I broke down and bought the new Thesis Wordpress theme. It’s a quality wordpress theme but it’s not free. It’s the first time I’ve purchased a theme. I usually pay someone to customize a free theme. I’m still learning it but here’s my preliminary review.

Is Thesis worth it?
I think it is. I like that I can change the width of my columns and number of columns very easily. I like that it’s very easy to change the font face and size (wish that included color). Things that would take a long time are much quicker and site wide rather than having to go into many files. With Thesis I only edit one file instead of widgets or code. They have a design panel and a regular panel that has a large menu of options for making global changes.

I also like how you can choose a template for each page. Just choose from a dropdown and you can choose to show a template that doesn’t have a sidebar. So it makes it much easier to operate the site like pages of a web site rather than a blog.

Technical Skills
I’m still learning but what I don’t like is that you still need some technical skills to make changes to the header image, background image and tweaks like that. I use hooks (a separate download) which help me place ads in the right places but they’re a little complicated because you need to know CSS. There are tutorials but again I wish this was easier to use. It’s even confusing to me than editing code from the files themselves.

Aesthetics
The style is so boxy and plain. Most of the customizations I’ve seen still have that feel. I’m not sure how to round corners or make the site look more aesthetically pleasing. Even adding a new header is a pain. Many bloggers stick with Blogger because they have more designs out of the box. Of course you can pay someone to design your site. There aren’t a lot of designs that appeal to women. I talked to Joseph Scott and his wife about it last week. He works on Wordpress (programmer). I’m not sure he’s convinced that it’s as big of an issue as I think it is.

What do you think about Thesis WP theme?

I recently had a lot of spam drama on my blog. It explained why my blog has been so slow! I met Vlad years ago as an affiliate marketer. Then I found him again on Twitter. He has been key in helping me get rid of the spam problem and helping with other parts of my blog. He has been invaluable.

I learned two things: always upgrade your blog to the most recent version. And monitor your site by adding a Google alert like this one site:newspapergrl.com viagra OR cialis OR levitra

One thing Vlad did after securing my blog is to optimize my WP Super Cache Plugin. I asked him to write an instructive post about what he did.

In Vlad’s words:

I absolutely love this plugin. The plugin author has written a very in-depth overview of what this plugin was designed to do. It helps your blog load faster and handle higher traffic loads. Countless bloggers have written about it and how it helped to keep their servers intact when unexpected waves of Digg traffic roll in. While I’ve never had my posts featured on the front page of Digg, I do receive a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon.

The first time I realized I might need the plugin was the time I started to think I might need a dedicated host to handle the increase in traffic to my blog. Currently the websites (10+) I operate all are hosted on a shared account. Most of them are powered by WordPress. And as much as I love WordPress, it can put some heavy loads on the server.

One day instead of your website you might see an error message from your host saying following “this accounts has been suspended, please contact your web hosting provider immediately.” I would have never seen this massage had I installed WP Cache Plugin as one of my first plugins. I was ready to buy more space and WP Super Cache saved me from having to do that.

So what does WP Super Cache do?

It replicates the pages of your blog and saves them as HTML files. And instead of serving your pages to your visitors through PHP scripts, it serves them as plain old HTML files, practically eliminating sever load. If visitors to your blog do not leave comments on your blog (about 90% + of visitors), the pages will never be served via PHP to them.

Originally this plugin was designed to survive traffic from websites like Digg. I do however believe that this plugin should be highly recommended by shared web hosting providers, and even “enforced” by those web hosts that tend to oversell their servers.

Important things to remember when istalling this plugin.

WP Super Cache plugin belongs to those plugins that require extra attention. Besides installing and activating the plugin, you actually need to turn plugin on via it’s own settings:

It is important that you choose the custom (aka as “pretty”) permalinks setting in your blog as WP Super Cache will not work with “ugly” permalinks, if you have not done so already.

Finally, WP Super Cache will ask you to update the .htaccess file. If you have modified your file already, it would be a good idea to back up that file and/or manually insert the necessary code provided in the WP Super Cache plugin settings page.

Finally to assure that plugin is working properly, you need to view the source of any of the pages of your blog. Look for the following code found at the very end:

If it’s there, your WP Super Cache is working, and is or will be saving your some cash. Remember to share your blessing with the developer of this plugin.

Vlad Zablotskyy can be found blogging at SageBlogger.com, Go Beyond MLS and Vlad Zablotskyy Interpreting LLC.

Thanks Vlad for this helpful instruction! Next I’d love to get a guest post about Stumbled Upon.

Thanks to Marketing Pilgrim and writing a lot of press releases lately, I’m in the newswriting mode! I first learned this news on Twitter, from Danny Sullivan. Shoemoney said he called it first (a month ago) and Danny Sullivan trumped that saying he and others predicted it a year ago. Oh yeah, and eBay moved their affiliate network in-house because Shoemoney advised them to.

Ah, Twitter. It makes me feel so “in the know.” These days I get news from Twitter as much as from my blog feeds. Egos flare up, people kiss up, rant, and sometimes act childish but I still love it after all this time (and for some ego stroking of my own - I just checked and I’ve been on Twitter for a full year now). But, back to the story.

It’s great that Google sees the conflict of interest with offering SEO and SEM services when they’re the biggest search engine. I’m disappointed that they are not selling all of Performics. They’re hanging on to the affiliate marketing piece.

Has Google ever sold off part of their acquisitions? This is the first I remember. Who will buy it? What is going through Commission Junction’s mind? Google offers a limited amount of affiliate links for advertisers now, but the reporting is terrible and I haven’t seen a single conversion.
However, Performics is the third largest affiliate network and packs some well know brands like AOL, LL Bean, and Motorola. Having their own affiliate network gives Google some real leverage in the market…and more conflicts of interest.

This is a guest post by Paul Wilson, my business partner who recently sold his blog to buy a wedding ring. I spent a good year trying to get him to blog and now I miss his posts.

Paul said he’ll start a new blog but in the meantime I’ve asked him to write for mine (and if anyone else wants to do a guest post, please contact me).

I’ll preface this by saying I’m a fan of Shoemoney and I read his blog and have met him in real life twice. I always respect that he’s worked hard and overcome personal issues as they are determined to succeed. (According to him he’s been fired, he used to be fat, etc). Over time he’s built a business, gotten healthier, built a lot of respect, and he’s openly shared a lot of his journey in an authentic way.

Jeremy doesn’t actually say he hates ALL SEOs - he just doesn’t like most of them. I wrote about how Aaron Wall loves SEO a few posts back (he didn’t say how he feels about actual SEO experts).

——- BEGIN POST BY PAUL WILSON ABOUT SHOEMONEY AND SEOs ——–

Jeremy Shoemaker (shoemoney.com) recently did a post on why he hates SEO experts (SEOs = people who are experts in search engine optimization). I know that there has been a lot said on this, but I have to weigh in.

I could not but wonder if Jeremy has lost touch with reality when I read his comment:

“SEO’s are like the 21st century car salesmen. Most are slimy and have no clue what they are talking about. They tell you you just need to put spammy keywords in your title tag, keyword tag, and write a spammy as hell description meta tag.”

Now, I will agree with Jeremy that there are definitely hacks in the SEO industry. However, you are going to find hacks in every industry. There will always be people who don’t know what they are talking about, trying to convince others that they are the “gurus.”

My good friend Jason runs JibberJobber, a legitimate business in the employment industry. Just because I receive tons of spam about slimy business opportunities doesn’t mean what Jason does isn’t viable, if not necessary.

What makes Jeremy’s post even worse, is the influence he wields. By him stating that 95% of SEO experts are “slimy” states that the industry as a whole is worthless (which I believe it wouldn’t take much to get him to admit).

To drive my point home, I recently was twittering Newspapergrl about possibly creating a monthly Utah SEO organization. Here are the responses her and I got on Twitter:

Twitter A: @paulwilson … sounds interesting but I do think that 90% of SEO is snake oil. Maybe i’m misinformed?

Newspapergirl: @Twitter A - misinformed. SEO is messier to track but it’s totally legit. You could benefit - you need to expand the reach on your site.

Twitter B: @PaulWilson There’s no need for monthly SEO meetings. Everything honorable about SEO can be learned fast. Monthly meetings are just slime.

Me: @Twitter B: I seriously disagree. I have been doing SEO since 1999, and I still learn something new with every person that I meet in my industry.

Twitter B: @PaulWilson You have to get past the slime, though. The good people will avoid a monthly SEO meeting, so all you’ll be left with is slime.

Me: @Twitter B: If the meeting is for SEO experts and sponsored by corporations like Franklin Covey, 1-800-Contacts and other corporations. Just like RMAMA. I am pretty sure we would get past the slime.

@NewspaperGrl: I am surprised the overall impression people have of SEO

@NewspaperGrl: I guess that makes it easier to rank higher for us =)

Twitter B: @PaulWilson It is possible to increase your rank honestly. SEO has been synonymous with gaming the system. Don’t brag about it.

Me: @Twitter B: You are welcome to believe what you like.

Me: @Twitter B: I personally believe SEO & SEM is a viable solution.

Twitter B: @PaulWilson Writing good content is the only viable solution. Once you start writing for robots, they’ll be the only ones reading your site.

NewspaperGrl: @Twitter B - don’t you think you can write good content AND add keywords that people are searching for? It’s usually not either/or

If you read Jeremy’s post in its entirety you will see that Twitter B is espousing almost word for word what Jeremy wrote. It worries me to see such a powerful blogger wield his influence so carelessly. For me, I see Jeremy blogging in his ivory tower totally disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday web life.

So, all-mighty Shoemoney what is your advice to the rest of us lowly peons:

“Concentrate on building a quality service. One that people will actually WANT TO BOOKMARK and comeback to…Its like people don’t know you can goto a web site without going to a god-damn Search Engine. When you create a good, useful service/site people will actually want to come to your site without you spamming Google.”

This is not bad advice Jeremy offers, but with so much noise on the web word of mouth generally will carry a website only so far. To believe that SEO shouldn’t be a part of your quiver of arrows is either ignorance, or willful stupidity. Google’s own page on creating useful websites shows that good content should be coupled with keyword research:

“Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. In creating a helpful, information-rich site, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your site.“

It truly is sad to see those, like Jeremy, live in their lofty ivory towers and scoff at us who make our living doing SEO.

———– END POST BY PAUL WILSON ABOUT SHOEMONEY AND SEOs ————–

I recommend looking at this - straight from Google for a primer on SEO for your web site:
Google’s - Making the Most of Your Content: A Publisher’s Guide to the Web

Done well SEO helps people find what they’re looking for. Most of the SEOs I know provide a huge benefit and 5% are scum.

I applied to be a Google Local Business Rep and forgot about it until tonight when I got an email saying I got accepted. No, I’m not a Google employee (though some day I’d love to be), I’m an independent contractor.

I’m also a huge fan of local businesses. When I totaled my car a few months ago I went with the auto body shop my insurance company listed that sounded like it was a local business. They were and they were superb. They even donate cars to needy families at Christmas.

Google is impressive. They have a training module about it. Here’s the slick part - they pay for fliers and their site connects to FedExKinkos and orders them. Then you go pick them up - which I did this morning.

Here’s how it works: I go to local businesses and take a picture. I enter the businesses information into Google Local. For that I get $2 and if they get a postcard and confirm the listing I make an additional $8.

Since I’m affiliate of OrangeSoda (and you can be too) and they are interested in someone managing their PPC campaigns (easy to start, complex to manage), I can make 5% of their spend for the lifetime of their account. Note that the minimum they can sign up for is $100 a month. I wouldn’t recommend starting that small, but you can. I don’t know anyone else who will take customers with that size of a budget.

Now I have a confession: if I’m bored on a date or I amuse myself by figuring out ways to help them market their business. That includes how to put their business on Google Local (if it qualifies).

I’d do it even if I weren’t paid, but now there’s an incentive. Plus, it makes me go out of my way to patronize local businesses which I want to do anyway. No more Del Taco lunches for me. Instead, it’s another favorite - El Gallo Giro (which is now on State Street in Orem).

It’s great to see the The New York Times report on the benefits of blogging - especially for small or mid-sized businesses. They say blogging is a “low-cost, high-return tool.”

It’s not just for small businesses though - Google probably has more blogs than any other business I know. They seem to create one for just about every product they have. Blogs are ideal for encouraging word of mouth marketing (see my post about word of mouth marketing on Marketing Pilgrim) by giving people reasons to keep talking about your businesses.

Even if you don’t blog, you should be sending your news releases to bloggers in hopes they’ll write about you. That reminds me I have one to follow up on (feel free to send me news using my contact form).

Top reasons for a business to blog:

• for marketing your products and/or services
• reduce your PPC budget by building permanent links rather than paying for ads (I recommend doing both)
• search engines favor fresh content and frequent updates
• improves your public relations, by regularly communicating with your community
• raises your company profile online
• excellent for building your brand - even unknown companies can get high rankings fairly quickly

I’ve long been an advocate of blogging for businesses. I provide blog writing and design services with some of my partners. We basically handle it all for you from building the blog to writing posts.

Blogging has helped my own business grow as well as boosted my reputation. Right now I blog for two companies (including Podango’s Google podcast) and train and manage a staff of bloggers.

Our experience is that within a few months our clients start seeing higher rankings in search engines for key terms relating to their business. For small businesses blogs help you compete with much larger businesses.

For example, type in “internet marketing” and a company you’ve never heard of pops up first. Notice how they basically feed in blog posts on their home page. This is a very competitive term too - with over 111,000,000 results in Google.

Most businesses can benefit from a blog and it’s one of the first things I recommend. It doesn’t take a lot of technical expertise or cost. I’m also biased in that I love to write and the conversational tone of blog writing makes it simple to dash off a quick post.

Ideally, the best marketers utilize both on and offline marketing together. While I’ve never advertised in a newspaper (not even a classified ad) I was an advertising rep for my college newspaper. It was volunteer but I learned a lot from doing it. Plus one of my regular customers owned a Cajun restaurant and offered me free food (like hush puppies or fried alligator).

Back then I thought I was furthering the cause of our paper, but really I was learning about business and sales with no pressure on me. I wish I’d done even more volunteering like that.

I’ve been interested in Google’s newspaper advertising or as they call it Google Print ads (this goes to a video explaining how it works). Today I gave this a closer look. Note: you have to have a Google AdWords account to access this. First, I was surprised that they don’t just include traditional papers but have some weeklies, Spanish papers, college papers, and other niches. Over 600 in all. Note: if you live in Utah you can choose from the Salt Lake Tribune and/or Deseret News and that’s it.

The pricing is like Priceline bidding except there is more interaction. You get the newspaper’s list price and then you submit a bid. You don’t compete with other advertisers, publishers review your bid and get back to you in a day or two. They can accept, deny, or negotiate on the price. You can send an email to the publisher through the Google interface.

Here’s a quick example: you probably want to run your ad at least 3 times minimum. You select the newspaper(s) and set your budget. You can choose what section you’d like to advertise in. The list price for the paper I chose was around $1200 an ad for a daily (in a mid-size city). Your minimum bid is going to be around $300. Contrast that with a college newspaper that is around $800 with a $170 minimum bid. This is for 2 columns wide and about 11 inches tall (Google recommends at least 10 inches high or if you run smaller ads increase the frequency).

You’ll get an electronic tearsheet - or PDF file of your ad, after it runs.

There is an excellent “Tips for Beginners” section within your account that gives a lot of guidance, research, and advice. The nice thing is you don’t have to sign any agreements or contracts with the paper, like you normally would have to.

Newspapers have high trust and people tend to look at them longer and keep them around. I’d like to experiment advertising my SEO blog writing services that I offer.

If you want to try Google Print ads, you have to sign up for an AdWords account first.

This is a theme that’s been on my mind for most of the past two years. I dream about working from home and a flexible schedule. Then I live it and start to miss the routine and being paid on time. Contracting and building your own business has a certain amount of stress built in that doesn’t leave at the end of each day. When I work for someone else I still take what I do seriously, but I can more easily disengage from it when I’m not at work.

Lately the days seem to melt into each other. It’s like being in college. I could choose what to do with my time, but if I wasn’t studying, I felt like I should be. So it goes with working from home. I get paid for my time and the other time I’m building things that are residual.

I’m a social person but working online so much has turned me much more introverted. I notice how much more difficult it is to really engage people I don’t know. That used to not be a problem! I used to love talking to people where now I more often observe.

I read a lot about Google (I blog about them at www.podango.com/Google) how a lot of Google millionaires actually don’t quit their jobs or they go on to found charities or join VC groups. Work doesn’t stop because a job does. Work is an opportunity to make meaning and a framework for growth.
I’ve been daydreaming about looking for a regular job with a PR firm. Where my social media, SEO, and writing skills can play in and I can fill in the gaps. And ideally I can blog. This is just an idea I’m tossing around (don’t worry Paul Wilson). Once again I crave the social atmosphere and routine that a job offers. I’m not quite there now, just thinking.

Here’s a great post that covers the pros/cons of freelancing and working from home that I could relate to.

I normally praise Google but there is an exception - Google Checkout for Sellers. This is the most un-intuitive program to use. I invoice through it. I had to del.iciou.us the right URL because there are separate ones depending on if you’re buying or selling. It took me a long time to find the correct one, but in case you need to know (and for my memory) it’s http://checkout.google.com/sell/.

After logging in you go to the “settings” tab to find a link on the left that says, “send an invoice.” Why is it under settings? That is usually things like how you want to format or set up your account. Not to bill from. Then you fill in the information and send the invoice. It does not remember past emails, so I have to look it up again. Also, there is no formatting on the message, it takes out all the spaces. So I still send a separate email with an actual invoice.

Once you get payment, you have to claim it (another unnecessary step).

The best part of Google Checkout is that there are no fees to use it. Otherwise, I prefer PayPal. Even PayPal hides invoicing and makes it difficult to find. Once you’re there though it’s pretty straightforward.

If you’re purchasing things online, Google Checkout is a breeze to use and you use the same login wherever you go.

I just wrote about how Google launched a new project called International Cleanup Weekend.They want local communities to clean up their communities and map it on Google Maps. I’d like to get a group of people to take on projects like cleaning up the Provo River. Or, we could climb a mountain and bring trash bags to pick up things on the way back down (Phil 801 you could coordinate that one).

There are projects like this going on all over the world on October 13th and 14th.

How it works:

- Choose a spot to clean up (submit in comments)
- Add the place to Google Maps
- Everyone meet Saturday morning October 13, with gloves, trash bags, and if needed a truck to haul off the garbage
For two years I was a community organizer. One year of that was through Americorps who are partnering with Google to do this. As I blogged about in a soon-to-be-published post on Marketing Pilgrim this is a good idea for businesses to get involved in. Serve employees breakfast, get the bags and everything and send out a press release on how cool you are to be involved in something so progressive. You can use Google in the headline.
Read More about the Google International Cleanup Weekend