Work from home blog grows up.
At Ask-Us.biz, we’re always looking for new and exciting ways to help you in your quest to “work from home”. We don’t tell you exactly how to make money, as there are way too many different ways to do that.
What we do, is provide you with usable tools to make your job easier.
One thing that always makes our job easier is great documentation. So, when tools come along that have great videos, guides, etc., we take a close look at them.
What you’ll be seeing over the next couple of weeks is the evolution of this blog using a fully optimized theme that is all “plug and play”. We’ll reveal the source once we’ve finished tricking it out.
Enjoy the journey with us!
That question is more relevant than ever. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is as important as it’s ever been. I, for one, have suffered information overload for years regarding SEO. That is, until now.
When I found this new theme (the one I’m using for this blog), I also found a fellow who finally explained SEO in a way I could understand. Even more importantly, he has created several inexpensive products which have guided me through the process of making my web sites (all wordpress blogs) much more search-engine friendly.
From keyword research (using only free tools), to a complete list of every plug-in you need, as well as resources that help you create floods of highly targeted traffic (no gimmicks, no black hat, no exchanges), I’ll be presenting each of his products once I’ve implemented them myself.
The first product I purchased was his “Firestorm SEO. I found this product upon recommendation from the developers of this theme. He had used this theme in one of his videos.
“Firestorm SEO” is a total combination of several of his products. He starts you off with optimizing your browser properly, then into keyword research, and then into all the plug-ins and their implementation. Each topic is covered in a separate video.
When you’re first beginning, I believe it may be best to purchase the less expensive products first. That way you can totally concentrate on one subject. For that reason, I purchased Keyword Diamond Mine. In this series of videos, this guy holds your hand through every single step, from how to find profitable niches, to how to maximize your keyword research and get highly targeted results that don’t cost you an arm and a leg.
I can honestly recommend Keyword Diamond Mine as I am using it myself on several blogs. To date, my most successful blog positioning is Put-In-Bay Iceguides. I put this blog up for my housemate’s son’s business. Within 60 days, this blog is ranked # 1 for 17 different keywords across the 4 major search engines, and is receiving over 25% of it’s traffic from search engines.
WordPress plug-ins can make or break your blog.
As promised, here are some of the things I’m using to crush the competition among ice fishermen. Shawn’s site has been up less than 2 months and here’s a bit of data. Put-In-Bayiceguides is ranked anywhere from 1 down to 40 in each of the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
So, what am I using?
First I installed a plug-in for Firefox, SEOBOOK. The basic version is free and has a really neat toolbar that provides you stats for yourself as well as info about your competition.
Within wordpress, I installed WordPress SEO, and SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2. These two plug-ins do as much to help you get your site ranked as any I’ve used previously. They’re very well documented, and are easy to work with.
Another must have plug-in is WP-DBManager. This makes it super easy to back up your database right from your admin panel. You can also optimize and repair the DB as necessary.
That’s it for now, will be back later with some really exciting news about themes.
Cindy and I got an early morning call this week from her son, who owns an ice fishing business at Put-In-Bay, OH. Since he’s family, we said sure, we’ll put it all together for you.
So, we’ve both been quite busy this week getting his off-line business online. She took care of registering a domain name for him, while I researched the best way to showcase his business.
I chose a WordPress blog hosted by us on our own server. That way, Cindy and I can be the administrators while he concentrates on his business. His entire season lasts about 3 months. During that time, he puts in 18 hour days, so has no time to worry about this kind of stuff.
Less than 3 days later, his blog is operational, and I’m awaiting the “content notes” from him. Just as soon as I receive those notes, I’ll flesh out the blog.
Of course there’s much more to putting his ice fishing business on line than simply creating a blog. I’ll cover each step in later posts. For now, check out the progress at Put-In-Bay Iceguides.
Take a look around this site and you’ll see some new advertising for Internet marketing stuff. Some of it is free, and some of it is ridiculously discounted (to make it totally affordable).
This is just the start!
You’ll notice banners between the posts… those are awesome products that Cindy and I use and personally recommend. In fact, most of what we promote comes from the “Unselfish Marketer“. Cindy has been using his products for a couple of years, and I was just getting involved when I got sick.
When you’re looking for how to drive traffic, or what niches are hot, or you need some particular templates, the “Unselfish Marketer” has just what you need. Believe me, we get a ton more value from our membership than anything else we’ve ever joined.
You’ll want to be sure and grab the Free Traffic Marketing Report, as that gets you on our preferred customer list. That means you’ll often get advance notice of new stuff… and even great bonuses that I don’t have time to post here.
Traffic (human visitors to your web site or blog) is the lifeblood of your business. The processes you use are marketing and advertising.
When you’re first beginning your business on the internet, one of the biggest challenges is how to get people to come to your web site or blog.
More often than not, you’re driving traffic comprised of other advertisers who are trying to sell you something, not necessarily looking to purchase your product or information.
I’ve found a reputable free download that will help you drive targeted free traffic to your site. The process is simple. You can use this process as you have time, maybe an hour or so a day. There’s nothing gimmicky or shady in the methods used in this free report.
All you have to so is either click on the image to the left or follow this link.
Many years ago, I thought affiliate marketing was the way to go. That was before all the “affiliate managers” came along. I remember getting involved with Commission Junction (and later leaving them). They were very complex and hard to work with.
Now that I’m back, and 10 years after my first foray into affiliate marketing, I’ve reactivated my LinkShare.com
account. They have some programs that work very nicely with Shari’s Gone Country!. Of course, I also have Clickbank, and Amazon, as well as Google Adsense.
When adding advertising to your blog, it’s my opinion that you should use a “light hand”. Too many ads can clutter your site and cause your reader to lose track of the content. I like to use ads to break up things on my sidebar, alternating things like links, and other widgets with an adblock of some sort.
With this particular blog, my theme allows me to have two sidebars, right, and left. I’ve chosen to use the left sidebar for “blog stuff” and the right sidebar for advertising. Watch for some really great additions to the ads as I search out quality affiliate programs that help you work from home.
Missed me?
After 18 months or so, I’m finally able to get back to working from home, promoting affiliate marketing and driving traffic. I’ve got a ton of catching up to do, but believe I’ve updated most everything on this blog.
Stand by for great things to come. Cindy has been holding things together on her end while I was unable to work and tells me she has a ton of stuff to give away that will help your business grow.
Oh, I was away from work thanks to a very serious heart problem that required open heart surgery and eventually a pacemaker. I feel like I’m on top of the world now. Dixie Regional Medical Center and all the associated health care providers simply rock the world.
The following solution works under these conditions.
You must have each of the blog scripts installed in your root domain on a WHM cPanel. I’ve not made it work when the script is installed as a sub-domain.
Only one script needs to be modified. I have the mods in one blog and ran plugin updates for four more with no modifications.
1. In wp-config.php add the following line to your definitions:
define(WP_TEMP_DIR’,'/home/username/public_html/tmp’);
Be sure to change “username” to your cPanel login name
2. Create a folder named tmp under the site’s public_html
3. Ste permissions on the new “tmp” folder to be 777
Close the file and update your blog
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been laboring to use the internal WP2.71 internal plugin update function.
It used to work just fine… and then, well who knows what happened.
Here’s what my great web host guys have discovered, and you may want to pay attention.
It seems that the folks writing the code for WordPress are a little clunky. They’re really trying to do the best for us (as in protecting from hackers), but they aren’t real adept at writing “universal” code.
We host several WordPress scripts on our shared server using the WHM cPanel function. That means every script is on the same IP address… and that appears to be the problem for the internal updating function.
Our web host guys have done some experimenting and made at least one of our blogs update internally. They also gave me the code to use and see if I could do it on my end.
Well, I didn’t have much time the other day, and it didn’t work as it should. Tomorrow I’ll have several hours and will do some direct comparisons. Just as quickly as I make the solution work, I’ll post it here, as well as at the WordPress.org forum.
Adgitize, kind of a strange name… but hey… when it works, that’s what counts!
Adgitize, founded by Ken Brown, is an advertising program built by a blogger, for bloggers. Ken has several years’ experience in the blogging community, as well as considerable experience in the traffic-driving/advertising area. He’s also a programmer. I’d call this all win-win-win.
So, how do I use Adgitize?
I am using Adgitize to advertise Traffic-Exchange-Business.com as we are targeting the blogosphere, as well as more traditional web sites from the work-at-home niche.
I also proudly advertise Adgitize on each of my blogs. For that, I am rewarded a few cents each day.
I earn income from Adgitize, as I am rewarded for blog posts, as well as for visiting other blogs (up to 50 blogs a day as an advertiser), and I earn income from people who click on my advertising. Again, a multiple win!
A young fellow named Lee at LM-BLOG recently interviewed Ken Brown. You can read his full post here.
In my book, Adgitize is well worth the effort. The emphasis is on the right stuff… your ability to write compelling posts, and to drive additional traffic to your own blog. You get rewarded for your activity, and you’re not wasting your time, either.
Discover Adgitize for yourself, today!
