Tag Archive: Blogging

The Ugly Truth about Blogging

Here is a secret (the ugly truth about blogging) that we have learnt and are sharing it with our readers. If you are a new blogger or your blog is still in the process of being established, we suggest that you consider the following. This post aims at helping you understand and learn the art of making money and driving web traffic to your site.

The Truth about Article Directories

Article directories are said to  benefit from contributors like bloggers and writers. One of the strongest from of SEO is creating unique and keyword rich content. Even search giants like Google in their Search Engine Optimization Starters guide ask webmasters to create unique content. The ugly truth about article directories is that, they have learnt and understood the best concept in SEO (Unique content and lots of it).  Being new to the blogging The ugly truth industry many bloggers fall victim to websites like these. They listen to what probloggers say on their blogs and soon start submitting articles to article directories. Their valuable time and efforts are lost, as these directories drive little or no traffic to your blog. By understanding how article directories work, you can surely drive the right type of web traffic to your blog.

The time of action is always kept a secret

You will often find bloggers and internet enthusiasts talking about the various successes that they have had in the past. How they became successful and how they are making a six figure income today. Most of them might be true for a fact, however they always fail to mention the time of action. Keep in mind is that they most often will not work for you.

Let us give you an example : Submitting articles to directories will drive traffic to your site thousands of visitors may be, says a blogger. However if you notice that this blogger will most probably have a well established and a well ranked blog. This makes it very obvious that there are already thousands of people looking for information about this blogger continually. This evidently drives traffic when a reader finds and useful article from this blogger in a directory.  Every time an idea is shared or a tip is provided be sure to question the  blogger or yourself as to how it would have been possible and make best use of the idea.

Source of Income is camouflaged

ProBloggers often tend to share their successes and failures in their venture. There are some secrets that are often never revealed by blogger or entrepreneurs. If you are good at what you are doing, you can certainly make money online like others do.  Even though they share their income stream on their blogs, they often do not tell you their actual source of income. It is up to you to understand the successes in blogging and make money out of them.

Affiliates always win from your loss

One of the biggest secrets that I’ve recently learnt is how affiliates earn. Never go for an affiliate who is offering a free download. Most often users download a free version and never come back for a purchase and even if they do, the cookie expires by then. The referred user learns the secret of affiliates and makes use of the offer themselves and in the end you lose when the product owner wins by making a sale, getting traffic, back links and free advertisements. Understand the type of product you are promoting online, see what is the demand and see how the user will purchase the product and many more. You will need to analyze the product owners web site before you start promoting their products.

This brings us to the end of “The Ugly Truth about Blogging” Thanks for reading.

Essentials of a ProBlogger

Bloggers and Blogs are increasing by the minute. Everyone wants to make it big online, make some money and become famous. There are quite a few factors that are very important for you to follow to make sure that you put up a ProBlogger professional stand  as a blogger. For you to start getting sponsors and start making money online you will need to ensure that you meet some standards. Let us share with you some interesting facts and ideas what will help you put up a professional and quality blog.

Get a Great Blog Design

There are a few good ways to get a good design. You can:

Get a Domain and a Hosting Package

The most important thing would be not to use a sub-domain. Its advisable and also gives a professional impression to have a self hosted site. Domains are relatively cheap, usually costing in the range of $10 to $15. We suggest buying domains and hosting packages through TMDHosting. They offer Free domain for life + Free domain privacy for as low as $4.99/mo. It’s hard to come by a price like that.

Write some Quality Content

No matter what anyone says, Content is KING. Write up some good quality articles tagged with some strong keywords related to your niche. Have the articles published at the time the site is launched. It is essential that you optimize your blog well at the time of launch. To ensure better ranking and also continued growth in search rankings. Do the necessary analysis to ensure that you optimize well. Get a FREE SEO Analysis Report before you start to optimize. Have a minimum of 30 to 45 articles to run for the first two months at least, giving you room to prepare for the coming months ahead.

This brings us to the end of “ Essentials of a ProBlogger” thanks for reading.

Top 10 must have Plug-ins for self hosted WordPress Blogs

WordPress on of the most powerful and widely used CMS system has made content management and blogging much WordPresseasier that anyone can imagine. No technical knowledge of HTML, XML or PHP is required to set up and run a WordPress blog. For its simplicity, even we at GenuineSEO have set up our blog on WordPress. Some might wonder, how will I take care of Search Engine Optimization, Spam Protection, Social Media submission and many other factors. This is where WordPress Plug-in come into play. Today lets see some of the must have plug-in for a WordPress blogger.

All in One SEO Pack

Automatically optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization). WordPress users now do not have to worry about Optimizing their WordPress blogs. This tool is so simple to use, virtually anyone can optimize their blogs ( Of course you have to know the process involved in SEO).  An excellent and easy to use plug-in, a must have for self hosted WordPress Bloggers.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plug-in will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. You no longer have to worry about creating and site map and manually submitting it to Google every time. This awes0me plug-in allows you to take care of all this activity in the control panel of your WordPress blog. The plug-in allows you to create a site map and update it as and when new content is published and submit it on a regular basis. This makes sure that your site map is up to date on Google. Give it a try it will surely make things better.

Contact Form 7

Just another contact form plug-in. Simple but flexible. Creating a custom from allowing readers to get in touch with you,  just to say a Hi! or request for more information. This plug-in is the one for you, its a very simple and easy to use and customize plug-in. Its top rated because of the numbers of good response it has received. It is also available in different languages. If you don’t have it installed yet, do it now.

GD Star Rating

GD Star Rating plug-in allows you to set up advanced rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog using single, multi and thumbs. As I write this article i’m the process of installing this plug-in, its one of the top rated and I hope to see some good reviews and thumbs up!. This plug-in allows your blog readers to rate your content, allowing you to understand how good or bad your writing is ( in a way for you to improve or make necessary changes to meet the targeted audience). Install it and you will see the outcome.

WPtouch iPhone Theme

WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with Ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android or BlackBerry touch mobile device. We have nothing much to say about this plug0in it talks for its self. Install it and start browsing your blog from your iPhone and you will know what it means for you to provide this feature to your readers.

Add to Any Share/Bookmark/Email Button

Help readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and many more. Today everything is about social media, you can hear people referring and talking – social media this, social media that. Yes, that is correct. Social Media is the place where anyone can get maximum attention and also build strong networks. This helps everyone benefit. One of the best ways for your blog to get visibility is to submit your articles to Social Networking sites. You do have a few options. Display all your social bookmarking buttons or just use this awesome plug-in that pop-up all the buttons when needed. This helps you project a clean and neat site and does not slow it down any bit.

Easy AdSense

Easy AdSense manages all aspects of Google AdSense for your blog: insert ads into posts and sidebar, and add a Google Search box. Easy and complete! All you money makers out there,  this is a one simple plug-in that helps you manage your adsence account right in the convenience of your WP control panel. This is yet another simple and easy to use plug-in. Manage your accounts and monitor all your activities. We consider it one of the most productive plug-in after Akismet.

Page Flip Image Gallery

FlippingBook WordPress Gallery plug-in helps you to create Image Gallery with Page Flip effects on your blog. We do not have a Image Gallery of our own, but some of our friends and fellow bloggers have tried this out and the feedback was good. If you plan on showcasing images using a gallery this is a plug-in you must try.

Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. Who would ever say to know to one of the most useful and effective plug-in WP has ever had. I have been using this plug-in for years now and it it working at its best till date.  If you are a WP blogger then you must have the Akismet spam protector. It is considered the best.

WP Super Cache

A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files. The first time we read about this plug-in we did not really see the point or the objective behind it. You will notice the difference once you install it. It is certainly effective.

The plug-ins we have listed out are either the ones we use or based on the feedback we received from fellow bloggers. You can also send us your feedback and suggestion. Do you find any plug-in that has made a great deal of difference to your blogging experience, share it with us.

This brings us to the end of ” Top 10 must have Plug-ins for self hosted WordPress Blogs” thanks for reading.