My old blog theme was starting to look a bit tired, but the main reason for the change was less to do with aesthetics and more to do with function and ease of navigation.

I’d tweaked so much code in the old one, that it was also taking an age to load and certainly didn’t like me adding any plugins to it!

I’ve tried to keep it simple this time as I wanted a cleaner, less ‘busy’ look.

If you’d like to create a similar looking blog, then I highly recommend the Flexibility Theme – It’s free and is really easy to customise the layout and colours – it also allows you to add your own custom graphics in the header, background etc. so you can make it really unique to you.  All without editing the code.

I’ve also added some cool plugins to allow people to share my content and also to allow me to manage my blog more easily.

Listed below are all the plugins I currently have installed and I recommend you try them out to improve your blog looks and functionality.  (I’d like to give a shout out here to a fellow MWA student, Paul Lear, as he put together a great list of plugins, which helped me – Thanks Paul! – if you don’t know how to install plugins, Paul also has a video showing you how here)

Ok, here’s the list and the links to the download sites :-

Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.”

Click here to go to download page

All in One SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Pack

Optimises your blog to make it more easily found by the search engines.  All you do is activate the plugin it and it will search the content of your blog and automatically create relevant keywords and phrases that people may search for.  (As you can probably tell, I don’t know much about SEO! – Put simply, if you use this plugin, you should get more traffic!)

Click here to go to download page

CommentLuv

Shows a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments and therefore a more active community.

Click here to go to download page

Contact Form 7

Allows your readers to contact you, without you having to reveal your email to every spammer in the world.  It also looks more professional than “Contact Me at JoeBloggs@hotmail.com”

Click here to go to download page

Google Analytics for WordPress

This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your blog without having to manually edit code.  Once added, login to your Google account to check web traffic stats etc. It also allows you to download tracking to your WordPress blog.

Click here to go to download page

Post Teaser

Post Teaser generates a preview or “teaser” of a post for the main, archive and category pages, with a link underneath to go to the full post page. It includes features to generate a word count, image count, and an estimated reading time.  It allows your visitors to scroll through all your recent posts more quickly to find something that interests them and in my experience means they’ll stay for longer on your site.

Click here to go to download page

SexyBookmarks

SexyBookmarks adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts allowing them to be shared, thereby increasing your traffic.

Click here to go to download page

Top Commentators Widget

Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site. Visually it creates a sense of community and interactivity and so encourages users to post comments.

Click here to go to download page

TweetMeme Retweet Button (Yes, thats really what it’s called!)

Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.

Click here to go to download page

WordPress Database Backup

On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Ok, not as exciting as some of the others maybe, but I think it’s a gem because backing up manually via c-panel can be a real pain in the neck – And it’s better to be safe than sorry!

Click here to go to download page

WP-Cumulus

My favourite – A Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress which spins your tags when a visitor hovers over them.  Probably encourages people to stay longer on your blog, but to be honest, I just think it looks cool!

Click here to go to download page

They’re all the plugins I have installed at the moment.  Feel free to comment below if you’ve found any other cool/useful plugins you’d like to share.

Now it’s time to start filling up this blog with more great content

Don’t forget, we are in the game of Internet Marketing, NOT Internet Selling.

The world of Internet Marketing is rapidly changing and the techniques that used to persuade people to part with their hard earned cash are becoming far less effective.

In these times of credit crunch and economic uncertainty, I for one am far more aware of the value of my money and I am a lot more careful in where and what I spend it on.

I’m certain I’m not the only one and I’m betting that my readers and subscribers are just as sick as I am of the constant barrage of hard selling that’s still prolific amongst some online marketers.

As an example, I’ve just checked my twitter account and I’d say 90 % of the people following me are only doing so because they want to pimp their products and affiliate links!

Now, don’t get me wrong… we’re all in this game to make money and I don’t mind a bit of soft selling and gentle marketing on twitter, facebook, blogs etc. but it really gets my goat when I this sort of thing:-

cb_earnings 92,000 richer in 8 weeks. I can show you how. – http://tinyurl.com/fdgbgdfbd (url changed to avoid making this person any money from click throughs!)

It wouldn’t be so bad if this one a one off, but this guy (or gal) has tweeted literally hundreds of the same kind of message, all containing the same affiliate link for Clickbank Code. AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!

Needless to say, I no longer follow this person and have no interest in ever doing so again!

Point is, this person lost my trust and even if I wanted to buy Clickbank Code, I wouldn’t do it through their link because they have provided me with nothing of value and are just trying to get rich at my expense!

Now although I DO provide lots of free content and value to my readers and subscribers here, I don’t feel comfortable pushing big flashing ads down their throat just to make a few sales here and there.  If someone stumbles upon my blog, I want them to go away with nothing but good impressions so they’ll keep coming back.

I also want them to know that if I do recommend a product, it’s because I have complete faith in it… not because it’s been thrown up by an ad rotator.

Since I set up this blog and on my previous blog, I’ve had all kinds of Ads – some were for products  and services I used, others weren’t.  I’m now wondering whether it had a detrimental effect on how long people stayed on my blogs and how many signed up to my mailing list.

For the few quid I’ve made from Ads, how many readers/potential subscribers have I actually lost because they clicked on an Ad and navigated away from my website?!

Wish I knew the answer, but my gut feeling is that it’s a lot.

Ok, so what makes me think no Ads is the way forward? How am I supposed to make any money?!

Well, because my Mentor, Alex Jeffreys has proved it can be done.

He’s made $711,043.03 online, without selling one single thing from his blog, ever!

That’s some pretty convincing stuff, wouldn’t you agree?!

So from here on in you won’t see any Ads from adsense, paydotcom, clickbank, or even any banners for my affiliate products.  Just great valuable content because (to nick another of Alex’s phrases) “I’m Marketing With You, Not To You!”

If my free advice here helps others make money online, then it can only be good for my reputation – which means I’ll grow a big, loyal following of people who want to pay for my help, just like they do for Alex’s help!

Ok, I’m getting down off my soap box now

Seriously though, have a good think about whether those ads on your websites are really justified.

Are they making you a lot of money, or are they just encouraging people to navigate away from your site, never to return again?

Could you be using that ad space more effectively,for example, to grow your twitter following, to add a video, to add various opt in free reports?

There are blogs out there who have hundreds of thousands of hits every day, such as problogger.net for example.

Darren Rowse who owns the site, probably makes a fortune from advertising alone, but with so much web traffic, he can afford to lose a few readers  if they don’t like all the ads on his site.  Can you?!

I’d love to hear your comments on the subject.

Take it easy,

Ok, so it’s not a massive increase in traffic yet, but this is a method that will keep getting traffic organically and the more (interesting) comments you leave, the more traffic you’ll get.  I only left a handful of comments on sunday and yesterday and it’s already resulted in 12 more visitors that might never have found my blog!  That’s powerful stuff!

Here’s the new screen shot from Google Analytics (click on the image to enlarge)

I’ve also added a quick post to my facebook status to let people know my blog has recently been updated, so I’ll let you know if that has any significant effect on traffic in the coming days.

Until then, “see yer later la,” (as we say in Liverpool!)

Alex calls it “Oil Rig Hopping,” and the idea is to get your blog linked to from external sites, by leaving comments on other peoples blogs.

Each time you comment on someone elses blog post, you’ll have the option of adding your blog URL, therefore, people can click on your link and be directed to your blog.

The key to this method’s success, is that the comments you leave have to provide some extra value or point of interest.  That way, anyone reading your comment will see you as someone with credibility and hopefully decide to visit your blog.

If you leave the same comment on each blog you visit without even reading the post, then there’s a good chance your comment will be classed as spam and you’ll be blocked from leaving further comments.

After spending just one afternoon using this method, it’s easy to pick out the marketers who are blatantly just pimping their own websites without providing any value.  They leave comments like, “Great post, I’ve always wondered about this issue, thanks, will definitely be back!”

So, how do you choose the best blogs to comment on?

Well, this method is going to be most effective if you choose blogs that are in the same niche, or a similar niche to yours.  In the internet marketing and related niches, a great resource to check out is http://www.winningtheweb.com/im-top-blogs/ as it lists the blogs that rank highest in the search engines.

I would also encourage you to comment on blogs of marketers that you regularly read and look up to as this is also a great way to become known to them.  If they know who you are and know you provide extra value to their posts, they’ll be much more willing to work with you in the future.

Hope this was useful and as always I’d love to hear your comments!

The second step is… Start driving traffic to it.

A blog is the perfect platform to start building an online income because it’s relatively easy to set up and as soon as you start adding content to it the search engines will pick it up and start sending traffic your way.  You can then monitize your blog by adding affiliate links and adds and as long as you provide some great free content and real value along the way, people will start to know who you are, like you and finally trust you… and once they trust you, they’re more likely to buy from you.

My mentor Alex Jeffreys has been drilling this into us since the start of his coaching program, but this week he’s really stepped it up a notch.

He’s been showing us the methods he uses to drive bucketloads of traffic to his blog and I’m now buzzing with ideas and can’t wait to get started and share my ideas and progress with you.

To motivate us further, Alex is running a competition for his students to see who can drive the most traffic to their blog by 14th August using the methods he’s taught us and also any of our own methods.

The rules are as follows:-

1. We have to show proof of our blog traffic using the Google Analytics tool.
2. We have to use our blog to write about how we are driving the traffic!

The benefit of writing about how to drive traffic to a blog, is that those posts will automatically begin to show up in the search engines for keywords, such as “driving blog traffic.”  So the effect is that traffic will end up on our blogs naturally.  (Nearly confused myself then so hope you still follow! )

The benefit to my readers, will be that as I implement each traffic driving step, I’m going to tell you what I did it and what the results are.

So here’s where I am right now…

I have never really done anything to drive traffic to my blog.  Most people who land here, do so by chance after searching for something in Google.

The only way I currently send anyone here is through my eBay “About Me” page, therefore my traffic is pretty low as you can see from the Google Analytics Screenshot below.

(click to enlarge)

Google Analytics Screenshot for www.steve-wakefield.com 31st July 2009

Over the next few days I’m going to use various methods to try to drive traffic and I’ll outline the steps I take each time, then share the results with you as soon as I have them, so check back regularly.

Hopefully, I will start seeing some big traffic increases and also teach my readers some new techniques along the way!

So, if you don’t already have a blog, then get one set up asap and you’ll also benefit from this exercise.  If you are unsure where to start, check out http://www.blogsetuptutorials.com/free/ which was created by Tommy Mclaughlin – a former student of Alex and another of his success stories!

Best of luck and will speak to you again soon,