Global Blog Income &#38; Blogging Tips by Alwin Chuah

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Use WP-SpamFree Plugin to reduce comment spam on your wordpress blog

admin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 07:47:50 +0000

Once you have setup your blog, you will be happily started to post materials to your blog.
Initially the traffic will be minimal. Once the traffic starts to increase, you will have some comment posted on your blog by the readers. This will make you even happier as of now you have some feedback.

Very soon you will find that there are some comments that are not related to your postings. Some of these comments are just fill with links, .political or religious statements or foul languages. These are known as comment spam.

As a blogger , we are responsible for what is posted on our blog. Whether it is by ourself or by our blog readers. Therefore for best practice, we must check through the comments before we allow it to be published. If the comment spams are a lot then it become a tedious chore to delete it one by one.

I have found a plugin known as WP-SpamFree that will help to monitor the comments and blocked those comments classify as spam. In this way, I will have minimal number of comments to check and save my precious time. I found this plugin is effective and is even better than Akismet ( This is also another plugin to detect comment spam)

Features of the WP-Spam plugin
1. It provides a counter on your dashboard.
2. No need to have CAPTCHA’s challenge installed. Note: Some of the CAPTCHA method which is complex has turn off some readers from posting comment.
3. Includes drop-in spam-free contact form. Easy to use — no configuration necessary.
4. A reliable and effective comment spam detection system.
5. Easy to install & configure.
6. Completely compatible with all cache plugins, including WP Cache and WP Super Cache. Not all anti-spam plugins can say that.
7. The best thing is that this plugin is free. However you are welcome to offer a donation.

Download
You can download the plugin at
http://www.hybrid6.com/webgeek/plugins/wp-spamfree

Install & configure
Unzip the plugin and upload to your blog’s plugin folder.
Go to your blog’s plugin and activate it.
Click on Plugin and look for WP-Spamfree.
Click on Activate.
Also you will see Settings.
Click on Settings to configure it or alternatively you can take the default settings.

This is must-have plugin for serious & ambitious blogger.

Cheers

Alwin Chuah

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Offline Method to Promote your website or blog

admin — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:30:29 +0000

There are a lot of ideas on how to promote your blog or website using online method.
Have you ever wonder whether you could promote your site via offline?

When I ask people how many ways can they promote their site via offline? Sadly only one or 2 ways were mentioned. Some think that they need to have a lot of money to start an offline promotion.

Actually there are many ways that you can do offline promotion methods that do not require large sum of money to promote.
.
Following are some of the ways that you can use for Offline promotions
•   T-Shirt
•   Car
•   Name Cards
•   Classified Ads in Magazines & Newspapers
•   Brochures

T-Shirts
Look for your neighborhood’s shop that provide customize T-Shirt printing service.
Design and print your own T-shirts. You can give it to your family members, relatives & friends. Get as many people to wear as you can afford.

See below for my own sample:-

Car
If you own a car, you can print out your website and paste it at your car’s front & back windshield.

Name Cards
Try to design your name card with attractive colors. Attend as many functions, seminars as you can especially relate to the area you are promoting. The objective is to mingle around and handout as many cards as you can.

Also if you manage to collect other people name cards, email to them within 24 hours.
Be sure to include your website in the email

Classified Ads in Magazines & Newspapers
You can also use this method to promote your website. However advertise only in Magazines or Newspapers that have specific column for your niche that you are promoting

Brochures
This is the most expensive way of offline promotion. If you are just starting out, try to print a limited copy and distribute it to your neighborhood and check out the result. This method is only suitable for some niche only. It is highly recommended to print in attractive colors combination and with pictures.

Words that capture attention
For all the promotion methods that I mention above, not only do you need to include your web link, you also need to include caption that can attract the readers. You must remember, it is this attractive caption that causes people to visit your website or blog. Promote with just your web link alone is not enough.

You can always look at websites, blogs, newspapers, magazines for sample headlines that attract your attention. Ask yourself this question. Can it be use in what I am promoting? Keep a Scrapbook with you always. In this way you can immediately jot down the ideas and save it.

Domain name
As your visitors need to manually key your web link at the browser, we must ensure that they have good experience. The recommended ways in naming a domain are:-
•   It must be relate to what you are promoting
•   Use only 3 to 4 words for your domain name.
•   Don’t use dashes, or underscores

With the ideas provided above, you can now include Offline promotions in your Internet Income journey.

Cheers

Alwin Chuah

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Domain Name: Correct Strategies for newbie

admin — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:04:16 +0000

If you just started to embark on Internet marketing, whether blogging or website, you will need to have a domain name. You need to plan and consider a few areas before you decide on a domain name. The reason is that if you started on a wrong footing and have register the domain and setup the blog or website, it will be troublesome to correct it.

A domain name is just like a name given to a business or shop. For example if you see “Jim’s tailor”. You will know it is a tailor shop, right!
So this means we need to think of a domain name that can relate to what we want to promote.
If you are just starting out in trying to earn some money from internet, you might want to consider not to over spend unnecessarily.
When you setup a website or blog, you will need to plan on how to promote your site. Believe me, no traffic will come by itself, you really need to promote your site.

If you want to promote through online, you can use a few ways like:-
• Search Engine
• Pay per click
• Email
• Blog
• Backlinks
• EzineArticles.com
• Joint Venture

If you promote through Offline, you can use the following ways:-
• Brochure
• Advertise in Newpaper and Magazine
• Name Card
• T-Shirt
• Car sticker
• Classified Ads

Therefore a good domain name should be best suited for promoting through online & offline.
Also good domain name must be easily recall and simple to key in the browser.
Following are the recommendations for naming a domain:-

English words
If you plan to promote your site to the whole world, it is recommended to use English words as part of your domain. Unless you are targeting audience of your own country, then you can use your local language.

Keyword
You need to have your keyword(s) included as part of the domain name.
Let’s say you are promoting dog training. Then the words “dog training” should be part of your domain name. This will score high in the Search Engine for the keyword. The higher the score, the higher position the website or blog will obtain in the Search Engine.

3 Words Plus One
It is recommended to have 3 words only in the Domain name. Research has been conducted that people tend to recall one to 3 words easily. With a bit of creativity you should be able to find a good 3 words domain name.
However if you have difficulty in finding a good 3 words domain name, you may use fourth word. The fourth word should be Best, Better, The, Info or alternatively use plural words.

Joint Words
When you joint the words together, you need to read it whether it can meant other things than you intended. How do you read this word “nowhere”? Is it “No Where” or “Now Here”?
The best way is to get your friend to read your domain name and see how they pronounce it.

Dash and Underscore
Don’t use dash & underscore as part of your domain name. If you promote your site through offline, people will need to key in your site name in the browser.
There is a tendency they will key in the dash or underscore at the wrong position. Also people might confuse between dash and underscore.

Same Joint Letters
Try not to have same joint letters like ii, ll, tt. I find that people always make mistakes when keying the web link that have repetitive characters joint together.

Length
Don’t use long words. The longer the words, more spelling error will occurs.
Also long domain name will have difficulty to fit in Offline promotion like Classified Ads or Online (eg AdWords). Google only allow to display 35 characters at the AdWords Display URL field.

Dot Com
Register for Dot Com only. Most of the people will tend to key in Dot com if they are unsure the ending of your domain name. To emphasize how popular the dot com is, there is a shortcut for dot com at Internet Explorer & Firefox.
At the URL , you just need to key the domain name and press Ctrl + Enter. It will automatically fill up with www and dot com.

Conclusion
In conclusion, remember to apply the above factors in your selection of domain name.
It is crucial to give a first time visitor a good experience in keying in your domain name.
May you prosper as you journey through the Internet.

Cheers

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Display a Flag Counter at your blog

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:13:34 +0000

Do you like to know which countries are your blog readers from?

Also you can know which country provides you with the most readers.

At the same time you can display this information at your blog for everyone to see.

Well now you can satisfy the above by having a Flag Counter at your blog.

Unfortunately this is not a Wordpress Plugin. So you need to paste some HTML codes.

Here is a screenshot of the flags & the counter for each country readers that have visited your blog.

Where to get

You can get it at http://s05.flagcounter.com

Features

At the above website you can configure:-

• Number of flags to be shown.

• Column of Flags

• Background, Text & Border Color

You need to click on “Get Your Flag Counter”

The following will appear

Steps to install the above code at your Wordpress blog:-

Click on Appearance->Widget

You need to decide which sidebar you want to set this Flag counter.

At the Widget, drag the Text to the selected Sidebar

Copy the HTML code from the Flag Counter Website and paste to the Text box.

No need to fill up the Title. Click Save

That completes the installation steps.

Note:

Plan properly the settings for the flags. This is because once this flag counter is displayed at the blog, it will start counting. If you decide to change it later, you will need to go to this website and configure again. This will cause your counter to initialize again.

Now you can show off to the world where your readers are from.

Cheers

Alwin Chuah

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Use Twitter Follow Me Plugin on Wordpress blog

admin — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:10:58 +0000

If you already have a Twitter account and would like other people to follow your twitter postings, you may do so by placing a “Twitter Follow me” badge on your Wordpress blog.

Your blog reader just need to click on the Twitter Follow Me badge and it will be taken to your Twitter’s page

Download Plugin
First you need to download Follow Me Plugin into your PC from http://wpburn.com/wordpress-plugins/wp-followme-plugin

Steps to install & configure
Unzip it and upload to your blog’s plugin folder.
Go to your blog’s plugin and activate it.
Click on Settings->Follow Me Settings

Feature of Follow Me plugin:
•   change the color of the badge
•   change the follow me label (Follow me / Follow us)
•   change the position of the badge (left side or right side and the distance from top)

Following is the screenshot of the Follow Me configuration screen

The best thing is that as you scroll down your blog page, the Twitter Follow Me badge will be continued to be displayed.

Cheers

Alwin Chuah

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Use Language Translator Wordpress Plugin to increase blog readers

admin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:00:34 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Do you know about half of the world population do not understand English at all?

This meant, if we write our blog in English, only half the world population can understand what we write. The other half will not understand at all.

Therefore in order to increase readers to our blog, we need to have a plugin that can translate English language to other languages. This way we can allow more people to enjoy what we have written, ahem.

I search in the Wordpress plugin and found the Global translator is the most popular plugin.

Following is the screenshot your blog reader will see and by clicking the selected flag, the blog information will be converted to that country’s language.

Key features of Global Translator plugin:-

•   It can translate 41 different languages

•   It support 4 different Translation Engines:

from Google Translation Engine, Babel Fish, Promt & FreeTranslations.com

•   Search Engine Optimized:

It uses the permalinks by adding the language code at the beginning of all your URI. For example the english version on www.domain.com/mycategory/mypost will be automatically transformed in www.domain.com/en/mycategory/mypost

•   Fully configurable layout:

You can easily customize the appearance of the translation bar by choosing between a TABLE, DIV or IMAGE MAP based layout for the flags bar and by selecting the number of translations to make available to your visitors

Plugin Download

You can download the plugin here at http://www.nothing2hide.net/wp-plugins/wordpress-global-translator-plugin/

Steps to install & configure

Download the Plugin into your PC.

Unzip it and upload to your blog’s plugin folder.

Go to your blog’s plugin and activate it.

Click on Settings->Global Translator

The configuration screen appears. You may follow the guide on the screen and configure accordingly. If you not sure, use default settings.

I hope you like this article

Cheers

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Simple Online business that generates income for years to come…

admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:42:55 +0000

The purpose I setup this blog is to apply what I have learned about making money from blogging and also from affiliate marketing.

I have attended a 3 days Internet Marketing training too.

As I was doing my research on articles for my blog, I came across a website.

At the header of the website, it display “Create Your First Website by 3.45 this afternoon”
Also with a bold red headline “Revealed! A One Page Website Is All You Need To Start Making Money Online”

Also there is a video by the owner Chris Farrell explaining what this whole thing is all about.

So I subscribe and download the ebook on “Create Your First Website by 3.45 this afternoon”

I was amazed on the simple, step by step instructions provided by the author.

What I like about this book is that

•   It explains how to start your Internet Business successfully
•   The Whole book is written in simple Non-Technical terms – Suitable for Beginners
•   Screenshots & video links provided
•   It guides you on step & step on how to create your first website

Believe me, in my opinion the explanation in the book is very much better than

some of the internet courses that I studied online & offline.

Who is this course for?
This course is for those interested to learn how to make money online.
As an avid reader of my blog ( don’t think I don’t know that you come to my blog frequently…),
I have requested from Chris Farrell to provide this ebook for free for my loyal readers.

And guess what, he finally consented.

Today I am presenting to you a 100% free e-book that I have personally read, apply and proven to be effective.

This ebook, although you may not realize it – will save
you MONTHS of sweating and struggling to make money online.

Click here to get the Free e-book

My best to you,
Alwin Chuah

****************************************************************
‘Nothing Comes From Doing Nothing’
****************************************************************

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Don’t Quit

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:24:08 +0000

As a blogger, it is sometimes a lonely journey. It is a one man show. You have to maintain & update the blog regularly. At times the traffic can be slow. At times you will be very happy, when you see your articles are in the first page of the Search Engine.At times you feel you are wasting your time updating the blog. That is the time, my friend that you should not quit.

Below is an inspirational video with the famous “Don’t Quit Poem”. Enjoy it and be inspired!

Cheers!

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