• May 25th, 2007

• Are you a Confused Blogger? Having My Blog and Eating it too!

  Posted in Blogging, Personal Baby Steps, by Andrea Yager
• 0 Comments

Assuming we use the word Blogger as a ‘verb’ which describes it literally to be ‘one who blogs’, calling oneself a ‘Blogger’ may give someone else a false impression of what you REALLY are doing.

Ok, lets try and say that again :). You could collect many different individuals who BLOG, and some may be offended by the freedom with which someone else allows themselves to attach themselves to this line of ‘work’, or perhaps ‘pleasure’.

 

Sometimes I make no sense no matter how many times I try :).

 

For example… Pat Conroy may take offense that Danielle Steel calls herself a novelist…. and many serious bloggers may take offense that others who just Blog to make a buck and create cheap trashy sites spitting out RSS content and plaster them with Google Adsense (I said PLASTERED people - nothing wrong with me trying to pay for my chocolate habit) .

 

I am straddling the fence since I am really peddling a business here, but refuse to blog without trying to add my own personal flair, style and believe it or not - my own written words! Dont let that surprise you. Many marketers such as myself get ahead by buying the rights to use public label rights (PLR) content that someone else has created. In fact I have such a membership where I receive monthly material all related to marketing. Yet every time I look through the list of articles, searching for a good blog post, I see lots of great information, but its like HO HUM.. if I cant get through it, why would I expect you to?? Good news - gonna save myself $12.95 a month now!

 

This makes my professional life a little complicated since I admire that which this was not set out to be, yet I fully intend to keep delivering. Therefore the rules will just have to keep changing to what Suits me best, and I guess that really what Blogging is all about.

 

I added a few categories which I think I will enjoy writing and I hope you will enjoy reading..

 

1) Personal Baby Steps… posts like this, when I make a decision, when I grow in business

 

2) Things I learned today Series - When I have a busy surfing day and feel like sharing the goods whether it be personal or business related… I can see where you could confuse this with category above, but I wont

 

3) Idea of the week - Many of my readers are work at home moms (or aspiring), so I hope to offer a weekly review of a job that can be done from home, with or without the need for the computer! Guest entries welcome!

 

So this way I can continue to have my BLOG and eat it too…

 

~~ Andrea

• May 22nd, 2007

• Getting PLUGGED with the Plugins!

  Posted in Blogging, SEO / Traffic, by Andrea Yager
• 2 Comments

Someone just pointed out to me that my Blogging Category to the left was VACANT of posts and I just happened to be downloading some cool plugins for the [blog] that YOU should know about, so here goes.

 

Plugins have basically made your blog (Wordpress anyways) about as capable an engine as any expensive BIG website.

 

Apparantely there are these [GEEKS] throughout the world who get a kick out of creating a ‘plugin’, which is literally a zip file that is usually downloaded (for FREE) and then uploaded into your [plugin] directory of your site. Then you click ‘activate’ and VOILA… you are in business. Some require a little bit more of a learning curve than others and usually it is not too hard to find installation instructions and even video tutorials and step by step guides.

 

Go to WordPress Plugins and find the latest available. Most of the programmers offer the plugin user to donate a nickel here or there to support their Geek habits. Many of these people are still in college! The Adsense guy has it set up where you can ‘reward’ him with a %age of your earnings. This is JUST for adsense within the posts - a reasonable request considering any earnings are directly a result of his generosity.

 

I already have the standard Adsense Deluxe (technical difficulties keep me from showing you it in action here), and Akismet - to avoid spamming comment posters.SEO and Traffic being the latest ‘HOT’ topic around here, I downloaded

 

SEO Title Tag - Creates SEO Friendly Title tags,

 

Google Sitemap - Creates a Google Sitemap - loved by Google search engines

 

Ultimate Tag Warrior - Creates a Tag Cloud,
 

and SimpleTags - which add auto-linked Technorati tags to each post, either at the end of the post, or within the body of the post.

I am ‘moderately’ Tech Savvy - I am comfortable with FTP, and not scared of HTML, PHP, what have you.. so I managed to get all the plugins uploaded and activated.

 

However…I still have some WHAT NEXT questions..

 

Like I activated the Google Sitemap, but how do I get it so a viewer can see that it exists?
 

Like I am placing the proper [TAGS] around my words in my post as suggested with simple tags, but will it really appear at the bottom of this post as technorati tags?? If it DOESNT work, I am not correcting it later - so excuse the random use of []’s.

 

Like why AM I having technical difficulties with my Adsense Plugin?? I put in the proper Google Code and all..

 

When I have the time… I know all the free resources will be available to me to get it straightened out…. unless YOU can help me??

 

~~~ ANDREA

 

 

[wordpress plugins, blogging with SEO, SEO title Tag, Ultimate Tag Warrior, Andrea NEEDS HELP]

• May 20th, 2007

• Whats the BEEF with Traffic?? Here’s the MEAT - 10 FREE TRAFFIC TIPS.

  Posted in HOW TO's (NEWBIES...!!), Online Business, SEO / Traffic, Traffic, by Andrea Yager
• 13 Comments

 

It seems that when it comes to the roads, noone wants traffic, but when it comes to the WEB, its ALL about the traffic.  

 

Many people, myself included, would like to believe that we are going to dump good money into a solid looking website, and then the people are just going to come.. or maybe we will email our parents and friends and that’s all it will take for the business to really take off. 

 

One of my favorite lines from one of the greatest movies in the ’80’s: 

 

“IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME”… 

 

 

It could not be LESS true with the WEB! ..