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I did a post a little while ago about Changing The Header On Your WordPress Blog and I mentioned several reasons why we would like to do that including individuality. By that I mean we want our blogs to stand out from the rest and the only way to really do that is by using an individual header rather than the ones that come with our current theme. I then wrote a post telling my readers how to design their own header.
The problem with headers is that your visitors see the same image no matter what page they are on. I’ve often wondered if there was a way to display different headers depending on what page a person was currently viewing?
Individual Page Headers Are Great
So, what’s so great about having individual page headers? Well, for one thing it makes the page stand out from the rest of the blog and that can be really important, especially if that page is trying to get their attention. Like my Advertise Page for example. I’ve also changed the header on my Contact page. So, apart from individualise your blog it also accentuates whatever your page is trying to sell your reader, from a product to mere content. We all know how an image captures a persons attention so why not use that knowledge to your advantage.
Luckily for me FlexSqueeze not only makes this possible it’s also very easy to do and as is my want lately I’ve put a video together for you to show you just how easy it is to change the header on individual pages.
In case you’re wondering, yes I did design both those headers and yes, I used the method outlined in the post about designing headers. You see, I actually do use the methods outlined in my posts
Four years ago I wrote a post on one of my other blogs called No More Ho Ho Ho For Santa This Christmas which was all about some recruitment firm who were training their Father Christmas guys to say Ha Ha Ha instead of Ho Ho Ho. Naturally they were created with ridicule by the majority as they should be.
Today I woke up to news that a Sydney Montessori school had replaced Merry Christmas with Happy Holidays! Talk about political correctness gone wrong, especially when it involves kids. I’m amazed that they can’t see they just don’t have the right to ruin Christmas for these kids. It’s almost like your friend telling blurting out to your little ones that Santa doesn’t exist.
Leave Christmas Alone
The excuse used by the headmaster of the school for removing Christmas referencesfrom the end-of-year songs may have been an “attempt by one teacher to address the fact that she had Hindus and Jewish children in the classroom”. What a lot of crap! Those kids wouldn’t have minded a bit and neither would have their parents. They knew what sort of country they came to when they migrated here and I’m sure they respect our right to our culture just as much as we respect theirs.
The problem all lies with the PC police, The Political Correct morons who make rules up because they’re worried about upsetting those that we have welcomed into our multicultural society. What they fail to see is that by doing that they are upsetting the majority of the population. They have no qualms at all about removing Christ from the equation but I’m sure they would never, ever attempt removing Allah from it because that would upset all the Muslims. But it’s OK to upset the Christians because we are more likely to roll over and accept it?
For the life of me I don’t understand why people have to change things, like using Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. It’s been Merry Christmas for so long and all of a sudden it’s not good enough. If you really want to say Happy Holidays that is fine but everyone knows that it’s the Christmas Holidays we’re talking about so why not just say Merry Christmas and be done with it.
I truly believe that if it wasn’t for those PCM’s (Politically Correct Morons) people would not be trying to replace Merry Christmas with Happy Holidays not to mention all the other PC nonsense that exists.
Happy Holiday Or Merry Christmas
I’m not about to tell anyone which one they should use as I believe its really a matter of personal choice. As far as I’m concerned I’m going to continue to use Merry Christmas and these are the reasons why.
Happy Holidays is so generic and as far as I’m concerned it sounds like a half hearted attempt at wishing someone all the best for Christmas, almost like you don’t really mean it.
Not everyone has the luxury of having a break over Christmas. I know that for 25 years I was never able to take a break over Christmas so having someone say Happy Holidays to me would have pissed me off no end whereas Merry Christmas would have made much more sense.
I know the Yanks make a big deal over saying Happy Holidays and I for one hope it never comes here. It would pain me no end if our department stores directed employees to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. I understand in the States they celebrate a lot of holidays in November and December and they’re trying to convince people that Happy Holidays incorporate all the holidays including Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah. What a lot of BS, I’m sure that most people say Happy Thanksgiving during that time of year and not Happy Holiday.
Anyway, like I said it should be up to the individual to say whatever they want and that’s the way it should be. As for me, I wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year.
Do you guys remember my first ever post on Zaparena called Put Money In Your Pocket And Generate Traffic To Your Blog!? Well, that was the first of many posts promoting a site that I believed actually worked, one that not only generated traffic to your blog but also put a bit of money in your pocket. There were those who said Google would penalise sites who used it and I proved them wrong. There were those who didn’t like the scantily clad women portrayed in their ads and I explained to them that you didn’t have to have those ads if you didn’t want them and I chose to have them because I happen to like scantily clad women?
Can You Make Money With Zapunited?
Well, as you can probably tell those ads no longer reside on this blog and let me tell you that is not by choice. What used to be Zaparena is now Zapunited and anyone still displaying Zaparena ads they now link to the zapunited site. Note to self, remove all Zaparena ads from my blogs. I displayed the Zapunited ads in place of the Zaparena ones to see how well they perform. When I noticed they were only generating a minimal amount per click I emailed them.
I explained how I have advertisers who pay me $30 a month to display a banner on this blog and asked what I could expect from their advertisers. I received an answer saying that I would earn more if I displayed the ads under a post. Somehow I think they missed my point because I wasn’t enquiring on how much they would generate per click I wanted to know what it was worth for them to display their ads on this blog. As you can see from this image there is one ad spot available
On this blog when there is an empty spot like that someone would fill it by paying me thirty bucks a month. I assume that someone will be getting some cash when that spot is filled but it’s not me unless someone clicks on that ad. I’m not sure I’m happy with that unless it generates well over a dollar a click and I get over a hundred clicks, combined, a month. Anything less and that and as far as I’m concerned it’s simply not viable to display their ads.
I know some of you out there are saying that Zaparena didn’t pay that much for their ads but then you’re forgetting the main reason I displayed their ads is because they generated targeted traffic to my blogs. There is no such advantage having zapunited ads and so they have to pay their way.
I reckon I will give them a months trial to see how they work out. Once the month is up you can expect another post updating you on the results and on my decisions as to whether or not they will have a place on this blog.
As a regular reader I just have to know, do you miss seeing all those near naked women. As to whether or not you can make money with zapunited, only time will tell.
I’ve noticed over the last few days that no matter what site I was visiting there was always something missing, the site’s Page Rank! The first time I noticed it I thought that perhaps the PR checker I was using had developed a fault. I downloaded another one and that wasn’t any better and so I thought that perhaps my MacBook Air, heaven forbid, was the culprit so I rushed over to my PC and checked it using the FireFox plugin and was relieved to see that wasn’t working. At least it wasn’t my MacBook Air’s fault
So the next thing to do was to use one of the online sites to see if they are still showing the PR of sites and to my surprise they were. This would suggest that perhaps Google had changed the api used on different plugins rendering them useless and one just has to wonder why they would do that. Could it possibly be that they’re deciding to do another PR update soon? That may well be the case as they did one roughly this time last year which I wrote about in my post Googles Latest PR Update In Time For Halloween!
Speaking of Halloween, what a perfect time for Google to come up with something scary for their next update. The only other perfect time would be April Fools Day. I wonder what devilish plan could they have up their sleeve? Perhaps they plan to do away with PR altogether, rendering plugins useless first and then doing away with it completely. Why do you ask? Who knows, perhaps that was the reason why they introduced the Google +1 button in the first place. They know that way too many people game their attempts to come up with an accurate and trustworthy way of ranking websites. So why not do away with it altogether?
Still, no-one really knows why Google does what it does, which is probably why there are so many books around about Google.
Most people who become bloggers do so with high expectations of striking it rich. You can’t even blame them because the net is full of people promising they can show them how to make a whole lot of money online, saying that all they need is a blog or a set of websites. A few have actually done it and they get a whole lot of traffic because people think if they stick around long enough some of that fortune will rub off on them. Others haven’t come anywhere near making a decent online income but they write as if they hold the key to financial freedom. Unfortunately they manage to fool a lot of people, all those newcomers who come online to hopefully improve their financial status.
Many who fail to reach their dream of financial freedom continue the online life because they’ve come to love blogging. After all it has so much to offer, you get to express yourself, to share your knowledge with others and the interaction with your commentators is truly sublime. Unfortunately the rest will give up in disgust once they’ve come to realise it wasn’t as easy as they were made to believe.
Now, I’m not here to tell you that I have the secret because I haven’t and saying any different would make me as dishonest as all the rest. However, over the years I have discovered certain things that every blogger needs to know if they want to make their blog a success.
Traffic
This is the most important part of making money online and yet most of those people selling their ‘secret to success’ fail to mention it. All they tell you is get your niche online and the money will start to flow in. Start up another ten and you will increase your income tenfold. Unfortunately no traffic means no customers which means no money and ten times nothing is still nothing.
Getting traffic is possible though but it takes a lot of work and a fair bit of time to drive traffic to your site. What makes things worse is you don’t want just any traffic, you want targeted traffic. This means if you have a blog that is selling computers you don’t want people coming over who are looking to buy dog collars.
The way to get targeted traffic is all tied into the keywords you use in your domain name, your headings, blog titles and posts. Even that is not going to work unless the search engines think you have something of value, and the way to do that is by getting backlinks via blog commenting, forums, writing articles but most importantly by writing brilliant content so other will link to it. My post How I Am Marketing My Online Lottery Niche highlights some of the strategy I’m using to market my latest blog.
A Product To Sell
Most everyone will tell you to make money online you need something that you can sell, preferably your own. Unfortunately most of us don’t have that and so we do the best we can by placing Adsense ads on our sites or by promoting other peoples products as an affiliate. I’ve had a bit of success selling products like FlexSqueeze (a brilliant blog theme), Market Samurai, web hosts and a few others. The problem with those products is once you sell someone a product they’re no longer a potential customer, at least not for that product, which means you’re forever looking for new customers.
In my post The Secret To Online Success Is Passive Income I outlined a few methods I used that were making me money on a regular basis. I also spoke about my latest venture, one that I am confident will be my biggest earner because I am now selling a product that people buy on a regular basis, lottery tickets. I am now in the process of driving traffic to Buy Online Lottery Tickets with the knowledge that every time I gain a customer I will make money whenever they purchase a lottery ticket online. I’m also offering others the opportunity to become a MyLotto affiliate giving them the same opportunity to make money online, knowing that I also make a percentage of their sales.
Building Your Brand
At the beginning of the post I said the most important facet of making money online was driving targeted traffic to your blog, well that’s not quite true, there is something way more important. The most important part of your online businesses is YOU! You are the face of your business as everything you do online affects the way others perceive you. That being the case it doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to your blog because if your online profile is suspect you’re screwed.
By everything I’m including blog commenting as this is by far the most popular method used by bloggers to market their blog. I’ve known this from the beginning and I am constantly surprised by the amount of people who fail to use commenting to their advantage. This is probably because done properly it takes time and many prefer quantity over quality failing to see that a lot of poor comments only serves to hurt their brant. If you’re not sure what constitutes a good comment I suggest you read Teaching People The Proper Way To Comment as I used this post to grade people on the quality of their comment.
One thing to remember while online is that unlike the offline world you have time to think before responding to any negative comment, or feedback on one of your products, that you may receive. Never, ever, let anger cloud your replies because once you blow up online you reveal to everyone your loss of control and lack of professionalism. Two posts taking about this subject that you may find interesting ate Kristi’s 3 Questions To Ask About Offensive Content On Your Blog, although you can apply this to a lot more than just blogging.
Social Media
Social media is an important facet of your online business and one that I still have a long way to go as far as online promotions go. It’s also very important as far as branding goes and so you have to be very careful how you conduct yourself when using them. Something that many people fail to realise is that almost everything you do online is open to public scrutiny and that being the case acting in a manner that can be seen as untoward by others can cost you business. So be very careful what you say online or even what you link to. You may think that something you saw online was extremely funny and so you tweet the link to all your followers not thinking that many of them may find it very offensive.
When it comes to social media it’s my opinion that ChingYa would have to be the online social media guru, blog posts like her 7+ Major Tips In Enhancing Your Upgraded FaceBook Page just goes to show the wealth of her knowledge. You could do a lot worse than going over there and learning from what ChingYa has to say.
Phew, I don’t normally rave on like this but I reckon I just had a lot to say, and even so there is probably so much that I left out. This is where you guys come in by using the comment section. What are you doing to make your blog a success? What have I missed out and how can we help each other to attain our goals.
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