Almost everyone online is on one or more of the social networking sites out there. If someone says he does not know what Facebook is, the only reason for that would be because he has been living in a cave since the last few years 
. Unlike this caveman, I have profiles on many of these social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Youtube, etc. So, I was looking for an easy way to connect my blog with these social media, and I found this great WordPress plugin – Social Media Widget.
It took me just a few minutes to install the plugin and set it up to show the icons and links to my profile on the various social networks. The icons are available in different styles and sizes. Even though most of the social media sites are supported in the plugin, you can also add a few custom URL of your own. You can see it in action on my sidebar, it looks something like this:
The Social Media Widget
Go check it out on the WordPress Plugin Directory for a full list of features.
After about 1.5 years of being my own boss, I finally signed a contract for a job as a Software Developer yesterday. It was about time! . At first, I badly wanted to be self-employed and it worked fine for me, but it’s not something I can do for long term.
Working from home was great at first, but after a while I started getting bored sitting at home all day, and working at hours that most people would normally relax or sleep. Gradually, I was losing the motivation to work, especially because I was doing the same things over and over again for each project.
But now, I’m already beginning to feel like I’m alive again 
. And I’m gonna be programming again, so that’s great. It’s time for me to explore some new horizons, learn some new skills, master my own skills, and above all, to stop sitting on my ass all day at home in front of this screen!!
I have finally added a contact form to the website. Now readers and clients can use this form to contact me more easily without me having to publish my email address openly. The problem with publishing an email address openly is that it doesn’t take long for spambots to catch your email address and in no time you start receiving all kinds of spam emails. No one likes to have spam in their inbox!!
How did I set up the contact form?
I used Takayuki Miyoshi’s Contact Form 7, which is a free plugin that can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin directory, together with Really Simple CAPTCHA for the CAPTCHA module at the bottom of the form (once again, to reduce spam mails in my inbox). That’s about it actually. And then I called the contact form I created with these plugins on a WordPress page.
Having difficulty setting up the form on your website?
Just use my contact form to get in touch with me and we can work something out. 
It’s been a long while since I made a new post on this blog. I was supposed to be posting and sharing my knowledge with the World more regularly, but somehow I was “too busy” doing my stuffs that I kept procrastinating about writing anything here.
Today, I feel a bit guilty for what I have been doing the last few months. I was basically running after money, trying to make more and more money with my online business. When I had a job last year and Internet Marketing was just my hobby, I was not really bothered about the money I was making from it. But, ever since I decided to do Internet Marketing fulltime, it became my source of income and i began “chasing” more money from it, and I was not much bothered if I was providing value to my clients.
Well, this does not mean that I’m going to get a job in the corporate world and make this Internet Marketing thing my hobby again. No way. I just love my freedom of not having to answer to a boss way too much to ever want to get a job again. But, I’m definitely going to put more focus on providing value to my customers. It’s CRUCIAL that I do. Otherwise, I’m no better that those businessmen who sell cheap stuffs at high prices just to make more money.
So yea, it’s time for me to draw the line between making money and making a difference.
P.S. I also want to thank that one potential customer who emailed me saying that I was beating around the bush to make more money and not providing value. THANK YOU. It was the wake up call I needed.
Wow, I can’t believe that I have not made any post for this month of September 2009. Well, I have been quite busy and somewhat lazy as well. But, I won’t tell you about the lazy, because I want you all to think that I work so hard and I’m always busy with work .
This month I started working on two new projects (that is, two new websites), that I’ve started from scratch. I was supposed to start only one of them, but the opportunity to start a second profitable project came in front of my eyeballs, so I grabbed it .
In project one, I’m basically just using articles to promote the vendor’s product, which is the easiest thing to do. I also setup a blog but so far no posts have been made on the blog, so the blogging phase of the project is still pending.
For project two, the website is one a keyword-rich domain, so I am taking advantage of that fact to optimize the website (which is obviously powered by WordPress) to rank higher for Search Engines. So far, the website is ranking among the top ten results in Google for the main keyword which gets about 2500 searches per month.
I also had to update WordPress to the lastest version on all websites because there was a security issue with the previous version. Things move fast in an opensource community, so we have to stay updated if we don’t want ot be left behind.
P.S. I’m sorry, but I can’t reveal more information about the projects I’m working on, so don’t ask .
Hello Reader,
How are you doing? I hope you are doing great!
The last few days, I have been experimenting with a few WordPress plugins to automatically link a keyword in the posts/comments to a URL (a Web address). I need such a tool so that I don’t have to manually link the keywords when I am typing the post, and also to automatically change the links on all post if I need to.
I tested a few plugins, but apparently they have not been updated since a while and I was having problems making them work on the latest versions of WordPress. It’s really sad that some developers give up on upgrading their plugins. Well, we can’t blame them either, they are providing us with great tools and if no one supports them, sooner or later they will give up. So, if you like a WordPress plugin, and you want the developers to continue working on it, consider giving them a donation or at least spread the word around so that they get some visibility out there.
Anyways, here are the plugins that I came across that can (could) automatically link keywords to URLs:
But, the one that worked for me (so far) is:
- SEO Automatic Links (It’s easy to setup, easy to use and above all, it will make you some easy money if you use it well)
I hope you found some value in this post! WordPress is a great CMS (Content Management System) and if ever you are stuck with something, remember there is a WordPress community to help you out. You just need to ask!
I have not updated the blog since quite a while. I have been busy, although I must admit I have also been very lazy. I have been reading some books and learning some new things. I’m currently reading a book on Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion. There is a lot cool stuffs about how the human psychology can be “manipulated” in this book. Anyone interested in marketing should read it.
The last thing I did on the blog was to upload digital copies of my certificates. So now, anyone who wants to check if I am who I claim to be can clear their doubts.
What am I gonna add next?
I own the rights to a series of self-improvement tips. I want to set up all the tips in an autoresponder so as to send a daily self-improvement tip to anyone who subscribes to receive them. The tips and advice will cover many aspects such as goal setting, building self esteem, etc…
Paypal provides a secure environment to make purchases and receive payments safely over the Internet. Basically, what you do is you feed your credit card or bank account details in your Paypal account and then you only need to use your email address to make and receive payments.
Unfortunately, Paypal’s sevices are still not available completely in some part of the worlds. In 2005, when I first discovered Paypal, I was eager to open my account, but they later informed me that they were not offering their services in Mauritius. Fast forward three years later, they now opened their services to Mauritians, but you still have some restrictions on your account. For example, we can not add a local bank account or receive payments. But, in my case, my local Mauritian Paypal account helps me a great deal in sending payments for things I purchase online.
So, do you have a Paypal account? If not, you may open an account here.
The last few days I noticed some spam comments on the blog. They are the type of comments that are not related to the post and are used to promote some other websites. I have no problem with someone wanting to have a link back to their blog or website, but the comment should be relevant to the post, and the website they link to should be decent. By decent, I mean the kind of websites you will let your 10 year old daughter view.
Anyways, since I can’t be deleting these spam comments every time, I have just activated Akismet. Akismet is a WordPress plugin which checks comments using their web service to determine if the comment in question is spam or not. I have it activated on my other blogs too, and it really does eliminate a lot of the spam comments.
You would need a WordPress.com API Key to activate it. You can get one by registering an account at WordPress.com and you are all set to deal with spam comments.
The blog has been on the web for just one week, and I have already had visitors from 11 countries worldwide. That’s why I find blogs(especially WordPress blogs) so awesome. If I had put up a static website, I’d probably still be the only one reading it.
Well, that does not mean static websites should be banned. They have their purpose too, but if you want immediate web traffic, blogging is the way to go. By default, WordPress “pings” some services to notify them that a blog has been updated. That alone will bring a few visitors to the blog. Anyways, I won’t get into the technical details of why blogs get traffic easily.
The statistics of the blog are provided by Awstats, a nice little traffic monitoring tools that comes with my hosting service.
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