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It might seem no big deal or anything new to most internet marketers as there are so much more lucrative forms of monetizing your blogs. And to many bloggers out there, blogs are no longer the domain of daily musings and gossip and stuffs. Rather, it has served as a platform of reaching out to a targeted group of audience and also potential customers.

And the more savvy ones have even turned it into a really profitable income stream.

Now personally, I’m not really concerned about monetizing my blog. True, I do have some Adsense ads and also one or two affiliate banners. But I really kept it to the bare minimal.

Cos I want it to use it more as a platform to communicate my thoughts, learnings and experiences and not let the ads serve as a distraction or even turn people off.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve nothing against monetizing your blog. In fact, creating niche blogs with Google Adsense ads can indeed serve as a profitable income stream as I have friends who make at least $5000 a month just using this income stream.

It’s just that for my main blog which is the one you’r reading right now, I do not wish for monetization as my main priority.

And sometimes, pasting those huge Google Adsense ads or any other banners all over can really serve as a distraction and do you more harm than good.

Hence, I would always rather focus on providing good content and the monetization will  kick in through your affiliate recommendations. Affiliate marketing certainly serves as a more lucrative form of monetization than joining any advertising agency.

Nonetheless, Nuffang does seem a good solution for local bloggers who blog occassionally or are new to the idea of internet marketing. It also pays out in Singapore Dollars so that’s a huge advantage. In fact, I just joined it to see what it offers. :)

However, for those who are really serious about making money online or even monetizing your blogs for that case, I would really recommend you start off with affiliate marketing.

Higher commissions and potential. Not to mention it certainly gears you towards building a long term business.

Of course, it also involves lots of had work and determination. Just like any business opportunity (both online and offline), there are also much learning and implementing involved of the latest strategies. So do check out Kanggie for more internet marketing strategies.

And for those who are really into monetizing blogs, Rob Benwell’s Blogging to The Bank serves as a great guide for beginners.

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What I Like About His Blog:

1. Attractive theme and colour

Firstly, the theme and the colour used for the blog is attractive. I especially like the refreshing orange colour used for most parts of the blog. From the header, to the navigation bar, to the opt in list, the colour is synchronized throughout and blends in nicely with each other. It breaks the monotony of a regular blog that is usually filled with only information and nothing else.

2. Easy Navigation

The table right at the top of the blog which lists the announcements and recommended articles is useful as it helps in navigating around the blog. Overall, the layout is clear and simple. And there aren’t many banner ads. I don’t get the idea that he is hard-selling anything to me, and can freely explore the blog with ease. Hence, it’s rather pleasing to the eye.

3. Useful Information

Overall, the blog does indeed provide useful content, especially for internet marketing newbies. It also recommends tools which I was unaware of previously. Most of the entries are aimed towards educating these newbies, which I feel is a relatively good outreach. And the theme of the content is focused, concentrating on well, Internet Marketing.

What I Dislike About This Blog:

1. Poor Usage of English

Ok, I must admit I might be biased in this aspect. I believe not everyone may be as particular as me, but I often pay close attention to the usage of English as it allows smooth transition of ideas when reading. No offence intended really, as I understand everyone’s command of English varies (I won’t say mine is perfect either). I do cringe when I notice poor grammar and sentence structure, and also obvious spelling errors. I admit that content is still the main priority, but blog entries should be kept free from grammatical and spelling errors as far as possible. One does not have to write in fluent or bombastic English. But in order to reach out and appeal to a wider audience, it would certainly help if the level of English is reasonable at least.

2. Inactive Forum

I felt that it was nice of Alvin to set up a forum, however I think it is very under utilized. I believe that if an interactive and vibrant forum is to be created, the owner has to take the first step to create the reason why people should participate in the forum and thereby encourage them to do so. As the forum is now relatively ‘dead’ without any activity, attempts to direct people to join the forum would probably end up futile.

Suggestions For Improvement:

1. Correct the spelling and grammatical errors

As mentioned above, a blogger should strive towards keeping his/her blog free from spelling and grammatical errors. He can get someone to proof read his entries. Furthermore, the titles of blog posts can be made more catchy and free from spelling errors To Alvin, if you find it troublesome or tedious, well, do at the very least proof read your recommended articles and perhaps, the ‘about me’ section. Anyway, I will willingly do it if I win the best review (*hint hint*). (Note: Change ‘Alvin’s personnel Story’ to ‘Personal Story’. )

2. Turn the Forum Alive

I understand it takes both time & effort to maintain an interactive forum, as I personally manage one as well. Nonetheless, if you are serious in using the forum to benefit others, you have to take the first step, for example by starting a controversial topic and getting others to feedback and participate actively.

I guess that’s about it. Having said so much, I must applaud Alvin for starting this campaign. Though he should benefit from the spike in traffic and the increased publicity, I feel it still takes a certain amount of courage to put your blog up for review, which is tantamount to having to face with criticisms. Though I do not expect him to face any backlash, as I guess most people will try to appear nice in the hope of winning the prize he has put up.

Nonetheless, as the saying goes, ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’. Good luck to Alvin. And for those of you who are interested in winning the Digital Video Creator, head on down to Alvin’s blog. I would love to have some competition.

Lastly, to those who are thinking of setting up a similar blog review campaign, do remember to include attractive prizes! It helps, well, look at what I’ve just spent my Sunday afternoon doing!

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10 Essential Plugins Everyone Out To Have

1. Optimal Title - Now by default, here’s how Wordpress displays your post::

Your Site Name >> Your Post Name

But by installing this plugin, your post will be displayed as:

Your Post Name at Your Site Name.

Hence, by placing your post name which includes your keywords first will increase your chances of getting ranked faster on the search engines. And it will appear more relevant to whoever is searching for that particular keyword.

2. Ultimate Tag Warrior - In simple terms, tags are like keywords which are used to categorize posts in the blogging community. It will help you build incoming links from Technorati, an essential community which you ought to join. Once you install this plugin, you will be able to include tags in your posts. And once you’ve tagged your posts, it will appear on Technorati under the tags you have stated. In other words, traffic!

3. Get Recent Comments - This plugin allows you to place excerpts of the most recent comments that have been placed in your blog. With this feature, it will attract further comments from your readers and hence build interaction.
4. Adsense-Deluxe - Allows you to place Google Adsense ads in your wordpress conveniently. I understand that you can simply copy and paste the code from your Google Adsense account. But for some who chooses to place Google Adsense ads in certain posts, it might be troublesome. So, this plugin enables you to just insert a special code each time you wanna place Adsense ads.
5. Related Posts - This plugin will display other posts which are relevant to your current post. Firstly, this builds inter-links within your blog. More importantly, it displays posts which might be of interest to your reader since it’s related to what he/she is reading. Thus, it will encourage them to stay longer on your blog.

6. aLinks - This wordpress plugin will convert words/phrases into links.

7. Sociable - Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites. hence, makes it easy for readers to bookmark your posts on social bookmarking sites.

8. Subscribe To Comments - This plugin will enable readers to subscribe to your comments. Hence, it encourages interaction and re-visits to your blog.

9. Popularity Contest - This plugin will help you identify and list your most popular posts. hence, it helps in getting an idea what your readers are most interested about and also helps to direct your readers to your most popular posts.

10. Sidebar Widget - And finally the last one! While I personally do not use it as is not supported by my theme, many have found it to be extremely useful. Makes it extremely convenient for anyone to arrange their sidebar by simply using drag-and-drop. Certainly saves beginners lots of hassle of customizing your sidebar.

And there you have it! The 10 Essential Plugins Everyone Ought To Have. Now this list is by no means comprehensive and there are many more plugins which have served many others well.I myself also use many more plugins. To get a more comprehensive list of useful plugins, you can visit Lorelle’s blog…

So what about you? Which plugins do u personally like other than those mentioned above? Do share ya!

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And man.. indeed there was! First up was Rachit, who was also using the same Wordpress theme as me. His sidebar was also at the bottom! And only on IE 6. Nope, not IE 7. Bewildering indeed.. Dropped him an email to inform him and he did a Google Analytics check and found out that a whopping 35% of his visitors was still using IE 6!

And his solution? He switched back to the default Wordpress theme! Woah what a drastic measure.. The advice he gave me was to switch back to more tried and tested themes.

Such as Regulus.. While for me, guess I just have to wait and see.. As I fell in love with this theme I’m currently using, so I’m just going to stick with it and pray hard and cross my fingers that no bug crops up again.

But one thing for sure, we should always try to view our websites/blogs on different browsers. For Rachit’s case, as it appears differently on IE 6 and IE 7, I seriously have no advice on how to double check on that.

Next up was Adam Wong, who also faced the same problem. Sidebar was normal with IE 7 and Mozilla but at the bottom at IE 6. Informed him about it as well..

That was two out of a few blogs that I checked!

Man! I wonder how many others faced the same problem too! And why isn’t anyone telling them about it??

Nonetheless, thinking that the whole Wordpress bug saga was over, I set my mind at ease.

But today, I received an email from Steven. He said he tried to leave a comment but he couldn’t as there was an error.

WHAT THE??? Isn’t everything supposed to be peaceful already??

And why is it the comments section posing a problem again??

Darn.. It has to be the plugin once again!

Deactivated it! And nope it won’t solve the prob. Now there was an error saying ‘the administrator did not activate the brian’s threaded comments plugin’. So I had to copy and paste Patricia’s ‘comments.php’ file into mine. And only then was I able to post comments.

Why did it happen?? I am equally clueless!! And since I still have to study for my test coming up, I decided to let the plugin win this time and not bother about it until the weekend.

Instead, decided to destress by blogging about it. Ahh.. And man I feel so good now..

Now it’s obvious that bugs do exist and no matter how careful we are, we still have to face them. Nonetheless, be calm when you encounter them!

And thanks alot to Steven. Though I’m not sure if anyone did attempt to post a comment unsuccessfully, I would like to be optimistic and think that was the reason why noone posted a comment for the past 3 days. Call me egoistic. I call it positive thinking!

haha.. enough of this wordpress nonsense.. Well, just wanna call out to all bloggers and readers! If you happen to see any errors surfacing in anyone’s blogs, do let them know! It will make their day and make the blogosphere a better place to blog in!

Alrighty.. To all bloggers frustrated with the bugs & errors, congrats! Cos you’re NOT alone!

God Bless & Have a Error-Free Blogging!

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For example, if you were to subscribe to my RSS Feed, you are able to view the content of my website using a feed reader say Google Reader. Hence, instead of you having to come to my website everyday to check if I’ve updated the content, you can simply log into your Google Reader to check.

Thus, if you have a habit of surfing say your favourite 10 different websites, you save yourself the hassle of visiting each individual website each day.

Some RSS feeds provide a summary of the content so you still have to visit the website directly to view the entire content. Nonetheless, you’re able to know which are the ones you have to visit at one glance.

RSS feeds not only serve to enhance your surfing experience, it helps in sustaining your readers as well. For example, lets say you do not update your posts frequently. And your readers have to come back to check for updates only to be disappointed each time. Sooner or later, they are going to stop coming back completely.

However, if they were to subscribe to your RSS feed, it would save them the hassle and time.

Hence, you should always make your RSS feeds avaliable for subscription.

To optimize your RSS feed subscription, there is a powerful service called Feedburner which every blogger out to sign up with. I only learnt of this service after reading Gobala Krishnan’s powerful eBook on blogging called Wordpress Adsense System.
To illustrate the usefulness of Feedburner, let’s take a look at how my default RSS feed looks like:

To see the full version, go to http://calvinwoon.com/feed
Notice how this doesn’t make any sense to a person who accidentally clicked on it without knowing what RSS is.

However, if I were to use Feedburner to burn my feed, my default feed is enhanced into this version:

Click on http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheInsightsOfCalvinWoon to see the full version.

As you can see, feedburner makes it easier for readers to subscribe to your RSS feed.

There are a couple of additional functions to it such as:

1. It allows your readers to easily send your links to their friends.

2. Users can bookmark your site directly from their feeds.

3. You can see the no. of comments received and various other functions.

If you were to scroll down my sidebar, you will come to a section called Syndicate this site and you will see options to subscribe to my RSS feeds.

Simply click on any of the feed reader to subscribe to my feed. The one I’m currently using is Google Reader so you might want to consider that as well. Hope you will enjoy this added convenience!

And for all bloggers, be sure to sign up for a free feedburner account at http://feedburner.com! If you need any help with it, drop me an email and I’ll do my best to assist you!

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