The beauty of using WordPress to run your blog is the extensive number of plugins that let you customize your blog the way you want. The plugins can be for things that appear in public such as threaded comments, Technorati tags, and allowing users to subscribe to comments or things that are behind the scenes in the admin panel such as blog stats and SEO.

I would like to share a current list of WP plugins that are installed on this blog. Here they are along with a short explanation of what each one does and how it’s useful.

But wait, if you have no clue how to install a plugin, read this next section. Otherwise, you can skip down to the list.

Install a WordPress Plugin in 5 Steps

1. Download the plugin. Normally it’s in a zip file.

2. Uncompress the zip file. If you’re using Windows XP or later, there is a built-in utility to help you do this. All you have to do is double-click on the downloaded file and you can extract the files inside to a directory of your choice.

3. FTP the file to the plugin directory on your webserver. Sometimes you’ll need to upload the entire directory into the plugin directory.

4. In your WP admin, click on the Plugins tab to find and activate the plugin.

5. Some plugins may need some customization. You can choose the options either under the Plugins tab or the Options tab.

Be sure to read the README file that comes with each plugin for installation details.

Okay, now on to the list of cool plugins:

Akismet

Akismet helps to cut down on spam comments. The only thing you need to get this plugin functioning is a WP API key. You can find out how to get one. Ever since I installed Akismet on this blog, it has caught a grand total of 12,682 spam comments. I do check the spam folder every now and then because some valid comments can slip through the cracks.

Subscribe to Comments

Want to build community? Using the subscribe to comments plugin will give the commenter a chance to be alerted by email whenever a new comment is posted in response to the same blog post.

Threaded Comments

This plugin (Yet Another Threaded Comments plugin) helps to organize the comments section on your blog by allowing commenters to respond to a particular comment and displays all of them in a threaded fashion just like the way some forums or groups are organized.

Popularity Contest

This plugin called Popularity Contest from Alex King will help you see which of your posts are the most popular among readers. You can configure the way the popularity of each post is measured by setting the weight given to each criteria such as number of views, comments, etc.

You can show a list of the most popular posts on the main page of your blog so that new readers will be able to get a taste of what your blog is all about.

Related Posts

This is another great plugin for keeping the interest of new readers. It displays a list of posts that are closely related to the topic of the current post below that post. What this does is it allows the reader to stay on your site longer as they may be interested in reading other related posts.

Including You Tube Video Clips

WP Video makes it easy to include You Tube videos on your site. Just include the URL of the video between a set of tags in your posts.

Managing Post Archives

SRG Clean Archives organizes your archives so that your older posts can be easily accessed by the reader.

Simple Tags

Generate Technorati tags for each post by using the Simple Tags plugin. Technorati is very popular and having the appropriate tags on each post will help your blog get discovered.

SEO Title Tag

I’m fairly new to using this plugin but the concept is that you can optimize your blog for search engines by creating customized title tags for any post, static page, category page, etc.

WP Shortstat

This is one of my all time favorites. WP Shortstat lets you view keyword searches that bring visitors to your site and tracks the number of visitors to your blog each day. It also shows you additional information such as the countries your visitors come from.

WP User Online

WP User Online lets you see the number of current visitors to your blog. Visitors could be either human or machines, i.e. search engine spiders. It helps you see how often and how fast your posts get spidered. You can also include a widget on your sidebar to let your visitors see how many users are online.

Ever read the Cialdini’s book called “Influence”? This plugin helps you implement the concept of social proof on your blog. The thinking behind this is that if a visitor sees that there are 53 other people currently reading the blog, then this must be a popular blog and they should pay more attention to it.

These plugins may help you build up a community around your blog.

image credit: Donncha (Flickr)

Technorati Tags: WP plugins

Popularity: 52% [?]

PepperJam Network launched

PepperJam introduces their new affliliate network and I have a comprehensive review of it.

Bloggers Unite To Help Out A Fellow Blogger

Bloggers got the word out and helped RT raise over $3,000 in 24 hours. It gives me the warm fuzzies to think of the way bloggers pulled together to help out. Thanks everyone!

More WP Plugins

Want to turbo-charge your blog? Vic’s got a nice list of WP plugins that you can use.

Technorati Tags: pepperjam network, affiliate network, bloggers helping bloggers, wp plugins

Popularity: 22% [?]

Some people have way too much time on their hands! Here’s a quiz that you can try. See how many you can get correct.

This is a good way to get traffic to your blog. You can incorporate something that goes viral like this. If you can’t do it yourself, ask friends to help or hire someone.

Technorati Tags: funny, programmer, serial killer

Popularity: 25% [?]

Update: 24 hours after word was out that RT needed help, bloggers helped to raise over $3,000. And RT was even contacted by SkyNews that wanted to do a story about this.

It’s not everyday that you can really do something tangible to help out a fellow blogger. If you haven’t read RT Cunningham’s blog - Untwisted Vortex - go read it now. Anyway, the main reason for this plug is that RT needs some financial help related to a family emergency.

For a bit of background, you can read his post on why this is the hardest thing he’s ever done and more background on the situation here.

If you want to help out a fellow blogger, you can do that by using the PayPal donation button on his blog.

Technorati Tags: RT Cunningham, untwisted vortex, help a blogger

Popularity: 24% [?]

I expect to see more people coming online with their blogs and trying to make money online, especially since stories about ‘probloggers’ keep popping up in the mainstream media, in this case the Wall Street Journal. According to the story, this site rakes in $15,000 to $18,000 per month from Google AdSense. Rhett Butler, the owner of the site, says that he gets about 1.3 million uniques per month. I’ve never heard of his site, Mongabay, until now.

The other usual suspects included in the article is Darren Rowse of Problogger.net. That’s what making the Forbes Internet celebrity list can get you. He sneaked in at #25.

For your convenience, here’s the full list:

1. Perez Hilton
2. Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)
3. Mark Frauenfelder (who? think BoingBoing)
4. Seth Godin
5. Cory Doctorow
6. Matt Drudge (Drudge Report)
7. Gina Trapani (LifeHacker)
8. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
9. Harry Knowles
10. Robert Scoble
11. Frank Warren (PostSecret) - hosted on Blogger!!!
12. Om Malik
13. Will Leitch (DeadSpin)
14. Jeff Jarvis
15. Kevin Rose (Digg)
16. Kathy Sierra
17. Fake Steve Jobs (We LOVE Fake Steve Jobs!)
18. Markos Moulitsas (DailyKos)
19. Xeni Jardin
20. Ryan Block (Engadget)
21. Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit)
22. Pete Cashmore (Mashable)
23. Steve Rubel
24. Heather Armstrong
25. Darren Rowse

Technorati Tags: celebrity bloggers, mongabay, problogger, wall street journal, full time blogging, influential bloggers

Popularity: 33% [?]

Maybe that statement is an exaggeration but the point is that too many blogs are depending on AdSense as their major source of revenue. And I’d say that the major motivation that’s keeping a lot of blogs alive is the fact that they can make some money off AdSense.

While many small-time bloggers can make some extra cash through AdSense on their sites, don’t fall into the trap of relying solely on one source of revenue. This is especially true if you’re planning to quit your day job and think that you can survive on AdSense alone.

image credit: blmurch (Flickr)

The importance of diversification

Imagine that you wake up one day and Google bans your AdSense account. Will that kill 80% of your revenues? 95%?

That’s what happened to Incredimail, a public listed company (NASDAQ:MAIL) that saw its stock fall 30% today after they announced that Google has banned them from AdSense.

According to Maxim Group analyst, Matthew Weiss:

“This announcement is a big blow for IncrediMail as we believe that approximately 85 percent of the company’s advertising revenues are attributable to its AdSense relationship”

According to an article in the MotleyFool:

“Through the first nine months of 2007, revenues soared 94% to $13.3 million. The company is taking advantage of its popular email applications to launch Instant Messaging and social networking.”

If 85% of the revenues are from AdSense, that would amount to about $11 million dollars for the first nine months of 2007.

Use your earnings to invest for the future

While you are getting some decent checks from Google, set aside a part of it to invest in your continuing education and also for growing your revenue streams. Maybe you can plan to acquire some other websites. Or use some of your profits to hire writers and invest in building up new sites.

Or you can invest it off-line in traditional stuff like the stock market, CDs, forex, or pick your favorite investment vehicle.

Think of it this way. Look at what happened to Polaroid. They should have seen the trends occurring in the photography business with the advent of digital photography. Instead they were relying too much on their instant cameras which use film and look at where they are today.

When you think of photography who do you think of? Kodak? Polaroid? Hardly. I think the winners are Nikon and Canon.

So be sure to keep up with what’s happening in the industry.

Once again, I see that so many blogs are following the same layout as some A-list bloggers, you know, having the 125×125 ad blocks on the right hand sidebar. It’s like lemmings.

The supply and demand for these ads will eventually adjust their prices. However, there will always be suckers who are willing to pay more than the market price for them. While some popular blogs can charge hundreds of dollars per month for these ad spots, the advertisers will soon come to their senses if they are really measuring the results of putting up those ads.

Ad buying tips

If you’re considering buying an ad spot, be sure to set it up in such a way that you can measure the results. For example, you can use Google analytics and look at the referrals coming from the site that you’ve placed your ad on. You can look at the traffic coming from that referral and compare it to your average visitor in terms of time spent on your site, pages viewed, etc. Don’t just advertise blindly.

Another way is to set up a specific landing page and link it to the ad. Place an opt-in box and measure the conversion rate from the traffic you are getting. In some cases, it may be worth it. If you’re paying $30 per month for a spot, that means about $1 per day. If you’re getting 20 visitors per day, you’re paying 5 cents per visitor. Let’s say 1 out of 20 visitors opt-in, that means your acquisition cost per subscriber is $1. This isn’t too bad compared to putting up an AdWords ad.

Who says that Google won’t penalize sites selling 125×125 ad spots next? It would be in their interest to squash the competition for advertisers who would otherwise be advertising on AdWords.

It’s almost like the heady days of banner advertising in the first dot com boom. Everyone was into selling banner ads on their sites until the whole thing came apart. Some of the Web 2.0 properties may face the same fate. You can’t base your business model on AdSense alone.

Technorati Tags: Google AdSense, Incredimail, getting banned from AdSense, revenue streams, diversification, banner ads, 125×125 ads, lemmings

Popularity: 51% [?]

Everybody and their mother knows that Google frowns on paid text links as a way for webmasters to buy link juice for their sites. So it turned out that 2007 was the year that most of what’s known as text link advertising died. Most bloggers are so scared now that they put no follow links on all their link ads.

(By the way, if text link ads are being discouraged, why does TLA still have PR7?)

image credit: w@ndering_st@r (Flickr)

There is another way to do sell text links which is virtually undetectable to Google. Some people call it content hosting or presell pages.

By the way, Bob Massa’s blog (where I found the term ‘content hosting’) is one that you should read and keep in your feed reader. Lots of good insight there.

The way it works is that you contact the webmaster or blogger directly and ask them if you could pay them to have some of your content and links put on their site as part of a post.

It’s like product placement on TV shows. Or like how you see the judges on American Idol always drinking Coke. That’s content hosting for you.

This way your links will look a whole lot more natural than if they are a part of a list of text links on somebody’s sidebar. That’s just screaming out for Google to get you.

I’m sure there is already an underground market for such a thing. If you target a well established blog to host your content, you get both the benefit of the traffic as well as the link juice.

That’s all the more reason to expand your inventory of sites so that you have a stable of sites with various PR values that you can use content hosting to introduce your newer sites. For the more advanced, you can spread out your hosting and also your IP addresses.

The key is keeping things looking natural. Some people think you’re trying to game the search engines. I think you’re just trying to figure out their rules and play by those rules.

Here is an image that I came across on Flickr. I’d like to call it Determination.

image credit: J Quantz Jr. (Flickr)

Technorati Tags: text links, backlinks, passing PR, content hosting, presell pages, link juice

Popularity: 33% [?]

I use Entrecard and MyBlogLog from time to time to see who is visiting my blog and to check out new blogs. I’ve seen a whole lot of new blogs trying to break into the “make money blogging” or “I want to be a problogger” scene. The growth of these types of blogs are phenomenal.

Obviously a lot of people are unhappy with their day jobs and are hoping to make money at home just writing their blogs. Maybe it’s the perception cast by some A-list make money bloggers that it’s easy and require little effort. Hey people, stop believing that. Easy isn’t going to make you a full-time income. It takes dedication and knowledge.

I predict that most of these startup blogs will fail and fizzle out in the next year.

image credit: Aihibed (Flickr)

Let’s go through these top 5 biggest mistakes starting from #5.

5. No About Me page. Who reads blogs? People. And people want to know more about the person behind the blog. So why not write a little bit of background about who you are and why you’re blogging.

4. Flaky posts. Rule #1 of blogging - give a reason for people to read your blog. Don’t expect to just rehash stuff you read on other blogs and hope your readers will come back. Find your own voice. Give your unique opinion on the issues.

3. Ugly blog design. All right. Ugly is in the eye of the beholder. But I’ve seen some outright hideous colors and design choices (or lack thereof) on some new blogs.

2. Hosting on Blogspot. Don’t be cheap. It costs less than 10 bucks to get your own domain. Or you can use a GoDaddy coupon and get it for $6.95. If you’re planning an exit strategy of selling your blog one day, it’s a LOT harder to sell a blog on a blogspot domain.

And #1, drumroll please….

Too much advertising on the site. I’ve seen new blogs that already have Adsense, 125×125 ad spots (albeit unfilled), Chitika, Widgetbucks, and banners and widgets to the wazoo. Stop trying to monetize your blog at the outset. Build up a number of good posts first and increase your incoming links, traffic and reputation (however you want to measure it - Alexa, Technorati, etc.)

Technorati Tags: mistakes new bloggers make, ugly blog design, blog advertising, advertising overload, blogging advice

Popularity: 28% [?]

Here’s an article from InsideCRM on 101 ways to monetize your blog. Actually it’s broken down into the following subtopics:

1. Merchandising
2. Paid Content
3. Begging (a.k.a. donations)
4. Opportunities (speaking, consulting, etc.)
5. Offline
6. Ads
7. RSS Ads
8. Text Ads
9. Sell Your Own Ads
10. Affiliate Programs
11. Sponsored Posts
12. Misc.

How many of these ways have you tried? Please leave a comment. I’d like to hear about your experiences.

One thing you can do is to pick one or two items out of each subtopic and work on those. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Of course, some things like getting speaking gigs and consulting work is much harder to come by unless you establish your expertise.

For new bloggers, ads, sponsored posts, affiliate programs and donations are probably the best to start with.

Technorati Tags: blog monetization, revenue streams

Popularity: 26% [?]