Flame Scorpion

In wordpress, with plugins you can accomplish everything. But how it will be to have few hundred plugins installed ? WordPress plugins are updated frequently, this means that you will have to update a plugin almost every day. How about security problems that might appear due to bad coding of the plugins ? If you just use few important plugins you will be safer and your wordpress experience will be better.

There are many things in wordpress that can be done by writing a line of code using the theme editor from your administration panel ( I know you hate ftp clients ).

What is search engine archiving ?

You can use meta tags placed into document head to give instructions to search engines. While this is not a way to stop your website being archived by crappy search engines or bad people, big search engines will always follow instructions. For example, Google shows visitors cached versions of your page, mostly when your website is unavailable or when someone request a cached copy.

Archive or not ?

If you should place a “noarchive” tag into your head section of your page depends on what page it is. If if is a static page, or a blog post, there is no need for you to block search engines from caching your site. But, if you sell products or services on your page then it might be a good idea to prevent caching. Your future customers might access cached versions of the page where you offered another price or to disclose your marketing and pricing strategies. Also, if there is a page that is updated too often, it might be also good to prevent caching because the information in the cache is outdated and irrelevant.

How to do it.

To prevent search engines to archive your pages, you should have this line in the head section of your website:

In wordpress, go to “Appearance” -> “Editor”. On that page, you will see your template files listed on the right side. Select “Header”. Make sure to put your code between opening and closing head tags, as it is shown in the images below.

Blogging can be an easy way to make some money online by sharing your knowledge. You don’t need any programming, designing, or tech skills to get started. You need to have some experience and be passionate about a subject. You start writing articles, tips, tricks, insights, your own experiences, share the posts with all your friends interested in the subject and traffic will come someday. Then, the easiest way to monetize this content is to place some ads around. When the blog audience grow, the revenue streams can be many, but for starters, contextual advertising might be the single option. At least for those who think they are not prepared to get into affiliate marketing, or who do not find good products to promote.

Google Adsense is the highest paying contextual ad network. Some topics and niches can get better results from other networks, but they are only particular cases. Most website will generate bigger revenues from Google Adsense ads. That’s because they have by far the most advertisers who are already used to pay big bucks for search engine traffic. Despite this fact, bloggers ( including me ), always complained about poor revenue coming from ads, compared to other sites. The metric to define the display ad performance is RPM ( Revenue per thousand impressions. I think it was used to be called EPM before.

Depending a lot on the topic, the type of people that visit the website, websites usually get between $1 and $10 RPM. However, blogs are always in the low part of the graph, most of blogs failing to reach even 1 dollar for every thousand impressions. It is true that since more and more websites were added in the program, the revenue started to drop constantly. But even when the average adsense payment was high, blogs usually did 3-4 times worse than other websites. For example if a normal website have $5 EPM, a blog usually had $1-2 EPM. Why is happening ? When readers come to a blog, they are so focused on reading the article. They focus on the text and completely ignore ads and everything else. An important factor why they have a easy job doing this is because most blogs look alike: content on one hand, sidebar on the other. On a normal website, they need some time figuring what on the website is what they are looking for so there is a bigger chance they will stick to an ad.

So, is Adsense dead for bloggers ? Is still worth it ? If you just want to place one ad in the header, one in the sidebar and one after the article, then you might forget about it. You need so many visitors to make real money that it is not worth. If you manage to get 100,000 page views a month, then you must be doing a really good job. Why you should waste all your time for a $100 dollar check every month ? You will either find other ways to make money from your traffic or you will stop blogging.

Last year I had the same problem. I had a blog who got a lot of traffic, mainly by mistake. I had a domain name that was exact  keyword match for a popular movie. It was a subject that I had no interest in. Someone helped me and wrote few articles and then traffic started to come, in waves. Then, I was mad because I was making so few money from Google Adsense. At that point I thought what can I do to put an ad somewhere where the readers simply cannot ignore. And it struck me: in the middle of the content. I did some wordpress coding and I had an adsense ad displayed after the second paragraph of the content. Result ? The Adsense revenue on that ad was 8 times bigger than any other ad on my page. Then I removed all other ads and left only this one. The revenue was 5 times bigger with only 1 ad, than it was with 3 ads before. That’s a big increase. So I managed to get some good money from the traffic that I had no idea how to keep oo monetize.

Then, I build a plugin based on this technique, that I called Revenue Maximizer. Will let any wordpress user to add an adsense ad, or any other offer ( affiliate link, banner ), right in the iddle of the content, where the reader cannot ignore. The plugin is freely available on wordpress plugin directory.

Running an online business with international audience can be a pain in the ass if you are outside US. Even if the website is working for all people you will shortly notice that users from United States are using your website the most. They are the biggest English speaking countries and the Internet is very well spread. More, if you sell something you will also notice that a vast majority of your buyers are from US. If you sell advertising too, your customers will want to know how much US traffic do you have, so this is your main target, even if you don’t want to.

Analyzing from the other perspective ( the service user ), you will notice that most of the services you need for your online business are mostly based in US: hosting company, email marketing service, advertising agency, payment processor and many other services.

So, what you do when you have to contact your service providers or you want to provide a support number for your customers ? Will you pay high charges from your mobile carrier ? You will do when you have no other option and when it is imperious necessary. But your users won’t call you on your international number.

The solution used by most Internet Business owners that were not based in US was to ask someone to buy a mobile phone and send them. However, all sent or received calls were incurring roaming charges that can be very high sometimes. Another method was to buy a service that offered an US number and redirected it to your phone. But it is the same problem, there are high costs when you call trough that phone.

Here is the best solution for you: Scratch Wireless. Scratch Wireless offers you the power to make calls directly trough wireless. You buy a Scratch Phone with $269 ( a smartphone with android ), and the Scratch Service is already installed. When you first turn on the phone, you register to their website and you can call any US number only trough Wireless. You don’t have to pay a single penny. You also get a US number so anyone can reach you there.

The Scratch Wireless network offers free calls and text while on Wifi. It works everywhere where you have a Wireless Connection. The smartphone you get is a Motorola Photon Q, a full featured Android Phone that also have a physical sliding keyboard.

If you’re still trying to rank your website by focusing on keyword density, backlink anchors and low-quality links, you’re in for a disappointment. Those techniques may have worked in the past, but search engines are changing rapidly. Today, it takes a lot more than “old-school” off-site SEO to rank well. With the widespread usage of social media, you’re company’s social presence now plays a major part in search engine rankings. [Read the rest of this entry…]

A new way to Advertise Your Business

Keeping up to date with technology is important for any type of business. This will help the business thrive and keep in competition with the rest of its competitors. One of the ways that you can begin to use modern technology for your business is networking. You can find out more about network solutions by reading information regarding networking topics. Rest assured that you will be able to find a wide range of alternatives that can get the name of your business out in the virtual world.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is one of the most important parts to networking on the Internet. This outlet can help to spread the name of your business across the world. Rest assured that you will notice the difference in customer traffic within a couple of weeks. Experts who specialize in social media marketing will be able to keep track and update news feeds to your social media webpage. By doing this, your customers will have an easier time to keep track of important updates, such as sales or new products, about your business.

Website Designs and Online Stores

Other vital parts of networking can include website designs and managing online stores. Designing the website to reflect your business is important. It is also ideal that it creates an appealing view to interested customers. Once you have your website working, you can then concentrate in managing the online store. This will include a checkout process where customers can purchase your products and services. Remember that you make the checkout process fast and easy.

Customer Loyalty and Great Results

Creating networking solutions can create a convenient setup for all of your customers. Within time, you will have customers that will return to your online store to invest in your products or services. It is essential that you keep track of everything that has to do with networking solutions over the Internet. You are certain to get the results that you have always wanted for your business. If you do have any inquiries about these types of online marketing alternatives, you can contact trained professionals, who will be more than happy to answer all of your questions, by phone.

With the digital world, most people with a digital product ( book, software, app, content ) tries to market the website and rank globally and they completely ignore local marketing that can bring focused customers. There are some businesses that are available only locally, like restaurants, shops, hotels, etc. In such cases there is no point in marketing it globally. However, most business owners make the mistake to hire a marketing company that will try to to that, instead focusing on a local market. Why should I hire a hotel internet marketing company? In the end, focused marketing is the solution to successful businesses. Instead of hiring a general and global marketing company, you should focus on a targeted local one. They have the knowledge and experience to give you the results that you need, instead of numbers that don’t bring you any money back.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Even if you are a individual providing services or a big company, communication is very important. You have to stay in touch with your employees or with your collaborators, providers. Video communication can help you in many ways: employee training, video meetings, digital display, etc.  If you do not put the technology to good use then you will learn the hard way.

Employees need close attention and have to be motivated on the way. If you try to run a business you will find out that the communication is the most important skill that you will learn. Use technology in your advantage so you can make your business successful. Video is very important in communications. Today, all courses and coaching programs are filmed.

To successfully broadcast your video you should use a Web Video Platform. Today everything is about mobility. The internet allows us to work from home but the world is not complete if we cannot see each other. With the current level of technology, the chat and the words are not enough while it is so easy to do a video conference or a video course.

Every business that envisions an online store that will help them sell their products and make more money needs help in making this vision come to reality. Part of the problem with these web stores is that they are very complicated. The business could hire a web designer, but the overhead in paying a new employee is just too much for most businesses to handle. However, using a eCommerce service that has a full range of options can help the aspiring online business to sell products and make money through a beautifully-designed and easy to us web store.

These web stores must be designed specifically to sell the products that the business has in their catalog. Also, these sites have to have coloring and script that looks like the business itself. These stores are not generic, and each design is unique to the company who is hosting the store.

With the help of web store designers, any business can get a web store that is made in their image while also having the opportunity to make sales at all hours of the day. These stores do not require upkeep or rent. Plus, these stores function whether the business is open or closed.

After the web store has been designed, business will find that they need help with their customer support. Many small businesses do not have enough employees to dedicate to answering phone calls. This would take the employees from their regular work and cause the business to lose focus on their core strategies and objectives.

With the assistance of a customer support call center, these businesses can have their web store designed and never have to worry about providing help on a support line. These support services answer questions on behalf of the company.

With these web store designs, payments are taken instantly, communication is sent to the people who must ship products and shelves do not have to be stocked for the company to make sales. These web stores help businesses to become more profitable and vibrant. Any company could request a quote and see that these web store designs are a worthy investment.

I bet that you often think that you give so much to the world and that you get in return only few bucks from Google Adsense. Then you heard that you can make more money if you ask people to subscribe to your list so you can send them offers. If you place a subscription at the end of every article but you will only get several subscribers every week.

You hear about email marketing on all webmaster forums, but I am sure that they did not build those high engaging list only showing a subscribe form at the end of the website. How they do it? Well, they give something for free ( a report, a book, a software ), and they promote that offer like hell ( like they promote a paid product ), and they end up with few thousand of subscribers that they can send offers. You should do that too but this is another story.  [Read the rest of this entry…]

From 2007 I am building my websites on wordpress. WordPress is the best content management system around and whenever I have a client with a non-wordpress site I suggest him to move to wordpress. WordPress is customizable and you can basically do whatever you want. There are many plugins available that will let you to build social networks, forums, etc. Past few years I turned several ideas into WordPress Plugins. It seemed conveniently to use their framework to build powerful applications, instead of building standalone applications and services.

After 4 years of development I came to the conclusion that this is not a wise approach. Why ? Most of the services and applications can be developed standalone, and to be integrated in websites by placing a javascript code ( like google analytics, optimizely, etc ). I am not thinking about the potential user  base that I might lose if I build a wordpress plugin. Usually, wordpress users are the target of my services related to web development and internet marketing. This is not the reason I don’t consider wordpress plugins as a good business model for services and applications that can be built standalone.

There are several factors that I will detail in the body of this article.  [Read the rest of this entry…]