Here’s her email:

Hi

Thanks for all the helpful info for bloggers!

I just began a free wordpress site and am finding out I can’t do a lot of customizing.  Can I stay with wordpress and do the following? Google adsense, custom buttons, link within?  Do I need to upgrade somehow?  I am finding conflicting info out there.

I made a button in Publisher web page design that has my photo some wording and then buttons to facebook, twitter, email etc.  How do I get that on my wordpress site?  Can I upload it as a whole image to my media?  Then how do I make the buttons active?? Or do I do something else?

I really appreciate any help.  Thanks

S

Ps

It appears these other mom sites are making money with advertising . . . $35 per mo for button, how do I do this?  I have a lot of content and activity from link parties but no ads or way to create $ yet, how do I begin?

You can see my blog here

www.fivelittleladies.wordpress.com

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you

Let’s start at the top.

1. Congrats on starting your new blog! With regards to wordpress.com… this is just my personal opinion (but that’s what you asked for lol), of all the free options available for bloggers wordpress.com is my least favorite. If you’re looking to make money from your site I think they are the least “commercial” friendly blogging site available.

If you must go with free I would suggest going with blogger.com instead. They are on board with Google so they’ve created ways to make setting up adsense, and affiliate accounts with Amazon very easy. They are not apposed to making money from your blog.

Now, you mentioned having to “upgrade” I think what you’re hearing about is in reference to hosting your own blog. This means you purchase a hosting account. Which can now be as low as 3.95 a month with Hostgator. Once you have your hosting account you buy a domain name. When you’ve got your domain name you install wordpress software ~ which you find at wordpress.org. It’s the same software wordpress.com uses (so it will look the same) but you own it, your content, the site, the whole shebang.

The difference is kind of like this:

wordpress.com or blogger for that matter is kind of like living in an apartment. You sign a lease. You agree to follow the rules. They provide you with building maintenance.

Downside is if it is perceived you broke some rules the landlord can kick you out. Same with free blog platforms.

On the other hand. Hosting your own blog is like owning a house. The only way you’re getting kicked out of your house is if you don’t pay the mortgage (hosting bill). You can do whatever you want (as long as it’s legal) at your house. You can decorate it, design it, run a business out of it… and as long as you pay your bills on time you get to keep the house.

Is it worth owning the house. Yes. Absolutely. Especially if you’re considering making this a long time business endeavor. Plenty of people do great on blogger… I know that. AND I’m a control freak, and I don’t like the delete button to be in the hands of anyone else.

1 1/2. Check the TOS about adding adsense to wp.com. The buttons will be explained in #2, and linking within… you just have to highlight the words you want to use in the link and then click the “chain” icon in your text editor. It will allow you to enter a url. When you hit save it will create a link.

Unless you’re talking about having “related posts” at the bottom of your pages. I’m not sure if you can do that with wordpress.com or not. That is a plugin (one of the many awesome things about hosting your own) that works with the hosted version of wordpress.

2. Adding your buttons. You should be able to upload them through your media section. Once you’ve done that you should be able to follow the Adding Social Networking buttons tutorial to finish it up.

3. Monetizing your site. When it comes to selling advertising you have to have enough traffic to make it worth an advertiser’s money. I’d suggest at this point you find some products/services that are related to your niche and use them as your “ads” in the sidebar. To do this all you have to do is join the affiliate program for the product and they will provide you with the banners and a url that is specific to you. That way when anyone clicks through and buys through your link you will get a commission.

This is a great way to get started in the beginning. If you set it up to hold 4 125X125 buttons (like on this site) you could leave one blank and let it say “your ad here”. Then create a page that gives out the details of how much your charge, and how people can sign up to advertise on your site. With that little message there people will know you are open to the possibility of advertising, but you will still have the ability to make some money while you’re waiting on your first ad sale.

Also, another great way to start monetizing is to sign up to be an Amazon affiliate. When you’re writing posts, if you’re talking about something specific  ~ you recently did a post about sewing… you could mention the type of sewing machine you use, and then link to that machine for sale on Amazon. (while it  isn’t an amazon product,  you’ll see I did this exact thing above in this post. I talked about using hostgator ~ then I provided a link to get there. I, of course, used my affiliate link, so if anyone goes and gets hosting with Hostgator after clicking the link I will get a small commission. That’s exactly how it works ~ you just work in links to relevant products in your posts)

As your audience grows you’ll get more clicks ~ and the bonus, with Amazon, is it doesn’t matter if someone buys the sewing machine or not. If they buy something after clicking your link (within 24 hours) you get paid for it!

(last month someone purchased an entire exhaust system for their car after clicking my link. I know I’m not promoting car parts ~ but it was a nice commission. )

So that’s the easiest way to get started monetizing your site.

I hope that answers your questions… if you (or anyone else) have any more, please feel free to ask in the comment section. I’ll do my best to answer.

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Commentluv and Keywordluv are both wordpress plugins. They are plugins that create links to your site when you comment on someone’s blog who has them installed. Keywordluv creates a link to your site that uses your anchor text in the name field of the comment. This way you can use your name (so you’re not a spammy goofball) and get a link with your anchor text as well.

Here’s how keywordluv works.

You find a blog that is using keywordluv. (This blog is one of them) You will probably see a note in the comment area that lets you know they are using keywordluv… like this one:

When you see this note you know instead of trying to just stuff your keywords in the name field to get an anchor text link you can use your name and your keywords, and your keywords will be the only thing linked to your site.

Here’s how you do it.

In the name field of the comment area you put in your name @your keywords. It will look like this:

Jackie @Internet Marketing Simplified

Then in the url field you put your site url. I’d put http://internetmarketingformommies.com

(and enter your email address in the email field)

Make a meaningful and helpful comment and then hit the publish button.

When you publish your comment you’ll find that only your keywords (Internet marketing simplified in this example) will be linked to your site. This provides you a great anchor text link back to your site.

Why would a site owner want to do this?

A couple reasons. As bloggers we like to help other bloggers out. The best way to help people out is to give them a link to their site… and keyword anchor text link is even better.

It also encourages people to leave comments on your site ~ which is great for you. It builds community, and provides new content for the spiders to come check out  ~ which brings them to your site regularly and often.

When you’re leaving a comment, remember to read the notes in the comment section… they’ll let you know what you can do on each site. Keywordluv does give you the option to not leave a note at the bottom, so if you don’t see one, go through the other comments, hover over the links connected to the name ~ see if they are all just connected to the name, or if they have a name and keywords with just keywords linked up ~ if they do, they’re using keywordluv, and you can use the name @ keyword in the name field of your comment.

Here’s how Commentluv works:

Commentluv is a little bit different. It’s automatic, and you don’t really need to do anything more than put the url of your site in the url field of the comment. Commentluv does the rest. Once you’ve added the url and start typing your comment you’ll see commentluv will pull up the last blog post you’ve published. It will use the title of that blog post as the anchor text, and create a link in your comment back to that post.

If a site is using commentluv they will probably have a little icon at the bottom of the comments area. You can see it in the image above. There may be a place where you can check the box if you don’t want a link from your last post to show up.

If you don’t see the icon at the bottom, look through the comments on the page ~ the blog owner may have just decided not to add the icon at the bottom. If you see something like “so and so’s last blog post… in the comments above you that means the blog is using comentluv.

Now, not all blogs use commentluv, in fact, probably, most blogs DON’T use commentluv. If you are using blog commenting as a linking strategy it’s a good idea to try to find some that are. If you want to look for blogs in your niche that are using commentluv you can go to Google and search for them. Simply put in the search box:

your keyword commentluv enabled

(of course substitute your keyword with your actual keyword lol). This will bring you up a list of sites that are related to your niche that are using commentluv. Go in, take a look at the site, the posts, get a feel for them and if you like the site, go ahead and leave a comment. If you really like the site, go ahead and add it to your RSS reader (or Igoogle) so you can go back when they post again. This is how you not only get links, but also become part of a community.

Should you use commentluv and keywordluv on YOUR site?

It’s up to you. There are advantages and disadvantages to using these plugins.

1. If you’re doing a niche site they can be nice because people will google their niche (as I suggested above) and come to your site and leave comments because they’ll be getting a link from a related site… on the flip side, they may leave sucky spammy comments and you’ll spend time deleting them.

2. If you’re building an authority site, where you want to build community I think it’s a good idea to add them. That way you give people a reason to leave a comment, and you make it easy for people in your community to get to know one another. (It’s easy to have something catch your eye in a commentluv link and go check it out).

You’ll have to decide whether using these plugins is right for you or not. Remember, you don’t have to use both of them. You can install only one. If you’re thinking about starting with commentluv and keywordluv I’d start with commentluv. I have found you get less spam comments with commentluv. Once I added keywordluv to my sites I started getting a lot more spam… everyone and their brother is looking for a keyword anchor text link.

I hope that helps you better understand the commentluv and keywordluv plugins. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comment section.

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Q Re Squidoo: is there a way to get a new module, not at the end of your lens, but between certain lenses. I think some of my lenses would look better if I had certain modules between the text lenses, but I cannot find out if this is even possible.

A Yes! It is absolutely possible. All you have to do is go to the sidebar of your lens where all the modules are listed. You can then click on the one you want to move around. Hold it down when you click and then move it into the order where you want it. When it’s where you want it just unclick. This is called “dragging and dropping”. So you just drag and drop it where you want it. Make sure to click “apply” so it will stay where you put it.

QMy footer code doesn’t say “body” anywhere for me to insert what I need to. And I can’t figure out how to make a text widget go to the location in the sidebar where I want it to go.

ATo add a widget you go to your dashboard and click appearance. You’ll see the widget option. Click that. When you get to your widgets you’ll see a bunch of different widgets to choose from. Choose the “text” widget. You’ll drag and drop it (as discussed above) to the sidebar you wish to put it in. Then open it up and paste your statcounter code there. Then save. There has been a weird glitch with WP lately where if you go view the blog and then click the back button to get back to the dashboard it deletes what you just did. So open another window to check any changes you’ve made. Just remember you won’t see anything on your blog that confirms you’ve installed the statcounter code ~ you’ll just have to wait until someone clicks to see the number move. You can also go to the Fanpage and ask someone to go to your site so you can see if your counter is working.

QClickthrough rates. Can you tell me, or suggest where I’d find the information, on what is considered a decent clickthrough rate from articles to one’s site? I’ve tried, but I cannot find this information. Please understand, I do not mean conversion rates (sales, I assume), I mean how to find out what an acceptable or even good clickthrough rate from articles would be.

AI did some asking around since I didn’t really know the answer to this and here’s what some of my twitter friends had to say: (read the bottom one first

QOn my blog the newest posts come on top of the older posts. Can I make it so just one shows up on the homepage?

AThat is the nature of the blog. It gives the newest information at the top of the page. You can change how your homepage looks in a few ways. You can make it 1 new article ~ the whole article by going into your settings area and clicking the “reading” settings. You can change how many posts show up on the front page. If you want the posts to show up in the sidebar you can add the “recent posts” widget to the sidebar where you want them to show up.

You can also make it so only a portion or excerpt of your posts show up on your homepage. There’s a plugin called “homepage excerpts” that will allow you to do that. I use it on this blog. You’ll see I’ve chosen to show one whole post and then excerpts for the rest of the page. There’s plenty of flexibility with that plugin so play around with it until you get it the way you like it.

If you have more questions feel free to ask. I will answer them either in a post, on the facebook page or maybe in another Q and A post such as this one. Just keep in mind that all the tweaking in the world will not bring you traffic! It’s content and promotion that does that.

Keep taking action! There’s not much that can’t be changed as you go.

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