No one likes to wait for a web page to load – if a site is taking too long to load, the visitor is more likely to close it and move on. This is especially true for blogs, which are meant to be seen and read. Today, we will share with you several tips on how you can speed up a blog running on WordPress.
1. Eliminate unnecessary plugins

Don’t use too many plugins – they will noticeably slow down your website. Imagine them as too many apps running at the same time – they will affect the overall performance of the blog. Keep the number of the plugins low – let’s say from 5 to 10, but don’t go over 20.
2. Optimize your Database

All the information for your blog posts and comments is stored in a database. So, to speed up the loading speed, you can optimize this database. There are two ways to do that – with the WP-Optimize plugin, or manually. The plugin is the easier way, but always remember point 1 of this article. If you want to do things manually, follow these instructions:

1. Inside your web hosting Control Panel, locate and open PHPMyAdmin- you can find it in the Database Manager section.
2. Once logged in the PHPMyAdmin, select your database.
3. Click “Check All” at the bottom of the page.
4. Choose “Optimize table” in the drop-down list next to it.
5. Done!
3. Cache your Database

Another way to speed up the work of your database is to cache it. This way, you will reduce the number of queries made to the database each time a user visits your blog. You can cache your database with the DB Cache Reloaded plugin.
4. Disable Post Revisions

Post Revisions exist since WordPress 2.6 and they are useful when there are several writers working on the same blog, or if you make constant changes to your blog posts. If left enabled, this feature will create multiple entries for a blog post in your database, effectively slowing it down.
5. Use a Cache Plugin

You can also create static versions of the most visited web pages. This way, you will reduce the queries made to the database. And static HTML pages load much faster. There are a lot of cache plugins, but be careful with their configuration – if they are left untended and not properly configured, they tend to use too much CPU power.
6. Optimize your images

Have your images optimized – you can use Photoshop’s “Save for Web” function, which will save the image with a good balance between size and quality. Here is a list of other image optimization tools:

Online Tools:

PunyPNG
Smush.it
Online Image Optimizer

Desktop Tools:

Shrink O’Matic
PNGGauntlet

7. Optimize your CSS and JavaScript files

Another way to speed up your website is to optimize the CSS and JavaScript files – this way you will reduce the size of the files and save some disk space and decrease the server load. There are several tools you can use to do that.

To compress the CSS files, you can use several tools:

WP CSS plugin
CSS Optimizer
CSS Compressor

To optimize your JavaScript files, use:

JavaScript Compressor

Small Business Internet Marketing is not anything new. Small business owners have been promoting their products and services in various ways since the beginning of time.

What has changed is the way that small businesses go about marketing today.

If you have a small business that is struggling to promote itself here are a few things to keep in mind.

What is Small Business Marketing?

This is basically done so that you can promote what you have to sell. Today small business owners include off-line local business owners, and Internet marketers who are building their business online. It also includes home business owners who run their business from the comfort of their own home.

Why do Small Business Internet Marketing?

You have to be out in the marketplace where people can find you. Businesses of all sides struggle with the best way to do this.

The big difference with small business owner is they do not have the staff to hire full-time workers to handle their advertising for them. Unless you’re able to build a business strictly on word-of-mouth advertising, you will need to promote it, and the Internet is the best place to do that.

Where to Do Small Business Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing is great because of the many different avenues available to you. Regardless of your budget you can find ways to promote online.

You will want to consider search engine optimization in any Internet marketing that you do. People still log online looking for information and you have a chance to provide that for them when you promote online.

When to Do Small Business Marketing?

In the past off line business owners would sit down with their yellow page rep and put together their marketing plan for the next year. Then based on how business was going they would throw in additional advertising such as newspaper ads, direct mail, or even radio ads. Today that is not the best approach to take.

Small business Internet marketing should be done year round. You can automate much of this so you do not even have to pay attention to it and you can still benefit.

The best thing to do is to put together a marketing plan and then consistently monitor how it is working. You can make adjustments based on the results you are getting and eventually settle into a consistent successful advertising plan.

How to do Small Business Marketing?

Whenever possible take a broad approach to promoting your business online. Here are a few ways you can do that.

1. Pay per click advertising. This is a fast way to get on page 1 of the larger search engines for keyword phrases that people are searching for.

You see these ads across the top of a page and down the right-hand side. You want to be as high up on the page as you possibly can based on your budget. You will be billed every time somebody clicks on one of your ads.

Googe Adwords is the number one place to promote on the Internet. Because Google gets the majority of search engine traffic today it only makes sense that you advertise with them.

Yahoo Marketing is an affordable alternative. They are the #2 search engine and you can generate more website traffic for considerably less money than you would with Google.

Facebook ads. They now have over 500 million users and have become a power player in the online advertising arena. You can purchase targeted Facebook ads at an affordable rate.

2. SEO. Search engine optimization should be done in every type of advertising you do.

This means you need to develop a keyword list that people are searching for relating to the niche your business is in. Your goal is to rank as high as you can on Google for those keyword phrases.

Once you know what these keywords are you can begin to implement them into all of your advertising strategies.

3. Article marketing. This is a good way to develop backlinks as well as provide information that people could be searching for.

Always remember that people do not come online to purchase something all of the time. Many times they are just looking for information and you may be able to provide that in the form an article.

If you do not like to write you can hire a freelance writer to write for you. Hands Off Article Marketing is a good way to develop an online presence with articles. In this program the articles are written for you, and submitted to online article directories, blogs, and shared video site such as You Tube.

4. Social media. This encompasses a large number of small business Internet marketing opportunities.

For sure you want to start a blog and add content to it on a regular basis. Search engines love blogs and this is a good way for you to develop an online presence and drive traffic at the same time.

When you make a blog post you want to also submit it to online social directories. Use Only Wire to reach the top directories with the click of one button.

Search engines spider these social directories all the time. It’s a good way to get them coming to your blog and spidering it as well.

Social networking is important to be involved in. You should set up a FaceBook and Twitter account for your business. ou should also join LinkedIn and personally interact with people whenever you can.

You can also outsource all of your social media to a professional. This is money well spent because it allows you to reach a segment of the market you might otherwise never reach.

5. Email marketing. Building an email list is smart for the long-term growth of your business.

You can add a sign-up form to your website and let people subscribe to your email newsletter. This is a good way to sell products as well as keep in touch with your subscribers whenever you have something new to announce.

6. Other types of small business Internet marketing. Other things you can do to promote your business online include ezine advertising, classified ads, banner ads, starting an affiliate program, and much more.

Over time you can dominate your market when you have a large number of small business Internet marketing strategies working for your business!

Is Social Media Marketing like “Cat Herding”?

The first thing I did today when waking was to run down to get some coffee. I needed caffeine in a bad way. You see, I was challenged to answer a question, can you quantify a ROI with Social Media Marketing? I already knew the answer however let me bore you a bit of what I found when searching for this topic. Google, Yahoo and Bing each had over 14 million results for “Social Media Marketing ROI’’s”.  So I set out on a mission to read them all……just kidding, I barely got off the first page when it struck me.

I couldn’t help but think, “my audience is Small Businesses and if I am going to be true to this I need to be painfully blunt.” Of all the posts I read on this seemingly elusive question; “Can you put a ROI on Social Media Marketing” all and I do mean all were over intellectual attempts at trying to impress others that they have the answer. Some well meaning, others a blatant marketing campaign. Here are some of the babble.

“an overarching truth about business: The best marketing strategies, those that yield long-term value, are based not on trends, anecdotal evidence, or past “success stories” but on new scientific methods and metrics explicitly developed for analyzing often-imprecise data.”

HUH?

“The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.”

Really now!

“No marketing program has value that can be measured separately or independently. The value of marketing derives from its ability to help the organization implement its strategy … Marketing programs seldom have a direct impact on financial outcomes such as increased revenues, lowered costs, and higher profits. (Rather,) Marketing affects financial outcomes through chains of cause-and-effect relationships.”

… No impact? Ouch!

At the risk of insulting some of my colleagues I am going to stop there. The point I want to emphasize here is this; small businesses are concerned with one thing, can we make money? We can all agree ROI is hard to measure or because it is too time consuming, many small businesses shy away from social media. I myself own a small business and I am largely concerned with my bottom line. How we get to a good bottom line is with constant Plan, Do, and Review with marketing as a whole.

Ultimately, the key question to ask when measuring engagement is, Are we getting what we want out of the conversation? When you ask businesses why they are participating in social media, what do they say? Most, “to make money,” If they say, “to grow our business,” they’re just saying, “to make money,” in a nicer way. If they say, “to participate in the conversation,” which is the more appropriate reason to be involved in the social web.

In it’s simplest term let me tell you the why you need to be engaged in this type of marketing, however, Social Media on it’s own is not the end all be all. A well executed Online Presence for a business should include a well designed and thought out Web Site/Blog, Search Engine optimized pages, as well as a well researched Pay Per Click program. On top of this should be the inclusion to the 30-40 Social Media sites which will in turn earn you back links to your site.

You may be wondering, “you didn’t answer the original question”, and your right. Let me answer it this way. Did you ask the Yellow Page sales person for the return on investment? Did you ask the Value Coupon rep for that same answer? Even still there is an answer, yes in your business it can be tracked and quantified with some very simple techniques like simply interacting with your costumers. I’ll conclude with this, the Internet is the place where your potential customers are looking for your products and services and you do need to be there. Be there in a way that shows how great of a business you are.

Lastly, I hope I didn’t over simplify this issue, please comments and questions to l.mcleod@bulbwired.com, we love the interaction.

by Marc Meyer on 09/12/2009 18:40- From SocialMediaToday.com

Do you feel like Twitter is stealing the oomph from your blog? That you don’t blog as much as you used to? Yea me too. A lot of good topics get thrown under the 140 character bus in the form of epiphany like sound bites. So what do you do about it? How are you striking the balance between the 2? Are you on a schedule? Do you tweet at certain times?

How do you decide when to save that mind blowing tweet for a full blown blog post?

I used to blog every day, and now? 3 times a week. However there are days that I might write 3 blog posts in one day. Is that you? Here’s what might work for you. Because though I may be only blogging 3 times a week, I’m getting my source material from Twitter.

So though Twitter might be stealing some of my thunder, it is also creating the lightning for my blog posts.

Use Twitter as your source and inspiration for topics.

The real trick though, as has just been pointed out to me by@newjerseyliz, is how do you manage to read tweets, respond to tweets, read blog posts and respond to blog posts and write your own blog posts? And do it consistently. That’s why my Twitter network has evolved into my own personal RSS filter of what I should read. Maybe yours should too? Tell me what’s working for you.

25 Social Networking Sites For Real Estate Agents – Presentation Transcript

25 Social Networking Sites For Real Estate Agents. View more presentations from Tina Merritt.

If you are a work at home beginner then being an affiliate is THE most lucrative means to start making money fast. But being an affiliate and being a successful affiliate who’s making money are two different things. You’ll be surprised that 87% of affiliates don’t make more than $175 a month. Are you one of these struggling affiliate marketers? Here are 7 reasons why you could be among those who don’t make money.

1) Saturated Market

One of the most common mistakes that many affiliates make is to join an affiliate program that promotes a product that targets a highly saturated market. That means that the target market you are trying to sell to is full of others who are trying to sell the same thing. Areas such as “internet marketing” and “website traffic” are areas that relatively new affiliates should be weary of since it’s very hard to sell anything in these markets unless you’ve already made a name for yourself. Stay away from these highly saturated markets and find “niche” markets that you can easily dominate and promote to. This will greatly help you make a profit.

2) No interest in product

This is a mistake that many affiliates do without knowing it. They simply join an affiliate program because it’s “cool” or because someone else told them to. And they figure that by being an affiliate they will get the same benefits. Don’t be fooled. If you don’t have a personal interest in the product you are promoting you won’t put in the effort to actively promote it. And this will ruin your chances of success. If you like what you promote, then it shows through your websites or your written words and this positive influence is transferred to your prospective buyers as well. Make sure you join an affiliate website that promotes a product that interests you.

3) Low profitability

Many affiliates join an affiliate program simply because the payout per sale is huge. Often a single sale might pay you $99.00. And you think it’s a good product to promote. But you forget the fact that to earn $99.00 you have to sell a product that’s $299.00. Thus a single sale could be hard to make as compared to a much lower priced item. Therefore concentrate on joining an affiliate program that pays a higher percentage yet has a product price that is low or moderate. A 50% commission of a product that costs $50 is a good deal because you will be able to sell more of that product that the high priced ones.

4) No pre-selling

Many affiliates simply advertise their affiliate URL. They put their entire faith on the main affiliate website that they are sending people to. Thus your success is in someone else’s hands. Why take the risk? Why not pre-sell the idea of the product and get the prospect into a buying mood by preparing them for what they will find at the affiliate main site? A well constructed product review can be the ideal pre-sell for any product. Advertise your website that reviews the product and let the prospect visit the main site via your website. Once you “prep” them up, the sale is far more easier to make.

5) No Link cloaking

As I mentioned before, many affiliates use their affiliate URLs in advertising. This means that their affiliate Ids are plainly visible to anyone who wants to replace it with their own and thus steal a sale from you. Thus you must employ some form of link cloaking or encryption so that your affiliate links don’t get stolen or hijacked. Why chance it when you can prevent link theft?

6) No focus

A common mistake of an affiliate is to join an affiliate network and start promoting ALL of the network’s products at once. This “shot gun” affect can shoot down your profits simply due to the fact that you have no focus and thus your advertising efforts are wasted. Always pick one or two related products and maintain your focus. This way you can tune your marketing efforts without the other product cannibalizing your profits.

7) No targeted traffic

And lastly the most common mistake is to have no targeted traffic. Website traffic means nothing unless you get targeted traffic. Simply joining click exchanges or traffic exchanges will not make your affiliate checks soar. You simply MUST employ methods of FREE targeted traffic generation and keep generating traffic in this manner if you want your profits to increase as well.

There you have it. If you can avoid those 7 mistakes, then you will become a Super Affiliate that finally earns the kind of money you’ve always dreamed of.

About the Author
Khemal Dole owns and operateshttp://www.PaychecksDirect.com, a completely FREEservice that teaches many beginners and evenexperts how to work at home. Sign up for his FREE 14 day Work At Home Beginner’s Course and learn how real people make money from the internet.

Article source: http://www.contentdragon.com/content/business/small-business/7-reasons-why-87%25-of-affiliate-marketers-don-t-make-money/

The very meaning of the word “Entrepreneur” suggests that accidental doesn’t go well with it, an oxymoron of sorts. The adjectives mostly associated with entrepreneur could be; Great, Awesome, Extraordinary and the like, after all it does take an above average effort to succeed in any enterprise, more so in the context of this story, Affiliate Marketing, SEO/PPC, the new Social Media. Let me promise right now not to be a slave to this economy, however, what has risen up from the ashes is; more and more people are taken to their own businesses out of a shear lack of meaningful employment options. How this will flush out is still to be seen, whichever way it goes it’s always smart to aim your product and service at the masses before you can define a niche.

Entrepreneur

–noun

There are some great entrepreneurs over the last ten years or so that just seemed destined for greatness and it looked like there was no other career choice that would fit, it simply seems natural that heading their own enterprise was the only course. Here are a few I know to a different degree; one personally, one casually and one I just admire from afar.

Scott Richter from Affiliate.com and Media Breakaway, it seems like Scott is a lucky guy, always right place right time kind of guy. I know Scott casually and know that he is one of the hardest working people I’ve seen in this business. As my Dad used to say, “Luck is something you make yourself available for”. That is how Scott occurs to me, try many things and see how they flush out and yes good luck seems to shine on him. With the great things he has accomplished so far I am certain Scott has a lot more ahead of him.

Let me give you a shining example of another leader in affiliate marketing. Kevin De Vincenzi from XY7.com and Rapid Response Marketing, The reason this is going to be such a glowing accolade is, Kevin and I don’t really get along, however, he is truly a born entrepreneur and a great businessman and one could learn a lot from him. Kevin constantly throws a lot of crap against the wall to see what sticks and is constantly looking for ways to monetize, always looking for the “outside the box” angles. I myself learned a great deal working for him and although I don’t have the dough he has to experiment, I do in fact try to see the angles. Kevin has achieved much with a limited education and limited resources, kudos to Kevin.

Here is a person I would like to know personally and know more about, Peter Bordes, Founder and CEO of MediaTrust as well as a slew of other great accomplishments. Peter seems to be a highly intelligent person with a high degree of integrity. Peter Founded the Advaliant CPA platform out of a need for honesty and integrity in April of 2004 and has become a leader in this space. The leadership Peter has assembled in MediaTrust alone is a reason to emulate.

The reason I bring up seemingly “born to be” an entrepreneurs in an article call “accidental….”, we all need to mirror someone especially given that these new accidental entrepreneurs do not have the needed skill set to succeed on their own, myself included. All 3 of these great entrepreneurs should be followed for the very same reason I do, they are all at the top of their game and are winners. If you are anything like me, an “accidental entrepreneur” as the tile suggests you do not have the same skill set as these guys and need mentoring in all aspects of your business.

Now don’t misread me here, all 3 of these guys are highly un-accessible, bottom-line not easy to get to talk to. Scott has sort of a fan club kind of base and is not easy to get to talk to unless you are in his inner circle. The few times I had the chance to hang with Scott at events like ad-tech and Affiliate Summit I enjoyed it and he really seems like a nice guy, although very private. Peter is highly visible in the Social Media space and can easily be found on twitter and others, although a real busy guy. Kevin, will talk to you if you have something of value, only money value. Can’t really be found much on the Social Media scene and like Scott has an inner circle and stays close to that.

In summary, the new economy has many of us “Team Players” and what I mean by that is guys/gals that prospered inside of larger companies and find themselves with no other options but to carve out a piece of the pie for themselves, yes entrepreneurship. Although still in my humble beginnings bulbwired.com was born. I would truly rather be a part of something bigger and exciting, however, the opportunities are slim and even slimmer in Portland, OR where I live. There has been interest and offers; all have me moving and with 3 kids a wife and a dog it’s not easy to do. I find myself inside the exciting world of going on my own and find strength in following these guys as well as others I know in other businesses beyond the Internet. The point ladies and gentleman don’t go it alone, find the people that can help you and ask for their help. Lastly, I want to thank an “Accidental Entrepreneur” Auggie over at auggie4000.com, Auggie has helped a lot and continues to be an inspiration.

Does anyone else find it  surprising that so many site owners are reluctant to provide outgoing links on their website. Somehow they have come to believe that providing relevant outgoing links from their site can be harmful to their results in the search engines.

When you send your visitors to a relevant resource, this is not a bad thing. This is a good thing.

Relevant sites does NOT mean competitive sites.

Definitions of Relevant on the Web:

Having a bearing on or connection with the subject at issue; “the scientist corresponds with colleagues in order to learn about matters relevant to her own research” wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Evidence or information that has enough value to prove something significant to a case.http://www.attorneykennugent.com/library/r.html

If you write an article and would like to provide evidence of what you are saying, you should provide your resources within the article. Those MUST be credible resources. For example, if I write an article about website credibility, the site I point to in order to back up what I am saying must be an EXPERT on the topic, such as the Stanford Guidelines for Website Credibility. This method (used properly) gives your pages MORE value, not less. It also adds to the relevance of your page to the topic.

Incoming and outgoing links are not just about making pages filled with links. It is something that can be blended into your website in multiple ways, as it pertains to the specific page.

Think about the common interests of your target visitors and you will have no trouble deciding if a link is relevant to your site.

J Walker from GNC Web Creations
http://www.gnc-web-creations.com/

Wolfram Alpha is a search service being released this month that some feel is a Google killer. The jury is still out, however,it does hint at the possible future direction of search services. Wolfram Alpha hasn’t been launched as of yet. The major difference between Wolfram Alpha and existing search services is that it answers questions, as opposed to returning a list of pages.

Last weekend, Wolfram Alpha, unveiled a new “computational knowledge engine” based on the work of Stephen Wolfram. Some have dubbed Alpha a “Google killer,” but, in reality, it is very different from the standard search engines that we are all familiar with today.

Here is a public demo Wolfram gave earlier this week.