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Adding a Gravatar to your WordPress Blog

For the last few weeks I’ve been taking part in the 100 Blog Comment Challenge, which is showing signs of being a huge success for everyone involved. We now have 102 contributors on board so phase one is complete, phase two is to get them all to comment and bookmark each others blog post. I have been following the comments and replies of quite a few blogs and can plainly see that a lot of people are really benefiting from the interaction with other bloggers.

One thing I noticed during the challenge was that quite a few people were having problems Installing Gravatars on their blogs, with some having installed it only to find it was conflicting with another plugin and showing two images.

Being the helpful kind of guy I am I decided to make a video and show you how I have it set up on my blog, so that you can simply follow my settings and resolve the issue on yours.

Hello and thanks for visiting my blog.

This post is going to be slightly different to my normal posts, in fact what I’ll be doing here I have never done before……more on that in a moment.

I sell information products, both on eBay and from my websites and I have recently found a jewel that I just have to bring to your attention, especially if you also sell (or are thinking of selling) information products.

Whether you are an established eBook writer or a newbie with an idea to create an eBook something you are going to need are

eBook Graphics

I personally have only ever used Planet Divinity, No that is NOT an affiliate link, my earning money is not the point of this post….

I could go on and tell you about the Cheap Prices, the Quality of Work Produced or the Speed at which it is delivered, but that’s not the point of this post….

I could go on even further and tell you that Planet Divinity ask a series of simple questions and from your answer they will produce a first class cover, but that’s not the point of this post either….

Need A little help with your

Blog Writing

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed many people trying to get blog owners posting to their blogs a bit more frequently. In fact that is why I wrote my last blog post, to give the new bloggers a little nudge of encouragement.

Since then Steve King and Jacinta Dean and have thrown down the gauntlet and started the “100 Blog Comment Challenge” AKA #100comments. Basically those that take up the challenge have to write a blog post and try to generate 100 comments for that post.

Personally I think this is a fantastic opportunity for every blog owner to get in the mix and get to know each other. This is exactly how you build relationships, with like minded people, that can become beneficial to us all for the long term success. How many times have you heard the saying “I don’t, but I know a man (or woman) that does”?

A little encouragement for struggling

Masterclass Students

As many of you know I started this blog as part of the Masterclass course that John Thornhill runs, and since starting the course I have been visiting my fellow students blogs, leaving comments and building relationships with them, (as most of us have).

The other day I read a few posts which really got me thinking.

One was from Mandy Allen entitled “Who have you inspired?” Where Mandy talks about linking up with some old friends and how a comment she made years ago inspired one of them to change their career.

The second post that got me thinking was by Bill Murney entitled “Blogging”. Where Bill talks about some of the Masterclass students’ lack of blogging, and asks what could be causing it?

The third post was by a new member of the Masterclass course, and one to watch out for, Terry Conti entitled “The Tough Get Going and The Weak Give Up” where Terry mentions, amongst other things, the lack of blogging.

After reading the posts I thought about them for a while and decided I would write this in the hope of helping these new bloggers overcome the problems they may be facing.

Hi everyone, thanks for visiting my blog.

Today I would like to cover keywords and keyword spamming. Keywords are used all over the internet to increase search results, but today I would like to concentrate on eBay.

As you know the use of keywords plays a large part in being a successful seller on eBay. By placing the relevant keywords in your titles and descriptions your items have a much better chance of being discovered in the search results.

More views = more sales.

Because keywords play such an important part of our listings and their success some people are keyword spamming to try and increase their sales. This is a major No No on eBay and, when caught out, will get your listings removed.

So what is keyword spamming?

Basically keyword spamming is when people enter keywords into their titles and descriptions that have nothing to do with their product but could influence the search results.

For example:

Some people selling non branded goods try adding a few brand names to their listings so as to get the item found in more search results, remember More views = more sales.

Hello and thanks for visiting my blog.

In the last video we dealt with uploading your website and testing that everything worked as it should do. If you suffered any problems or are stuck in any way please let me know and I’ll help you through it.

If on the other hand you have completed the uploading process then Congratulations you are now online and ready to go, pat yourself on the back: You’ve got your website online for the world to see….

…..Now that your website is online and ready to make sales we need to start generating traffic to it.

Now, I’m not an expert in traffic generation but I know a man that is. As I said in the last video, I have had to get special permission to create this video as I’m showing you the members only area of Total Web Traffic.

Before we get to the video I would like to thank Dave Nicholson for allowing me to create the video and for making a special offer available to my readers, more on that below the video.

As a result of the world wide recession many people have turned to eBay to try and make money from home. Some have found success and some have found that it can be very frustrating to list items over and over on eBay without making sales. Most of us have been there and many of us have, at some point, found the eBay fees catch up and sometimes overtake our profit, which only adds to the squeeze being put on our finances.

Many people have then become disheartened and have left eBay without trying to research their market. There are various ways of researching your market on eBay to help you find items that are selling successfully. But what if I told that there is an area of eBay where people are actually queuing up for items, and telling us what those desired items are?

Want it now: Is an area of eBay where people who cannot find what they are looking for, or cannot be bothered to look, list details of the items that they want to buy. There are literally thousands of listings there but what you are looking for in this area is either high value items or repeated listings. Repeated listings mean that many people are looking for the same items. If you can source those items you will obviously make lots of sales, and if you can find them at the right price your profit will increase dramatically.

Hi Thanks for visiting my blog.

It’s time to upload your website to your server (web host). While this may sound daunting, it is really simple to do and the video below shows you exactly how to carry it out.

Before we can upload the website we need to download  an FTP program, (File Transfer Protocol). There are plenty of free ones on the web, but I use (and recommend) Filezilla. It is easy to install and easy to use, but the best feature is that it is free of charge.

To be able to access your web host you will need your FTP details which are in the email that you would have received from your hosting company. If you used D9 Hosting then the email is entitled ‘New Account Information‘ and you will find the details needed in section 4.

The details you need are:

Your FTP Hostname/Address:
Your FTP Username:
Your FTP Password:

Have them ready to copy and paste into your FTP program, which is demonstrated in the video.

Hi, thanks for visiting my blog:

It’s Friday afternoon and here in the UK its our May Day Bank Holiday weekend, giving us an extra day off on Monday. Some people will be visiting family or friends, some going away for the weekend, some will put their feet up and relax, and some will be working as normal.

This is the age of information and with that comes information overload. Most of us have suffered it at one point or another and today I want to give you a simple tip to help overcome the dreaded info’ overload.

Do you know that over 90% of eBooks aren’t completely read and if they aren’t read how can the information within them be applied? I’ve done it myself, you start to read the latest Hot product and something distracts you and takes your attention away from your reading. You forget the eBook and deal with whatever situation took you away from it and by the time you come back to your computer there’s something more urgent to do. You close the eBook with the best intentions of reading it tomorrow…..

Hello and thanks for visiting my blog.

In this Module we are going to create a newsletter and opt-in form for your website.

Q, Why do I need to create a newsletter in the first place?

The answer to that is quite simple: Email Marketing!

Say for example you have a website but don’t have a newsletter. You will need to drive fresh traffic to your website over and over again. Some of those visitors may (or may not) make a purchase and then leave your site. Once they have left your website the chances of them coming back is somewhat slim as there are so many other websites to choose from. Meaning that you have to keep trying to drive fresh traffic to your site, (traffic = potential customers). This can be quite difficult to achieve and you will probably give up at some point in the near future, meaning all your hard work has been for nothing. Don’t get me wrong, you need to drive traffic to your site whether you have a newsletter or not, but……

……by creating a newsletter and placing an opt-in form on the same website you are able to capture leads, (potential customers), that are interested in what you have to offer.