Setup an E-commerce Site Using WordPress E-Commerce Training

I don’t know about you but for a long time I believe WordPress was only a blogging platform that could be used for blog sites only. It was in my dark hours with Blogger but still there is no excuse for that attitude. WordPress is one of the best content management systems ever made. I don’t care what the folks at Interwoven or Joomla say, but a well-done WordPress site trumps those “wanna be” solutions any day.

Membership sites are now becoming very popular these days. You basically identify a popular niche. You create a super duper resource site for that niche, and then you offer a membership plan to help fund your future research. It’s being done by all the top gurus in the Internet Marketing industry. And most of them use amember solution. There is no question in my mind that amember is a great script, but it’s not free, and you have to pay $100+ per each license. Why pay that kind of money when you can have thousands of membership sites made for free!

WordPress Ecommerce training not only has everything you need to create a membership site, but it also comes with 109 themes that are suitable for such sites. Running an e-commerce website with WordPress is like a breeze really. You need to figure out what form of payment you accept, and integrate that with WordPress. In addition, you need to know what you will be selling. Finally, you need to find a way to manage your customers.

An E-commerce website is not for everyone, and you shouldn’t get on the bandwagon unless you have specific plans to go about making money, but if you have decided on running an e-commerce shop, you are better off putting your trust in WordPress. It has never disappointed me, and regardless of how good other scripts are out there, they are still not WordPress.

DIY Themes Thesis Theme Black Friday Promotion

Now, I personally think that Black Friday should be about gadgets only, but it’s fun to see WordPress guys jumping on the occassion and offering deals for this cool Friday. The good folks at DIYThemes are now offering a one day deal on their flagship theme “Thesis.’ Here is the deal:

The first 150 people who buy this theme today get 20% discount. Your totals will be:

$69.60 for Thesis Personal

$131.20 for Thesis Developer

$61.60 for Developer Upgrade

Here is the coupon code that you should use for today: 20D03977D0. Remember, this code is valid for only 150 people…

Use WordTracker for Blog Ideation

I don’t know about you, but coming up with new ideas for my blogs has always been a challenge for me. I remember my first year of blogging very well. I was so excited, and I was having all these crazy ideas for my WordPress blog. But then, I started running on empty idea tank. I started rehashing stories and looking at them from a different angle. Whoever said blogging was easy!

The truth is, blogging is not easy, and it was never meant to be. It’s true that a lot of folks got away with talking about their lunch experiences a few years ago, but unless you have good solid content to share with folks, you are not just wasting your time.

Using WordTracker to identify new ideas

WordTracker is a blogger’s best friend. The keyword research service has been around for so long, and has helped many blog their way to success. What WordTracker does is it allows you to use a set of keywords and dig deeper to find small niches and long-tail searches. Long-tail blogging is an awesome way to target small niches and get folks to follow your blog.

WordTracker Questions is a powerful new addition to their keyword research arsenal. The service uses advanced techniques to make sense of what folks are searching for. Let’s say I want to write a blog post on WordPress on WPJedi. It would be easy to figure out what folks are looking for in this market by using WordTracker:

Some of these questions may sound pretty silly, but believe it or not a lot of folks don’t know these things. You can apply this to any niche.  You may only get a few ideas for this tool, but you can certainly get enough to come up with your own ideas. And let’s not forget that you should have a set of keywords ready to dig deeper and find new ideas. Folks won’t stop asking questions and looking for answers, and you shouldn’t stop trying reading their minds either!

Keep Track of Your WordPress Blog with Stattraq

If you have been involved in the blogging world, you are probably familiar with the importance of tracking your blog’s stats. So what do I mean by blog stats? The number of visitors you get everyday, the hits, the browser type these folks use, their surfing habits and more. Sure. You can get all this with Google Analytics (GA), but wouldn’t it be nice if you could access these info right on your WordPress blog, without having to log on to Analytics every single hour?

Stattraq allows you to keep track of everything that goes on your blog. You get the following information from Stattraq:

• Hit Counter: shows you the number of hits and your hits trend over a specific period of time.
• User Counter: Stattraq can track the number of visitors who come to your blog by putting a cookie on their computers.
• Page Views: shows you how many times your pages are viewed and for how long
• Browser: shows you the browsers used by your visitors.
• Referrer: shows you who has referred folks to your blog. In other words, where traffic is coming from.
• Search Terms: shows you what search terms have brought folks to your site.
• SE Saturation: shows you how many of your pages are indexed on major search engines.
• IP Addresses: shows the IP addresses of folks who have visited your site.

Stattraq is not a super Analytics software, but it gets the job done. The software is for free, and it’s easy to install (you can get it here). But here is the catch. You should still use your Google analytics for more comprehensive analysis, but you shouldn’t have to check it on a daily basis if you use Stattraq.

WordPress 2.6.5 Released

The latest version of WordPress, WP 2.6.5, has been released just now. This version fixes a bunch of security issues. You should definitely try to update your WP install as soon as possible.

Optimize Your WordPress Posts For Organic Search

A WordPress blog with no organic traffic is going to struggle to survive. More than 80% of folks try organic listings before their paid counterparts, which means you can’t expect to put all your focus on paid search and survive with your business. But one simple way to attract free traffic to your site is by optimizing every single post for a micro-niche.

Let’s say you are running a blog about mortgages. You can optimize your posts for bad mortgages, how to restructure mortgages, find a mortgage, and … Here is how to do it:

• Pick the right keyword phrase: picking the right keyword for each post is half the battle. You need to keep in mind that you are not trying to rank for a general term on a post. In fact, you should focus on long-tail if you want to have any success with your keywords.
• Keyword Phrase in Title: make sure you use your keyword phrase in your title tags. You can obviously download All in One SEO plug-in to help you customize your titles per post, but you can do this by hand as well (way more time consuming).
• Keyword Phrase in Header tags: you should put your keyword phrases in header tags such as h1, h2, h3 in order to let search engine know about their importance to your posts. Make sure not to overdo it (stuffing keywords in h tags can get you penalized).
• Keyword Phrase in URL: you should choose a permalink that allows you to add your keyword phrases to your URL. That helps you get some SEO benefit on Google and other engines.
• Keywords in Content:  have you heard content is king? Well, you should try to put your keywords in your content to make it rank for them. Easy, isn’t it?
• Internal Link Building: you should link to your other pages frequently, and you should use the keyword you are targeting on those pages in your anchor text to give your other pages a bump.
• Show me more: a lot of folks tend to put their whole post on their home page. You should always limit how much your readers can read on the home page. Using the more tag allows you to guide users through your pages.

Did I miss anything?

There are many other things you can do to optimize your pages, but the above techniques are the most important ones to consider. If you have time, you can optimize keywords tags and description tags, but at the end of the day you should concentrate your efforts on things that matter. Stay tuned for more tips.

Host Your Own TV Blog with Revolution TV

I had a story about WP.Element’s Jason moving on to doing bigger and better things. Jason’s new theme shows that he hasn’t been wasting anytime developing new themes. His RevolutionTV theme is arguably the best video-blogging theme I have seen.

The Revolution TV allows you to host your own video show on the Internet. On the right side, there is a section for the latest video episodes, and also you can promote your highest rated videos right below it. You are also provided with the place to actually blog about your videos:

The theme is well-designed but would be most likely useful only to super video-bloggers (someone like the star of Ask the Ninja). You can get the Revolution TV theme for free on Revolution 2, but I strongly recommend signing up for their Pro program. Not only you get support for all their themes with their pro program, but they also provide you with help on how to customize these themes. It sure as heck beats paying $1000s to create a custom theme made from scratch.

Ratings: 5/5. The theme is perfect even based on my picky standards. Vloggers rejoice.