MyMarketer

On February 27, 2007 I wrote my first blog post for MyMarketer.net. I had finally succumbed to the pressures of my friends to blog, and blog I did. For the next year I lived in the blogosphere. Yet, I not only lived and breathed in this new habitat but I went and proselyted to the blog ignorant. Many converts came from these efforts: hairfire.com, mommyjam.com, forwardeverforward.com, wellspringdaily.com, span-ish.com, tendermerciesblog.com, and internetsteve.com —are just a few of the bloggers that really caught the vision.

However, on February 14, 2008, almost one year later, I sold MyMarketer.net for an undisclosed amount. The irony of the sale going through on Valentines Day is not lost on me. I don’t think I ever would have sold this work of love if I had not found a greater love in my life. A portion of the money earned on the sale of MyMarketer will go to finance a token of that greater love a.k.a. a wedding ring.

Worry not though, I am not abandoning blogging. Rather just uprooting and changing residences. I own the domain TwitterU.com and will be using it to venture off on some web interests I’ve been wanting to do for awhile. I still plan on sharing my marketing thoughts with the blogosphere. Yet, now my main focus will be how Twitter and other social mediums can be used as marketing tools.

I thank all my readers for making MyMarketer a true home. I hope to see you at TwitterU.com.

P.S. Also, keep an eye out for my two other blogs, AstonishWeb.com and InternetLemonade.com, that will be launched in the near future.

I admit I am an addict—I absolutely love wordpress plugins! I actually have one client who pays me to know everything there is to know about plugins. Though, I have to be careful, because once I start hunting for a plugin I generally lose an entire day just searching and playing with them.

Recently, my good friend Ryan from IOVentures Inc. asked if I had written a blog post on my favorite plugins. I have been avoiding this post because it seems that everyone has their top 10 favorite plugins. However, Ryan isn’t the first to ask me, so I guess I will follow the blogosphere crowd and give you my favorite plugins. Hope these help! ~Paul W.

My Top Favority Plugins

Bad Behavior - Little did I realize when I started blogging that I would automatically create a mortal enemy—spam! When I first started I used Akismet but it just wasn’t enough to fight off the avalanche of spam that seemed to engulf the blogosphere. Then I found Bad Behavior. This plugin acts as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. This keeps your site’s load down, makes your site logs cleaner, and can help prevent denial of service conditions caused by spammers. However, be careful if you are on a shared hosting package. I have been locked out of my one of my blogs because Bad Behavior thought the very website that had the plugin was also a spammer (due to another spamming site located on the server). Yet, this plugin is definitely worth the possible minimal hassle.

Chunk Urls for WordPress - When I first started blogging my wordpress theme was always getting broken due to long links that commentors left. With this plugin the urls are shortened in the comments making it possible to overcome the pesky problem of broken themes.

DoFollow - Wordpress automatically defaults to NoFollow with out going links from your blog. Frankly, I am a fan of rewarding my commentors. If you leave a comment plan on my blog plan on having a some link juice come your way.

Easy Tube - I have this plugin activated but I haven’t ever really used it. It still makes my list of plugins that I add to every blog because it helps the blogger easily place YouTube videos into your post and pages. I cannot share how many emails I’ve received in the past from my bloggers who have trouble setting up YouTube videos. Since, I’ve incorporated this plugin I haven’t heard a peep.

Google Analytics - I am a freak about knowing my website stats. It’s even a part of my morning ritual—I get up, shower, brush my teeth, and check my website stats. I have no doubts that you get a more in depth analysis concerning your website, but for free Google sure provides you with quite comprehensive functionality. It will be interesting to see if the new analytic code will give us even more information.

Google Sitemaps - Any Internet marketer worth his or her salt will tell you the importance of a site map. With this plugin your site map is automatically generated and made easily for the google bot to find.

HeadSpace2 - This beautiful plugin has replaced the Ultimate Tag Warrior. With wordpress 2.3 UTW was discontinued (though for you UTW junkies I did just find this plugin). Headspace2 is actually a combination between UTW and All-in-One SEO. It is probably the best SEO plugin I have come across.

ImageManager - I actually only have this plugin for my own blog, since it might complicate the blogging process for a newbie. Yet, I am still a big fan of my ImageManager. This plugin allows for some basic image manipulations such as, cropping, rotation, flip, and scaling right in your own wordpress wysiwg. ImageManager’s website states that the plugin has only been tested with wordpress 2.0 and 2.1 but I haven’t had any issues with it in wordpress 2.3.

Maintenance Mode - The original purpose of the plugin is to create an index page that tells your visitors that you are updating your blog. However, Maintenance Mode makes it easier for me when I am setting up a client’s blog and I don’t want them to see all the different changes I am making. Both purposes work really well with this plugin.

OneClick Installer - If someone were to ask what my favorite plugin is I would have to say OneClick Installer. This is the very first plugin that I add because it truly makes life so easy. This plugin makes it so that you do not have to ftp to your server every time you want to add a theme or a plugin. I have trained all my bloggers on this plugin, which has given them more control over their blogs universe.

Search Everything - I often use this plugin in conjection with Search_Hilite. Both these plugins make it so that your entire blog is searched and not just your post. This is particularly helpful if you are using wordpress as a CMS.

Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form - If you want to create extremely easy forms I recommend using this plugin. I have actually used and tried several contact form plugins and I feel this is the easiest and most intuitive plugin (note: learn from my mistake be sure to read the install directions completely through, there is one extra step you have to do that you don’t do with other plugins).

Smart Update Pinger - I am sure that search engines have devised a way to overcome all the extra pings they get when people are continually editing their posts. However, being the overly worried marketer that I am, and not wanting to worry about being accused of search engine spam, I use this plugin. Smart Update Pinger will only let you ping the search engines when you are publishing new posts, and not when you are editing.

Sociable - I have tried over a dozen social bookmarking plugins. Most of the plugins either make your post look ugly or do not function well. With Sociable I did not find this to be the case; both cosmetically and functionally Sociable wins hands down.

Subscribe To Comments - I honestly wish that wordpress would add this plugin automatically. Not only does it help you strengthen your community, but it also makes it one step easier in keeping in touch with your community on specific topics.

TinyMCE Advanced - This plugin enables advanced features with your wordpress wysiwg. If you want to be able to add further functionality like word size or

What Would Seth Godin Do - Those of you who are avid followers of my blog no my feelings about Seth Godin. Seth truly is one of the most amazing web marketers of our time. This plugin was created around a comment he made about being more pro-active on using your website cookies. If you are new to my blog you noticed at the top of my page an invite to subscribe to my RSS feed or to contact me. That is exactly what this plugin provides for you. A very good plugin in building a stronger community.

WP-Directory - Some of you have wondered how I created my Internet Marketing Directory. When I stumbled across this link I was quite impressed, and it truly makes it easy in manage your own article directory.

Here’s a list of plugins I plan in the future to play around with:

(The Plugin write-up comes from the plugin website)

AJAX Comments - Post comments quickly without leaving or refreshing the page.

Breadcrumb Navigation XT - Adds a breadcrumb navigation showing the visitor’s path to their current location.

Extended Comment Options - This plugin allows you to switch comments and/or pings on or off for batches of existing posts.

Lightbox JS v2.03.3 Pluginlightlight - Used to overlay images on the current page.

No Ping Wait - Speeds up posting by moving generic pings to execute-pings

Post Upload and Paste for Wordpress 2 - Adds quicktag, popup window, and add to post link for quick uploads during posting.

Robs Translator - Translate your blog and website to any language using Google translate - supports 11 languages! Latest bug fix - translator works with Internet Explorer

WordPress Mobile Edition - Show a mobile view of the post/page if the visitor is on a known mobile device.

WP-Polls - Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.

WP adm-anager - This new Plug-in enables you to make use of much improved Banner management features at WordPress blog.

WP Shopping Cart -A plugin that provides a WordPress Shopping Cart.

Having a license plate with BLOGGER on it I get stopped a lot and asked questions about blogging. The number one question I get is, “Can someone really make money off of blogging?” This question is always followed up with, “How can I make money off blogging?”

Often people do not like my response. Mainly because I dispel any belief of someone starting right away making thousands of dollars a month. The blogosphere is full of stories of well known bloggers who took years to make the money they are currently making. It is a rare, rare example of a blogger who in month one made several thousands of dollars (regardless of what some hyped-up ebooks may tell you).

If my tales of blogging hardship hasn’t discouraged my listener than I proceed to share what I have learned.

Advertising Works…Sometimes
First, advertising can make you money. Darren over at Problogger and Jeremy at Shoemoney are proof of this. However, the likelihood of becoming an A++ blogger is rather unlikely. I’ve experimented with advertising but haven’t really taken to it. Not to say one shouldn’t, and maybe someday I will go down that path. For now, though, I prefer the clean, concise look of a non-ad-littered website

The Community Is Key
The number one resource in bringing me consistent revenue has been the community around my blog. My readers have introduced me to more opportunities and consulting jobs than anything else. In fact, it was due to a reader that made it possible for me to leave my corporate job.

Community Building Is Not Easy
Which conveniently takes me to my next point–you don’t build a community overnight. When I first started blogging I had no readers what-so-ever. This being the case, I had to work at Oracle during the day and blogged at night for almost a year. A community is a fickle thing. If you don’t continually work it won’t grow, and if you stop building it will die. I am reminded of a millionaire I once spoke to. He told me, “If a business isn’t growing it’s dying.” Your blog is no different. Many web snakes will tell you that you can put a blog on automatic and you will make lots of money. I am here to tell you this is rarely true, particularly since I have tried to do just that with another blog. Both my business partner and I have learned the hard way that blogs take nurturing and time.

The Quickest Way To Build Your Community
There are lots of different ways to build your blog community, most of which I endorse. However, there is one tactic that I stumbled on that I don’t see discussed much. The best way I built my blog community was actually through my offline efforts. Early last year I was introduced to a blogging group here in Salt Lake that met once a month. The group consisted of an eclectic assortment of blogs that ranged to finding employment to planning weddings. However, it were these people and their blogs that helped me build MyMarketer and its community.

Offline Communities Help With Your Online Community
Back in the day when I had a PageRank of a whopping 1 I wasn’t particularly focused on my writing. Yet, as I worked and played with the Utah bloggers they helped my define my blog and even sent some of their traffic my way. Though, I must admit that I did have to work for their traffic. In May of 2007 we created a street team that worked to get Seth Godin to Salt Lake City. On my blog I created posts that had in depth graphs of our efforts. These newly found friends started linking to my graphs because it was pertinent to what we were doing. I was now having blogs with 4-6 PageRanks linking to me. These links, in my opinion, were a significant factor in helping me jump to my current PageRank of 4.

For me this offline community-building was a serious catalyst in defining my presence on the web, and to make the necessary money to leave corporate. I strongly suggest to any budding blogger to find a local blogging network that meets outside of cyberspace. If your city doesn’t have one than create one. I love how Janet has a link on her site that lists all the Utah bloggers she is aware of. I know for a fact that this directory has helped her several times in generating buzz on her different projects.

Recently, I have become a junkie of the forums on Digital Point. As an internet marketer I have found the services and people who use Digital Point to be quite helpful in becoming better at my trade.

One service that I discovered on Digital Point is a new company called TNX.net. What made me stop and checkout this service was their promise for free text link ads (this link will take you to the Digital Point post).

Currently, I am undergoing the task of improving MyMarketer’s search engine ranking, and I have looked at a lot of solutions. In my searching I have learned that there are many things you can do to improve your search engine rankings. However, as an Internet marketer ultimately I know that one-way links are chief among all. If you can have thousands of one-way links you are most likely going to rank quite highly, and possibly even in the coveted top 10 spots.

Understanding this, I looked at TNX in depth. What I found is that a first glance at the TNX site, you see it is not very clear. So, hopefully my notes on their services will be helpful to you.

TNX takes a unique angle over the other text link sites. Their service use a point system as a payment method. You can actually earn points to use in buying links, but also you can get people to buy links on your own site. Initially, I thought this might not be as profitable when trying to sell links for my site. However, I actually noticed several advantages with this system:

1) Higher Volume - With TNX using a point service, it is easier for you to reinvest points earned into buying your own ads on other sites. The secret here lies in the ease of both earning and spending points. Due to this ease there is a much higher volume of transactions which means a higher chance of selling your links.

2) Transferable Points - Points can easily be transferred to another user without limit. You can buy a review from another user using yourTNX points, or you can use it as a way to pay the bet you lost on who will win the political primaries–who knows.

3) Earnings - Points can actually be redeemed for cash but it’s not very much (1,000 points per 65 cents). The rate increases over time, but as you can see it doesn’t encourage you to trade your points in. I am guessing it is encouraging users to reinvest points back into the system.

4) Buying Links - If you decide to use your points to buy links, you’ll notice a few things. One thing is that the link purchasing system doesn’t let you choose where you want your links to show up on another site. You do have control over category, language, PageRank, and Yahoo!backlink preferences. It seems that TNX is doing this in order to assist you in building backlinks from relevant sites of a certain PageRank. This of course, in turn, boosts your own PageRank.

You currently get 2,000 points for posting on the Digital Point thread I mentioned earlier (the thread was started in September, 2007 so I don’t know how much longer TNX will be doing this). You will also earn an additional 5,000 points once your own site gets approved. The 7,000 points is a whopping total of $5. For you affiliate geeks you can use TNX’s affiliate program to get points for referring others to sign-up. You earn up to 5% of whoever signs up on their point revenue.

So, there are my notes on TNX. Overall, it looks like a valid system, and I will definitely investigate it further. I know TNX is fairly new, but if anyone else wants to assist me in further checking it out, please let me know. ~Paul W.

Whether you celebrate
Christmas or not, we wish you peace, happiness,
joy and all good things during this holiday
season.