Top 10 Tips To Increase Your Blogging Productivity

I have been working from home for just over three months now, in the beginning I found it hard to focus and my productivity dropped, especially in the summer months when the sun was shining and beckoning me to go out. Today I’m going to share a few tips that I have put in to practise…

1. Write down special goals – If you work from home, you have to do this – There are just too many distractions and no boss watching over your back every minute of the day. On my table I have a small card that I write down 2 mission critical tasks for the day. That way I focus on the most important tasks and outsource the rest.
2. Wake up at the same time everyday – Set a time to get up each day and stick to it. I get up at 7.30am to exercise, then have my breakfast and start work around 10am. I stick to 4 hours of work a day.
3. Turn off phone and instant email notifications – Having constant interrupts makes it harder to stay focus. I make sure there are no interruptions when I am writing a blog post because my readers want the best from me. Don’t you?
4. Exercise – I find doing exercise in the morning gives me so much more energy and motivation for the day, if you don’t regularly do exercise, try it for one week and see how you feel. Your mind will be clearer for the day and you might shed a few kilos along the way!
5. Tidy office – Keep your office clean by filing away piles of paper. If you have notes written down, transfer them to your computer and put a reminder to complete them. That way you will have less clutter and paper lying around.
6. Music – Not for everyone but I find music really helps me work during the day. Put something light and soothing on in the background.
7. Daily schedule – Even though you are working from home and don’t have to follow the usual office rules, try and set out a daily plan for yourself – start at the same time, have lunch at a set time etc – I find it helps to have a daily routine.
8. Just do it – If you are like me you have certain jobs that you try and put off because they’re dull or take ages, make sure it gets done first thing in the morning when you are fresh and motivated.
9. Outsource – Even though you can do a job doesn’t always mean you should do it – why not outsource that boring coding job which will leave you free to concentrate on more important jobs or jobs that you enjoy doing more.
10. Close your door – If there are distractions at home, like people calling round or noisy kids, make it a rule to not be disturbed when your door is shut.

All of these are pretty obvious things to do but if you don’t do any of them, give it a go and see if your productivity improves.

Tyrone Shum
Increasing Blogging Productivity

My Top 10 Profitable Wordpress Plugins

I’ve noticed a lot of people are interested to install lots of plugins but really don’t make it profitable on their blog. You can have over 50 plugins that all work and make noise, but none of them are any good to make your blog stand out. (Additionally, my term of profitable also refers to helping you market your blog and also creating a brand). Since most plugins are free, it’s very easy to find them on the Internet and install them with Wordpress 2.71. Furthermore I’ve provided a link to the download page for each plugin. Hope this list will help others and it’s in alphabetical order, enjoy!

Add Post Footer
The Add Post Footer is very useful in helping you cross sell products, a free eBook to encourage readers to subscribe or other top articles that are related to your post. It allows you to enter HTML code into the footer of every post you write and is very simple to use.

All in One SEO Pack
As you can see from the name of the plugin – it’s an all in one SEO pack that assists each post in your blog to be “search engine optimised”. You can either leave your header, meta tags and description of your post just the way they are when you publish, or you can fine tune them to be more specific to keywords you want to use for search engines. I’ve found at times I wanted to add additional keywords and change the description of my post instead of having the default Wordpress summarised description. A must have plug-in for serious Internet marketers!

Bird Feeder
If you’re on Twitter and want to save time twitting – the Bird Feeder plugin will automatically feed your most recent posts in the format of: [your message] [post title] [short url] to Twitter. It’s great because you won’t have to double up by copying and pasting your posts back into Twitter or be on Twitter 24/7 (if you’re not already).

FeedBurner FeedSmith
This little gem, the FeedBurner FeedSmith takes your blog’s feed and redirects it to Feedburner. It’s better branding for your site and you won’t have FeedBurner’s domain name showing when a reader clicks on your RSS feed button, e.g. feeds2.feedburner.com/internetbusinesspath becomes internetbusinesspath.com/feed. For more detailed instructions.

Google XML Sitemaps
If you want to be found on Google, then Google XML Sitemaps plugin is a requirement for your blog. This plugin creates a compliant XML sitemap for the Google bots to crawl your site and it will help your blog achieve higher rankings if you want to be found on their search engine. Once you’ve install this plugin don’t forget to hop onto Google Webmaster Tools to let them know you’ve got a sitemap for them to crawl, otherwise Google won’t know.

Max Banner Ads
Monetising and profiting from your blog couldn’t be any easier. If you have advertisers and want a very streamline and easy way to insert their ads onto your blog, then Max Banner Ads is the plugin for you. I use this on my blog and it’s saved me a lot of time. It’s easy to use and can be very profitable for your blog.

RSS Feed Signature
The RSS Feed Signature is another great plugin to use within your RSS Feeds. It simply adds a customised signature to any RSS Feed that goes out to your subscribers. If you are keen on increasing your subscribers, I would suggest installing this plugin and add a “free eBook offer” to your RSS signature. If you subscribe to my RSS Feed you’ll see the link at the bottom of each feed to take you to the free eBook offer. You can read more about how to download your free eBook from the RSS feed.

Top Commentators Widget
This plugin allows your blog to display a user who has posted the most comments. The Top Commentators Widget shows other readers your highest commentator and will encourage people to find out who they are by clicking on their name. Also the highest commentators websites will be linked automatically onto your blog and can increase your search engine rankings as well. Therefore getting you more traffic and more comments all at the same time.

What Would Seth Godin Do
Most people would know Seth Godin as his name is associated with Internet Marketing Guru. The What Would Seth Godin Do plugin simply displays a welcome message on your blog for first time and returning users. It may ask them to subscribe if they’re a first time user or thank them for coming. It’s a great tool to have to create the “experience” for a user coming to your blog.

Wordpress Simple Paypal Shopping cart
If you’re like me who offers advertising on my blog and needs a simple way for advertisers to pay you, then the Wordpress Simple Paypal Shopping cart is an easy plugin to install and use. It allows anyone to pay you using Paypal which is used by millions of people worldwide and can save you time having to respond to advertiser’s email with your bank account details and so forth. The plugin has functions to let you add a “Add to cart” button and creates a shopping cart module when the advertiser or user decides to pay you. It will then redirect them to the Paypal website to pay. Very simple to use!

If you haven’t tried any of the plugins above I would highly recommend adding them to your blog. So give it a go!

Tyrone Shum
The Plugins Guy

What is RSS and How Do I Use It?

I’m asked regularly what RSS means and I thought it’s important to explain what it means and how it works.

What Is RSS?
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. This may not mean much to you but it is the technology that millions of people on the Internet use today to keep track of their favourite websites. In a nutshell, RSS is a way for users to subscribe to their favourite website and download their content automatically, such as articles, music, podcasts, video and almost any other digital media available. That way you don’t have to visit their website again to get the latest update.

The idea behind this concept is that if you have a RSS reader (which you can download) you will be able receive all this content in one location and it is more efficient rather than individually going to your favourite sites.

How To Use RSS?
Firstly as mentioned above you need to have a RSS reader to subscribe to the content. There are numerous RSS readers on the Internet today and many of them are easy to use. Simply Google the word “RSS reader” and you’ll find a whole list of ones to choose from. A couple of free and easy to use web based readers I recommend are Google Reader and Bloglines. I use Google Reader and it’s very simple to use and does the job for receiving RSS.

Both of these RSS readers work a little like email. When you’ve subscribed to a few website feeds, you’ll see unread entries from them and they will be marked as bold. As you click on them you’ll be able see the latest update and read it right away. Once you’ve read the item it will be marked as ‘read’.

The best way to learn how to use a RSS reader is to simply subscribe to some feeds and try it. Both have a help section to teach you how to use them if you get stuck.

Why Are There So Many Different Buttons Just To Subscribe To RSS?
As more and more users are using RSS, more companies are releasing new software to offer more services and functionality. You’ll notice on websites the icons coming in all shapes and sizes.

Any time you see any of these icons, it means that site offers a feed you can subscribe to. Simply click on the icon and you’ll be on your way to subscribing to their feed.

What Next?
Hopefully after you’ve read this article, you’ll realise how powerful RSS is for you and business. RSS is designed to make your life easier and save you time. So don’t forget to subscribe to Internet Business Path below.

Tyrone Shum
RSS Marketer

7 Top Blog Design Tips

Most blog platforms come with some basic blog designs. They may call them templates or themes or something similar, and usually they are not bad although some customisation is pretty common. I often see some common mistakes, and hopefully you will be able to avoid them.

1. Include an about page
   Make it prominent and make it truly about you, not some resume-like page.If people find your blog and like what you have to say, they are going to want to know something about you.
2. Have contact information visible
   An email or maybe even a phone number should be included. Your email can be displayed as a graphic to prevent spammers from harvesting it easily. I would suggest using an address that has your domain at the end to be more professional. e.g tyrone @ internetbusinesspath.com, rather than tyrone @ gmail.com.

   Visible contact information will make you seem more real and although people may occasionally contact you, it will be far less often than you might think.

3. Include a picture of yourself
   Blogs are personal, even business blogs, and people who visit yours will want to know what you look like. It’s also easier to built trust if your picture is visible. Though, you don’t absolutely need a picture, but it’s strongly recommended. Sometimes people might think you are hiding something if you don’t have one.
4. Show a top posts or articles page
   Some of your blog posts are going to be much more popular than others (you may be surprised which ones they are). I call these your pillar articlesDon’t bury your pillar articles, your most popular blog posts. Highlight them somehow. You might for example have a top posts section in the titlebar or sidebar.

   I have a most top articles section and I list my most popular posts based on the ones that are read the most. Other people do it slightly differently. For example, Brian Clark at copyblogger.com has a “Popular Articles” in his sidebar and under that he lists his most popular blog posts. Yaro Starak, on his blog Entrepreneurs-Journey, calls his most popular blog posts “Popular Articles” and lists them at the very top.Somehow or another highlight them. You might do something as simple as create a category called “most popular” and include popular blog posts in that category.

5. Don’t have a blog banner that is too big!
   The banner is the top portion of your blog that goes across the top. It might have a picture of you there, the name of the blog, perhaps some graphic — they vary quite a bit.You don’t want your banner to be big. No one should need to scroll down to see your content. People decide really quickly when they first reach a Web Site, and that includes blogs, whether to read or to leave.
6. Create a visually appealing blog
   Avoid bright colors. Stick to reasonable fonts like Times New Roman and Arial. Have someone with a good eye look at your blog, preferably a graphic designer. Everytime I start a blog and I’ve started dozens for myself, for friends, and for clients, I always get a graphic designer to at least look at it after I am done.

   The problem is that it might look OK to you or me, probably neither having a particularly good eye nor appropriate training, but it still might look really ugly to others. Having a graphic designer take a quick look at it is good insurance.

7. Keep it simple silly!
   Some blogs are just so busy: they have one, two, sometimes three sidebars just crammed full of all kinds of stuff. With some of it you wonder why is it there. What purpose does this serve? Now in my opinion calendars are a prime offender. What good is a calendar there? Some people like them, but to me they serve no purpose.

   Empty space in a blog is not only allowable, but it’s a good thing. It helps focus eyes on what is important, which is your content and hopefully the few things you choose to put in your sidebar.

Most blogs start with a basic template which is then customised over time. These tips will hopefully help you that with customisation and help you avoid common mistakes with blog design.

Tyrone Shum
Blog Tipster

Blogging For A Full Time Income

Did you know that you can make a full time income by blogging? You are able to create an online income business that earns you 4 or 5 figures every month by just spending 1 or 2 hours a day? If you are looking to create this kind of side income, this is the right article for you.

You do not need to be an expert, you do not need to have a PhD in business and you do not need to have a degree in doing so. All you need is know how to blog. With a blog and a proven blogging system that I’m going to share with you, you will be able to create an online income business within 3 months.

How To Create Income From A Blog?

1. Choose a topic
   Before you create your blog, you must know which topic you are going into. The best is to choose a topic that you are passionate in. Choose a topic that you have intense passion. After that, try to narrow down your topic or find a niche within a market. For example, instead of blogging about fishing, blog about fly fishing.
2. Create a blog
   Next, create a blog. Creating a blog is very easy and there are numerous resources on the Internet to help you.  I would recommend setting a domain name and hosting your own blog and using WordPress. Read setting up a blog to get in depth instructions.
3. Create quality content
   You need to have quality content because it is what people in your market are looking for. Nobody is going to visit a blog that has no value to them. In internet marketing, content is king. Therefore, if you are going to create an online income business, you will need to provide value for your market, through quality content in your blog.
4. Market your blog
   Once you have content, you are ready to bring in visitors to your blog. This is about traffic generation, where most people fail and give up. Traffic generation is not as complicated as you think. As long as you are willing to take action, traffic will come. Create a daily, monthly and yearly traffic plan, and then stick to this plan and take the necessary action according to your plan.
5. Offer a product or service on your blog
   The last piece of puzzle you need is an offer. An offer is how you make money. Insert money makers or advertising into your blog such as Google Adsense or affiliate marketing. This is how you can make money from your blog. In fact, writing quality content and getting traffic is what takes time and requires work. This step is easier because once you have content and traffic, making sales for you will be a lot simple.

This is how you can create an online income business by using a blog. Remember, action produces results, if you are not taking any action, nothing is going to happen. So take the first step now and decide which market you are going into.

Tyrone Shum
Blogging Full-time