For years, Wordpress was used strictly by blogs, after all, that’s what it was built for. Recently, a lot of companies have started using it for their main website, and there are a lot of good reasons for doing so.

Wordpress is very SEO friendly right from the start. Without making any changes, or adding any plug ins to Wordpress, your content will be very search engine friendly, and easy to index. By adding an SEO oriented plug in, you can actually boost the SEO effectiveness of your Wordpress site without having to hire an SEO firm, or a web developer.

Speaking of plug ins, if there’s a particular type of functionality you want your site to have, chances are a plugin exists to make it happen. Everything from playing audio files to adding a storefront can be accomplished through plug ins. Functionality that used to be extremely difficult to implement on a standard HTML website  can be up in running  quickly and easily through the use of plug ins.

Once the site is up and running, editing the content, or adding new content is extremely simple in Wordpress. Each post and page can be edited  from  within Wordpress, and if you can handle writing a document in word, you can write or edit a page in Wordpress.

Wordpress allows you to have multiple accounts set up that can make changes to the site. As such, it’s very easy to have several people working collaboratively on your website. This makes it easy for different departments within the company to edit different parts of the website.

The real benefit of Wordpress is the money it will save you. After the initial set up, you won’t have to pay a designer to make any changes to your site for you. If you have someone tech savvy on staff already, you can even add new functionality through plug ins without having to get a developer involved. Wordpress also saves you time by allowing you to make those changes as soon as the need arises, rather than waiting on a developer to add new content to the site for you.

Wordpress saves you time, money, and allows you to add robust features to your website with a few clicks of the mouse, and it just keeps getting better as time goes on. What once was a piece of software created for blogging is now a robust content management system suitable for all of your website needs.

A great example of a nicely integrated store/blog.

Blogs can be a great source of traffic for your main website. If you are selling Android accessories for Android based cellphones, it would be a great idea to have a blog set up as a side project in order to do a few things:

• Keep your buyers and customers informed.
• Keep constant new information coming from your website which can then be picked up by Google.
• Announce product updates, etc.

As an Android accessory sales website owner, your most important thing is to get users and visits who A) have Android phones and B) might potentially buy something. It can be a great attractor for your visitors to see that you have a blog because it gives a personal element to your site as well.

Blogs are one of the resources which are free or very cheap to set up. These services are one of the essential traffic sources that any advertising plan needs to get more exposure to specific websites. The common options do take time to increase in readers and thus improving the influence it can have on the audience. Well established Blogs are also an important resource when you use them wisely to help you provide traffic to your websites.

The most common option is to create a blog with a popular service and keep it updated. The blog can be anything relating to the business, products or services which are being offered. The more information that is placed on these blogs, the more can be indexed into search engines which will help route common searches to the blogs, which in turn could route traffic to the website(s) that need the traffic. This option does take time, but the great thing is that many blogs can be created and be about different subjects in the industry and still lead traffic to the same website(s).

The other option which works well is to keep watch for blogs that offer information about the same field or subject that relates to the websites needing promotion. These blogs will usually have comment sections that allow for comments from readers to be shown. Of course, many of these comment fields will be offered with spam protection so the comments need to sound natural to post without being filtered out. The way that these comments can help improve traffic to websites is the fact that they are usually indexed by search engines. They can be used to place a link back to the websites that are being promoted for additional search engine weight.

Building a successful blog isn’t easy. It takes a ton of work, long hours promoting, writing, submitting to directories, and doing other mundane tasks.

But, luckily building a successful blog is possible. There are so many niches that need a top site still, and the field is wide open. Maybe you are an expert pottery maker, photographer, or management consultant. There are numerous people each day looking for content on your topic avidly online and you can be the site that they come to.

Content
Writing good content is really important to having a successful blog. Content should be aimed at readability for your visitors, but also for search engine optimization.

It takes a delicate balance between writing for the search engines and for your users.

The best way I can suggest to do it is to use keywords as part of sentences only when you need it. For example, if I have a website about chocolate pancakes, I do not need to include that in every sentence or even every other sentence. However, I can use the keyword in the opening sentence or as part of a sentence when needed. The other thing you can do is add your keyword to your content using h2 title tags within the content. You can have your opening sentence or “thesis” at the start of your paragraph even with your keyword in it, as a way to draw attention to your main idea for your reader, and to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) rank.

Marketing
Marketing your blog can be a chore unless you want to do it the right way. Marketing can be a lot of fun — visiting your favorite blogs on your specific niche can be a great way to market your blog through commenting on their recent posts. Engaging with top bloggers can get your name out there and get people to follow your blog when you write engaging comments and participate in discussion.

Another marketing method is to join forums that are related to your niche. Promote your blog lightly, through your forum signature only — or else you will just seem like a spammer.

Start slow building your blog and relationships with your readers. Find and engage your audience, promote it through social media, bookmarking and forums and take your time to build it, it will not come over night so be patient.

Social Media is quickly becoming THE way to promote online business and websites. There are three main reasons for this, which are: the high amounts of back links, the increased attention to the website, and the increased amount of traffic sent to the website. Social media is a cheap, and generally free way for businesses and websites to gain free exposure resulting in the three things just stated.
Social media is built around interactions and conversations. So, in order for it to work for people wanting to advertise, they need to modify their techniques into a more personal, and conversational tone. This can allow businesses to create a face, and not hide behind corporate shields, resulting in more end-user trust, as well as an easy to obtain email marketing list.

Preparation is key for virtually anything, and is key when you are entering the social media market for the first time as an advertiser. First off, you need to know your audience. Hopefully, your audience, or at least part of it, is young, because mainly, the youth are the ones using social media, although the middle-aged and older sectors appear to be growing in numbers among the various websites out there. As a business, you should already have identified the demographics of your target audience, and with that, you already have your groundwork. The next step would be to analyze your competition, find out what they are doing and if it works, and if it does work, figure out why and how you can do that too.

After that, you should make sure you have employee guidelines. This might not be a big deal to small sites, but for large businesses with tons of employees, it’s important that they know what they can and cannot do in the social media realm when representing the business. That being said, it might be helpful to only have one or two people working on your social media sites and blogs, so everything is run smoothly. It is important for those people to update them frequently and monitor the conversations. They must also keep everything relevant to today’s society, and of course, interesting.

In closing, social media is meant to be fun, so keep it that way. Don’t bore people with plain old advertising. Make it new. Make it exciting. Make it cutting edge. If you do that, people will be interested in you and what you have to offer, whatever it might be.

Blogging can take a whole lot longer than needed.  This is generally due to the time eating activities available to the blogger on the computer while they are trying or are at least supposed to be writing.  Effectively earning money from blogs requires the blogger to be focused on updating them.

A good way to keep yourself on task is to give yourself a lot of work.  This way, mentally, you will say I don’t have time for this because I have so many articles to write.  Whereas, when you only have one or two to write, you might think that you have time to take breaks, when realistically, you do not, because time is a precious resource, and it could be used elsewhere or on something else.  Writing a lot of posts at one time can save a lot of time as well as effort, because many writers can get on a roll, where they can pump out very articles very quickly, allowing them more extra time later to work on other things.

Using a white screen writing program, or a word processor in full screen mode can be very beneficial, because then, it will be the only thing you can look at, and nothing else on the screen can possibly distract.  This obviously doesn’t account for things outside of the computer, such as the TV or people, but those can be easily minimized as well.  Working with a full screen word processor in a closed off room without a TV is the best way to ensure you are writing what you need to be.

Social media sites are the biggest time sink for bloggers.  The sites themselves are designed to keep you on them, with so many different feature and things to do, you can’t even think of them and list them all in one hour.  They keep users coming back for more, which is what they are designed to do, and should be voided at all costs when trying to write.

During your down time, while you are just browsing the web, you should have a quick and easy way to jot down blog post ideas.  This may come in the form of a program, such as Microsoft OneNote, or EverNote, or even by just, old fashioned, pen and paper.  Whatever works for you, so long as it allows you to quickly and easily record what you want to write, and the source if you need to.

Photo credit: laffy4k

A great way to make money with a website is to purchase an established website that you know you can add value to the website and flip it at a later date for a profit.

To give you an example of what i mean i will give you an example of how i once made money buying a website from flippa.com for $1800 and then 3 months later sold it for $15,000 making a tidy profit.  The website i bought was a 6 months old blog that was rarely updated by its owner.  It was in the internet marketing niche which i know alot about so i knew i could add value to the blog.

The blog at the time was receiving 3,000 unique views a month and was a PR2 and was making $500 a month from affiliate sales via clickbank.com and a little on google adsense.

When i took over the blog this is what i did to improve the value of the blog:

1.) Made sure i added at least 2 very informal posts everyday to keep my readers and attract new readers.

2.) I offered a fee ebook download with an optin emails form. (i managed to capture 5,000 email addresses) to which i later emailed offers to bringing in $2,000 in commission, mainly clickbank products.

3.) I changed the theme of the blog to a premium wordpress theme.

4.) I installed a forum which help build a community around the blog.

5.) I submitted alot of articles to article websites and built up some good backlinks

6.) I did alot of blog commenting on other similar blogs helping bringing in more backlinks

7.) I sponsored wordpress themes digital point marketplace also helped bring in more backlinks.

After the first month my traffic had reached 6,700 uniques a month and my revenue went upto $1600 a month from commission from various networks i was using.  Most of my income came from my email list because within the free ebook i was given away had links to affiliate products and was earning money from my readers clicking on links within the ebook and purchasing a product.

By the end of month 3 i was adding 3 new articles a day and my email list had reached 5,000 email readers and was making on average $3,000 a month from affiliate commission mainly from Clickbank.com, Cj.com and Google adsense.

Now i knew i could resell the blog as i had added some very good value to the blog and sold it back on flippa.com for $15,000

So the key to buying and selling websites for profit is to look for a website you know you can add value to it.  Pick a niche you know about and would enjoy working on.

 
Getting Started

First thing I recommend is that you login to your wordpress blog and upgrade to the latest version straight away via the dashboard as wordpress are always working on new patches that fix any known threats.

Then start upgrading all your plugins as there may also be new patches that the plugin developer may of fixed that are known threats to his/her plugin that could harm your blog.

Protecting Your Plugins 

With so many plugins available free on the Internet which most of us have installed, you may be open to an attack as some plugins may have flaws in them, which an attacker could use to alter your blog in some way.

All a hacker has to do is go to www.yourdomainname.com/wp-contents/plugins/ to find out what plugins your using.  Some clever hackers will have some sort of scanner software to scan your blog for any open backdoors to gain access to your plugins.

Solution

To prevent a hacker from accessing your plugins simply setup a index.html file and upload it to your plugins folder /wp-contents/plugins/

Password Security

This one is common sense, yet most of us use the same password for all of our website logins.  It’s wise to use a different password for all your logins and have a mixture of numbers and upper and lowercase characters.

If a hacker has managed to get your password and has hacked into your hosting server and finds all your other blogs, if your using the same password to log onto all your blogs, you’ve just given the hacker full access to your entire network of blogs.

You should also change the default admin username to a different name.  Because if the hacker knows your username then he’s halfway there to getting into your site.  To do this create a new username and give it admin privileges and delete the original admin username.

Protecting Your WP-Config.php File

Your wp-config.php file within the root of your wordpress blog contents information about your database.  For example the database name, username and password.  This is a file you should protect.

All you need to do is add the following code to your .htaccess file if you have one.  If you don’t have a .htaccess file setup at your root then open up notepad.exe and add the following text:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# protect the htaccess file
<files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

# limit file uploads to 10mb
LimitRequestBody 10240000

# protect wpconfig.php
<files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

# disable directory browsing
Options All –Indexes

I put this text into a file I call htaccess.txt on my local drive, I upload it to the root of the host, and then I rename it on the host to .htaccess and then it immediately disappears because it acts like a system file

Login Limitations 

It’s a good idea to limit how many times a user can enter in a wrong password to get access to your blog.  There is a good plugin for this called “LockDown” which will lock out users if they enter their password wrong too many times.  You can choose how many times users enter their password and also how long they’re locked out for via the options page – Click Here To Download

Hiding Your Wp-Admin Login Page 

A great plugin called “Stealth Login” can hide your wordpress login page so if your password did leak out, a hacker would have a hard time trying to find your login page.  A good use for this plugin is to prevent any malicious bots from accessing your wp-login.php file and attempting to break in.

Click Here To Download Stealth Login  

Hiding Your Wordpress Version 

By default, WordPress theme’s have a line in the header.php to display the current version of WordPress you use (can be found by viewing source).

Since anyone can find your WordPress version this way, your blog is prone to hackers until you upgrade to the latest version. To prevent displaying your WordPress version, just open your theme’s header.php file and look for the following line

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(’version’); ?>” />

And replace it with <meta content=”WordPress” />

To access your header.php within your wordpress dashboard, click on Appearance / Editior and then click on the Header.php file as shown below:

Some themes might already have this done for you, but it’s worth taking a look.

Protecting Your Database 

Another great free plugin is called WP-DB-Backup, which makes backing up your databases very easy and automated.  You only need to set this up once and set it to run at regular intervals.

This plugin automates the backing up of your databases and can have it sent to your email inbox.  Other than the default table created by Wordpress, you can also backup custom tables created by plugins.  In the event that your account crashes, you can easily import and restore the database with the backup.

Click Here To Download WP-DB-Backup

Change Database Table Prefix 

When installing wordpress, it uses the default “wp” prefix in your database tables which makes it easy for a hacker to hack your database tables if he managed to get in.  You can easily change the prefix to other terms that are difficult to guess using the wp-security-scan plugin.  Click Here to Download

WP-Security-Scan checks your WordPress for security vulnerabilities and suggests/provides corrective actions. The corrective actions include changing your database prefix, hiding the WordPress version number from the header and allows you to test out the strength of your password.

Once in a while, it is a good idea to run the inbuilt security scanner and check your blog for any security invulnerabilities.

Protect Your Blog From Comment Spam 

Spam can be a danger to your blog and its visitors. Comment spam can insert unwanted content onto your website. One way of protecting against spam is using plugins that track comments and trackbacks, running them through tests to check on whether they are spam and then refusing or approving based on the test results. Though its worth noting that this is not completely full proof and depending on the size of your blog you may even want to personally moderate commenting, or maybe even limit commenting to specific posts.

Anti-spam Plugins and additional resources on how to protect from comment spam:

Akismet

Codex on Combating Comment Spam

Codex listing of Spam Tools

Limit Self Registration Of Users 

Wordpress supports the ability for users to create new accounts for the purpose of posting. Though this registration does allow them to subscribe as well, which gives them access to reading only. Turn self-registration off in

Settings:  uncheck anyone can register

or limit your readers to the subscribe role only.

Delete the Install.php from your root directory 

After you have installed wordpress make sure you have deleted the install.php from your root directory, as anyone could run this file and cause damage to your website.

Checking Your Theme For Harmful Links 

When you are installing a free wordpress theme you have found on the Internet you need to make sure the free theme doesn’t have any harmful links that could potentially ruin your rankings with Google.

Some designers will sell footer links on these themes, which is how they make money by allowing you to download them for free, but some designers will hide the footer links so you don’t see them, which is against Googles webmaster algorithm and will harm your rankings.  Also some of this links will link to what is known as a bad neighbourhood of websites which are currently blacklisted by Googles eyes and if your linking to them, your blog will loose its rankings.

Here is a typical themes footer with links you will find on a free theme

Now if I run my cursor over the bottom of my entire footer and highlight it, I might find some hidden links just like the following in red:

Now you can guess how bad this would look in Googles eyes and what affect this would have on your blog.

So when you download a free theme make sure to check the template files for any hidden links

You can do this from within the dashboard under Appearance / Editor / Footer.php

I highly recommend you get your wordpress themes from Woo Themes

Click Here To See Their Themes
Keeping Your Computer Clean

Its very important to make sure the computer your using to edit your wordpress blog is clean from any spyware, viruses, malware, adware, etc.  For example you could have an infection of keylogger on your pc, which will track all your passwords, and be able to hack into your wordpress blog and other websites you use.

Make sure you have an up to anti virus and firewall protection on your computer.  A very good application, which is free to use, is called “C Cleaner”, which will scan your computer for any spyware, adware and delete them. I recommend installing this and running this at least once a day if you use the Internet a lot as it will detect any infections you get from visiting websites that install applications in the background without you knowing.

Click Here To Download

Server Vulnerabilities 

The webserver running WordPress, the database with the WordPress data, PHP and any other scripting/programming language used for plugins or helper apps could have vulnerabilities. Therefore, make sure you are running secure, stable versions of your web server, database, scripting interpreter, or make sure you are using a trusted host that takes care of these things for you.

It should also be mentioned that if you’re on a shared server (one that hosts other people besides yourself) if someone else is compromised, then it’s very likely you could be compromised too even if you follow everything in this guide. Be sure to ask your web host what security precautions they take.

One Hosting Company I recommend is Hostgator –

Click Here To View Price Plans

Wordpress blogs are becoming more and more popular as the number one content management system for webmasters due to its ease of use and how well they are optimised for search engines.

However wordpress is now becoming the number one threat for hackers to hack into due to the amount of vulnerabilities there are with wordpress and with all the plugins that are used.

The default installation of wordpress is very vulnerable as hackers will find it very easy to attack your website.  They are very popular for a phishing attack which can see your blog being de indexed from search engines which will have a dramatic effect on your blogs rankings, as it will be removed from search engines listings.

Click Here To Find Out How You Can Secure Your Blog

As a member to my program I will show you how to set-up a network of successful niche websites built on Wordpress.  Wordpress is a content management system that is free to the public and is mainly used for Blogging.  A blog can be used as a personal diary to write daily articles about anything you like.  Nearly all online companies use a blog, as blogging is a great way to drive traffic to your website and attract a reader base.  The reason blogs are so successful is because search engines love a website that is updated on a daily basis with unique information especially a Wordpress blog because they are optimised for search engines.

The best way to make money online is to start your own blog on any niche you like.  My advice is to set up a blog in a niche that you have a personal interest in.  For example if you’re into gadgets or electronics set-up a blog dedicated to writing reviews and news about electrical items.  If you have an interest in health and beauty set up a blog writing about the latest health and beauty products and so on.  If you have an interest in finance set up a blog about the latest news.

If you’re serious about making money online with your own network of blogs then I highly recommend you to join up to my membership program and watch my video tutorials on how to set-up a successful blog and drive traffic to them and make money from affiliate marketing.

Click Here To Join

A blog can be monetised in so many different ways, for example:

• Google Adsense (earn money from readers clicking on links on your blog)
• Amazon Associates (earn money from referring your readers to buy products from Amazon)
• Affiliate Marketing (earn money from referring your readers to buy products from companies you are affiliated with)
• CPA Leads (earn money from Cost Per Action, which means referring your readers to other websites that pay you for every lead you send them e.g an email opt in form)
• Click Bank.  Earn money from selling clickbank digital products
• Creating an email list.  Building up an email list is a great way to make money from emailing your lists with affiliate products.

If you keep your blog updated daily/weekly your blog will grow nicely and will get good traffic coming to it and you will start to see money being made from your efforts.  Top successful bloggers are making $1,000 a day from commission.  Because they have so many readers everyday and if that reader clicks on a Google advert or clicks on any of the affiliate banners and makes a purchase the blogger earns a nice commission.

If you’re serious about making money online with your own network of blogs then I highly recommend you to join up to my membership program and watch my video tutorials on how to set-up a successful blog and drive traffic to them and make money from affiliate marketing.