Popularity: 48% [?]

In case you ever want to Jazz up your WordPress blog - or perhaps you’ve got a kick-ass idea and no idea how to implement it… it might just be on this 40+ Most Wanted WordPress Tricks and Hacks. Seriously awesome - seriously you must get yourself there when you get a chance.

Things included on the big list:

• Display categories in a horizontal drop-down
• Add author bio to every blog post (handy if you’re group blogging!)
• Highlight author comments
• Format images for feedreaders
• Create a dynamic sticky
• Turn WordPress into a CMS
• Create a Peel-Away ad on your blog… for free!
• Protect WordPress blog images against hotlinking
• Add Ad stripe to improve blog earnings

The list goes on and on… obviously I have taken a couple of the ideas and have downloaded the plugins and I’m excited to mod my blogs!

I’ve been to HongKiat.com when I was having problems with uploading images to my newly upgraded WordPress blog - I didn’t know why I wasn’t able to “crunch” a new image and add it to my blog in their nifty Media Gallery - and it was really getting me aggravated. So I put my aggravation on the Internet and found HongKiat’s solution. And it worked!

So if you’re having problems with uploading images to your newly upgraded WordPress blog - go here and do what he says. Easy-peasy - step by step to get you through it. I’ve had to use this on a couple of my blogs - seems to only affect the upgraded sites… not the new freshly installed ones. I’m not sure why - but there you go - the fix.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Well as you know last night I started a new CPA project where I’ll be pushing Coffee.  I love coffee and I don’t think I’ll find it all that boring to write the content and get things going with the design of the site and all that good stuff.  In face I just bought the domain, set up the hosting and now have a site live.  It took me about an hour to put it all together.  Now I’m writing the content.

The content writing hasn’t gone too badly for me so far - I’ve got a big list of keywords that look to have good competition - both from advertisers and searchers.  So I’m hoping that I can strike gold with a couple of those keywords and start bringing people to the site through organic searches.

Of course taking this route also means that I’m going to be sitting around and waiting for a while.  Who knows how long it’s going to take this little site o’mine to actually start ranking well for these keywords I’m plugging in to the content.

Seriously, I’m thinking a very long time.

So now I’m thinking I’ll need to start shelling out a little cash to do some PPC advertising.

Now this is where I start to panic.

This is also the hard bit.  This is where you make it or it breaks you.  I’ve tried PPC advertising before and haven’t really had any profound success with it.  I know that it takes a lot of tweaking to get it right.  Some do it well and see 200% to 400%  ROI.  Wow… imagine that - that’s what I’ve been reading.  Crazy.  I am not shooting for that sort of success - breaking even at this point would be success to me.

So now where do I start … what do I need to do to prepare myself and my site for PPC advertising.

The Plan:

1. Content for site. - Currently I’m working on this and have 4 articles up.  I also have a shop page offering a few coffee related items.  Don’t want to dilute the ad pool too much by offering from various affiliate networks.  This site I want for MarketLeverage’s CPA offers.
2. Landing Pages. - I would like to set up landing pages for my PPC offers to my site that will draw in the interested party and have them click to the offer.  I don’t know if you can direct link to an offer through Google Adwords.  Going to have to check that one out.  But landing pages seem to be the route I’ll be taking.
3. How to go about creating landing pages. - Yes, I’m debating on how to do this.  Should I create a site that is filled with content and have pages created within the site that would serve as the landing page.  I’m not going to be putting the PPC campaigns up and pointing to my index page - wouldn’t convert well.  I want a nice compact page that will filter people through to the offer to buy the product.  I want to be able to convince them.  So do I create separate pages within the site itself or could I create a 1 page landing page … lets say on a sub-domain.  Maybe a link at the bottom back to the main site - the offers are there as well… I’m not sure.
4. Don’t want to confuse the potential buyer with lots of offers. - pretty much explains itself, which is why I’m leaning towards the one page sub-domain for each offer.

So the game plan for the next couple of days is to create landing pages.  Then set up the PPC and see where it takes me.  As far as PPC goes - I’m leaning towards Adwords.  Bidvertiser might be another possibility.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Well I think I owe Stu a beer…  I’m not going to get the Ninja Affiliate cloaking thingy - I’m going to try out the free WordPress plugin Monty suggested and see if that works.  If not I’ll be back at it wrangling with PHP code to make that cloaking work on that site damn it.

I’m also taking the plunge and signed up with MarketLeverage to try out some of their CPA offers - I was going to give them a go a while back but they’ve got this thing where they phone you first before they approve you.  Perhaps to know that you’re “real” and not some bot floating around the ‘net.  So the first time I signed up I didn’t manage to get approved… because I wasn’t around for the calls.  But this time I made sure I had my phone with me all the freakin’ time and finally made contact with them and now I’m an affiliate.

So why MarketLeverage?  Well, I’ve seen them around and I am always looking for new CPA sites and I’ve not done a CPA site of my own in like… forever.  So I thought I’d give them a whirl.  So last night I sat down and took a look at some of the offers and decided to try my hand at Coffee - yes there are about a million sites out there about coffee, but they’ve got some great offers going with big payouts so why not.  So I got started last night and realized why I’d not done this in a while.

I’m not sure if the way I’m going about it will work.

I’m not pushing the site with PPC.  No budget - so I’m going organic - which will take a while to be seen in the search engines.  But I’m doing it smarter this time.  I’ve made a list of the keywords that contain “coffee” and I’m going to work my way through some content adding some of the keywords to the site - and then watching them on my DigitalPoint account for Keyword tracking.  I’m hoping by being more keyword focused this time around I will be more successful than I have been in the past.

Also I love coffee - so learning about it and writing about it isn’t a complete bore.

Now because of the CPA offers - I’ve got the site set up with ads.  Now I’m wondering if I should have posts specifically directed towards the content of the CPA offer - that way I have a “landing page” if at sometime I have a bit of cash to flog to a PPC campaign?

I’ve never been overly successful with CPA sites… so it’s a bit of a learning curve.  Any suggestions or hints you could throw my way that have worked for you?

Popularity: 6% [?]

I have Entrecard running on my sidebar and I noticed this morning as I cruising through my blog that I have my default ad running there. There’s no problem with that - except that PinoyDealer should be running there currently and I have 4 other ads set to run there in the next few days.

Anyone else notice the glitch?

Popularity: 4% [?]