Brian Vaughan

Free Reviews

Posted by Brian

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Well, those of you that have stopped by will notice things look a bit different. I’m not done yet, I still have to do a little coding to enable widgets in the sidebar and a few other small things. I’m trying to pump some new life into the site and the main way to really do that is of course post.

To post though, I have to have things to write about, which isn’t all that hard but I also want to help out people that have been reading my site. Now how am I going to do this? Well there are at least 35 of you that were interested in this site and subscribed to the RSS feed, and stayed subscribed even when I wasn’t posting. So I am offering all of you a free review (not that I’m charging for reviews now anyways) of your website, or a service/product you offer.

If you are interested in getting a review done for you feel free to contact me and we can work out a review for you. If it is a product/service you want me to review I will need a free trial to be able to review it properly.

Do you like this post? Want to see me get drunk? Buy me a beer.

7 Must Have Plugins

Posted by Brian

Lots of people blog, and lots of people use plugins for Wordpress. In fact I’m willing to bet everyone uses at least one. There are some we just could not live without. There are some that make the process so much easier, and more enjoyable. No one likes sifting through hundreds (if not thousands) of spam comments that is why we have Akismet. There are so many plugins out there, and so many that do similar things that it is hard to pick which plugins are right for you the blogger.

Having too many plugins isn’t a good thing, having too many can slow down the speed of your site. You don’t want that, if your readers have to wait for your site to load, odds are they will just close the window and go on the the next blog. So how do you choose which ones to use on your blog? First you need to figure out what you want to do with your blog. If you want to make money with your blog with ads, you will probably want to have a plugin that makes inserting ads on your blog easier. Plugins when used correctly will make your life as a blogger easier and faster.

Recently a few people have asked me what plug-ins I use and would recommend to them. Well here is my list of the 7 plugins that every Wordpress blog should have in my opinion.

1. Akismet - it gets rid of that pesky spam
2. All in One SEO Pack - Just genious. Lets you customize the meta tags, titles, descriptions, keywords, everything that will help you rank better in the search engines
3. Adsense-Deluxe - Want to easily show your Adsense ads on your blog? in your posts? Then this is the plug in for you, so much freedom.
4. FeedBurner Feedsmith - Easy way to display and keep track of all your RSS readers. Displays so much information about your readers, click through rates what reader they are using, just a great plug in
5. Dagon Design Form Mailer - Every site should have a way for users to contact you, this makes it seamless
6. WWSGD - This plugin display a short message to new visitors of your blog urging them to subscribe to your RSS feed.
7. and bringing up the rear Dofollow - Let the Google juice flow. This plug urges your readers to comment more on your blog because it will help then get better rankings in Google.

Those are the basic plugins I use on all of my Wordpress sites. What plugins do you use? Got one you want to share I would love to hear what it is.

Do you like this post? Want to see me get drunk? Buy me a beer.

Two Great New Programs

Posted by Brian

Lots of hype has been going on about the websites DealDotCom and BlogRush. Both of these sites have exploded into the blogosphere over the past week. I almost feel like I’ve missed my opportunity to really promote these two fantastic resources for bloggers, because by now most people that will be interested in joining those two programs that read this site have already joined through someone else.

DealDotCom is a website similar to Woot in that it offers one product per day until it sells out. Once that happens you will have to wait until the next day to get another product. So far the site has been a relative huge success with two great products for the first days. One great feature is, if you have a product you want to sell, you can try and get it listed on the site for sale. That is a great way to get your product out there to the masses. Now of course DealDotCom takes a cut of the profits from the sale but having them sale the product for you means your not having to put a lot of money into advertising yourself which is always good. They offer a great affiliate program for both tier 1 and tier 2 at 35% and 15% respectfully, just keep in mind what you get is based on the profit that DealDotCom makes not what the item is actually selling for.

The second program is BlogRush, which aims to “rushing” your blog with new visitors. Yes I know excuse the pun, but that is in fact what BlogRush is intended to do. In short, you earn impressions on other blogs by showing the BlogRush widget on your own site. For every impression you give, you earn one impression on the network. 1:1 ratio very nice, most exchanges like this are 2:1 or even 3:1, 1:1 is very nice indeed. I will admit I have been running it for awhile now, and haven’t really had great success with it, I have recieved one new visitor from BlogRush. One new person to my site for just sticking some code on my sidebar? Seems pretty good to me. One thing I have noticed is a lot of people have been complaining about poor performance with the network. Your headlines mean a lot with BlogRush, you have to have eye catching titles to entice people to click on them. So while writing your posts make sure you have good titles so people will notice them.

Do you like this post? Want to see me get drunk? Buy me a beer.

Why Do YOU Blog?

Posted by Brian

People start blogs for different reasons, some just for fun, some just because its the “cool” thing to do nowadays. Right now a lot of people are starting them just to try and make a quick buck. People hear about the blogs making $X,XXX-$XX,XXX a month just blogging, and they get excited and decide to jump in and try and do the same thing.It is true some people do make quite a bit of money every month with blogging take John Chow, John Cow, Shoemoney, ProBlogger and others, but don’t expect to go from 0 to the likes of one of them overnight. Does this sound like you? If that is you, you may want to rethink why it is you are actually blogging. Most blogs that the only reason the do it is to make money will simply fail, no ifs ands or buts about it.

Why is this you ask? Well, if your just in it for the money there is no passion in what you are writing about. You have to have a fire within to write good, informative content for your readers to read. If your eyes are just on the prize that may be at the end of the tunnel you are going to have a hard time getting through that tunnel with out tripping in the dark. You have to have the fire within to light the tunnel up and guide you. Now some of you are saying, but but money is what I am passionate about, that is what I want and love, that is why I blog because I want more of it, that is a little different. You still have to be passionate about what you are writing about or writing for.

When I first started this blog, I did so basically just as a motivational tool for myself and to keep track on some different websites that I have in production and that I already have up and somewhat running. Now you are saying but you have ads and are trying to make money from this site. Yes it is true that I have ads posted on the site, and if I make a few bucks that is great, but if not I’m cool with that as well. This blog is basically here for me to document how my Online ventures are going, the setbacks and the breakthroughs. Never know maybe one day this site itself will be a major breakthrough and become one of my biggest sites, only time will tell. Try and not let the $$$$ blind you, blogging is hard work if you want to make money at it, especially if you if you want to make a living at it.

So I challenge you to take a few minutes out of your busy day and really sit down and think about, why exactly do YOU blog. For money? for networking? for fun? to keep in touch with friends and family? Come on and tell me why YOU blog.

Do you like this post? Want to see me get drunk? Buy me a beer.

August Review

Posted by Brian

Well August is over (thankfully). This month has had it’s ups and downs. As I mentioned in my last post Very Bad Month several of my electronics decided to die on me including my computer. Which of course makes it hard to blog as often as one would like to. I was talking to the ever popular John Cow about that a few days ago before I left going to New York, his advise? start a blog. Again though not having a very reliable/good computer to do the work on makes it a pain to keep something updated.

When the month first started it looked like I was about to have an incredible month with Adsense (at least for me). Was looking like I would make over $100 just with Adsense for the month, but the second half of the month it took a nose dive and hardly trickled the rest of the month and ended out only bringing in $47.56 with Adsense.

Misc - $75.54
Adsense - $47.56
Adbrite - $2.44
YPN - $0.46
Kontera - $0.10
___________________________
Total = $126.10

Do you like this post? Want to see me get drunk? Buy me a beer.

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