can by a single-use license or a developer’s license. Other marketplaces use a membership model where members pay a monthly or yearly fee for access to all of the themes. And some marketplaces, like Blog Themes Club, offer both.

At the current time, Blog Themes Club has 4 different themes to choose from (shown below). Single-use licenses range from $19 - $39 depending on the theme. Memberships can be purchased for $49 for 3 months, $79 for 6 months, or $99 for 12 months. However, to celebrate the launch the prices will be $29, $49 and $69 respectively until July 31, 2009. Club members get unlimited downloads of themes as well as support.

The Giveaway Details:

If you’d like to win a free one-month membership to Blog Themes Club, please leave a comment on this post. On Wednesday, June 17, I will select 3 random winners. Be sure to leave a valid email address where you can be reached.

Themes:

Anima

Invictus

Kronos

Profectus

UPDATE: The contest is now over. Thanks to everyone who participated. The winners are Justin, Roseli, and Fabio. Kevin will be contacting you shortly with the details of claiming your prize.

The Winning Way is a checklist 500+ proven internet marketing strategies. Gyutae shares his knowledge and expertise by briefly covering each topic (the book is well over 100 pages long). Despite the length of the book, it is very easy to read. Gyutae even offers a guarantee for his free e-book. If you do not find at least 3 new ideas in the book, he is willing to pay you $50 (see the details of the guarantee).

I downloaded the book last night and have read through most of it already. I recommend that you visit his site and get your own copy of the free e-book. With his guarantee you really have nothing to lose.

In this article we’ll look at a number of things you can do to improve the impact of the older posts in your archives.

1. Look for Easy SEO Opportunities

Last month I published a post Simple SEO Changes to Improve Unexpected Rankings. That post covers some very easy things you can do to improve the rankings of posts that are already drawing traffic for specific search phrases. If you have a blog that’s been around for a while and built archives with a decent number of posts, one of the easiest ways to add more value to your older posts is to identify opportunities that already exist.

If you have a post that is drawing traffic for a specific phrase, make sure the page title is optimized for that phrase, add some internal links using that phrase as anchor text, and build some links from other sites to that post. Since these posts are already driving traffic for these phrases, if you can improve the rankings with some simple changes you should see a noticeable increase in search traffic.

2. Promote Your Best or Most Popular Content

Many blogs include a list of popular posts in the sidebar. This can be an effective way of directing new visitors to the best content on the site, and improve your chances of turning that visitor into a subscriber or a repeat visitor.

Sidebars aren’t the only place to promote your best work. Links within the context of the new blog posts will have the most impact in terms of click-throughs, so make an effort to link whenever appropriate.

You probably spent a lot of time writing your best posts, so make sure that you’re still getting something out of them rather than letting them collect dust in your archives.

3. Build Links

Achieving solid search engine rankings is probably the best way to extend the life of your blog posts. Even a small increase in the number of search visitors you draw on a daily basis will make a big difference over the course of a month or a year. Most bloggers focus link building efforts only on new posts, but you can also build links to your older posts. If you have older posts that have potential to draw significant search traffic, spending some time building links could be a great investment of your time. You could exchange links with other bloggers, do some article marketing, build Squidoo lenses, or some other type of link building activity.

4. Consistently Use Internal Links in Your Posts

Going back through your archives and adding internal links to other posts can take a lot of time. You can help yourself out and work to extend the life of your posts by using internal links in your new posts. Get in the habit of reading through your posts before publishing just for the purpose of identifying opportunities for internal links to your older posts. You may get some click-through traffic from your subscribers to the older posts, plus the links can help to establish them with search engines.

5. Go Back and Update Important Posts

The posts from your archives that are drawing the most traffic on a regular basis are assets to your blog. Rather than just leaving them alone and hoping that the traffic continues to flow, go back to the posts periodically to see if there are ways to improve the post. Is the information out of date? Are the links still active? Is there new information that could be added to improve the post? Could the formatting be improved to make it more reader-friendly?

Be updating your posts from time-to-time you’ll help to keep them relevant and useful for a longer period of time, which should help to ensure that they continue to draw visitors.

6. Focus on Quality Over Quantity

Most of us bloggers feel the need to publish a certain number of posts per week or even per day. Consistent posting is a great habit to develop, but quantity of posts should not take priority over quality. If you’re rushing to pump out new content just for the sake of having something new for readers, it’s likely that these posts will have little long-term value, and shortly after they are published traffic will fade and they will rarely be read again.

By focusing your efforts on creating the best content possible, you’ll draw more links, attract better search engine rankings, and develop a better reputation among readers in your industry. In this case your archives will be a strong source of on-going traffic.

7. Use Landing Pages

If your archives include a number of posts on similar or related topics, consider creating a landing page that provides some information and links out to these posts. The page could become a valuable resource for visitors and funnel traffic to posts in your archives.

8. Evaluate Your Stats

Most bloggers are obsessed with stats, tracking visitors, page views and subscriber counts on a regular basis. But many times the stats aren’t really used productively. By evaluating which posts on your site are drawing the most on-going traffic and which search phrases are sending visitors, you can probably use this information to come up with some ideas for new posts that will be likely to turn into strong long-term assets in your archives.

What’s Your Opinion?

What do you do to improve the effectiveness and impact of your older posts?

There is a great deal of variety in the sites that are featured (hopefully the categorization helps to make it more useful). Some are social media sites with user submitted links and voting to see which links get promoted to the front page (Digg-style), and others are intended to allow people with common interests to connect in various ways.

Here is a listing of the sites that were just added. Be sure to visit the list of social media and social networking sites for more.

Bookmarking:

Jack of All Links

Mister Wong

Cars and Auto:

Car Community

Dating:

BachelorPlace

Education:

Curriki

We the Teachers

Fashion/Clothing:

Springleap - T-shirts

General Networking:

ECpod

MyWebProfile

Plaxo

Health/Medical:

DrConnected

Sanewire - recovery

Internet Marketing:

Gooruze

Movies:

Reelempire

News:

BookmarkUs.net

Mad or Love

Zoomit (Canada)

Photo Sharing:

eSnips

Professional:

CitiAlly

MyCareer.ge

Naymes

Venture Capitalist Network

Sports:

KeeCricket

Prep Champs (high school sports)

Strands

Travel:

TrekCafe

Miscellaneous:

Clubnet UK - clubbing

Freagle

GreekStrength - fraternities and sororities

Match A Dream

Scoop.at - Austria

Sydney Networkers

Velospace - Bicycles

I get emails every day at my design blogs requesting link exchanges, and I sent a few myself when I was getting my first blog started. Some of the emails I get take an effective approach (even if I wind up not exchanging links) but most have serious flaws that will prevent the blogger from having a decent chance to get a link. Obviously, if they’re contacting me, they are also contacting other bloggers with the same request, and if they are making the same mistakes with each email they could be spending a lot of time and not getting many links out of it.

With the right approach link exchanges can be very beneficial, especially for newer bloggers. Here are 9 things to remember when you are asking other bloggers to exchange links:

1 - Be Direct and to the Point

If the purpose of your email is to request a link exchange, make sure it is clear what you are asking for, what you are offering in return (such as a blogroll link) and keep it brief. Of course, it’s not bad to put a little bit of thought and personality into the email, but avoid getting too long. I think this also depends partly on who you are contacting. Those who run large blogs get tons of email, so the shorter the better. If you’re contacting a new blogger that probably doesn’t get many emails from visitors, you have a little bit more freedom in this area.

2 - Start with People You Know

Your best chance of getting someone to accept a link exchange is when you have had some contact, or if the other person at least knows who you are. While I generally turn down all link exchange requests at this point, I will usually accept if it’s from someone that I consider a friend. If you’re just getting started as a blogger your contacts may be limited, so that is a good reason to get out and make an effort to get to know other bloggers in your niche. If possible, leave comments on a blog and start participating before asking for a link exchange.

3 - Only Approach Sites that are Relevant to Yours

It’s not rare to get a link exchange request from someone who has a site that is totally unrelated to yours. If I get an email that’s asking me to link to a dating website or something that has no connection to my site, I’ll delete it right away. Focus on spending your time building links from relevant sites and you’ll have the best results.

4 - Approach Blogs of a Similar Size

If you just launched your blog last week, don’t ask for a link exchange from a highly established and successful blog (unless you know the blogger or unless you already have an established reputation). Your time is much better spent approaching other new bloggers, and you’ll probably get a pretty high percentage of people that accept your request. As your blog grows, you’ll be able to move on to link exchange requests from bigger blogs.

Larger blogs are less likely to accept your request for a few reasons:

• There’s nothing in it for them. Well, not completely nothing, but they certainly don’t have the same motivation that a smaller blog would. A link from an unestablished blog will not send much direct traffic, and the blog probably already has plenty of links, so it won’t make a difference for search engine rankings.
• They get too many requests. If bloggers accepted every link exchange request their sidebars would never end.
• They don’t know if you’re serious about your blog. I don’t think most bloggers want to have a blogroll full of links to blogs that haven’t posted in six months. Unfortunately, a very high percentage of new bloggers give up very quickly. As a result, you’ll have to prove yourself for a while before getting blogroll links from larger blogs.

5 - Find the Blogger’s Name

For bloggers that get a lot of emails requesting link exchanges, it can make a HUGE difference if you take a minute to find the name of the person you’re writing to. Not many people do this, so it gives your message a more personal touch and shows that you care enough to personalize it.

6 - Don’t Ignore Single-Post Links

Blogroll link exchanges are the most common, and they do usually result in a link from every page on a blog, but they are not the only option. When I started my first blog I was publishing a weekly links post that included about 10 - 15 links to other posts that I read throughout the week. This worked out very well for me because it allowed me to attract some people to my blog as they followed the link that was coming to their site, plus it allowed me to “reward” those who commented throughout the week or who I was getting to know. Linking to others is a great way to make friends.

These link posts also were the focus of the link requests that I made. I think there was about a one month span where I looked for other bloggers who were also doing weekly or occasional link posts who blogged on similar topics as me. If I liked their content I sent them an email and asked if they would be interested in exchanging links from our link posts. With this approach I got a very high percentage of people who accepted the offer and I’m actually still in touch with some of those people nearly two years later.

I didn’t always follow my own advice from earlier in the post about getting to know the people first, but I did focus on smaller blogs and they were generally very open to the suggestion.

7 - Don’t make it look like the request was sent to 1,000 people

To have the best chance of getting a link, make the email look personal and not like a bulk message that was blasted to tons of people. Just using the person’s name, which was already mentioned, goes a long way here. The formatting of bulk messages also can make it look obvious some times, so just write a simple paragraph with your request.

8 - Provide a link to your site

This one should be obvious, but I get requests all the time that say “hey, I just started a new blog and wanted to know if you would exchange links with me?” Keeping it brief is good, but if someone doesn’t even take the time to tell me what their website is, or provide a link, the chance that I’ll respond is pretty slim.

9 - Don’t go overboard

Link exchanges can be a great benefit to bloggers, but they’re only a small part of what it takes to build a successful blog. Don’t spend all of your time emailing every blogger that you can find at the expense of the other things that need to be done to run your blog.

10 - Focus on content first

The very best thing you can do to attract links, regardless of your approach for link building, is to focus on producing the best content possible. If you request a link exchange with someone who is not familiar with your blog, the first thing they’re going to do is visit and see what kind of content you have. If you have good content, there’s a good chance they will be interested in linking to you. Good content will make it much easier to build links.

What’s Your Experience with Link Exchanges?

If you have any experience with link exchanges, please share in the comments.

You may notice that some of your blog posts are drawing search engine traffic for particular search phrases and keywords (especially if your blog has had some time to establish itself with search engines). Even if you are doing keyword research prior to writing posts, you’ll almost definitely see that some of these phrases that are producing traffic are not something that you had intentionally targeted. While this is a nice surprise, it also means that there is likely more potential if you’re willing to make some small, but significant, tweaks.

If you’re drawing search traffic from a phrase that you’re not targeting, it probably means that you could be ranked even higher, and draw even more traffic as a result, if you make some changes to optimize your post accordingly. Just because a post was published at some point in the past doesn’t mean that it can’t be modified and made to be more effective.

In this post we’ll look at a few simple changes that can be made to improve upon these unintentional rankings. By taking a relatively small amount of time to recognize these opportunities and act on them, you could be setting yourself up for significantly more search engine traffic on an on-going basis.

First of all, you’ll need to find the keywords and phrases that are already driving traffic to your site. These are the search terms that you know are already producing results, so making a small effort to move up in the rankings is well worth your time. If your post is ranked 5th in Google for a particular phrase without even attempting to optimize the page, you may be able to quickly improve to the 1st or 2nd spot and see a noticeable increase in traffic. Repeat this process for a few different posts and the results will add up.

As an example, I have a post on my primary blog that has steadily attracted search traffic for the past six months or so. It’s not a ridiculous amount of traffic each day, but it does come from some fairly competitive search phrases and it is consistent every day, which adds up over the span of a month. I recently spent a few minutes to look into which search phrases were sending traffic to this post and I was surprised to see that I was ranked 4th in Google for a phrase that didn’t seem to be optimized. I made a simple change in just a couple of minutes and within a few days the post had moved to the #1 spot for that same phrase. Since then search traffic has been up consistently for that phrase.

To find these opportunities for your own blog, look at your stats from Google Analytics (or a similar program) and see what search phrases are sending traffic to your site. Most likely these phrases will be leading traffic to a particular post rather than to your homepage, which means you can simply optimize that post to more effectively target the phrases that are already sending traffic. Just look through the phrases that are sending traffic and you’re sure to find some that could be more productive. Personally, I start with the ones that are sending the most traffic since they have potential for the best results.

In addition to looking at Google Analytics, you can also use Google Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools will show you some valuable data under “Statistics” and “Top Search Queries.” This will show you 20 phrases where your site is ranking well, and 20 phrases that are sending the most traffic to you. You may find some items on this list that surprise you a little bit. If they surprise you, it probably means that you weren’t intending to draw traffic from these phrases and there should be some room for improvement.

So now that you have identified a few phrases to work with, what should you do? Here are a few simple suggestions.

1. Page Titles

Page titles are the most significant on-page factor for search engine rankings. If your post is ranking very well for a particular phrase that is not exactly used in your page title, you should be able to see some improvement in the ranking if you change your page title to include this phrase. If you’re using WordPress and the All-In-One SEO Pack Plugin this is very easy. From the example that I used earlier, I didn’t remove anything from the existing title, I simply added a two-word phrase that was already producing the search traffic. As a result, with no other effort, that was enough to jump a few spots in the rankings.

2. Add New Internal Links

By adding more internal links to a particular post you will be indicating to search engines that the post is important. This is a pretty simple process, but one that most of us don’t take the time to do. If you’re blog has been around for a while you have plenty of places where you can add internal links. Go back and find posts on related topics and add a link in the content of the page or at the beginning or end of the post. Also, look for opportunities to link from any significant pages on your blog.

3. Change Anchor Text

Another factor that will influence search engine rankings is the anchor text that is used on links that point to that post. You can obviously control the anchor text used on your internal links, so take a few minutes and see what anchor text you are currently using on these links and see if it could be optimized to match the phrase that you are now targeting.

The anchor text of links from other sites to this page will also be significant, but you may or may not be able to change that. In most cases the best you could do is to contact the other blogger or website owner and ask them if they mind changing the anchor text on a particular link. I know some people do this, but I can’t say that I have ever asked someone to change the anchor text on their site for me.

4. Meta Description

While meta descriptions are not going to make a big difference in terms of rankings, an effective description is capable of improving the click-through-rate from the SERPs. For example, if your page is ranking 3rd in Google for a particular phrase, you could enter a description that will do a better job of attracting clicks from those searchers and you may find a 10% in traffic without moving up in the rankings. Again, this is something that you can easily do with the All-In-One SEO Pack Plugin.

5. Add to the Content of the Post

One of the best ways to help a post draw more traffic on an on-going basis is to make the post more useful. Most of us don’t take the time to improve our old posts, but the time can be a good investment in some cases. By making adding new or updated content you will be making the post more useful and hopefully it will attract more links in the future because it continues to be valuable. And more links mean possible improvement in rankings.

6. Write a Follow Up Post

I rarely write posts to target a specific word or phrase, but I did so about a year ago with a post on my primary blog. After a while the post attracted some links and moved up to the number one spot for the targeted phrase. After that I thought it would be nice if I could get a second post to rank well for that phrase, so I published a follow up. Since my site was already recognized by Google as a good source of information for this phrase it was pretty easy to get a second post to rank for the same phrase. Before long I had the first two spots in Google for the phrase pointing towards my two posts.

If you have a page that is ranked very high, this is a very achievable way to grab an even higher share of the traffic for this phrase. However, most of us (including me) rarely think to do this. Take a look at your posts that are ranking well, most likely you’ll find some opportunities where you could write a follow up post to target the same phrase.

Reminder:

One thing that should be pointed out here is that any changes made can also affect your rankings for that post and other search phrases. So if the post is already ranking well for your targeted phrase and you see another phrase that also is sending some traffic, you won’t want to abandon the targeted phrase by making changes that will be counterproductive.

What’s Your Advice?

What simple SEO changes do you make to your blog?

In this post we’ll take a look at 25 resources, some free and some paid, that will simplify your blogging life in one way or another. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

Twitter Resources:

Twitter is a great resource for bloggers, but it can be difficult to manage. Fortunately, there are some great tools that can help to organize your Twitter account and make it more productive without requiring all of your time. Here we’ll look at two of the best resources, but you can see others in 5 Firefox Add-Ons for Twitter.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a great resource for organizing and simplifying the use of Twitter. With TweetDeck you can customize how the data is shown, but you can see all of the tweets from those who you are following, you can separate replies to you, as well as direct messages. TweetDeck will also help you to easily and quickly reply and retweet, plus it has functionality to shorten URLs.

Twhirl

Twhirl is a desktop client for social sites including Twitter, Friendfeed and others. I’ve personally been using it recently for Twitter to see how it compare to TweetDeck. It does many of the same things to make Twitter easier to use and more effective.

Blog Editors:

Many bloggers, myself included, find it easier to write and edit posts prior to publishing by using some type of editor other than just the blogging platform. WordPress has everything you need to enter posts directly, but using an editor brings some advantages. However, using Word is not the best option as it will add unnecessary code. The are a number of quality editors to choose from.

BlogDesk

After trying a few different blog editors, BlogDesk became my choice. It is free and simple to use, plus it has a number of helpful features. You can post directly to your blog from BlogDesk (although I rarely do it this way). BlogDesk also allows you to swicth to code view to have more control if you want.

Blog Jet

BlogJet is a blog editor for Windows. It’s not a free option (starts at $39.95), but it does have a lot of useful features, including a WYSIWYG editor, YouTube and Flickr support, integration with browsers and feed readers, and more. There is a free trial available.

Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer is the preferred editor for many bloggers. It’s a free option that includes many features. The most recent version will even allow you to include video from your computer in posts, and it will automatically publish to YouTube when the post is published.

ScribeFire

ScribeFire is a Firefox extension that gives you a full-featured blog editor right in your browser. Being a browser add-on, it provides a different user experience than the others on this list, so you can see for yourself which type you prefer.

Firefox Add-Ons:

Firefox is an excellent browser for bloggers in part because there are countless add-ons that have been created to achieve a specific purpose. Here we’ll look at a few that can help bloggers to save time and work efficiently, but you can find more in 10 Firefox Add-Ons for Bloggers and 20 Firefox Extensions for Social Media Addicts.

LinkChecker

If your blog posts typically include a number of links, LinkChecker can be a big time saver. Rather than manually checking to see if all the links are active, you can run LinkChecker to do the dirty work and quickly point out any dead links that need to be corrected.

Social Media for Firefox

Most bloggers are also at least somewhat active on social media sites. The Social Media add-on will show you data about any page as you’re surfing. You can see how many votes a page or post has on a number of different social media sites, and you can also quickly identify those that have not yet been submitted, which is a great way to build a profile by getting to the best stories quickly.

Amazon S3 Organizer

Amazon S3 is a great service for hosting images and media files rather than hosting them on your own server. Especially if your blog gets high volumes of traffic or bursts of traffic, having images stored on another server can help the blog to perform more efficiently. Amazon S3 Organizer is a great way to upload and manage your files on Amazon S3, which does not currently provide an way to do this without using another program.

SEO Toolbar

The SEO Toolbar from SEO Book is an excellent free SEO resource. With the toolbar installed you can get all kinds of information on any page as your surfing, including link analysis, ranking information, general domain information and more.

WordPress Plugins:

WordPress is my blogging platform of choice, and it’s also extremely popular with other bloggers. One of the reasons WordPress is a great choice is the huge number of plugins that are readily available. While there are plenty of valuable plugins to choose from, the ones featured here will specifically help you to achieve efficiency.

Database Backup Plugin

Backing up your WordPress database is an essential security measure. The Database Backup Plugin makes it easy to set automated backups that you can have sent directly to your email address. It makes an essential task something that you won’t have to worry about.

cforms II

If you need any kind of contact form on your website, cforms II makes it easy to set up. You can create multiple customizable forms, including tell-a-friend options.

WP125

Managing your own ad sales can be much easier with WP125. It allows you to easily set and manage 125 x 125 banner ads within the WordPress dashboard. I used the plugin for a few months before moving to a third party network, and I was very pleased with WP125. If you’re looking for an easy-to-use plugin that allows you to sell and manage your own ads, this is a great choice.

Bad Behavior

Even with Akismet, comment spam can become overwhelming. Bad Behavior is a plugin that will help to cut down on the amount of spam comments that you receive. “Instead of merely looking at the content of potential spam, Bad Behavior analyzes the delivery method as well as the software the spammer is using. In this way, Bad Behavior can stop spam attacks even when nobody has ever seen the particular spam before.”

Monetization:

Aside from personal blogs, most bloggers have the intention of making money. Unfortunately, making money from your blog can be a huge task in itself. There are some ways, however, some resources to help make the monetization process a bit simpler and less time consuming.

BuySellAds

BuySellAds is an advertising marketplace that allows you to sell ads on your site with little to no work, plus BSA makes it easy for the advertisers as well. Payment is handled through PayPal subscriptions, so renewal rates tend to be high if the ads are priced well. I use BSA on all three of my sites and highly recommend them, especially to bloggers in tech-related niches.

Commission Junction

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize a blog, but having tons of different affiliate programs means that you’ll have to spend a lot of time tracking results and managing the accounts. Commission Junction is one of the largest affiliate marketplaces that allows you to promote many different programs while tracking all of them from just one place, and getting one paycheck.

LinkShare

LinkShare is similar to Commission Junction. With LinkShare you can promote a number of different affiliate programs without needing to track and manage them all separately.

Themes:

Most bloggers want to be able to give their blog a professional, attractive and unique look. While there are thousands of free themes to choose from, you’ll probably want something better or more customized if you view your blog as a business. Custom themes are always an option, but they are out of the price range of most bloggers. For this reason, premium themes have become very popular. For anywhere between $20 and $100 you can get a premium theme that has an improved look and possibly better functionality than a free theme. Premium themes are a great way to save yourself some headaches and expense when it comes to improving the look of your blog.

ThemeForest

Envato’s theme marketplace, ThemeForest, offers very affordable WordPress themes, as well as HTML/CSS templates and themes/templates for other content management systems. There is a wide variety of WordPress themes available, including many for specific purposes and types of sites. You may be able to find the perfect theme for your needs for around $25 or $30.

StudioPress

Brian Gardner, the designer behind the popular Revolution series of themes, has a number of excellent themes for sale at StudioPress.

iThemes

iThemes has a number of WordPress themes for sale. They create themes of all kinds, for blogs and for CMS purposes.

Thesis

Thesis is an incredibly popular premium theme from DIY Themes. It’s flexibility, features, and optimized code make it a favorite among bloggers.

WooThemes

WooThemes sells a number of great premium themes from some very talented designers. The have themes for many different purposes and they frequently run specials and promotions.

Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes is a different type of premium theme marketplace. Designer Nick Roach offers all of his premium themes (currently more than 20 themes) for a price of just $19.95 per year.

Hard Drive Backup:

Most bloggers have valuable information on their hard drive. If your hard drive crashes you could lose hours, days, or even weeks worth of work. You can protect yourself from this by having a system to backup your hard drive. Automated, online services are very popular and affordable. If your hard drive ever crashes, having one of these services will most certainly simply your life.

Mozy

I have been using Mozy for about a year now to backup my hard drive. It’s one of those services that I hope I never have to use, but if I do need it, it will be well worth the money. Mozy will automatically backup your hard drive at specific intervals so you don’t even have to remember to do it. You can get unlimited backups for less than $5 per month, and a personal account with 2 GB or less for free.

Carbonite

Carbonite is a similar service to Mozy. The cost is $54.95 per year, with the a free trial period of 15 days available.

Intronis

Intronis is another similar service. Their pricing is the first 2 GB each month are free, and each additional GB is $2.99.

Suggestions?

What other resources do you use that make your life easier?

Although there are all kinds of different types of resources for Twitter (see 101 Twitter Resources), in this post I’d like to focus on Firefox add-ons. (You can follow Traffikd on Twitter.)

1. TwitterBar

Twitterbar is a popular and simple add-on that lets you tweet from your address bar.

TwitterBar allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A small Twitter icon sits to the right of your address bar; clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over it to see how many characters you have left.

2. Twitbin

Twitbin uses the sidebar of your browser to follow conversations.

Twitbin is a firefox extension that allows you to keep up with all of your Twitter conversations right from your browser sidebar. Send messages, receive messages, share links, and more from Twitbin, the best twitter addon for firefox out there.

3. TwitterFox

TwitterFox helps you to stay up-to-date with conversations of those who you are following, and to update your own status.

TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets on Twitter. This extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar which notifies you when your friends update their tweets. Also it has a small text input field to update your tweets.

4. TwitKit

TwitKit is another add-on that makes use of the browser sidebar.

TwitKit is a Twitter sidebar for Firefox. TwitKit has a 6-section interface, using tabs to separate content. You can view the Twitter public timeline, your user timeline, a list of your friends and their latest tweets, a list of your followers and their latest tweets, @replies made to you, and stats about your account.

5.  Power Twitter

Power Twitter adds some additional features that may make Twitter more effective or fun.

Power Twitter adds features to the Twitter Web interface including:

-search and recent searches
-search scoped to a specific user
-status history peeking on mouseover
-Facebook status updates
-inline YouTube, Flickr, TwitPic, Google Maps, song.ly, and more
-url expansion
-url translation to page titles
-open web update (news feed) mapping
-custom settings
-@mentions
-photo uploading
-link shrinking
-#hashtags

There are a number of reasons for this change of opinion, but I’d like to point out a few.

1. I’ve made it a part of my everyday routine.

For many Twitter users, it is constantly a part of their life. That’s not the case for me, and I doubt it ever will be, but when I started making an effort to get involved on a regular, consistent basis, I started to appreciate Twitter more. If you’re struggling to see the value in Twitter, I encourage you to make it a priority to be more active and I think you’ll have a similar experience.

2. I follow only those that I know or that I truly want to follow.

I know many Twitter users feel you should follow everyone that follows you, but that just makes it too chaotic for me. At first I followed a lot of people, but eventually I cut back and that’s when I really started to feel like Twitter had a significant purpose for me. If other users don’t follow me because I don’t follow them, that’s fine and I understand that, but in order to actually get something out of Twitter, I feel like I need to limit how many people I’m following.

3. It’s embraced by others in my industry.

As a web designer and a blogger it’s easy for me to connect with colleagues through Twitter, because almost everyone is there. In other industries that are less tech-savvy, it’s likely that a lower percentage of people are using Twitter. But I like the fact that most people who I have a need to contact for professional reasons can be found on Twitter.

4. Integration with blogs.

Last month I started the Traffikd Twitter account, something that many other blogs (and companies for that matter) are doing. There are a tons of WordPress plugins and all kinds of opportunities to integrate Twitter with blogs. I like seeing blogs that have some sort of integration, and it has made it easier for me to be active with Twitter since I’m on a lot of blogs everyday.

5. It’s great for quickly sharing resources.

Most of the things I post to Twitter are either interesting links that I’ve come across or re-tweeting links from other users. I really like being able to quickly share links without the need to write a blog post or send emails to friends. And I love finding new things through the tweets of other users.

What’s Your Opinion of Twitter?

Personally, I plan to continue to increase my activity on Twitter since it has definitely proven to be a valuable resource. What about you? Are you on Twitter? How active are you? Feel free to leave a link to your Twitter account in the comments.