Hi, thanks for stopping by.

Do you need a little help:

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.

If you want to pause the video as you carry out each step then open another browser tab and have this post displayed on both. That way you can switch between the two and stop start the video as needed and copy or connect from the other. It saves going up and down, back and forth etc.

Before you can take any action you need to go through your pictures and select an image of yourself to use as your gravatar, remember it will be widely seen across the internet so chose wisely. You can always change it later if you wish to .

Ok, here’s the video, I’ll place a Gravatar link and plugins mentioned beneath it. In the bottom right corner there’s a toggle button so you can view in full screen, just press escape to minimize the screen again.

Having got your photo ready you then need to sign up with Gravatar using the same email address that you use for your WordPress blog.

Then open your WordPress admin panel and go to the Plugins section, where you need to click the Add New button and enter WordPress Gravatars.

Following the instruction in the video you will be able to install, activate and configure the settings for the WordPress Gravatars Plugin.

Once you have done that open a new tab and visit your blog to see how it looks.

If you would like to install the comment reply plugin that I show you during the video it’s called  WordPress Thread Comment and is installed in exactly the same way as the  WordPress Gravatars Plugin.

As mentioned in the video the two plugins have instructions to include your gravatar, so you may see two images but don’t be alarmed as during the video I show you how to overcome this problem.

As always, I appreciate your comments

Until next time, take care

No related posts.

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….

Ok, I can hear you…”What is the point of this post and how is it going to be different?”

Let me explain…

The point of this post is to Save you money on your “eBook Graphics” and pass on a free lesson that I have found. It’s different because……….I’m going to ask you to go and read someone else’s blog post.

My last couple of posts have been about blogging and to demonstrate the benefits of visiting blogs I want to bring a post to your attention. As you know I spend quite a bit of time visiting other blogs and when I found this post it instantly took first place for the Best Free Lesson I have found online this year!

Before I tell you who and where I want to ask you to do 3 things:

1. Open your mind to future products
2. Think of all the old PLR material you have sitting on your Hard Drive
3. Clear your desk for 18 minutes; 2 minutes reading and a 16 minute video.

Oh, sorry there’s a 4^th, make your self a coffee, come back and get comfortable, then click the following link to Sally Neill’s Blog Post.

If you like the video please leave Sally a comment saying so and she may make more for us all to share.

If you have also found valuable lessons that are free for everyone to see please leave a comment below and let us all know about them, if you include a link i will check them before publishing your comment, thanks.

Until next time, take care

No related posts.

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”?

For my contribution to the challenge I’ve decided to continue the subject of blogging from my last post and try to offer some advice on how to construct a blog post. Now I’m no master blogger, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have some experience and it is this experience that I want to pass on to those that are new to it and may be struggling to try and keep their momentum going.

Did you notice that I said construct a blog post rather than write one? Well the reason I said that is because I think it is true for the new blogger. You see once you have experience and some success you will be able to write about it, but until then you have to construct your posts and to do that you need to research the subject that you’re writing about.

Researching a subject isn’t very hard. You obviously have a computer and an internet connection so visit Google and enter the subject you wish to research and forums in quotation marks, for example “weight loss forums”. I’ve just searched for that term and found 78,100 results. From there you enter some of these forums and begin to absorb the information, obviously making notes as you go.

The easiest way of making notes is to start a swipe file. A swipe file is a folder containing the notes that you have copied from these forums. You simply open notepad and paste in the information that you are using for your research and save it to the swipe folder. Note: You must never copy the swipe file into your post as that is plagiarism and illegal. You simply use it for researching your chosen subject.

Once you have done the research and gathered the information for the blog post write a draft copy in your word processor. I use open office writer as it spell checks everything for me. Don’t keep going back and correcting your spelling, do that all at once when you’ve finished writing the complete draft.

Next is keyword research, which may sound daunting but it really isn’t anything to worry about. Visit Google Keyword Tools and you will see the following screen:

Please click the image to see full size.

The trick now is to find alternative keyword phrases with a high search rate but low results. To do this you want to check the term on google again, but be sure to put the term in quotation marks, this will instruct google to search for the exact term and they will show you the results accordingly.

For Example:
“quick weight loss” produced 968,000 results, which is to much competition.
“weight loss advice” produced 159,000 results, much less competition.

You want less competition to have a better chance of being found by the search engines.

Now that you have your keyword phrases go back to your draft blog post and enter the keywords into your post, so as to have a flow of words that make sense.

Spell check the post now, and also check the grammar. When you’re happy with it save your work and come away from it for a little while. If you can, get someone else to proof read it. I always ask my wife or daughter to read all of my writings as fresh eyes tend to read it all and will spot any mistakes. When I try to proof read them I tend to speed read as I know what is coming and I do tend to miss my errors. If possible leave it over night and have another read in the morning, prior to posting it on your blog.

Please Note: Different people have different opinions about how many words should be in a blog post. Some say it should be between 200 and 400 words, while others say it should be at least 700 words. Who am I to say who’s right and who’s wrong, after all its their work on their blogs. For my blog posts I aim for 400 words but I will keep typing until I have given my readers the full story and that can sometimes be close to a thousand words. If the post is interesting and has a flow to it people will read it to the end. If, however, it has no flow and is hard to read people will just close the page meaning your efforts are wasted. Please bear this in mind when writing.

Okay, you’ve completed the post and are eager to publish it, so you post it to your blog.

Now you need to let people know that it is online, but before you do that I recommend that you install a plugin called Comment luv. This plugin places the title of your blog visitors last post below their comments, which in turn encourages them to leave comments.

Once you have the plugin installed it’s time to start visiting other blogs and leaving comments for their blog posts. Most blog owners will return the gesture and visit your blog to leave you a comment, especially if they see that you have comment luv installed as they know that it will generate them traffic back to their blogs in the future.

New Bloggers: I hope that you have found this post helpful and that it encourages you to post to your blogs more often. If so please leave me a comment and let me know, I will reply to every comment left.

Established Bloggers: As I said earlier I’m no master blogger, I’m just trying to help others with my experience. If you can add your tips to this post and pass on a little help we would be very grateful.

As always I welcome your comments, especially for this post as it is my contribution to the “100 Blog Comment Challenge”. Will I succeed or fail in my quest to reach 100 comments?

That, my friends, is now in your hands.

Please use the tweet buttons as well to send a tweet of this post to your followers.

Until next time, take care.

Related posts:

1. Encouraging New Blog Owners

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.

When we start anything new it is quite often difficult to keep the momentum going as we still have our normal daily commitments that have to come first and then there’s the problems that pop up and stop us in our tracks.

To name a few:

• Work: This is a major hurdle when trying to carve a new career as you still have the bills to pay and a family to keep secure. However when you’re working take a notepad and pen with you and make notes about what comes to mind. Even if you wrote a blog post about your work and why you want things to change.
• Family: We all like to spend time with our families. Isn’t that why we work so hard, so we can spend quality time with them? I have every Sunday away from the computer and spend the whole day with my wife and children. Maybe you could do the same and take them out for the day and then write a post about where you went or what you did. Randy Smith starts all of his blog posts with a catch up and quite often talks about what he’s been doing off-line with his family.
• Health: I know all about health issues getting in the way and stopping you moving forward. I won’t harp on about my situation, just read my posts from the past year and you’ll see for yourself the hurdles I’ve had to face. But face them I have, and through doing what I can when I can I have moved forward.
• Problems in general: I view life and its problems like an athletic track with hurdles, with the problems being hurdles. No sooner have you got over one when another one appears. When you’re faced with the hurdles you have 4 options:
  • Get over it
  • Get around it
  • Get through it
  • Get stuck by it

Obviously the 4^th one isn’t an option for us as we have already started to get over our main problem by starting the course in the first place, we just need to keep going.

Maybe the lack of blogging is because you’re in the product development stage of the course. If so write a post about how your product or salespage is taking shape. You’ll start to build relationships with your readers and they may become eager for your product, or share some tips to help you. Terry Conti does this and gets a good response, go and check his blog out.

Could it be that you’re getting stuck for ideas of what to write about on your blog and need some inspiration? If so visit other blogs using the Masterclass blog roll (on the right of your screen) and see what other students are writing about. This post is a prime example of that, as I said at the start I visited Mandy Allen’s, Bill Murney’s and Terry Conti’s blogs and here we have a post generated from those visits.

It really is that simple.

Then start spreading your wings and visit established blogs that are in your niche and start building relationships there. I spend a little time visiting blogs every day, except Sundays, and leaving comments. Not silly comments like “Great blog I’ll be back for more”, but comments that relate to the post. This helps build relationships with the blog owners and most of the time will bring them back to my blog, where they will also leave a comment for me. Take a look down the right hand side of this page and you’ll see a list of my Top Commentators, visit them and get some ideas for your blog.

If you don’t quite understand something ask the blog owner to elaborate on it, or to email you more details. I often email blog owners and ask for advice or help, and guess what….. so far I have got a response from them every time!! I have even emailed some of the MC students when I’ve seen them making a mistake or if they have errors on their blogs, which also helps build relationships.

Your blog is like your office window and through it your readers, subscribers, followers and customers all have a chance of communicating with you directly. When they visit 3 or 4 times and see the same blog post every time do you think they’ll come back for a 5^th or 6^th visit?

It’s doubtful isn’t it?

So have a little look at some of the blogs out there and try to find the inspiration that you need, like my good friend John Edwards says:

“Within your inspiration lies success”

Established Blog Owners: If you come across new blogs that haven’t been updated for some time please leave them a comment of encouragement. Also, If you could add some tips to this post and help those that are stuck I’m sure they’d be very grateful.

By the same token, if you’re struggling let us know how we can help.

Until next time, take care

Related posts:

1. The Importance Of Comments and Replies on Your Blog

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.

Let me elaborate a little: A non branded denim jacket saying something like: Heavy Duty Denim Jacket bla bla bla Not Levis, or Heavy Duty Denim Jacket bla bla bla similar to Levis

Or The latest film title on DVD bla bla bla not Blu-ray.

I’m sure you get the picture.

Some people, knowing that keyword spamming is not allowed, try and get clever by including non relevant keywords in white text on a white background so that they are not seen by the human eye in the hope that they’ll slip through the eBay team assigned to checking the listings. This is a waste of time as eBay have software that also checks the listings, and the software sees all text, regardless of its colour, and flags up the offending listings.

It’s against eBay’s policies to do anything that manipulates the search or browse experience on eBay, this includes all parts of your listing: Title, Sub-title, Pictures, Item Details and Descriptions.

When eBay catch you doing this they will remove your listing and give you a warning. If you have further listings in the fixed price fromat their position within the listings could also be reduced, which will obviously affect your sales. If you continue trying to list items in this way, or try to hide your text, (white text on white background), your account will be suspended.

So you see it really isn’t worth the risk.

If you struggle to find successful wording for your listings then my good friend Randy Smith can help. Randy noticed that some listings, of identical items, were having mixed results. While some were selling like hot cakes others weren’t even being bid on. Being an inquisitive guy Randy looked into why this was happening and spent time researching it. As a result of his research Randy has written Magic Auction Words, which is a massive collection of MAGIC Words and Phrases that will grab your prospect’s attention, INFLUENCE them to visit your auction page and PERSUADE them to bid-on or buy your product!

It’s the perfect reference if you’re auctioning-off products or services to regular consumers, businesses, auction buyers and sellers, marketers, entrepreneurs, MLMer’s, affiliates, web masters, executives, investors, opportunity seekers, etc.

By having this ebook on your desktop, You’ll be able to Save Hours of thinking about what to write and you’ll Discover How to Work Less to get those visitors to click on your links.

Once you’ve read Magic Auction Words you could use Randy’s persuasive words and phrases in a variety of ways….

….pop over and see exactly how. I know you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Until next time, take care.

Related posts:

1. Start Making Money On eBay With The eBay Want It Now Listings
2. A Quick Way to Find a Bargain on eBay Time after Time
3. Fine Tune Your Research For Successful Sales With eBay Pulse

Hi all and thanks for visiting my blog.

Is This The Age of Disposable Computers?

No of course not, but let me explain this little tale and you’ll see how I got that title….

About 18 months ago I upgraded my PC and gave my daughter my old one for her college work.

Shortly after this I had a bit of a scare regarding my eBook website which made me sit up and think about backing up my system, sites, files, folders and everything else that I have sat on my computers.

I bought myself an external hard drive with a huge amount of storage on it and backed everything up. I then went to my laptop and old PC and moved all of my files and folders onto the external HD, so that all of my work is in one place and safe.

I then went to Acronis and tried their free 30 day trial, so as to back up on a regular basis. I was so impressed that after the free trial I bought the software.

Anyway on with my tale…..

Last week my daughter came to me and said that her PC wouldn’t boot up. I asked if her work was safe. Very wisely she back ups her college work to a memory stick after every session.

I then got onto a friend that fixes my PC’s for me and asked his advice. He came back to saying that it could be many things. He would need to take it away in order to test it. It may be a failed hard disk/memory or it could be a software issue.

He also pointed out that if it’s more than 5 years old, it may not be worth doing as he would need to charge £80 for the diagnostics, plus if it’s the hard disk or memory, that could add another £45 per item to the cost.

He would be able to fix any software virus problems OK, but he would have to do the diagnostics first, to make sure there wasn’t an underlying issue.

The computer is over 5 years old so would cost me at least £80 to find the fault and then more money to fix it. I decided to have a look on eBay and see if there were any towers on offer.

Bingo… I found a Dell, P4 with XP, professionally refurbished and ready to go for £39.99 + £10 P&P, £50 total!! Can you believe that price? It was cheaper to replace the PC than to fix it.

I bought it and waited for its arrival. Two days later it arrived and we entered my daughters room like it was an F1 pit stop, ……well sort of……

The old PC was removed and the new one installed. Total cost £50

If I hadn’t copied all the files and folders to my external HD the PC would’ve had to have gone to the menders and I would have to have repaired it regardless of cost.

So before any mishaps come your way Go and get yourself an external hard drive and protect yourself, your work and your future!

Why do I mention your future? I hear you ask…..

If you lost all of your work from your computer right now, would you, could you, sit at your PC and start it all over again????

So let me repeat: Before any mishaps come your way Go and get yourself an external hard drive and protect yourself, your work and your future!

It’ll be one of the best investments you make.

Until next time, take care..

No related posts.

Hello and thanks for visiting my blog.

We are all aware that eBay are forever changing things on their site.

Over recent years the changes to their feedback system and policies have seen some sellers throw the towel in and give up.

Some of those changers were:

• Restricting the sale of digital download items, music, eBooks, images etc as they believed these sales could lead to feedback manipulation.

• Removing the ability of a seller to leave Negative feedback for a buyer. Which for many sellers was their protection from buyers being over excited and leaving negative feedback. Or if negative feedback was left some buyers would use threats of returning the negative feedback unless the buyer removed it from seller.

• Adding the DSR (Detailed Seller Rating) feature, where a buyer will rate the seller on 4 key areas: Item description, Communication, Dispatch Time and P&P charges. Scoring from one to five, with five being Top Marks. The sellers DSR is then calculated and their fixed price listings are then placed on the eBay pages according to how good their DSR is. Which basically means if you have a good DSR your items will be well placed, but if you have a poor DSR your listings will be lower in the listings.

eBay’s feedback system is under constant scrutiny, discussion and criticism, with sellers claiming it to be unfair to them. Well I’m pleased to be able to tell you that eBay are concerned about their feedback system being exploited and are now actively working to protect sellers from buyers who misuse or abuse it.

A small minority of buyers have been known to:

• Threaten the seller with negative feedback unless the seller provides goods or services not included in the original listing.
• Purchase many items from the same seller and leave them negative feedback regardless of the buying experience.
• Leave abusive feedback.
• Leave positive feedback but score the seller a low DSR.

When buyers are found to leave a large amount of low DSR’s they are now being sent an email explaining the impact of low DSR scores to the seller and informing them of how feedback should be left. Should they continue to leave low DSR’s, or if they are found to be in competition with the buyer, the feedback left will be removed and the buyers account, and any related selling accounts, will be suspended.

As a seller you are also protected because eBay ensure that a single buyer does not have a disproportionate impact on a seller by causing them to lose their status, such as eBay Top-rated, or preventing them from gaining it.

There are some measures that you can take yourself to help protect your feedback.

If you receive negative or neutral feedback you can ask the buyer to revise it once you have corrected the problem. Drop them an email asking what the problem was, and remember you must always remain polite in your emails and stick to what was stated in your salespage and your returns policy. A genuine buyer with a genuine complaint will reply and tell you exactly what made them leave poor feedback, they’ll also welcome the fact that you want to try and correct it.

You will also find some petty buyers won’t reply to your emails to let you know what was wrong, especially if it was a cheap item. Well did you know…..

…..You can block individual buyers from being allowed to bid on your items. Type Block Bidders into the help pages on eBay and follow the simple guide.

You can also block buyers from buying your items. If you set your buyer requirements to block buyers with unpaid items or policy violation reports recorded against them it’ll help keep some of the unsavoury buyers from your eBay door. Type Buyer Requirements into the help pages on eBay and follow the simple guide.

Don’t be to strict though, we all had to start somewhere and it’s the unsavoury buyers we want to keep away from not the newbies that haven’t gained Feedback yet!!

In the event that you do receive poor feedback you can also send the buyer a Feedback revision request, but please note that for every 1000 feedback scores in any given 12 month period you can only request 5 revisions. So use them sparingly. You must also have resolved the issue with the buyer and explain to the buyer why you are requesting the revision.

While I’m pleased that eBay are now trying to protect sellers I feel that they still have a long way to go before they have levelled the playing field. But at least they are moving in the right direction, remember eBay are treading a very fine line trying to please buyers and sellers alike.

If you are having problems with a buyer pop over to this eBay help page and see what you can do about it. Like eBay say “If sellers don’t tell us about their problems, we won’t be able to prevent a buyer from doing the same thing again”.

For the Uk:
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/report_problem.html

For the US:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/report_problem.html

For other countries: Copy and Paste the above link into Notepad and replace the extension (.com or .co.uk) with the extension that you use for your usual eBay site.

Visit the page now and Bookmark it, you never know when you may need it.

Remember your Feedback IS your eBay reputation and you need to protect it at all times.

Related posts:

1. A Quick Way to Find a Bargain on eBay Time after Time
2. eBay and PowerSeller Policy Changes
3. Start Making Money On eBay With The eBay Want It Now Listings

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.

During the video I show you what Total Web Traffic has to offer and towards the end of the video I show you some of the results that I have had from following the course.

Please watch the video and feel free to leave your comments afterwards. Below the video you will find a link to the special offer that Dave Nicholson has made available to us.

Dave’s Special Offer: Total Web Traffic Discount

As always, if you have any problems you can either leave a comment or email me for assistance.

Until next time, take care

Related posts:

1. Generating Traffic To Your Websites
2. Part 2 of The Newbies Guide to Editing and Uploading a Website
3. Part 4 of The Newbies Guide To Editing and Uploading Their 1st Website

The Importance Of Comments and Replies: + Plugins To Help With Each

Hello everyone, thanks for visiting my blog.

I was hoping to have the next video of the Newbies Guide created and online by now but last week I had so many things go wrong that I just didn’t have the time to create it.

I had optimized the sales page for Ease The Squeeze With Auctions and when I uploaded it the whole page turned Chinese. There had been an error in the loading code and no matter how many times I uploaded it I couldn’t correct it. So I deleted the page and started all over again, that was 3 days taken out of my schedule, but it’s done now.

Onto the blog post:

Regular visitors, that leave a comment, would have noticed that things have changed slightly.

I’ve added a few plugins to enhance my blog for the search engines. You see every time a comment is left the search engines view it as fresh content and the search engine spiders are all over it. The more comments, and replies, the better results you’ll get from the search engines.

Not only that but those that leave comments also generate back links to there website, which in turn helps their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and helps move their website up the rankings. The more comments you leave on other peoples blogs the better your ranking will become, especially if you’re commenting on blogs that are in the same niche as yourself and you use keywords, where appropriate, in your comments.

The new plugins are:

CommentLuv: Allows people to automatically add a link to their last blog post to their comments. Which makes it easier for future visitors to click and connect to your blog. If you’ve seen blogs with commentluv installed on them you would have noticed the little heart shaped icon. If you register with commentluv then your details will appear in a small box every time someone hovers over the icon. Not only that but if you register yourself with commentluv then when you leave a comment on a blog that also uses commentluv you can choose from your previous 5 blog posts, allowing you to fine tune which of your posts is more relevant to the one you’re about to comment on. Thus allowing the chance of pulling some readers from that blog to yours.

WordPress Thread Comments: Allows you to reply to comments, and place your reply directly below the comment you’re replying to. Each of your replies are also viewed as a fresh comment, helping to feed the SEO spiders and increase your ranking. I used to reply to comments by editing the comment and leaving my reply beneath it. While this may look pretty it does not help with the search engines and there’s no way of automatically letting the person know that you have replied to their comment. With this plugin every visitor is able to reply to any comment and start a conversation going.

Subscribe To Comments: This little beauty does exactly what it says in the title. It allows you to subscribe to comments, by checking the box beneath your comment it will automatically send an email to you, and all of those that have previously left comments, every time a new comment is left. Allowing you to build a community and carry on the conversation. Don’t worry you’re not added to any mailing list and you can unsubscribe at any time by clicking a link within each email.

All of these plugins are FREE and can be installed by going to your WordPress admin panel, clicking the Plugins link and select add new.

Then just enter:

CommentLuv > search > install > activate.
WordPress Thread Comments > search > install > activate.
Subscribe To Comments > search > install > activate.

None of these need to be edited in any way.

To register with CommentLuv please visit http://comluv.com

Some blog owners may be concerned about seeing their name appear in the recent comments section to often. I’ve got over this by going to my widget section, finding my recent comments subtitle and adding & Replies to it.

Recent Comments & Replies now shows people that I read and reply to all of the comments left, which I hope will generate more comments being left.

Now let’s test it; shall we? Please leave a comment and let me know what you think of this new system I’ve added. Don’t forget to subscribe to comments and get any replies sent straight to your inbox.

Do you think this would benefit your blog?

What Plugins do you currently use and why?

Until next time,
take care, Barry

Update: Some readers have very kindly added information on other plugins that they have found useful.  I have installed the plugins and can say that they work a treat, and they have improved my blog.

Please read the comments left to find out more.

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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.

Finding repeated listings can be time consuming. There is software out there to make it easier for you, but that costs money. Unfortunately you will have to spend either your time or your money on this, but it is worth it. Use some of your time first to check it out, and decide from there.

Ok Barry, how do we find the want it now section on eBay?

Log into your eBay account and click on the help link in the top right corner. On the following page just enter Want It Now and click search. You will then see a selection of topics relating to Want It Now, click on the top one and it will take you to an information page where you will find a link to the listings.

Wow Barry there are literally thousands of listings there. How do I sort through that lot to find the repeated listings you spoke of?

This is where the time factor kicks in. All of the listings are placed according to the time and date that they were listed and it could be that there are weeks between repeated listings. So we need to filter that information and we do this using Notepad and a spread sheet, as follows:

1. First of all copy and paste the complete page of listings into a notepad doc. This will copy listing title, responses and the date of the listing.
2. Next, open a spread sheet using Excel or a similar program.
3. Now switch from notepad to spread sheet, cutting and pasting each listing title from the notepad to the spread sheet. Placing all of the titles beneath one another in the spread sheet cells.
4. When you have completed that, with only the responses and listing dates remaining, you can close the notepad doc, without saving it.
5. Return to your spread sheet and save your work. Now click the top of the column to highlight all of the cells with the titles in.
6. Now click the Data tab from across the top and select Sort by A-Z.

The titles will then be rearranged into alphabetical order, allowing you to spot repeated listings with relative ease. As I said this can be time consuming, but the results will speak for themselves.

If you find that to time consuming then check out the AuctionYen Video that will show you some software that will do all the work for you.

Until next time, Best of luck
Barry

Related posts:

1. A Quick Way to Find a Bargain on eBay Time after Time
2. Fine Tune Your Research For Successful Sales With eBay Pulse
3. More policy changes coming to eBay