It always seems like the it's "easiest" questions that are the hardest to find answers to. I know these have to be easy because I don't see anyone else having the same problems. I would greatly appreciate it if someone (or someones) could point me in the right direction. I just created a WordPress blog on GoDaddy hosting (if that matters). 1) I found a template that appears to meet what needs I will have for the blog, but it has buttons at the top right that I cannot seem to make function. See it here: Blog Do I need to just set up pages under Manage>Pages>Create New page? If so, then "Doh!" - stupid question. I was thinking that those page buttons were there as another way to access past posts (other than "Archive" and "Recent Posts") 2) I plan on putting Google Adsense on this blog (I am awaiting a response from Google). I uploaded the "Adsense Delux" plugin. I want to put these directly into the posts and/or between the posts. I don't see in the instructions how to put them between the posts. Any ideas? Additionally, does anyone have any experience with any other sources of revenue from a blog? Affiliate networks, perhaps? 3) Stupid question -> How can I see how much traffic I get (when I get traffic)? 4) How would I go about putting the digg, del.icio.us, etc. tabs at the bottom of each post like the ones shown at semiologic.com? 5) I have a good bit of content that I already had written before I built the blog and went ahead and uploaded it. I want to start submitting articles to Ping-o-matic, blogxplosion, etc. How many articles should I submit per day? Would it be overkill to submit two or three in a day (spread out, of course)? Should I wait until I get the Google Adsense set up before I begin sending them out? 6) Finally, any suggestions on the blog? It's my first so I would like some feedback from experienced bloggers.
1. I'm not sure since I don't know anything about that particular template but I should imagine that it's just a case of creating pages, yes. 2. You have to edit the actual template files to get them inbetween your posts I believe. When you get a good PR and/or good amounts of traffic, considering using the very useful Link Sales section here. Also try signing up to places like BlogAds, Adbrite etc. 3. Add a counter such as the free ones offered by sitemeter.com 4. It'd be a plug-in somewhere but I haven't a clue which one! 5. It's always good to have a great deal of content before you start attracting people. If there's one thing I hate, it's ending up at a site before there's anything interesting to read. I certainly wouldn't be back. Concentrate on making it as good as it can possibly be before looking for an audience. Patience is absolutely crucial since if you attract an audience before you have the site working as you want it to, you can lose regular traffic before you've even started. 6. I don't consider myself to be an experienced blogger (had a busy blog for about eight months now) but one tip that I can offer is to simply concentrate on writing a top notch blog. Create interesting content. Don't write to make money. If you do, you'll end up with transparent content and rushed articles. Make it clear that you're writing this blog because you enjoy it and you want to create a service. Splashing ads all over it in the way of the content gets on people's nerves. Put ads before/after the articles but not in the way of. I find that I'm far more likely to click an ad if it's not interfering with my surfing of that particular site. In the past I've deliberately avoided clicking certain ads and instead done a Google search because it's obvious that the creator of the site is after money first and foremost. HTH. Good luck!
Thanks for the reply. I looked up Blogads. It's currently invitation only so unless I get an invite that's out. I'm checking out Adbrite now. I won't be running a spammy blog or anything. That's not what I'm in it for. I value the content I'm putting up and I think a lot of people can get a lot of use from it so I'm not really worried about that. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to get my blog out there. Oh, by the way I found the plugin for getting those buttons (Digg, etc.) at the bottom of posts: http://push.cx/sociable
You can use different advertising streams with Google but only certain types. It would be against Google's TOS to run YPN concurrently for example. You'd be best off asking in another section about what does and doesn't violate them. I haven't really done too well with BlogAds myself. From what I've read political blogs are the way to go as far as they're concerned. A couple of plugins for you to check out that are always useful: - Contact Form (doesn't always work, you may need to get the PHPMailer plugin to assist) - Spam Karma 2
Yeah, I plan on hitting that forum up. I just figured I would ask those ?s here as well since I was asking all the others. I'm setting up the sitemeter now. As well as the contact form. Your blog is set up really clean, btw. Good job. Just another reason that I probably need to get more interested in socc...uh...football. Haha. Can SpamKarma 2 be run simultaneous as the built-in spam plugin that comes with WP? Is it better? I'm also having a big problem with my RSS feed. All the others seem to work fine except the orange one (top one). I get an error: "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below." Anyone have any idea what this is?
I'm not sure about the difference between Spam Karma and the regular WP spam thingy-wotsit. I've always used SK and never had a problem. As for the Syndicate buttons, a lot of Wordpress blogs tend to tie all their feeds to Feedburner. That way, you get a clear idea of how many people are using your blog via RSS etc. Once that number reached a decent total, you can monetize that through Google etc too. There's a plugin for that somewhere too. Oh and thanks for that plugin. Might install that myself. Thanks for the kind words too. I'm rubbish with code so my partner does a lot of it for me. I just take the credit ;-)
Maybe this will help you: http://silentbits.com/?p=189 http://silentbits.com/?page_id=72 http://silentbits.com/?page_id=142
Thanks. I'm taking a look at those now. Anyone got any idea how to get my RSS feed thing to work, though? It just gives me an error when I click on it.
1 - edit the header.php file for that template and link page 1/2/3 to actual pages that u have created in wordpress admin bit 2 - i think u already worked this out? 3 - use a stats program (not sure if godaddy comes with one?) there are free alternatives such as http://www.statcounter.com/ 4 - http://push.cx/sociable 5 - i would add all your posts for the day then ping/submit to ping-o-matic etc at the end of each day. 6 - read this forum, there are some interesting post about blogs/blogging.