Blog Appearance – Bob Caine's Blog

Phase 2 – Figure Out a Product

Phase 1, My Blog, is finished. I thought creating the blog was very straight forward and easy. This is probably because I had done most of tasks before. I am currently reading Bloggers Roadmap looking for ways to improve my blog. I have already found a couple of things one of which I have implemented. I created a footer menu and moved all the mundane pages like the legal pages to that menu from the blog menu. I like those pages on the footer much better. The second thing I learned is where all the code is for the various parts of the blog in case I have to modify it. I am going to do my best to avoid changing code.

Enough about Phase 1, I am on Phase 2 now. I freely admit I am not looking forward to this Phase. I have absolutely no idea what product I want to create. Let alone a product I am capable of creating. What the heck do I know enough about to create a product. Plus I need at least one up sell and a down sell products.

At the moment, I am leaning toward an ebook for a product because I don’t have the necessary skills to program anything. But, an ebook about what? I am an expert at not succeeding on the internet. Doesn’t sound very marketable to me. Hopefully, Partnership to Success has some great methods to teach me how to solve this problem. I really need to keep a positive attitude.

Week 7 – Essential Techniques

Week 7 is about getting my blog ready for the world. The first part of this is to add “legal stuff” to the blog. Guess what? There is a plugin for the legal pages. The plugin is WP InstaLegalPages. It contains the following nine legal pages.

Affiliate Disclosure
Amazon Affiliate Disclaimer (multiple countries available)
Anti-Spam Policy
Contact Us
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice
Earnings Disclaimer
Medical Disclaimer
Privacy Policy
Terms of Use

When activating the plugin, creates all nine pages as drafts. The pages are fully editable as needed and published when ready. I used all the pages except the Amazon Affiliate Disclaimer and the Medical Disclaimer. Once published, seven new, boring pages appear on my menu. Not the best result for a good-looking blog. The solution is to create and publish a page called “Legal Stuff” or whatever you prefer. The “Legal Stuff” page is the main page for all the legal pages. Making the legal pages sub-pages to “Legal Stuff” is done through Appearance, Menu. The Menu page allows you to drag and drop, up and down, your pages to create the sequence you want. To make the legal pages sub-items to “Legal Stuff”, you drag them to the right. Click save, view the blog. Now, you see “Legal Stuff” with a down arrow on the main menu. When the cursor is on “Legal Stuff”, the list of the legal pages displays. Clicking on one of the legal pages displays that page.

Week 7 also taught how to add images and videos to a post. I have added images to several posts but still have several that need images. I am hoping to find a site to get decent free images. No luck so far. I haven’t added a video yet but I will just for the experience. I may even get adventuresome and create a video.

How to schedule publishing a post and emailing broadcasts to your lists at a future date and time is the last topic of the week. This functionality is useful if you are unavailable when you want the post published or the broadcast sent. This is definitely a handy feature for both WordPress and Aweber. I am starting to see why Aweber costs a little more than other autoresponders. It has more functionality.

Please leave comments to help me improve and return soon.

Week 6 – Monetizing the Blog

I just finished week 6 about monetizing the blog. Monetizing my blog certainly sounded exciting but this week was very dull. You might remember that last week I registered, updated in my case, at Google Adsense. You have to wait for Google to accept your application. I did get an acceptance after several days. First, you receive provisional acceptance and told to put some Google ads on the site to receive full acceptance.

DON’T CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADSENSE ADS

There is a plugin to facilitate using Adsense. The plugin is GARD. GARD is an acronym for Google Adsense for Responsive Design. I installed and activated GARD. Once activated, GARD connects to Adsense using my account ID. Adsense and GARD have two modes – basic and advanced. Basic mode displays small ads with minimal text. Advanced mode lets you choose from a variety of ad shapes and sizes. The two modes are mutually exclusive. You can use basic or advanced but not both.

DON’T CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADSENSE ADS

John emphasized over and over to not click on your own Adsense ads. Google will know and delete your account. I am not sure using blog space for Adsense ads is really worth it. You get paid each time someone clicks on one of the ads. That is a good thing. But you don’t actually get paid until you reach $100. If you don’t have a high traffic blog, reaching the $100 minimum could take a very long time. I can always remove the ads.

DON’T CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADSENSE ADS

The second method for monetizing the blog is to include ads for products that pay commissions. The training video demonstrates this method using a ClickBank product called Simple Traffic Solutions. This is a product developed by John. There is no requirement to advertise this product. It is just the product used in the video training. I used STS for now but I will search for a different product soon.

There are several websites that have commission based products. To sell the products, you have to join, find a product you would like to sell, and promote it. Some products require that your approval by the developer. Commission percentage varies with each product but is usually at least 50%. Here are a few affiliate networks and marketplaces you can check out.

Commission Junction
ClickBank
JV Zoo
Deal Guardian

Week 6 concludes with instruction on how to ad advertising banners to the blog two ways. First method is adding banners in code view. This method requires retrieving the HTML code containing the graphic image link and your affiliate link. Copy the code and place it in a text widget. That’s it. Drag the widget where you want the ad and you are done. You may have to tweak the HTML code if it doesn’t behave the way you want; e.g., center it or open in a new window. This method works great for blog locations where widgets are allowed. Other locations require the second method. The second method is using media functionality. This method requires you to find the graphic you want. use “save as” to save the graphic on your computer, upload it to the media library. Once there the graphic is available for use with the OptimizePress, modules, advertising functionality. This method provides many more locations for the ads. I think this topic needs a separate post in the future.

Remember

DON’T CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADSENSE ADS

Week 2 – Blog Appearance

This week is about improving the appearance of the blog. Boy does it need it. The first thing needed was a product called OptimizePress. This is like a super theme or widget, it can be either. I guess you use it as a widget if you already have a theme you like. I purchased the Core Package for now which allows use on 3 sites. Downloaded the theme version, installed it, activated it and set it up. Since I installed OptimizePress and set it up, I have watched a couple of training videos. Just seeing a few of the capabilities is overwhelming. Knowing how to use the full potential of OptimizePress easily could be a career. Unbelievable capabilities!!! Can’t wait to use more of the capabilities.

Now a blog header is needed. This will really start jazzing up my blog. The problem is I have no idea what I want for a header. I went to the P2S forum and looked at many blogs for ideas. No real help. I have thought and thought about a header to no avail. Finally, I was to the point I had to do something. I finally settled on a roadmap concept. I realize it is not very original but I needed something. John suggested using his graphic’s guy or checking out fiverr.com. I checked out fiverr but everyone was more expensive than John’s guy, Steve.

While I was trying to figure out a header, I came across a picture from our trip to Yellowstone. We were all around a sign for Old Faithful. I ask Steve to use the picture in the header with the other family members removed. The result is the right side of the header. Let me know what you think of the header.

Since it took me several days to figure out the header, I completed the reset of the checklist first. I installed the ShareBar, All in One SEO and Link Manager plugins. I wrote an “About Bob Caine” page. I am not good at talking about myself so this still needs work,

I wanted a separate page for reviews and tips. I needed this page to be a blog like the home page. A plugin, WP Exclude From Home Page, which allows the exclusion of specified topics from the home page. Then I created a page which includes only those topics. Finally I added the all pages to a menu.

So concludes week 2.