If you’re looking for an effective solution to help get your blog noticed then the Contextual Partnership Plugin for WordPress bloggers could be well worth consideration. Perhaps the most attractive aspect is that there is no cost involved.

According to the developers the plugin is designed to;

Drive more targeted visitors to your blog (or blogs) by strategically linking your blog to and from other bloggers participating in the network. The exact method used to achieve this remains confidential but apparently it’s not a basic reciprocal link exchange – nor the more common 3 way linking arrangement often seen between bloggers.

Enhance the user experience for your blog visitors by providing them with links to other high quality blogs for further information on subjects of interest (and it can do this without you actually loosing the visitor which is a great feature).

Indirectly increase your search engine rankings by building highly relevant incoming links to your blog for keyword terms you define, related to your own niche market.

Not a bad indirect benefit at all.

To better understand how the network works, first you need to know what a “contextual link” actually is. A contextual link is simply a link “within content” of a blog post and “within context” of specific keyword terms in that post. For example the term “dog training” found within a blog post becomes a link out to another blog (related to “dog training”) within the network. Contextual Links are found all over the internet – bloggers interlink their own pages contextually, there are paid advertising programs that allow you to place contextual advertising links and earn per click, and bloggers naturally link out to other websites they find useful “contextually” as well.

This is the key to the “Contextual Partnership”. When you install and setup the WordPress Plugin, you’re asked to provide the URL’s you wish to advertise on other partners blogs, and the keyword terms you want those blogs to use to link back to your own. When a match is found within the network for the keyword terms you provide (and assuming it meets with the Contextual Partnership’s strategic linking methodology), a link back to your blog is assigned, and your account has a credit removed.
The amount of credits your account holds appears to be directly related to the number of links you’re providing to other partners in the network for the keyword terms they themselves are looking to use to advertise. Apparently for every link you provide for another partner, you earn 1 credit. That 1 credit is then “cashed in” to assign a link back to your own blog from other partners whenever a match is found for your own keyword terms. So if you already have 100 posts in your blog, and each of those pages finds a match to provide a link to another partner, then technically you could receive 100 incoming links to your blog as soon as you’ve been approved to participate in the partnership. You also continually earn more points and incoming links as you continue to blog and add more posts just like you usually do.

That’s the basic overview and you’ll find more specific information on the plugin website including details of many features not mentioned here (like the ability to select specifically which blog posts you want to include – or nor include in the network)…

http://www.contextualpartnership.com

Uptake by the blogger community seems to have been extremely good and this new service looks to become very popular. In the first two weeks of launch the partnership already had over 54,000 individual places to place links throughout the network, and within the first 4 weeks over 10,000 advertising links had been allocated between network partners. This is most likely a result to how easy it is to actually setup the plugin and participate – it literally takes 5 minutes to install and setup – although approval can take anywhere from 24-72 hours depending on the moderation queue as only high quality blogs are accepted to participate to keep out the splogs and spammers.
This seems to be one of those services worth giving a shot for a few months, and by the looks of things the developers have some exciting new features in the pipeline to make things even more effective for partners in the future.

You can find out full details and download the plugin below…

http://www.contextualpartnership.com

Or alternatively you can download the plugin directly from WordPress…

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contextual-partnership-link-exchange-plugin/

My main suggestion would be to go find yourself a hosting service. Many web hosting services offer packages that include web site building tools. This is in fact a common (and quick and easy) way to build your own web site. That’s the upside. It is quite a good option if you are sure about the web hosting service; like if someone you know very well (and is knowledgeable) recommends it. This is because of the potential downside: if you use this option and you find out that you don’t like the hosting service, you might not be able to migrate your web site.

Another excellent option is to use WordPress. WordPress is very popular as a blogging platform but it can offer so much more than that. You can start with the free version and if you find yourself needing more, then paying for the premium service is well worth it.

Squidoo is another thing that you might want to look at. I know a lot of small businesses using Squidoo – it’s free and easy to use. The downside is that you have to create your web site within their own web site.

Luck!

For your web site that is and this can be caused by one of many reasons. Many businesses who rely on the internet normally have firms providing hosting services for their web sites. This being the case, having low traffic on your site may be a rising concern so if the web site itself is designed so good, then what the hell could be causing you money? Well, if you’d take the time to review your hosting company and needs, you might just find out that the type of service you’re paying for isn’t cut out for the increasing demand on your web, causing them to bog down and thus losing customers in the process. There are basically two types, managed and unmanaged hosting services and they each have their distinct pros and cons.

Managed hosting has the hosting company working with you, taking care of the server management, application updates and many other technicalities you might not to bother yourself with. This type of hosting is more costly yet it allows you to focus your energy to money making goals leaving the technical stuff to the technical guys. Unmanaged hosting is the best option for people and businesses who have their own web development people and wish to save a lot in terms of the service. They handle all aspects of the technical stuff except for owning the servers and machines themselves. It is cheaper and more cost effective yet as mentioned, you do need knowledgeable people on the area of web development to manage the whole shebang. Now you can see the distinct differences of managed vs. unmanaged hosting services to analyze and see which works for you and if you are getting enough from your investment for the service. Hopefully, you pinpoint the problem and resolve the issue enough to resolve your traffic problem, getting your web site back on the map of the ever-changing internet.

It is the same way with SEO. Although you can learn the basics and tweak your website chances are that you’ll get better results by hiring a professional to optimize your site. The results may not be as obvious as a beautiful looking site but will be obvious in the faster rate with which you’ll get more traffic. Note though that SEO takes time even if you hire a professional to do it. As you can see from the previous post getting a substantial amount of traffic to your website is not that easy. It becomes doubly hard if you do not have any technical background or experience at all. This is why in my opinion instead of doing your site’s own SEO it is best to simply outsource the job.

So if you want your website to succeed make sure you have not only an excellent web design but a website that is optimized for search engines.

Keyword optimization – This includes choosing keywords for your website and knowing which elements of the website where they should be inserted. The keyword/phrases you choose should be the terms you know your customers will be typing in when looking for information. You should choose a variety of related keywords to cover the different search term possibilities. After choosing keywords you should incorporate them as much as possible in your page title, headings, meta tags, and body text. However, be careful to avoid using them excessively because this will make your website look spammy.

Link building – Search engines determine the popularity of a website based on the number of websites linking to it. Because of this you should learn how to get inbound links. It will be a little easier for established brands with a solid reputation before even launching a company site but since the majority of businesses are not large corporations then getting known in the internet is just as difficult as getting known offline. To build links you can employ different strategies from online social networking to link baiting and other SEO techniques.

• Develop an online social network in your niche – Not only do you need to widen your social network but you also need to build you and your site’s reputation. Once you build your reputation you can be sure that traffic will come in by simple word of mouth.
• Get indexed by search engines and rank well in their result pages – To be indexed by search engines you can submit your website URL and/or make sure that your website can be crawled by search engine spiders. Getting indexed is easy but it is the ranking well that is more difficult. To rank well your site needs to either be a phenomenal success in its field or you need to employ SEO techniques.

Most other techniques used to drive traffic to a website falls under SEO, which is why I will be discussing a few SEO strategies next.

• blogging
• selling used items on eBay
• affiliate marketing
• freelance services
• internet researcher
• online recruiter
• arts and crafts shop
• online consulting

There are plenty more that you can do to earn money through the internet especially if you can come up with brillian and unique ideas such as the Million Dollar Homepage, which made the owner more than a million dollars and which left those trying to jump the bandwagon not as rich as the original. In the end to make a profit in the internet you just have to find your strong points, your skills, your talent, and find a way to present it so as to get people’s interest. It does not have to become a phenomenon but it should be able to at least catch the interest of your customers. In my next posts I’ll be giving a few tips on how to catch the attention of your target audience online.

The great thing about merchant sites is that they can be used by all kinds of businesses not matter how small or big your business is. Many stay-at-home moms have found that they can sell their home-made products through their websites, helping supplement the family income without having to go to work in an office. Large companies also make use of their websites to sell their products to their already very wide client-base making it even more convenient for customers to shop.

If you want to set up a merchant site but feel like you are not yet prepared for it you should go ahead and start building a website already. You do not need to have a full-blown online store already and can simply start with an informative website. In the end, you can be sure that no matter what, an online presence will be good for your business.

Informational/promotional website – These types of website are for land-based businesses that simply want to have a presence on the internet in order to provide information to their existing as well as prospective customers. These websites are usually static and contain basic information about the business such as contact details, products and services, company profile, and existing promotions. All the other kinds of websites are basically informative sites that have additional features.

Customer relations website – This type of website seeks to get feedback from the customer as well provide customers information they need to have a more satisfying relationship with the business. Features of sites like this may include just one or a combination of the following:

• feedback/question form – Online forms that can be filled out and submitted with a single click. Answers to questions may be sent via email or call backs are made. Feedback forms are also often used to ask customers/users to report bugs or problems.
• online forums – Moderators of the online forum are employees of the company and are tasked to not only answer questions but also give members updates about the company and its products/services.
• business blogs – Blogs are all the rage now and have become a venue for businesses to update their customers regularly about company matters that are relevant to the costumers. The comment section is usually left open to encourage interaction between customers as well as the employees tasked to maintain the blog.

to be continued…