PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It involves the basis of you paying to get visitors to your blog or product page. It allows for maximum control over where your visitors come from, how many you want in a day, conversion rates, creating multiple campaigns and other various points.

Multiple campaigns is one interesting factor for PPC. You can make many different ads and test what works and what doesn’t. Effectively allowing you to increase the potential of your traffic and even sales.

PPC is ideal for short term traffic or for people pushing products online, such as Internet Marketers. To name a few ad companies we have, Google Adwords, 7search, MSN AdCenter, Adbrite, and dozens more.

Tip – For the best results you’ll want to use multiple sources when dealing with PPC. This is especially true for Marketers.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It involves your blog’s ability to pull in visitors through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. This is basically getting visitors for no cost, but it takes a lot of hard work to achieve high numbers.

There many factors to consider when attempting to increase your traffic through SEO. Content, backlinks, keywords, headers, clean code (backend), Sitemaps, meta, keyword saturation, and more. Each one can make or break your search engine ranking which can kill your traffic.

Tip – Content and Backlinks are KING!

So which is the way to go? That’s something that cannot be answered easily. It really depends on your needs, or your abilities, or even your goals. I’m not saying PPC is easy but it’s definitely easy compared to SEO.

PPC is ideal when you are pushing products online, trying to earn extra revenue. It’s important to track your results and ensure you are earning more than you are spending.

SEO is ideal for those who simply want more readers and even ad revenue. It’s a good steady source of traffic and when done properly can boost your visitations to unbelievable numbers… numbers you would be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on with PPC.

Some plugins, however, that you simply can’t live without. They help you improve your SEO score, keep up-to-date stats of your visitors, and much more. While these aren’t in any particular order we can assure you that you’ll find them extremely helpful.

1. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Yet Another Related Post is a plugin that automatically plugs similar entries you’ve created into your post. How does this help you? It allows you to keep your visitors around longer which, in turn, can improve traffic and even ad revenue and usually shows them you have more to offer on the subject they’ve came to your site to read about.

2. WP Super Cache

If you haven’t heard of WP Super Cache, what rock have you been living under? The benefits of this plugin are apparent usually within a day of having it installed. How does it benefit you? It lowers load times on your server (be it shared or dedicated) so there is less strain on your blog and server by creating static HTML pages of your entire blog. Then when visitors come to your site, it displays your HTML pages up instead of processing PHP and MySQL. How it benefits your visitors? Faster page loads, and what visitor wouldn’t love that?

3. Akismet

Akismet comes standard with all WordPress blogs. Use it and consider your spam troubles history. It runs various tests whenever you receive a new trackback, comment, or ping to see if it should be allowed in your blog. No blacklisting or work is needed from you once you’ve activated it and put your API Key into the system. The key can be obtained at WordPress.com by registering.

4. Feedburner

Replace your old RSS feeds with this amazing system. Your feeds get redirected to Feedburner and in return Feedburner gives you amazing stats on your subscribers. From what post they read, where they came from, and so much more.

5. Google XML Sitemaps

Unless you’ve been on Mars for the last several years, Google is the top search engine out there. Sitemaps makes crawlers, those pesky little things going all over your blog, able to retrieve the data they need to update their pages about your site. It supports custom URLs and it even notifies all major search engines when you’ve made updates.

6. AddThis

AddThis is an amazing Social Bookmarking tool that allows your visitors to share the things they find most interesting on your site with the world. It supports all the major Social Bookmarking websites and dozens you’ve probably never even heard of. It has several options to let you adjust their button to match the look and feel of your theme.

7. OnlyWire

OnlyWire is one of those secret “tools of the trade” so many people don’t want you to find out about. Imagine a website where you can input login information to dozens of Social Bookmarking and Social Media websites then have new updates you make be automatically posted to them through the use of a WordPress plugin. Sounds to good to be true, right? Think again! OnlyWire offers free and paid services and is a true one stop spot to obtaining traffic, ranking, and so much more.

8. WP-Polls

There are any number of bloated poll plugins for WordPress. Many that add unnecessary graphics, text, and links to polls you’ve added when all you really want is a simple and easy to use feature to offer your visitors. WP-Polls is the answer to your prayers! Lightweight, customizable, and as easy, WP-Polls gives you what you want and leaves out what you don’t need.

9. SpamShiv Lite

SpamShiv Lite, being the free version, converts email addresses you input to your blog into an unrecognizable code for crawlers going around the Internet looking for addresses to add to their spam list. This plugin protects not only your email address, but any that is added to your blog from spam. A must have, some might say.

10. All in One SEO Pack

Words cannot describe what this plugin can truly offer. It allows you to control every aspect of SEO for your blog, internally, with several small extras. One extra being the use of “tags” as meta keywords in single entries. It would take a whole page to write about all the features and benefits All in One SEO Pack has to offer but until you try it for yourself, you’ll never really understand.

11. Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 isn’t just a simple contact form, it’s a contact form which offers multiple form creations (depending your various needs), customization of exactly what you want, and an easy to use admin interface. Create any number of forms for your users to contact you and have those messages sent to any email address you require. Oh and it supports AJAX, CAPTCHA, and Spam Filtering.

12. Honorable Mention: Exec-PHP

Exec-PHP may not be something that you find yourself needing often but when you do it can be a life saver. It allows you to run PHP script within entries and pages.

While you may find only a few of these plugins useful for your needs, they are all truly amazing. They help increase usability and options you can offer your readers and even yourself. Best of all, they’re free!

Many blogging platforms, such as WordPress, have several plugins which can cut your post writing time in half. This is a feature known as Auto Blogging. It is the ability to have fresh, relevant, content posted to a blog. As mentioned previously, many of us simply do not have the time needed to post fresh content to one or more blogs. If you are one of those people then Auto Blogging is something worth looking into.

While there are quite a few plugins to help you achieve this, there are some that stand out from the rest. WP Robot, WP-o-Matic, and WP Mage, just to know a few, and each one works a little differently. Some allow you to pull content from sources like YouTube, Amazon, and article websites, while some relying on RSS Feeds. Worried about duplicated content being seen by Google? Some Auto Blogging tools even have the ability to change keywords within the content you are “grabbing”. Essentially making it appear unique to search engines and the readers of your blog.

And with the ability to get content from sources such as Amazon, eBay, and even ClickBank it’s safe to say that not only can Auto Blogging be a way to obtain mounds of content for your blog, but can potentially be an even bigger revenue earner!

WP Robot can be an amazing tool in the right hands. It has the ability to provide you with relevant content to your blog without lifting a finger, hence save you time needed to write blog posts.

So why is it important to go? Not only do they offer help, advice and nohow on content creation, monetization and distribution, but you will get to meet face to face with some today’s top bloggers and learn from them as well.

For more information, times and dates, you can visit BlogWorldExpo Website.

As Nate Whitehill, an attendee of the BlogWorld & New Media Expo, puts it:

“I strongly encourage anyone who wants to be successful in an industry to start attending tradeshows. The people you meet and the things you learn are well worth the cost of hotel, travel expenses, and conference passes.”

See you all in Las Vegas on October 14th and 15th.

BlackBerry offers numerous features like email, instant messenger on multiple platforms, web browsing, event calendars, social networking, GPS and much more. Many entrepreneurs find that they try new devices, only to return to their BlackBerry. While other devices like the iPhone offer similar (though not all) features, BlackBerry phones have time and again proven to be not only quick but extremely stable and reliable.

The organizer definitely deserves notoriety. With an address book, calendar and task list, you can trust that you’ll never be late for a meeting, lose a number or forget that report you needed to type up.

Even at first glance it’s apparent that the iPhone, no matter the model, is primarily designed for fun and entertainment. Their target market seems to be teenagers and people in their early to mid-twenties. Most of the applications created are for this purpose, and even the design has the feel and style you would expect from a phone targeted at a younger generation.

If you want a device that’s nice for web browsing and music, then the iPhone is definitely for you. But if you are a serious entrepreneur, there’s no beating the multiple BlackBerry devices on the market today.

We’ve known Rebecca for a little over 3 years, and seen her site grow from a personal hobby blog to something that is now her full time job, working from home and doing what she loves!

Tell us about yourself. How long have you been blogging?

I set up my first blog sometime around the end of 2003. I was just one of those typical ones where I linked to articles I liked, talked about my favorite music, pets, etc. After a couple of years of that, I got bored with it and took it down. In mid 2006, I got the idea fir what eventually became ElasticPop.com

How long did it take you to get your blog launched?

I would say it really took me about a eighteen months. Because my blog is a Blu-Ray/DVD review site, it took time to make contacts with the studios and PR firms that provide titles. In order to convince them that I could write and publish the reviews, I wrote for some established blogs before soliciting material for my own.

How many hours per day do you spend working online?

During the week, anywhere from 7-11. On the weekends, I try to cut it down to half that, but It doesn’t always work out that way!

What are your favorite revenue sources?

Google AdSense, Commission Junction, Amazon Affiliate Program, iReel

How long did it take you to see real profits from your blog?

That took a good eighteen months, and I’m always looking for ways to refine and increase profits.

What were some of the challenges you had to overcome to see your online visions come to life?

For me, I think the biggest thing was remembering that the site needed to be accessible to people, no matter their level of computer expertise. My first impulse was to build a site with all sorts of bells and whistles, but in reality, a clean speedy site is more likely to be revised.

Any particular methods to generating traffic you could share?

Use Social Networking! Twitter your posts, put them on Facebook and make sure you’ve set up an RSS feed. Outside of that, Make sure your URL is in the signature of every email account you have. Also, you might consider having business cards made up and giving them out, posting them on bulletin boards of business etc. Another great thing to do, is visit forums related to the topic of your blog, participate in discussions, leaving your URL.

What are some online resources you could recommend for people looking to becoming a Professional Blogger?

These are sites I keep bookmarked.

http://www.problogger.net/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/

Did you ever think you would be successful?

I hoped I would, but I had a fair amount of skepticism going in.

What’s the most common mistake(s) you see other bloggers make?

While it’s important to choose a topic that is popular, it’s equally important to choose something you’re interested in. Too many people choose something they clearly aren’t passionate about, and the site dies before it really gets off the ground.

What’s the best advice you have for would-be bloggers out there?

If you’re going to be a professional blogger, it’s best not to expect overnight success. It’s a lot of hard work, and growth tends to come in increments. However, if you are in it for the long haul, it can be a rewarding experience.

Any future plans you would like to share?

I’m in the midst of getting my forum up and running, so I hope my visitors will come on over and join the discussions!

Thank you Rebecca for taking your time to answer our questions! We wish you best of luck and great success!

In the world of online marketing, it’s common knowledge that a visitor makes up their mind about a website (either to stay or leave) in the first few seconds.

So what makes a good landing page? Something that catches the reader’s attention. You want to give them just enough to make them stay without overdoing it. Pages packed with endless amounts of irrelevant content tend to foreshadow your site and make it appear less relevant than the information they’re looking for.

Google Website Optimizer is a tool that nearly every internet marketer, blogger and guru find invaluable, and best of all, it’s entirely free! It can help you improve the effectiveness of your website in getting a return on your investment. By allowing you to test different versions of your site content, you can determine what will best attract users and lead them to convert on your site.

Landing pages are what will make or break your visitation. They give the world a summarized view of your blog, allowing your readers to decide immediately whether to stay or to leave.

With that, you won’t be surprised to hear about Google’s latest innovation, Google Voice. So what exactly is Google Voice? At its core it’s a voicemail system, but it definitely goes beyond that. They’ve implemented countless features that will revolutionize the way you use your phone.

Google Voice gives you a local phone number of your choosing that’s able to call up to six phones simultaneously, allowing you to have one phone for several devices. Additionally, Google Voice makes speech-to-text transcription a reality. Call settings can be created in a number of interesting ways. You can forward your Google Voice number to one device between specific hours, and if it’s not within those hours, it can forward to another device or ignore calls all together.

A prefect example of this would be you could be at your home office between 12 PM and 8 PM, but are still available to take calls afterwards until 10 PM. Then after 10 PM let’s say you don’t want to receive anymore calls. Well, Google Voice allows you to set what device(s) you want to be reached at during those hours and then set a Do Not Disturb for after 10PM. Finally you can relax at a time that works for you.

While Google Voice remains predominantly a free service, advertisements are present, particularly when using Gmail. Placing outgoing calls with Google Voice is free with the exception of international calls. The purchase of calling credits is necessary to make calls to other countries. But not to worry, Google’s prices are competitive, especially for the quality of service they provide.

As previously mentioned, blogging software not only keeps up-to-date content on your website, but provides an unparalleled source of traffic as well. Search engines like Google thrive on it. Their bots (a software that collects information from the web) continuously check for new posts on your blog, and those updates keep them coming back for more.

What does this mean for you? More thorough indexing on Google, better SEO and higher rankings on search engines, especially for targeted keywords. Having up-to-date content will provide the optimal setting for your website to succeed. Well-written and researched material will not only give the professional feel that your readers have come to expect, but will also portray you as an expert in your field.

In addition, it creates an open environment for your company where past, present and future clients can communicate with you directly by utilizing blog post comments. This will help in accommodating the ever-changing needs of your customers. What more could you ask for? All of this is possible with the power of blogging—up-to-date content, professionalism and putting a human face on your company. The benefits of blogging are vital to increasing traffic to your website and retaining relevance in a new era of communication.

So what’s changed with WordPress 3.0? For starters, they’ve created a new default theme, Twenty Ten. It proves to be much more robust and eye pleasing than the previous default theme, Kubrick.

In addition, the interface is lighter and has over 1,200 bugs fixes and enhancements. That’s only the beginning of the myriad new features. Creating a custom theme for WordPress is now easier than ever before thanks to new API integrations. Customized backgrounds, menus, headings, and more are now simpler to implement in new designs.

Another notable feature is the ability to perform bulk updates with the internal upgrading system. You can upgrade 15 plugins at once!

Probably the most significant change is the integration of WordPress MU (multi-user). WordPress 3.0 offers the multi-user system built directly into its structure. You can now run millions of blogs from one dashboard. Some of our notable customers are already taking advantage of this functionality.

You can learn more about new features and changes, including an exceptional video about the latest and greatest WordPress 3.0 by clicking here.

We highly recommend you upgrade immediately or contact us for further assistance.