Most of us probably need to improve our SEO skills just a little. We can read blog articles and pick up little gems here and there, however it is like finding pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle and trying to fit them in little bit by little bit.

A business called SeoServiceProvider now runs twice weekly (Tuesday and Thursday) one hour SEO workshops that are inexpensive yet very informative - I say inexpensive - they cost all of $20 for the one hour. We spend more than that on music lessons for the kids, or tutors for their school work.

The rewards from a well optimized site will more than pay for the cost in the long run. What I really like about these workshops is that you are not committed to buying a certain number and sticking to a timetable. You can attend as few or as many as you want. You just buy each workshop when you are free to attend. I suggest you check out their one hour SEO workshops - you have nothing to lose by looking.

Disclaimer: this is not a pay for post or affiliate program. The recommendation is made based on prior experience with the owners of the website.

Join the Pepperjam affiliate advertising network (only if you click on the official banner) and you will receive $10 as a starting bonus. The bonus is paid once you start publishing Pepperjam affiliate ads.

If that isn’t enough, you can write up to five blog posts and receive another $10 per post - that is effectively $60 in your first month and that is before you start earning from any of your affiliate ads. According to the information on their blog, it is up to five posts per month so I don’t know how long that will last for. You will need to get approval prior to making your blog post (BTW - this is not one of those pay per post posts).

You will like their site, it is easy to navigate, the sign up process is extremely quick and approval is granted or denied just as quickly. Now they took me on so they can’t be too fussy - you should all be shoe ins. There is a wide variety of affiliate partners to advertise, something for every niche. Get in quick before the offer finishes.

Plugins, plugins, plugins. Everywhere you look there is another list of plugins. Today’s post is not a list of plugins. Rather, it is a list of lists. Someone else has done the job for me, however, I don’t think they will mind me linking into them from here.

50+ WordPress Admin Tools: A-Z list of more than 50 plugins to help you streamline everything you need to do out back.


30+ WordPress Plugins to Help Get More Readers: Gaining blog readers is hard; WordPress makes it much easier. Here are 30+ WordPress plugins to help you garner some of that attention, and then retain readers once they visit.

30+ WordPress Plugins to Turn Your Blog Into A Hub: With more of our lives being lived online, it’s nice to centralize our media as much as possible. New aggregated social networks are springing up, but did you know you can do much of this already from your blog?

30+ WordPress Plugins for Comments: When working on a WordPress blog, posts often take center stage. However, the comments are often just as important - they create valuable discussion. And yet the default WordPress comment box is simplistic and uninspiring so check out these for some inspiration.

17 WordPress Plugins for Adsense: Implementing and tweaking AdSense ads on a WordPress blog can be tedious. We’ve gathered 17 WordPress plugins which help you implement, control and overview AdSense ads on your blog.

Many thanks to Mashable for putting these lists together.

I have come across two very useful tools that could make the development of your posts just that little bit easier. The first is a creation tool and the second a simple photo plugin.

Microsoft Live Writer. Does any one use Live Writer to create their content. Potentially it is a great tool. Create your content on your desktop or laptop, give the polish and feel that Wordpress and other publishers don’t do that well, add some photos or images from your desktop and when completed - upload it onto your blog. All very easy, all very straightforward. it even uploads the photos and images and alters the URL in the post so the images load correctly. I really enjoy using it, it has a MS Word feel about it. Installing is easier. The whole process is very smooth. The price is great to - FREE.

There is one downside to Live Writer and that is on my Wordpress installation - it doesn’t work. This I know is a problem with Wordpress and not Live Writer and that somehow I need to overcome a 403 permission denied error. I just cannot seem to get around it yet. If you don’t have that problem then you will find that Live Writer is a great tool.

Photo Dropper Plugin. The Photo Dropper plugin is one of the most useful plugins around if you want to insert images into your posts. With Photo Dropper, place the cursor where you want the image placed, type in a search keyword and Photo Dropper will search Flickr to find images to match your keywords. As you can see here it has found a picture to match my keyword - when added to your post the attributes are automatically added - just a little untidy for my liking.
photo credit: mrpbody33

How I Quadrupled My Blog Income is quite a statement - yet it is true. I have tried many different ad units on this site. I have tried Adsense with little luck. I have also tried some of the other pay-per-click ads like Widgetbucks - all to no avail. Text link ads don’t work - I do not have a high enough PR nor do I get high traffic.

Not only that, at one stage I had accounts with six or seven different advertisers and that meant six or seven different ad units on my page. Keeping track of each of these accounts can be time consuming and a little dis-heartening when they are only incrementing by cents each day. With Adsense there were days when I didn’t get a click - not even enough traffic to get a token couple of cents for impressions. (more…)

I will start today’s post with a quick apology. For those who thought that my statements from yesterday regarding the traffic received from each ad placement was derogatory - the contrary was the situation. All blogs mentioned in my previous post were mentioned because I thought they delivered good traffic. As a realist getting a quota of 3 or 4 to 1 is in my opinion pretty good. If spend 400 credits and get 100 visitors - I am satisfied. On too today’s post.

I have mixed feelings about Entre Card and at present I am in two minds whether or not to continue using it. First, I do not have the time to go card swapping all day. At present, whilst I am receiving a good price for my ad spot - I know that will not last long and the credits will run out. (more…)

Yesterday I reviewed some components of Entre Card that I thought were the positives and negatives. Today I will go through how successful this campaign has been. Before continuing I am not going to go through what ads were miserable failures, and there were a lot of them. I am only going to go through those that were a fabulous success - and there were a few of them.

Advertising through Entre Card is no different to advertising in magazines. You will not gain much success advertising marketing concepts on a parenting site, you will get some interest, but not buckets. The other observation I make is that Entre Card design is so very important. I have four designs. One for my site Just 4 Families. Three for this site, my trademark photo, another advertising the 10,000 EC competition and the third advertising my 1000 Blogs Against Whaling campaign. (more…)

Entre Card - it has been an interesting experience. Please feel free to share yours. For those who are not in the loop at present - Entre Card is based on the old fashioned business cards. Each participating site has an Entre Card drop spot where you drop your card (actually its just a click - but same principle). The more people who drop on your site, the higher the value that is placed on it. The more cards you drop, the more credits you can earn. With the credits earned, you can buy advertising space on other participating sites. That is Entre Card in a nutshell. (more…)

The following are all paid to post services. Be warned - you will lose any Page Rank if you write for these organizations. I have used Smorty which are okay - slow to approve posts but otherwise ok. Tried to sign up for Review Me but they rejected me (sob). Sponsored Reviews are okay. Not a lot of action from them but then I may have overpriced my blogs. Bloggerwave dried up pretty quickly after the first post. Pay U 2 Blog have been by far the most regular when it comes to posts - only $5 per post but plenty of them. Blogsvertise - their site did not load when I tried them. I have signed up for the others - I will see if my sites are accepted and provide a review of them at a later date. (more…)

One of things I like about blogging is that it is a sharing world, not a competing world. Sure, we ave the odd competition but it is generally in fun. We are not trying to lure “customers” away from each other, we are trying to attract traffic and then share that traffic with others, either through links in the blogroll or by direct referrals.

I was asked to read a post today that was full of praise for the assistance I had provided in helping get their site together. To me, it is just another part of the sharing - in this case sharing what limited skills or knowledge I had. Whilst ever I have time I am only to happy help, particularly those just starting out. If you have a problem, just ask. If I don’t know the answer I probably know someone who does.

Helping others is not just providing advice or helping with some of the coding. We can all help each other by promoting one another’s sites when the occasion arises. In this case, I have no hesitation in promoting Collin’s (from YourWordGallery) new site FeedFlare.

One of the reasons I am happy to promote this site is because the site itself is designed to help you promote yourself. Thats right, FeedFlare is one of these sites where you can promote your own blog, in this case, promote your RSS feed. Colin became frustrated when trying to promote his own site so what did he do, no he did not complain, he set about creating a site that would satisfy what he wanted. Now you get share in the rewards. Pay him a visit - you may be surprised.