Free Templates

I highly recommend using free templates when you're putting together a new website or blog. It's easier to adapt an existing template then creating your own, especially if you don't feel very confident about html or css.

I recently wrote about one free template resource site - I think it's the web's best kept secret. You'll find out all about it in my new article:

Free Templates

Some of these free templates do need some tweaking. For instance, you might want to change the headers to reflect the headline for your blog or website. Or you might want to change the color scheme. But that's easily done by changing a few things in your css stylesheet.

So don't be afraid to use free templates if you're stumped putting together your next website or blog!

Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate Review

Have you heard of an Ebook by Chris Rempel called Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate?

It came out a while ago but it remains one of my absolute favorites in the "how to make serious money online category."

The best thing is that all of the information in Chris' book is going to remain timely for years to come, and none of it is dodgy black hat stuff that will put your website at risk. Too many ebooks teach flashy, questionable "systems" that end up being outdated just a few weeks after the eBook comes out.

You'll find none of that in Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate.

At my main badger blog I just posted a lengthy review so you'll want to take a look at it:

Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate Review

This is one of the very rare outstanding affiliate marketing eBooks that delivers on its promise. Read about how I am making serious money using his methods in my review.

Amazon's Affiliate Program - Amazon Associates

Did you know that Amazon Associates are raking it in selling everything from soy milk to DVD's to rhinos?

Okay, so maybe not rhinos, but I think Jeff Bezos is probably working on that - once he can solve the shipping cost problems.

It took me a long time to start making serious money as an Amazon Associate because I just wasn't promoting products the way I needed to. These days they make it easy for you because they sell so many things - electronics, food, home furnishings - you name it.

So it's not just about making a few pennies from a book sale anymore.

You can read more about some of my experiences making money as an Amazon affiliate here:

Amazon Affiliate Program Weirdness

A Must Have Free Guide to SEO

Some years ago a keyword expert named Dan Thies wrote a fabulous free guide to learning SEO (search engine optimization.) He has since updated it and if you feel hazy about SEO you really should download his free guide. There's no opt in or anything, you can just grab the PDF here at his site:

SEO Fast Start

Also I have an article up about SEO and how you should use certain plugins for your WordPress blog if you want to get it spidered well by the search engines:

SEO Fast Start-The Best Guide to Seo Anywhere.

Don't be intimidate by SEO. It's just a matter of learning how to do a few things consistently to improve rankings on your site. Anybody can learn, especially if they do a little reading on it and check out a free guide like Dan's.

Keep Your Online Business to Yourself

Why is it that when you tell people you work with websites they think you're engaging in something slightly illegal or, worse yet, that your time and talent have no value?

I talk about a funny experience I had at the chiropractor in a new post at my blog:

Sure I'll Design Your Website for You - Not!

People tend to think that if you work with websites you're an arms dealer or a diddler of small children.

Why is that, do you think? Why don't website designs and people who work with websites get more respect?

Wordpress Spinner Allows You to Update with Fresh Content

I'm not a big fan of article spinners, because usually they produce content that looks robot written instead of created by a human hand.

But my friend Gerry has been having some good results with a program called Wordpress Spinner which allows you to present fresh versions of content you've prewritten each time someone views your WordPress blog. So you write the content once, and the software spins it and dynamically presents a different version each time your blog loads. This keeps your blog looking fresh.

Gerry has something like 100 Wordpress niche blogs at last count and while he does update them with original content as fast as he can, the Wordpress Spinner allows him to keep the content fresh in the meantime because it presents a fresh version of the site to humans and search engine spiders.

You can also do some other cool things with Wordpress Spinner that are very tempting to me - like you can dynamically rotate any elements of the page like the header, footer, sidebar, ads, and even css stylesheets. This allows you to do true A/B split testing to test conversions of these elements on your blog. What if one header annoys people and prevents sales but another one entices people to buy? With Wordpress Spinner you can test these elements.

Gerry says he improved conversions by about three percent across the blogs where he is using Wordpress Spinner. Not too bad!

There is a similar piece of software called Php Spinner which lets you do the same things on your static html site, php site, or Joomla blog.

Testing is so important because just tweaking a sidebar or header can make a huge difference in your sales. And this software seems a really handy tool to do that for you, in addition to keeping your content looking fresh if you want to use the article spinning function.

I wrote a little more about WP Spinner at my main blog today:

WP Spinner and Php SPinner - Keep Your Content Looking Fresh

Overcome Writer's Block

Speaking as a woman with a gazillion websites and blogs, I often struggle with writer's block. It's so challenging coming up with original content that will really enrich reader's lives. I do my best to create unique material that covers my topics well, but even I have days when I need a kick or two to get my creative juices flowing.

Well I recently found a fabulous list of writing hooks that will help you if you are doing article marketing, bum marketing, or even just struggling to come up with some new content for a static website or blog.

I write about it here:

Overcome Writers Block.

Have a look and see what you think! Overcoming writer's block can be tough, and I believe that every writer can use a cheat sheet like this.