Archive for August, 2008
Want to Know How to Make Money with Your Blog?
Hi peeps,
I’m quite sure you’ve found thousands of articles, blog posts and/or threads starting with a title similar to “Want to make money with your blog?” or more commonly “How to Make Money with your blog”. So have I and to be perfectly honest I believe that all these are bullshit just a bunch of useless info.
The truth is, no one can really tell you how to make money. What works for me may not do it for you. It’s that simple. Life is like that. However, some people are so desperate to earn an income that they would do whatever it takes to get some bucks - smart marketeers know about this fact and often take advantage of it for their own benefit. They tell you what you want to hear and make a lot of money… from you. (more…)
10 Wordpress plugins everyone should be using!
Hi peeps,
Today I ran a small clean up on my Wordpress blog and dumped several themes and plugins that were either no longer compatible with Wordpress or were outranked by a better theme / plugin. Once I finished pimpin’ up my blog, I realized that all these plugins on my blog kept appearing everytime I upgraded my WP to a newer version, when someone requests me to set up their blogs, or everytime I had to reinstall WP from scratch due to either weird bugs I couldn’t fix by myself -I like to experiment with my blog hehe- or, more recently, because of problems with my now former hosting provider.
This is the current list of plugins being used at Rauru.com. I believe that each one of them are the best in their area so I recommend them to anyone who’s running a Wordpress blog or planning to run one in the near future (in order of preference):
- Matt Mullenweg’s Akismet: this one is a must. For all those who have been living under a rock, this awesome plugin comes preinstalled by default on every Wordpress setup -that tells you how good it is-. It’s the best automatted -no, it’s not mispelled :P- antispam plugin ever. I’d dare to say that it catches 99.9% of the spam that arrives to your blog. Don’t blog without it!
- Michael Tolbert’s All in One SEO Pack: the best plugin to SEOing your blog. All you need to to is to adjust a few setting and it will handle all the SEO thing for your blog automatically. Perfect for both novices and experts on the SEO field!
- Arne Brachhold’s Google XML Sitemap: this marvel of science automatically generates a XML-Sitemap of your Wordpress blog. Each time you create a new post on your blog, it will update your sitemap and notify Ask.com, Google, MSN Live Search and YAHOO about changes via ping. A must-have plugin if you don’t want to update your sitemap manually each time you blog.
- Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine’s Yet Another Related Posst (YARP): want your visitors to stick around and read more nice blog posts from you? This plugin gives you a list of posts / pages related to the current entry, giving to your visitors the opportunity to check other posts with relevant content. I’ve been using this one for like a month now and I’m quite satisfied with it. Thumbs up, Michael!
- Alex King’s ShareThis (does anyone know the name of the guy who developed this wonder? Thanks Lucas!): I’ve tested several Social plugins and this one is IMO the most complete and versatile of them all. It’s design is quite unobtrusive and elegant. If you’re planning to share your entries with Social Bookmarking sites, you should definitely give this one a shot!
- Ozh’s Absolute Comments: one of the features that Wordpress should have is the ability to reply to your visitors’ comments directly from the admin panel. Instead, you need to go to the actual page and reply from there. That sucks big time. However, Ozh took advantage of this weakness and created this great plugin that allows you to respond to your readers right from the admin panel!
- Oliver Seidel’s cFormsII: cForms allows you to deploy several forms on your Wordpress blog. This is the ideal plugin for those who need to add a contact form on their sites and don’t have time to code it by themselves. This plugin offers a nice variety of features as Antispam protection (Q&A and Captcha), Tell-A-Friend functionality and Ajax support. This one is being used widely in a large number of blogs due to its flexibility - you don’t want to miss it!
- linewbie’s All in One Adsense and YPN: ready to monetize your blog? This plugin allows you to insert Google ads or Yahoo Publisher Network ads on your all posts. It comes with a built-in manager which allows you to customize your ads display and position in your posts. Currently, I’m not using it since I decided to drop Adsense and go for private advertisement instead
- Thomas Au’s MCEComments: Wordpress’ default Comment form is boring and lacks of functionality. Thomas’ plugin enables a simple WYSIWYG editor on the comment field to allow your visitors express themselves more freely. 100% recommended!
- Steve Smith’s Feedburner FeedSmith: people can use a large variety of ways to subscribe to your blog as Google Reader, Bloglines, NewsGator, FeedDemon, MyYahoo, etc. There are just too many options where to choose from - so why not make your visitors’ life easier and allow them to subscribe to your blog with two simple clicks? This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscribe.
I must say that these are not the only plugins I’m using on my Wordpress setup - I’m also using some others to perform specific things as WP-Poll which allows me to add polls to my posts. The ones being listed here are what I believe every blogger should be using no matter which niche are you blogging about. These can really extend your blog’s functionality and make your blogging life easier.
What about you guys? What are the best Wordpress plugins ever for you?
NetStrife’s Contest - $800+ Worth of Prizes!
Posted on August 22, 2008, under Advertisement, Contests.
Hi guys,
My friend Lucas is holding this great contest at NetStrife.com - Internet Marketing Blog. Paypal Cash, Wordpress stuff and Free Ad Spots are among the prizes being given away for this contest.
Lucas said it better:
Hey, stop staring at your monitor. Better get started now to have the chance of winning one of these cool prizes!
You can find the rest of the details about this wonderful contest here. If any of you out there win any of these prizes, you can thank me by sharing it with me 
Just kidding… or not?
Good luck!
Twitter, Twitter, Twitting!
Hi guys,
If there’s one thing I can say about myself is how very curious I am on many aspects of life -including the digital one!-. I’m always being attracted to unknown / new stuff like a small pin getting caught by a giant magneto. I just can’t help it.
For some time, I found myself struggling against the idea of joining Twitter just because everyone was there. The reason was that I truly hate being one more in the crowd. Yeah, I do. Also, I didn’t find anything attractive about it at first glance so I really couldn’t understand why it is so popular.
Today, however, the Dark Side of the Force has finally seduced me and I fell under the power of Twitter. I’ve heard so many nice -and potencially profitable!- stuff about it that I just couldn’t hold myself any longer and created my own Twitter profile. In my 30 min experience I’ve noticed that it does has some potencial so why not give it a shot? I can also follow my friends and other people so I think this should be a fun experience :D
What about you guys? Anyone on Twitter already? What do you think about it? I’m looking foward to follow more and more people so if you want me to be one of your followers you may include a link to your tweeter URL in your comment and I’ll surely be checking it out
Wordpress 2.6.1 is released!
Posted on August 15, 2008, under Internet, Technology.
Hi peeps,
Today, a new version of our beloved blogging system has been released! According to Ryan Boren (lead developer of Wordpress), this release includes a number of improvements for international users, a fix for several permalink issues on blogs hosted under IIS (Windows’ Internet Information Services), and some other enhancements. Apparently, there’s no need to upgrade to 2.6.1 if you’re not facing any problems with WP 2.6.
Check here for more details!
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