You can Sign Up for Chitika Ads for Free.

You can read a more detailed review on our success with Chitika here.

There are several advantages of using Chitika over other popular advertisers that could help you make money blogging. Although they provide ads for all categories, we have seen the best results on our blogs on photography, technology, electronic gadgets, fashion & accessories.

Chitika Premium Ads could increase the revenue of any bloggers many folds. Especially if you are writing blogs on products, fashion or accessories, Chitika could increase the money you make online from blog ads.

The key features of Chitika Premium Ads are:

• sign-up is free & suitable for new & experienced bloggers
• ads are targeted to search traffic & are contexual to search keywords making them very relevant to the visitor’s needs
• ads are international but more targeted to US traffic
• ads can be combined with other ads like Google Adsense
• ads are available in both IAB standard formats of leader boards, skyscrapers & wide banners as well in other formats that are designed to be suitable to blog themes
• ads can be customized to match the blogs look & feel
• ads can be collapsed for non US search traffic or other ads could be displayed when Chitika cannot show their ads
• since these are mainly shopping ads CPC rates are very high
• innovative ads like Whitespace ads also available to help you earn money from any space on the visitors’ monitor
• reporting is easy & payments are very prompt

In our performance review of Chitika, we have found that Chitika could increase your earnings from ads multi folds, double or triple is some cases. Since these ads are generated real time based on visitor’s search, the ads are very relevant to what the surfers are looking for.

If you making money online from blogs & websites, you can Sign up for Chitika Premium Ads free & start making money from high paying shopping ads.

The BlackBerry Storm is now available for less than $50!

I have been a Verizon customer for so long but they would just not change my plans to help me save the extra $500! So I went and bought myself a Acer Aspire One.

You can read my other posts on the slow Blackberry Storm:

• Resetting the Blackberry Storm often increased speed
• The OS Upgrade improved performance

I love the Acer – it fits right into the side pocket of my travel bag & fits onto my palm. It is so small & light that I don’t mind keeping it on my lap for hours. In fact, my time with my computer has doubled ever since I bought it.

The Acer Aspire one is available in many colors:

• Acer Aspire One Sapphire Blue Netbook
• Acer Aspire One Diamond Black Netbook
• Acer Aspire One Ruby Red Netbook

The netbook is available with either 3 cells battery pack, lasting 3 hours or with 6 cells, lasting well over 7 hours at a stretch. Imagine the time you could spend writing your blog for your own business even while traveling.

The netbooks come with WiFi & Bluetooth and combines with the tethered Blackberry Storm, I can be on the internet anywhere, anytime!

Although there are blogging subjects that attract more readers & more advertisers, making it easy to make money online, there is also the trick of “How to Blog for Money” and you could be successful with any subject. Also read my posts on:

• How to Make Money From Blogs
• Alternatives to Google Adsense
• Best Shopping Advertisers for Blog Publishers

Coming back to the subject of the 10 Best & Popular Topics to Blog to make a lot of money online, here is a list that I have compiled over time. I have observed earnings from ads, sponsorships & interest of shoppers keep changing but generally tend to follow this pattern below:

1. Blogs on Technology & Gadgets – technology subjects are extremely popular & there is a lot of interest among internet surfers to read all about new technology & new gadgets
2. Blogs on Celebrity News – celebrities are a great subject to blog. Especially if you are writing about celebrities & their daily lives, you could win a lot of fans on the internet
3. Blogs on Fashion & Jewelry – fashion blogs always find high paying sponsors especially from designers & fashion salons. Fashion Blogs are also great ways to sell fashion products to your readers
4. Blogs on Jobs and Employment Opportunities – jobs are always on high demand. People with jobs also look for changes. Blogs on job openings and employment opportunities are very popular in all segments of internet users
5. Blogs on Product & Service Reviews – while more & more people are shopping on the internet, these buyers also look for good detailed reviews of what they are about to buy. Be it books or computers, good review sites are extremely popular & could make you a lot of money in a short time
6. Blogs on Films Movies Music & Entertainment – this topic has an international appeal & you can build your reader base very quickly. Blogs on Movies Music & Entertainment are also suitable for shopping ads & always see high ad clicks & hence high earnings from advertisements
7. Blogs on Photography, Camera & Art – photo blogs are extremely popular within internet users. And you can win more by allowing people to download your pictures & art. One of the highest selling gadgets in the world in cameras – and photo blogs are great ways to sell photo accessories & make money from photo ads
8. Blogs on Social Life & Relationships – blogs that write on love, life & relationships are extremely high money earner on the internet. These blogs earn a lot of money from Personal Advertisements Networks & large companies like Yahoo, Batchmates, Classmates etc
9. Blogs on Small Business & Personal Business – these blogs earn a lot of money from local businesses. Blogs on real estate business, car dealerships & similar local businesses are sponsors of blogs on small business & local business
10. Blogs on Pets – people love pets and every other house either has pets or have pet lovers. Blogs on pets, writing about pets’ well being, pet health, pet food & pet games always make a lot of money from advertisers & from sales of pet products

As I said before, the subject of the blog is definitely important if you want to make money from blogs. The next step is to write original content & focus on the style of writing that will help you create your own trusted readers.

Also read my posts on:

• 15 Easy Ways to Build Traffic to a New Blog or New Website – Tips for New Bloggers
• Making Money by Blogging – Advertising & Affiliate Tactics for New Bloggers

For some of the best blog themes for small business, visit Business CMS Themes for Wordpress.

What works for such large corporations may not work for the small business or for the one man entreprenuer. However, the basic facts & the tricks to a successful business remain the same.

In this series, I shall share the lessons I have learnt over the ages from working with these Fortune 100 companies.

In this website I keep talking of the future of the internet & how the small business & professionals could make a lot of money by adopting tools & tactics that are used in large profit making companies. In this part of the series, I shall share 10 tips to build successful relations that could help you build your own internet business.

1. Build Relations Objectively – not all relations are useful when you want to make money on the internet. Choose the people who have the ability & the intent to help you succeed & build trust with them. Not all relations are healthy or helpful. Build relations from your heart & maintain relations with your brain.



2. Spend Time to Build Successful Relations – business success depends on how strong your relation is with someone. Strength comes from the trust & you have to devote time & energy in building the right relation with the right people.
3. Take Referrals – you can build successful relatitons through referrals. However, once you have the referral you have to invest the sme amount of time to build your trust with them. Do not hesitate to ask for referrals from your trusted friends & co-workers.
4. Don’t Always Talk Business – give importance to the social aspect of a relation too. It is just not always business & money. Develop a social relation with your colleagues, partners, co-workers & build an overall good relationship.
5. Keep Committments – promise what you can & keep your promises. This is a simple way many people measure your sincerity & honesty. Without being sincere, you are nothing more than a talking salesman.
6. Walk That Extra Mile to Make Things Work – if you want effective people to come & help you, you have to be effective for their success as well. “Give before you ask” is a principle I have learnt in my corporate life in GE. And you often need to walk that extra mile to make things work for someone’s success.
7. Credit Others for Their Contributions – Word of Mouth marketing is still the most effective. Look at how many corporate promotions happen just because the supervisor heard good things about their subordinates. Giving credit to co-workers & colloagues for their help make you a trust worthy colleague & people will not hesitate to help you in your success.
8. Handling Conflicts Objectively - conflicts are common in any relations. While you cannot avoid them, conflicts also show the strength & maturity of any business relations. The best way to handle conflict is to criticize the action & sympathize the person. Again, go beyond the normal to help someone resolve conflicts.
9. Constantly Be in Contact – “Out of Sight is Out of Mind” is so true. While you try to build more & more contacts, be sure that you maintain constant contact with the key relations. There are numerous tools & technology to help you write emails & greetings to help you be in constant contact with your relations.
10. Be Transparent & Upfront – this is one of the most gifted qualities that can help you build & keep great relations. You would be seen as someone honest & truthful if you are transparent & speak the right words. This does not mean that you upset people with harshness. It only means that you share information & facts in a way that people understand your statements & ideas objectively & understands your point of view without taking them personally.

These are the 10 simplest tips I have learnt from my corporate life to building successful relations & maintaining them to be helpful in your personal online business too.

I would love to hear any other tips that have helped you to build great relations in your career & business.

Read our articles on Google Adsense alternatives & all the ways to monetize blogs.

Very quickly we realized that Widget Bucks have started to earn us more money than most other shopping ad networks. Read the details on using Widget Bucks to make more money from blogs.
Click Here to Sign Up for Widget Bucks Ad Network & start making more money from blogs.

There are several reasons why we would recommend this blog ad network:

• extremely suitable for product advertising
• professional & eye-catching layout & display within all the IAB approved formats
• highly contextual product ads leading to high conversions
• very high CPM & CPC rates per ad
• international clicks are allowed which increases your chances of making more money from any visitor across the globe
• payment on time, every time
• easy to use reporting format to help you identify which all ads are making more money from you
• great referral program to earn residual income for life
• 3 distinct ad channels – technology products, local businesses & travel – all three are extremely popular within internet visitors

We have almost doubled our ad revenues when we started to focus on blog ad networks apart from Google Adsense. Moreover, Widget Bucks can be used along with any other ad network. You can also optimize your blog space by using competitive ad networks against them – so that the one with the maximum bid gets to show their ads on your blogs.

Click Here to Sign Up for Widget Bucks Ad Network.

FirstGroup, the UK based international transportation services company is using Twitter to keep their commuters posted on train schedules & deals.

First Capital Connect operates trains between London, Brighton, Bedford, Peterborough, Cambridge and King’s Lynn – one of the UK’s busiest rail networks.

Commuters could set up their locational information & First Capital could then send schedule updates, delays, reschedule notices & cancellation information to them through First Capital’s Twitter account.

In First Capital Connect’s Twitter services the company is using Twitter to pass on real time information to all the passengers who are affected by any changes to the train’s schedules.

The Twitter service was created by Tobias & Tobias, a leading UK based firm specializing in creative & strategic digital services. Brendan Nelson, head of strategy at Tobias & Tobias, said, “While many companies are still considering how to incorporate Twitter into their digital communications mix, FCC has taken a bold step forward. Their customers now enjoy a greater choice of ways in which to interact with their rail provider, and the freedom to do so even when they’re many miles from their computer.”

In a recent change Google has introduced Ads or Sponsored links within the search suggestion box, while getting rid of the drop down that showed how many results are available.

This change does not have much benefit to the publishers yet. Google has not mentioned whether similar ads would also appear in Custom Google Searches that many publishers use.

However, it will be a benefit to advertisers – they would show up in the search box, while the user is typing their search query. The picture shows how Pontiac ad could show up while the user is typing in GT8.

This is one of the 4 changes that Google is rolling out on Google Suggest. Just when we thought that there may not be any further options to make money from the Search page, Google found a way to introduce paid ads in search boxes as well.

Meanwhile, Google advertising revenues hav not gone up since my earlier reports. The alternative ads that are doing extremely well are:

• Widget Bucks – they have improved their advertising banners & made them more attractive & informative.  They have also introduced local business  & travel channels over their usual high performing shopping ads. Click Here to Join Widget Bucks now & Start Earning Money from Blogs.
• Chitika Premium Ads – this continues to give me very high returns. The products advertised are top of the line popular products & the earning per click is also very high, sometimes over a dollar for a click. This is much higher than any of Google’s ad earnings by any means. Moreover, they have also refined their search boxes making it easier to make money from them. Click Here to Join Chitika Premium Network for Bloggers & Online Publishers & Make Money from Blog Ads.

One of the biggest road blocks to getting away from a regular paid job to starting a business is the feeling of insecurity if anything goes wrong! When I started my online work I too had the same fears, but I had a good plan in place.

Although I am still on a full time paid job, my online earning has grown significantly. Thanks to a solid plan & some great ideas!

Here are 10 Small Business Ideas Anyone Can Make Money From – Online Business:

1. Freelancing Online Jobs - you can start freelance writing for other businesses. Find thousands of freelance writing and editing jobs fresh jobs daily. Kick start your writing career for just $7.00. Click here

2. Join a Permission Research project & earn money for your reviews & opinions - Make Your Opinion Count, Join PermissionResearch!

3. Write & Promote products online – this is more like an affiliate business but you do not really have to hard sell. Often product & service companies will sponsor website owners to showcase their own products & services. This is also termed as paid research & paid reviews.

4. Promote a small local business in your network – using your social networks, both online & offline, you can promote a small local business & get paid. One of the best ways to promote businesses is to distribute online coupons.

Usually large organizations pay millions of dollars to social marketing companies to help create a buzz & be a social spokes person. You can do that for small local businesses too within your own network & get paid for doing that.

5. Set up an online domain & rent niche content – you can set up a domain (choose from the best domain hosts). Find a niche content & rent out your sub-domain for a monthly fee. This is a great business model for newer entrants who find it hard to promote their products or services on their own.

They often look to communities to get better visibility. Community sites like photo.net, youtube.com etc get millions of visitors each month & their owners earn a lot of money from advertisements.

6. Auction domains & Parked Domain ads – you can buy & sell domain names. People pay a lot of money to get the domain names of their choice. If you happen to own a domain that someone else needs, they pay you to transfer the domain in their name.

That apart, while you still own that domain, you can still earn money from parked domain ads. You can sign up with Sedo to register buy sell online domains.

7.  Make money from ads – if you already have a website (or a blog) you can signup free with advertisers and make money from ads. You can choose between CPC & CPM ads to earn an optimum amount of money. Good content always gets good advertisements.

Many publishers have started to move away from Google. There are a lot of Google Adsense alternative advertisers who also provide ads with high CPC rates.

8. Sell your pictures online & earn from your videos – any content can bring you money, provided you market it correctly. There are numerous websites where you can upload your pictures & sell them online. Usually the agents will keep a commission of 50% – 70% to begin with. You get paid every time a customer downloads your pictures or videos.

You can also sell your own pictures or picture products from online service providers. Good online companies are Smug Mug, photo mugs & products from Ritz Pix &  Cafe Press Photo products.

9. Help local business with marketing – you can help small businesses with their marketing & promotional activities by running campaigns for them. Sign up for services like Overnight Prints for printing high quality promo materials & fliers, logo design to offer branding & design services or pop materials like magnets calendars or promotional T-shirts from Vista Prints.

10. Affiliate marketing – this is as good as selling & often involves working the entire 9 yards of hard selling. Though affiliate marketing is almost a full time job & requires experience & expertise on the products, you can start off by signing up free with best affiliates for them & then running ads to get visitors to your affiliate product pages.

Earnings from affiliate product sales are much higher than earnings from online ads. Even if your websites visitor count is low, a proper website set up for affiliate sales could earn you huge profits.

The key is to Start Your Business Now! You need to have the flexibility to change your style & your marketing model till you find the one that works best for you.

• making money from Google & Advertising
• making money from affiliate sales & shopping ads
• 15 great ways to make money from blogs

all talk of some of the best ways to make money blogging. While most of the high earning bloggers either sell their own products or their affiliates, there is a large section of serious bloggers who earn money by writing syndicated posts.

From my personal experience, almost 20% – 30% of a blogger’s income could come from writing for someone else. It could be a per-post payment, or a fixed price payment based on the total number of posts one has to make per month. While many professional bloggers often outsource their entire work to content providers, they always keep a keen eye on the quality of the content.

I have been talking to a lot of advertisers who buy blog reviews & pay for posts from aa, bb, cc, aaa to get a first hand idea of what they expect from a bloggers when they pay for a post.

1. Unique – fresh & well thought content that helps other readers get a fresh perspective or clears a lot of doubts about the subject. Since topics could also be controversial, a great post would have to be assertive & sober at the same time
2. Readability – the content should be written in a manner that is very easy to read. The writing style matters – people love to read informative posts that contain examples, illustrations & well researched references. The post should be written for human readers more than they are for search engines
3. Search Engine Friendly – keywords should be present in the Title as well as within the posts. Important key phrases could be enclosed in bullets, H1 or H2 tags, highlighted in bold etc
4. Facts and not Fiction – the content should be based on facts. Although conjectures are alright, they should be based on legitimate information. Pointing to authoritative people or to published articles in reputed websites also help build credibility
5. Detailed Post – most paid services require in-depth knowledge of the product or service. While some pay just to get back links, most advertisers wish that they highlight the uses, benefits & features of the product or services. Many blog advertisers also like it when the blogger compares their product’s strength with other competitive products
6. Impartial posts – advertisers general wish that paid reviews be of a positive nature, talking about the good things of the products. That being said, to maintain your credibility with your readers, you must be impartial & unbiased. If you cannot find anything good to write about, it is wise to reject the paid review offer. On the same topic, you dont have to be harsh on competition either. If you focus on the features & benefits, competitive products could pay you to write for them as well
7. Post length – typical advertised posts are 200 – 350 words in length. Such a post will be long enough to hold the readers’ attention. A longer post will be helpful for search engines and will be more search friendly
8. Credits – advertisers love when bloggers show statistical information on the value or popularity of their products & services. While it is accepted that the advertiser will speak good of their own products, it adds a lot of conviction to readers when bloggers credit famous people or organizations who publish data
9. No unwanted links – advertisers will also wish to build inbound links from advertised posts. Too many links will cause search engines like Google to suspend your site for spam. It is also a formality not to include links to competition or other advertisers links
10. Summary – a short summary at the end of the post helps emphasize the key facts. This also helps to build a few phrases into the reader’s mind. Much like titles, using keywords & key phrases makes the post extremely search engine friendly

This is a short summary of how good blog reviews & advertised posts could be written. Experienced writers could write great articles in simple english (or any other language) in about 200 – 250 words. But one has to learn over years how to write them.

Experiment writing blog posts on various topics of various length. It is quite possible that for your niche posts, the optimum word count could be different. You should also experiment with writing titles & foot notes to see how keywords could be used effectively all throughout the posts.

With videos, bloggers could open up multiple channels & ways to connect with internet users. Each of these channels open up new ways to connect with more people, more customers & more visitors.

There are a couple of ways in which you can start of with making your own videos:

• get a handycam & start shooting right from your home office
• use videos available on free websites like YouTube on your website – do check with the author before use to prevent usage violations
• employ a professional video making company to create videos on demand for your blogs

If this is the first time you are thinking of using videos to add more value to your readers & gather more subscribers, here are a few tips to help you explore:

• brand all your videos with watermarks – you can even create a custom video player with your branding
• share your videos on popular free video sites like YouTube – there are always millions of users & viewers on YouTube looking for your creation
• allow people to share & embed your content – this could help spread your messages faster over other video bloggers
• allow podcasts & vodcasts from your website
• show ads on your videos for extra online money from video blogging
• become an affiliate of any video production company & promote them to anyone looking to create videos for their business
• review other products, services or publish video interviews of high profile people from your community or line of business – they could be syndicated video productions or you could do it for free & earn money back from advertising
• sell 5 – 10 secs video advertising slots for long duration videos

When used correctly videos could add meaning and a new dimension to your blogs. Especially for blogs that focus on traveling, technology, training etc, videos could help in delivering the extra punch that one could not achieve with plain words.

The effect seems to have taken a turn for the worse on all posts during the last week. Fortunately for us, Pro Media Blog Twitter has not been impacted. You need to keep an eye on your Twitter posts as well as follow the Twitter blog for key updates that could affect your membership.

In case your posts have been deleted from your profile, they may not have been erased from the system. You can still view the updates & retrieve them.

Follow these steps to check your posts:

• Go to: Twitter Search
• In the Search box type in: from:<userID>since:<start date yyyy-mm-dd> until:<end date yyyy-mm-dd>
• hit enter to give all the posts made in between the start date & the end date

For example, if I were to find what all posts I have made during Jan 1, 2009 & Jan 31, 2009, I would enter:

from:ranjaymitra since:2009-04-01 until:2009-04-14

If you are not comfortable with writing the code in the search box, there is an easier way:

• Go to: Advanced Twitter Search
• Enter the form with all the desired information
  • In the People -> From this person field, enter the Twitter ID
  • In the Dates section, choose the Start Date & End Date for which you want to see the posts
• Hit Enter to see the results

You can use Advanced Twitter Search to look up any sort of Twitter posts, with any combination of the fields. While I explaied how to verify that your posts still exist after the Twitter virus attack, you can use the same form to run any Search queries on Twitter.

In this tough economy, where every penny spent matters to the advertiser, and every penny earned matters to the publisher, Click Fraud & inconsistent Forensics are a looming threat to all.

A report in the Wall Street Journal shows how companies are coping with click fraud. Several law suits against Google & Yahoo have cautioned these large companies to fight click fraud harder. Since they make money every time someone clicks ad ad, click fraud tends to increase their revenue.

But there is no easy way to detect or control this fraud. Click Forensics are not exactly scientific or consistent. Many times, these forensic analysis are done manually and result in errors.

One of the effect of a forensic analysis is returning back the advertiser’s money. Now if the clicks had been rightful, a faulty analysis would cause the publisher to lose the ad revenue for no fault of their’s.

Google, Yahoo and the large ad agencies have stepped up their forensic tests & analysis. Any bad analysis, or higher human error would cause publishers to lose their online income from valid clicks.

Our income from the ads on our websites have gone down. We have also reported very low clicks for the last quarter. A part of that had been ineffective Google ads. But we also suspect that incorrect click forensics have also played a major role.

How have you been affected?

While most of us are eager to hear experts give us a date when the economy will again spring back, Shiller observes that we need to be cautious in the days to come.

You can see Robert Shiller’s interview video here.

This graph, picked from Shiller’s book, Irrational Exuberance (2006), summarizes some of the key facts of the past & the current US economy.

4 key points from this interview on aspects of the crisis in the US economy 2009 – 2010:

• regulating for financial innovation
• reducing trust in models
• redesigning institutions
• and the time line for turnaround

Here is a list of other books by Robert Shiller worth reading for a better understanding of this crisis as well as understanding particularly an understanding human irrationality that played a key role in explaining economic breakdowns and exploring effective solutions:

• Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism
• The Subprime Solution: How Today’s Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It
• The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century
• Macro Markets: Creating Institutions for Managing Society’s Largest Economic Risks (Clarendon Lectures in Economics)

You can download the WP Affiliate Elite plugin & stop any leaks in your affiliate business.

The key features of this plugin are:

• quick and easy link building
• includes a affiliate link to all your keywords automatically
• increasing the affiliate link increases the chances of sales
• hides the affiliate link so that you do not lose any commissions
• pre formatted linking style is included
• each link can be tracked individually so that you can analyze which links are converting more
• comes with a 60 day money back guarantee

Most of the top money making bloggers use these professional plugins to run high conversion Wordpress blogs. Normal bloggers who sell affiliate products by creating links manually could never be able to create a top money making blog unless they use professionally created automatic products like the WP Affiliate Elite plugin.

The top money making bloggers will run multiple blogs & will post several articles on each every day. Having fresh content on the blog gives it a higher rating by the search engines thus driving more visitors to your site.

They use PLR Poster to do this immense job for them every day. This software gets free unique articles from the internet & posts them on your blog without violating any copyright.

You don’t have to pay anyone to write for you or you do not even have to depend on RSS Feeds to keep the content on your site updated with fresh posts. PLR Poster does the job of a writer & a blogger all at once.

For example, if you are authoring 20 blogs, then it will be a nightmare to write 5 articles every day for each of the 20 blogs. People thus depend on PLR content. PLR is the acronym for Private Label Rights. Users of PLR is permitted to modify the product to fit his or her needs.

Numerous writers across the world are creating content that match your blog or website’s content. There are several online sources of PLR articles that you can use to repost on your blog. Successful top money making bloggers have used PLR articles to a large extent to keep fresh content for their blogs.

They significantly increase your blog’s visibility & keeps your blog on the top of search engines.

PLR Poster is a software that these top money making bloggers use to pull PLR articles from the internet automatically & upload them onto their blogs. They search the internet for all PLR articles that match your blog’s content, extract them, formats them & then posts them onto your blog.

We use PLR Poster for several niche websites, where good free content is hard to find & requires time to browse the internet to get the ones of acceptable quality. This software can be set up to look for specific category of content, from specific sources, if you want, and it just grabs the whole article for your blog.

PLR Poster have also been used by viral marketers to produce hundreds of websites with free quality content available on the internet. Bloggers who make six or seven figure income often run hundreds of blogs. Affiliate marketers often run 500+ niche blogs. They use PLR Poster to create niche content from PLR articles available for free on the internet.

You can download the most popular PLR Poster software from their website.

We use several of these online services for our small internet business. They have helped us save money, plan better, minimize our risks & provide great services to our end customers.

Free Financial Services:

1. Paypal -You can sign up for a Free Paypal account in minutes.

Paypal is just not a credit card service any more. We use it to run our online shopping carts, to sell spot items, send custom invoices & even send out Gift Certificates & refunds to our customers online. They have extended their systems to provide customized information to the users. The system is completely flexible to work anywhere in the world.

2. Google Checkout – You can sign up for a Free Checkout account.

This is a credit card transaction service from Google. Although the fees are somewhat similar to that of Paypal, the services are limited. Not every merchant prefers to use Google Checkout. The features are also limited at this time, compared to Paypal.

Free Online Data & File Storage Services & Downloads:

3. Box.net – You can sign up for a Free Trial Box account.

With this service you can Store, share, and access your files anywhere.This is a great online service to keep your files safe, secured & accessible anywhere in the world. You can start off with a Free 2GB account & once you realize the immense benefits & peace of mind, you can extend to other services.

They also provide Free Trial Data Backup services to ensure that you do not lose your information anytime.

4. E-Junkie – You can sign up for a Free Trial e-Junkie account.

This is a combination of secured download, credit card processing & affiliate tracking system. But for the beginner, e-Junkie is one of the best way to provide secured downloads to your customers. You can upload all your items onto their system & they will automatically take care of the credit card processing & then allowing the authorized person to download the files.

We use e-Junkie for our theme downloads & we direct any buyer to a location on e-J to take care of the monetory & download part.

Free Website Statistics & Visitor Tracking:

5. Statcounter -You can sign up for a Free Statcounter account.

This is one of the best & the easiest tool to track your website hits & essential website statistical data. It allows you the option to either display your hit counter or not to show them to your visitors. It tracks all the important website visitor statistics including entry or exit pages, popular pages, geo locations, IP addresses & search terms.

They recently launched the Free Global Stats Tool that will help users to create custom charts & website alerts.

6. Google Analytics – You can sign up for a Free Google Analytics account.

This website tracking & visitor monitoting tool is provided by Google. It is fairly extensive in the details & helps you make intelligent assessment especially if you are using Google Adwords & Google Adsense. Google Analytics also helps you slice & dice the data in various ways to see which layout design or ad layout & ad positioning is working best for your website.

Free Website Uptime Downtime Monitoring Service:

7. Free Web Monitoring – You can sign up for a Free account to monitor your website’s availability.

This service lets you know whenever your website is down & have stopped responding. As a small online business owner you may not be able to monitor your website’s uptime or downtime thoughout the day & night. This service will monitor your web site’s availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with instant email alerts and weekly web site performance statistics.

You can monitor 5 URLs with each free account.

Free Google Search Engine Alter Service:

8. Free Alerts – You can sign up for the Free Google Alert service.

This is a Free Search engine monitoring & alerting service from Google. You can set key words that you want to track & anytime Google search engine finds a relevant topic, it will send you an email update. This is a very vital alerting tool especially if you want to know about your competition. People in niche marketing areas also find this tool useful to track activities in their niches.

Free Content Sharing with Emails:

9. Tell a Friend Email – You can sign up for a Free Tell A Friend email service.

This is much like any social networking website service but instead of sharing it on the web, this service lets you send an email to any email address. All you need to do is to embed the FreeTellAFriend button on your web page or blog & any visitor can send the content to any email ID of their choice.

This is a great free service to spread your online content virally.

Free URL Shortening Services:

10. TinyURL – You can send TinyURL without registering.

This Free internet service converts any URL into a short one of the form http://tinyurl.com/example. This helps you send small URLs instead of the large ones that often get truncated. May email systems will cut out a large URL leaving a portion that is completely useless. The TinyURL service ensures that your URL is short & often easy to remember.

Other similar URL shortening services include Bit.ly, eb.cx, elfurl.com, url.fm, notlong.com & shorl.com.

After the great success of Twitter, it was clear someone will think of competeing & the only way to compete with Twitter is changing the number of letters you could type. While Twitter lets you type in 140 characters, Flutter lets you do it with 26 letters!

The article by Kara Swisher on Viral Video: Forget Twitter, Google–How About Acquiring Nanoblogger Flutter? gives a good perspective on the developments on the blogging front, highlighting the strong rumors of Google trying to acquire one!

While I enjoyed listening to the 3 & a half minute video conversation on Flutter, it leaves me with a few questions. As an online blogger & a publisher, you too could be seriously thinking about these as well:

1. How much did you really benefit from Twitter? This has got nothing to do with what Twitter can or cannot do for you, but how much has Twitter brought you value in the past 6 – 12 months?

2. What has been the effect of 140 letters’ conversations? As either marketers or online business owners, have these 140 characters really been effective to you?

3. If you have used Twitter to get inbound traffic, how much have you really succeeded?

4. If you are an MLM or Affiliate marketer, how have you used Twitter apart from posting deals & some great opportunities?

5. How have your time spent on Twitter affected your spend time on Facebook or MySpace or any of the popular social networking sites?

5. Have Twitter enabled you to stop using any instant messaging system like AOL AIM or MSN?

6. How have to connected your RSS readers & Twitter followers? Have Twitter replaced your RSS readers?

While I am still new to Twitter & still learning the ropes, it has neither replaced my RSS readers or my network on Facebook or AIM or MSN. I still continue to focus on Feedburner followers & Facebook fans for help & suggestions.

Having said that, I cannot think of creating a specific opportunity for Flutter at this time. Unless you use all symbols to convey a message or use acronyms, the only use could be to publish tiny URLs to communicate – not a healthy way to build a long standing business relation!

Other posts I have read on the Introduction of Flutter are here:

• Mashable – Flutter Mocks You, Me and Our Microblogging Addiction
• Huffington Post -What Comes After Twitter? Flutter
• Download Squad -Flutter: Like Twitter in 26 characters (but not really)
• Pulse 2 Technology Reviews – Flutter Is Like Twitter, But Is Only 26 Characters
• Slate V’s mock on YouTube – Flutter NanoBlogging

Quite unlike the commonly seen MLM & Affiliate landing pages that seem to struggle with boring details to convince a customer to buy, the Advanced MLM Affiliate Theme takes a more realistic approach.

This business theme for online marketers is created for the advanced professionals. They spend a lot of time in pre-sales, in building testimonials & in training their team members.

The theme combines images, video & text in a way that adds a professional flavor to the MLM & affiliate approach. The theme also allows users to use testimonials in the form of videos & images.

The highlights & features are explained in the the Advanced MLM Affiliate Theme page. You can also view a live demo & download the theme from the details page.

Here is a small summary of some of the features that have received great feedback from experienced MLM Affiliates & online marketing professionals:

• this 2 column theme adds a professional flavor to MLM & Affiliate business with the focus on pre-sales, training & leveraging popular social networks
• combines text, images & videos effectively to build train groom networking members. At the same time, text video & images are also used to provide essential testimonials to buyers
• uses YouTube videos & Flickr pictures, automatically resizing them as necessary
• multiple ad units are also built into the theme to earn money from online ads
• makes best use of website blog space & optimizes ads & affiliate ad buttons
• you can show all (as many as you want) affiliate button links in sidebar sliders increasing your pass through sales or referral incomes
• static affiliate links & buttons are available for the critical ones that require more focus
• ability to show rotating one liner text ads in the header – as many text ads could be shown here

You can view a Live Demo of the Wordpress MLM Affiliate Theme.

The final version of this theme includes all the feedback from the experienced MLM business owners & online affiliate marketers, that included effectively using videos as testimonials, leveraging online networks on YouTube & Flickr as well as providing the options to show multiple ads as necessary.

We have received tons of improvement suggestions on our beta Wordpress MLM Affiliate Theme. Its been just over a day but the volume of feedback was great.

We apologize for not being able to return individual emails. We thank each and everyone of you for taking the time to review the beta version of the Wordpress MLM Affiliate Theme in details & writing back to us.

We will summarize the suggestions & feedback for our readers. We have looked into all of them & have grouped them as Essential to Have & Good to Have, as below:

“Essential To Have” Features to make the Wordpress MLM Affiliate Theme a Big Hit:

1. Include Videos for Training in the MLM Affiliate Theme – Advanced MLM & Affiliates spend a lot of time training others. Videos are one of the most popular ways to train teams. The feedback was to include Videos in the Advanced MLM Affiliate Theme

2. Include Videos to show Testimonials – Most Advanced MLM & Affiliates depend on customer testimonials to close sales. Most of the current MLM owners & Affiliates display customer testimonial texts. The feedback was to provide more compelling testimonials by including customer videos

3. Include Eye Catching Text as Testimonials on pages – Customer testimonials are a key feature of all MLM & Affiliate website blogs. The feedback was to include text testimonials & feedback from customers

In summary, the feedback was to embed videos & eye catching text in the Wordpress MLM Affiliate Theme that could help serve as customer feedback / testimonials as well as for training purposes.

We will implement all these in the final download. The final theme will have Videos embedded from YouTube. Having your videos on YouTube will allow you to share your YouTube followers with your business blog sites. It will also reduce your websites bandwidth (you dont have to pay YouTube to host your large video files) & you can re-use all your existing videos

“Good To Have” Features to make the Wordpress MLM Affiliate Theme a Big Hit:

4. Embed Flickr photos in your MLM Affiliate Theme – A large number of Advanced MLM & Affiliates wanted to show pictures from their Flickr account of achievements, lifestyle, accomplishments & events.

This is a great suggestion & the way we understood is that affiliates wanted to share their personal & business success stories without cluttering their websites. Many already have a lot of images on Flickr & did not want to re-post them again.

The other part of this suggestion is that Advanced MLM Affiliates could still maintain their network on Flickr & drive visitors to & from Flickr to their business website.

We will implement this feature & will include pictures from Flickr in the Wordpress Advanced MLM Affiliate Theme.

5. Remove Custom Ad Holders – Many of our Business CMS Themes contain custom modular ad holders. This allows publishers to combine ads for the best prices for the web spaces. The feedback is to remove the 300px x 250px Custom Ad holder that is built within the posts & pages.

This is a very valid suggestion, especially when you are an advanced MLM Affiliate. Unlike beginners who proportionately  make more money from Blog Ads, Advanced Affiliates make 10 – 20 times more money from Affiliate sales than ads. To them, these in-post ads are a distraction.

We will implement this feedback & will remove the 300px x 250px custom ad holder that is usually built inside the post. You can always use Wordpress plugins, listed in Essential Wordpress Plugins, to show ads inside posts.

6. Implement Twitter Updates in the Advanced MLM Affiliate Theme – Many MLM & Affiliates Business owners wanted to show updates from Twitter. This would help share followers between their MLM Affiliate blog site & Twitter.

This is a good suggestion, however we shall not be implementing it. The reason being different people have different ways to include Twitter updates in their Business Blogs. We will leave it to the owners to implement Twitter updates with any of the popular Twitter plugins.

The Advanced MLM Affiliate Theme does have social networking tools built into the Business Theme that includes Flicks, Twitter, MySpace etc. Users can use these effectively for building their social buzz.

Once again, we thank each and every one of you for your feedback. The final Wordpress Advanced MLM Theme will be released for download with all the improvements that are mentioned above.

And these are just the basics.  For a small online business, the competition is too strong, every small business website trying to get the attention of the same set of visitors.

So you have to make the best use of  any amount of time that you get the visitor to be on your blog.

1. The Business Theme – The theme is the first thing anyone sees when they come to your site. Choose your themes carefully. If you are trying to make serious money from your blog, it makes sense to pay for a good business theme.

We have a great selection of business themes here on Pro Media Blog. There is also a great collection of hand picked Business CMS Themes on Business Themes, especially for MLM Business, Affiliate Business & for bloggers who make money from Blog Ads.

2. The Logo – Have a professionally built logo. Anyone with Adobe Photoshop could make a picture but use a professional to create a logo that speaks for your business. The next step is to standardize your logo & use only the once that you approve consistently anywhere you want to use your logo.

You can use a professional Business Logo Design service. You can get excellent Business Logo Design for under $150.

If you decide to create your logo on your own, learn how to create the best with Adobe. There are plenty of resources on Adobe Education Store to help you. Before you finalize your logo, ask your friends & associates what they think of it. Feedback always help to improve!

3. Ads on Blogs – Visitors do not expect advertisements on a Business website, unless it is a social  website. However, showing ads also add to the publishers online income & to that extent you can to design your ads carefully & show ads that do not compete for the visitors’ attention over your content.

Not all advertisement agencies are good. Not all have the best selection of advertisers or the breadth of categories. Look at a list of blog advertisers we have used with great success. They offer variety & good quality of contextual CPC & CPM ads.

4. Contact Information – Confidence builders are contact information, preferably a phone number & email. Think about it, would you rather buy from a site that shows which number to call if you have a problem, or one which asks you to post in a forum?

You could mask your contact information to prevent them being stolen by spammers, but it is essential that you tell your visitors how to contact you. Your business blog site should also contain an About page listing a brief history, your credentials & may be a picture of the management team. It is also a good idea to list some customer feedback on the About page.

The point here is, even though people are buying from your website, they are actually doing business with You. A complete set of information helps your customers know you better. The current trend is to show the Twitter ID so that you could have some meaningful conversation with your customers too.

You could follow me on Twitter to get more updates.

5. Make A Statement – A Statement is essential to catch the attention & convey your interest. People may not always remember your web URL but they can always remember your Statement.

A catchy phrase conveys at least 2 important messages (1) what are you delivering & (2) what should the visitor expect. A Statement is different from a Slogan, which could be different for different products. A Statement conveys the message of your company.

Walmart for example, has the Statement “Save Money. Live Better“. If you are running your Affiliate business or a MLM online business, you would be selling a lot of different products from different companies. Your Statement would help you differentiate your business from those you are selling & show your business’s value & commitment.

As an example, if you are an affiliate selling desktops computers, your value Statement could mention that you prescreen products to offer the most popular products. The value that you are communicating are (1) saving customers’ time & (2) getting you the best products thus reducing risks of failure.

These are 5 very simple tips that could help you, as an online small business owner, get the visitor’s attention, give a solid impression on your professionalism & that you take your customers’ business very seriously & that You are there to help them solve their problem.

The list could have been bigger, but I have kept it to the 5 most essential points to help you stand out of the crowd.

Our new Wordpress theme is for online MLM Affiliate marketers & small business owners who also sell affiliate products. The Advanced MLM Affiliate Theme allows you to do all the necessary presales, generate leads, expand your online network & showcase your success stories.

The availability of dynamic badges on the Advanced MLM Affiliate Theme allows the user to generate sell-through revenue as well as referral money.

You can see a Live Beta Demo of the Advanced MLM Affiliate Theme.

As with any of our professional themes for online business, we are seeking feedback from experienced MLM business owners, Affiliate marketers & online business owners to help us tune the Advanced MLM Affiliate Theme before we release the final version.

A few points that could help you understand the reason & the use behind this Wordpress business theme:

• it is suitable for experienced marketers who generate a lot of affiliate business online
• the theme demonstrates deeper pre-sales activities rather than just a stop-and-shop theme
• it allows you to deep link to your affiliates network as well
• the theme makes the best use of space & highlights a few articles on all pages
• the theme dynamically links you to referral or product sales pages with the use of standard 125px x 125px buttons – there is no limit to the number of affiliate buttons you can show
• allows you to show multiple ads within the theme for extra money

We are looking for feedback from all our prior customers as well as from MLM Affiliate network business owners. It will help us to ensure that we have not missed any of the essential elements of advanced MLM marketing & will further help to fine-tune the theme.

Review & see a live demonstration of the Advanced MLM Affiliate Theme .

Biz Stone explains “Twitter provides a new way of messaging”. Stephen points to that fact that neither the concept was new, nor the services were essential. In spite of that, Twitter is an immense success.

The reason probably lies in the fact that people always find newer ways to use a service to their advantages. While some have used Twitter just as another web based instant messenger without the burden of running an application like Yahoo! or AIM, others, like politicians & celebrities have used Twitter to communicate with their fans & supporters.

Biz mentions a very significant trend – people, especially those who are the focus of the media, have used Twitter to replace the tabloids. Much like how the internet in general have caused the decline of newspaper print media, Twitter may cause to replace the tabloids.

True, if the high profile media personalities could express themselves directly to their fans, & respond to them instantly, there would be no extras for the tabloids to report! Unless, of course, if tabloids too get onto Twitter.

Biz also gives a very high level plan of Twitter’s upcoming development – to expand thoroughly into the mobile market, to have Twitter services expand into the lifestyle of mobile users. If advertisers piggy back on Twitter, the possibilities of sales marketing & promotions could be enormous.

The point that Biz Stone mentioned regarding the reason behind their success, which has been repeated in various other forums before, is the fact that Twitter has “patient investors”.

The investment could just be in the tune of a couple of million dollars a year, but the “patience” is allowing Twitter architects to focus on creating a value in the market rather than plugging all the money making opportunities.

In case you are a new or advanced blogger who make money from multiple ads from your blog, this is a great theme to help you earn more. We, though, recommend that you use the theme judiciously & keep your primary focus on creating great content.

You can read the details of the multiple ads Wordpress theme on the Wordpress Pro Ad Theme page.

The theme takes less than 5 minutes to set up & all you need to do is to add your advertising codes into the theme. If you need help with finding great blog advertisers, you can read our post on 15 Ways to Make Money from Blogs & sign up with the advertisers.

The Pro Ad Theme is modular in nature, allowing you to show as many or as few ads in any place as you want. Users have also commented that the Pro Ad Theme is also a great multi ad theme for bloggers to experiment with ad placements.

The Pro Ad multiple ads theme shows all the high paying ad format – multiple leader board formats, multiple rectangle formats, the multiple skyscraper formats & half banner formats. You could experiment with the best placements as well as the best ad formats that will work for you.

You can see a live demo & download the Wordpress multiple ads Pro Ad Theme on the Wordpress Pro Ad Theme page.

The Coupon Ads Theme is created for any business that either runs an online promotional business or deep links any affiliate links from their sites – like Affiliate marketers & MLM business owners.

[Update: We have Released the Coupon Ads Theme. You can read, See a Demo & download from the Coupon Ads Theme page]

We have made the following improvements:

1. Added the customer ratings to the product views – this will help customers to rate the product & also influence potential customers’ buying decision. Display product ratings on summary pages as well. The Ratings Plugin is included with the download. You may consider a donation to Lester Chan for creating & distributing the Ratings Plugin

2. Added leader board ad format & integrated the ad with the content. Leader board ads appear on the top & the bottom of every page. They are both modular in nature & can contain 2 different ads

3. Recommendations to similar or related products appear on the top along with the product specific promotion & a prominent Shop Now button. The customer product recommendation vote is also visible on the top.

The recent HitWise report shows that the most searched word in the internet today is “coupons“. Internet shoppers are always looking for a good bargain & they are always searching for Coupons and Discount Ads. The initial feedback from our group of beta testers who are all successful MLM & Online Affiliate marketers are extremely encouraging on the prospect of this theme.

We are completing the final documentation & the installation procedures & we shall release the final version of the Wordpress Coupon Ads Theme by this weekend.

[Update: We have Released the Coupon Ads Theme. You can read, See a Demo & download from the Coupon Ads Theme page]

We completed the first round of feedback of our business theme for Wordpress, the Coupon Ads Theme for Affiliate & MLM business. The theme was praised by all the business owners who ran the beta test for us.

The few points that came out, which we did not list earlier, as some big advantages of the Coupon Ads Theme for Affiliates & MLM Business are:

• ability to link the Shop Now to the affiliate sales shopping site while keeping the content on your website – this has 2 advantages (a) since the content lies on your site, you will keep getting search engine ranking & customers coming in from search engines (b) you have the option of closing the sale in 2 places – the first page & the detailed post page
• attractive design that makes the product & the sales pitch stand out
• absolute easy navigation with the ability to show 300px wide advertisements on the sidebar
• minimal customization – some of the business owners who tested the Coupon Ads theme could set it up in less than 5 minutes
• Prominent Related Items link on the top of the page increases the chances of more sales

Having said these additional advantages of using the Coupon Ads Theme, there are also a few suggestions that came to us. We are looking to see the best way to implement as many of them as possible.

• include the social media marketing tools like Twitter, Facebook & RSS subscription
• include product ratings & product reviews from other customers that could influence new customers
• although ads could be custom build into the sidebar widgets, include ads within the content especially the leader board formats would be very suitable
• include a slider that could display products one after another

These are all great feedback. We will try to include as many of them in the Coupon Ads Theme for Affiliates & MLM Business owners before the final release.

Meanwhile, if you have any thought of improving this theme or any other published on Pro Media Blog or on Business CMS Themes for Wordpress, please drop us a line.

[Update: We have Released the Coupon Ads Theme. You can read, See a Demo & download from the Coupon Ads Theme page]

The embedded link points to a bogus website that is set up to track your Google Adwords login ID & password. If you fall prey to the scam you will be giving away your entire bank details.

This is a fairly new online phishing scam targeting Google publishers & advertisers. We are all used to phishing scams related to your Bank Of America’s account & some more ridiculous ones related to your Hotmail or GMail login details. But this is the first time I have seen phishing scams on Google Advertising accounts.

Here is a snapshot of the Google Adwords phishing scam email. Note the visible sender’s email ID is quite convincing – googlead.com. In a previous post we wrote how John Stossel described the elaborate network of scammers operate internationally. And with the economy in a bad shape all over, more such scam & phishing is likely  to occur.

Some phishing emails are very obvious. But some are not so apparent. In case you are in doubt, there are a few things you can do:

• check the Windows status bar – that should give you the exact location to which the link will take you. In case it does not start with the sender’s domain, you should know it could be a scamming email
• sometimes the links are cloaked – you will not be able to see the destination unless you click it. If you are in doubt, do not click the URL. If you are using an email software like Microsoft Outlook, check for the email’s header information. Although the data is cryptic, look for the expected sender’s domain name. If you don’t see it, the email is likely to be a scam or a phishing email
• if the potential phishing email is asking you to urgently click on a link to log into one of your bank account, open a separate browser & log into your bank account by typing in the actual URL of the online bank to see if there are any issues
• call up your bank & ask for help to verify if there have been any problems with your account. In most cases they would know of any scams or phishing emails that is circulating
• report the email to the email provider. Each report helps them to update the security database & helps a little to protect you better. Whatever you do, do not reply to the suspected scamming or phishing email. You will only confirm a valid email that could lead to further scams

We shall be releasing another great theme the Coupon-Ads Theme for Wordpress blogs & online web stores. The Coupon Ads Theme is especially suited for all affiliate marketers, internet MLM business owners & bloggers who run shopping websites.

The Coupon Ads Theme for Wordpress is a small business theme that can be used by any online business powered by Wordpress & used as a front line internet store.

The Wordpress Coupon-Ads Theme is built to help online affiliate marketers display affiliate coupons & sell from affiliate links. You can link directly to the affiliate site, or to the affiliate product deep link or to another post or page on your own website for further product information.

The Coupon Ads Theme is simple in its design & performs the main function of displaying the affiliate products very well. It uses the minimal custom fields & uses most of the affiliate button formats thereby eliminating any additional work of creating images.

The key features of the Wordpress Coupon Ads Theme for online affiliate marketers, MLM business owners & bloggers who sell affiliate products are:

• easy to set up & install, very small in size which makes loading the site very fast
• clean simple layout focusing on the affiliate products
• Built in Shop Now button to deep link directly to the affiliate product page & close the sale faster
• ability to show additional promotions like Free Shopping or Discounts that are specific to the products
• show Similar Items on every post very similar to Recommendations on Similar Products as seen on other commercial websites like Amazon.com or Best Buy or any online retailer
• fairly optimized for search engines

[Update: We have Released the Coupon Ads Theme. You can read, See a Demo & download from the Coupon Ads Theme page]

The Wordpress Coupon Ads Theme will be ready by the end of the week. We shall have the theme for a live demo as well, like any other themes we publish. The theme will be available for download on this Pro Media Blog as well as on our Business CMS Theme website.

The video ads saw a meteoric rise. Internet Advertising spend in the Digital video category shot up from $324 million in 2007 to $734 million in 2008. The Internet advertising in the United States grew to $23.4 billion in 2008.

You can read & download the PwC 2008 Internet Ad Spending Report from the IAB website. The report includes data reflecting online advertising revenues from Web sites, commercial online services, Email providers, as well as other companies selling online advertising.

According to the report, some ad formats are performing better than the others:

• Search advertising is holding up relatively well, at $10.5 billion for 2008, up 20%
• Display ads, the second-largest category, are suffering slower growth — up 8% to $7.6 billion in 2008

The chart below (courtesy Media Post) shows the distribution of the 4th quarter 2008 advertising formats & their performance.

According to reports in the NY Times & the Wall Street Journal for Internet Ads spending in 2008, a few other points worth noting, especially for bloggers who make money online from ads, internet affiliate business owners &

• Performance-based ads (CPA ads, Shopping ads etc) made up 57% of all Internet advertising in 2008, according to the report, up from 51% in 2007
• CPM ads performance fell to 39%, from 45%
• Sponsorship advertising, where publishers create custom pages and advertisements for brands, was less popular this year than last: it fell to 1% of all fourth-quarter revenue in 2008, down from 3% in 2007

The major spend in the internet advertising came from the consumer-packaged goods companies (CPG), rising to $1.5 billion in 2008, up from $925 million in 2007.

Market researcher eMarketer predicts that online-ad spending will grow 4.5%, to $24.5 billion, compared with a previous prediction of 8.9%.

We have chose this plugin for the simplicity of use, the ability to choose from different translation engines, the ability to control cache & the integration with sitemaps. We highly recommend Davide’s Wordpress Language plugin.

There are a few other language translator plugins for Wordpress available. Most of them are available free, but we encourage a small donations to the authors for their contributions.

WP Translate by Scott Hough – this is one of the earliest plugins & one of the widely used language translation plugin for Wordpress blogs

Google Translator Plugin by John Pozadzides – this uses the Google Translation engine to translate Wordpress blogs

GG_Translate WordPress Plugin by Adrian Ritchie – links to translate your blog based on the languages the users has set up in their browser

All these plugins are quite capable of translating your blog page into a local regional language. It only matters how flexible they are in terms of choosing the translation engines & whether it does anything to prevent your blog being blocked by any of these engines due to over use.

As I mentioned before, after a few trials, we have started using Davide Pozza’s Wordpress Global Translation Plugin & have been very satisfied with that. We have configured it to use Google’s translation system which gives the closest translation to any regional language.

Our prior articles on Drastic Drop in Adsense Earnings & our recommendations to publishers to adopt a more competitive & effective Google Adsense alternatives received a lot of support from publishers.

We have monitored all our Google Ads on Pro Media Blog, as well as our other websites & blogs, for 3 months – a good time frame to make certain positive conclusions on our statements. The issues we noticed with Google Adsense lately are 3 folds:

• appearance of non-contextual ads, often showing Google’s own products wherever there are possibilities of showing other high paying competitive ads
• extremely low CPC ads – often as low as less than a cent per click
• incorrect reporting of clicks & impression counts – now we no longer believe in what Google is reporting in their Adsense manager dashboard

Appearance of non-contextual ads:

Blogs that write about products or services that also has a Google product in that area, Google has been showing their own products. As an example, if you write about photography (like we do on Photo Duniya or Journal Image), 7/10 times the Adsense Ads showed Google Picasa or Google Desktop ads. These products are so well known that no one would click on a Google Picasa Ad any more, leading to a loss of click.

On Pro Media Blog posts on possible alternatives to Google Adsense or how to make money from blogs, 8/10 times Google showed their own Adsense ads or none at all. The situation became so stale that we finally removed Adsense from our prime spots. We are now replacing them with other Adsense alternatives.

Low CPC rates:

The click rates are low & the cost per click is even lower. In our 3 months of monitoring across our sites, posts that often fetched as high as as 50 cents a click now give us less than 10 cents. We have seen large number of clicks that cost less than a cent.

This could be due to the economy, but what is worrying publishers is the fact that other ad agencies like the ones we have mentioned in our alternative suggestions, are fetching either as much CPC or close. So either Google is not able to get good advertisers or simply are not able to show the right ads.

Incorrect Page View, Ad Impression & Click Reporting:

This is a more terrifying situation where the publisher has no clue what is working & what is not. We all understand if this happens once in a blue moon, but Google kept on making these reporting errors very frequently.

Google has continued to make so many errors in reporting lately that we can no longer trust the Adsense dashboard information on ad views or the ad clicks. As a small publisher, we have no option but to suck-it-up quietly. We are left at the whim of the Adsense team to report any issues or simply ignore the whole incident.

We have kept this in mind when we have designed business CMC themes for Wordpress. Instead of depending on the Adsense plugins that source ads only from Google, we have kept a modular design on the Business CMS themes so that publishers can display non-Google ads or better still, make ads compete for the highest CPC CPM rates for the ad spaces.

You could see these great Business themes either on Business-CMS Themes site or on ProMediaBlog Themes.

Although we have retained Google Adsense in some of our blogs, we have started to implement other Google Adsense alternative ads in many of them with good results. We are monitoring our conversions & click rates to decide how much of our Ad spaces should be given to Google & how much of it should be given to other competiting alternative ads.

As it happens with any prime technology, there are a lot of add-ons to Twitter. With so many people writing about Twitter add-on tools, I thought I might write up a selection of some of the best popular posts on them.

Here are a few authentic posts on Google’s thought of buying either Twitter or Jaiku:

• Schmidt: Google ‘unlikely’ to buy Twitter soon
• A conversation with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google & Charlie Rose on Google buying Twitter – the transcript of the conversation from TechCrunch
• Twitter turning down an offer from FaceBook

Whatever the road map of Twitter is ahead, today it still stands as the most popular social networking tool among bloggers, small business & even large enterprises.

In no particular order, here is a collection of some of the best lists of Twitter add-ons for Wordpress. Many of them are plugins while some are completely new online applications.

• Top 10 Twitter Tools for Wordpress Blogs on Twitter Tool Box
• Handy Twitter & Wordpress Integration guide book on Create Blog Guides
• Popular Twitter Plugins for Wordpress Blogs on NC Trower
• 99 Amazing Twitter Tools on Open Cast
• 150+ Twitter Tools on Twitter Tool Box
• Twitter Widget for Wordpress hosted blogs on Wordpress
• Top Popular Twitter Tools for Desktops, Emails & blogs on Online Marketing, Startups and Venture Capital
• 10 Twitter Tools for Wordpress on WP Scoop

Our usage of Wordpress plugins are extremely minimal. We use only the essential Wordpress plugins but we have also compiled a list of the popular Wordpress plugins that add value to your blog.

We use Alex King’s Twitter plugin for Wordpress. Thats free, easy to use & can be customized very easily with no or even the simplest knowledge of PHP programming.

This Web Agent Builder 3.0 is a digital content manager & can grab precise parts of website content and organize it into usable formats. So as long as the information is available on the internet, in a visible format, they can be captured & stored into your own database for use.

While you may argue that you can sift through these numerous websites & collate the information manually, imagine doing that over and over again, in the same precise manner. Information on the internet can change & hence assimilating these information has to be a repeated activity.

The Web Agent can be easily programmed to look up specific sites & look for specific information, gather the information & save them into your own marketing database. Imagine trying to find out how your competitors are pricing their products, or the various features that they are designing into their products.

The Web Agent can be set to find out the competitive websites, go over to the product or pricing pages on their websites read-in all the information. Once you have the data with you, you may decide to slice & dice & represent them in a way that helps your own company to make strategic & tactical decisions.

Although this is a very simple example, these sort of web agents have been used very successfully in gathering market intelligence for a long time. Very much like any other web mash up software programs. Corporations like Siemens, Virgin and Alibaba have used Mozenda Web Agent Builder 3.0 very effectively to their own advantage.

For small & new business, there are flexible pricing plans that start from less that $40 a month. But you get to try it for free before you pay. You get the chance to evaluate whether & how you can use the web agent to help you gather your competition intelligence.

The system can also be programmed to run frequently, like once a week or one a month, depending on how frequently the information changes. But Mozenda has also built a few essential services to help the users more. A few services include Web data extraction, Research and Competitive Intelligence, Dynamic Data Feeds, Web Mashups & Website Integration & E-Commerce Inventory Management.

The Wordpress i-Sales Shopping Theme could convert a normal blog into a powerful & professional online store & help you sell more & sell effectively from blogs. It is professionally designed to create an attractive web store on your Wordpress blog.

See a live Demo of the Wordpress i-Sales Online Blog Store Theme.

You can read the details of the i-Sales Shopping Wordpress theme, but here are the key features & advantages of using the i-Sales Theme:

• The i-Sales shopping blog theme converts your normal blog into a powerful online store in less than 10 minutes
• it has a modular construction to help you customize the shopping blog even further
• it makes the best use of space, optimizing the sidebars to provide as much of information to pre-sell
• the slider on the index page & the pages continue to show attractive images of the products, linking to the products directly
• custom fields used to show key information on each product posts – including product price on your blog, availability (in stock or out of stock) & any special discounts for that product like Free Shipping etc
• popularize your products using your social networks like Flickr, Facebook & Twitter etc
• effective & easy to use widgets on the sidebars & footers. They can be controlled & changed from the Admin menu
• i-Sales Theme has multiple ads of all the high paying ad formats including the leader board & the wide rectangle
• highly optimized for search engines
• includes Lester Chan’s very popular plugins Post-Views & Post Reviews to help customers review products on your blog & influence other potential customers. You may wish to make a donation to Lester for his great plugins

See a live Demo of the Wordpress i-Sales Online Blog Store Theme.

The i-Sales Online Shopping Blog Theme is another great theme from Pro Media Blog & will help bloggers to sell effectively & sell more from your blog store. You can read the details of the i-Sales Shopping Wordpress theme, for additional details.

The problem is two fold (a) A drastic drop in clicks & (b) the revenue per click has gone down, so much so that many clicks now pay less than a cent!

The combination of low click rates & the low earning per click has been quite devastating on most of the publishers.

From all the reports on the internet & various publisher forums, these problems with Google Adsense earnings have been happening for quite some time now, especially after Google started experimenting with diverse advertising models.

Balancing your advertising earning is one of the best ways to get through a situation where one of the advertising agencies fail. But Google Adsense have continued to provide extremely relevant contextual ads with a fair earning per click, for a long time. For many publishers Adsense has been the only source of making money from blogs.

I have also noticed a lot of Google’s proprietory products in Adsense ads nowadays. Google has been pushing Picasa, Google Docs, Google Checkout & Google Toolbar a lot more. Such ads had mostly been used as “backup ads” for situations where there were no contextually relevant ads.

If that were true, then the situation means that Google does not have enough advertisers to work with. The other reason could be the sad state of the economy, where many publishers & advertisers have either cut down on online ad budgets or are looking for alternative advertising (like CPA ads).

While Google has been a life changer for millions of online publishers helping them make millions of dollars from Blogs, they continue to have a very poor focus on their publishers. Without a proper help desk or a customer rep to address concerns or issues, Google remains completely shut in explaining their often absurd decisions.

In the most recent example, Aaron Greenspan, a long time Adsense publishers, won a legal battle with Google where his Adsense account was allegedly suspended without paying out his dues. Huffington Post mentions the struggle which every Adsense publisher may have to go through in some form or another, looking for some help from Google Adsense teams.

The issue in Aaron’s case was he was alleged to have been involved in “click fraud“, though Google had no logic or reason to convince the judge that it was true, or that Google has a fool proof way of detecting the frauds! That puts every publisher in risk of being banned from Adsense program by a mistake on Google’s part.

Here is a quick reference on Additional Advertisers that are great Google Adsense alternatives:

• Adsense Alternatives
• Make Money From Blogs
• PPC CPM CPA Advertisers
• CPM CPC CPA Advertiser
• Sign Up for Best Shopping Ads

Although the data is just for a week, ending March 7, 2009, it shows that MySpace gets 33.44% of the total visitors compared to 25.38% by Facebook. In the fourth place is a little known social networking site Tagged.

Twitter & Linkedin ranks 12 & 20 in this list by Hitwise. Though the report is “ranked by the number of visitors for a week” the data is not so convincing with the information available in the blogger’s world. Clearly, as Compete data shows in the earlier post, Facebook is running way high on popularity & usage amongst all the social networking sites.

Social sites like Meebo, Bebo, Blackplanet & hi5 are popular either within a specific geography or within certain specific communities & hence will never turn out to be the large players in the business networking world. Significantly missing from this list is Orkut.

Orkut is backed by Google & could have become a better network had there been a strategy behind it from the beginning. But over time, Orkut has become more of a domesticated chat machine, with the largest population coming in from India & Latin America & users mainly exchanging personal greetings without substantial meaning or purpose.

The 2 key elements in making a strong progress are (a) choosing the network that suits your blogging style & content & (b) using all the festures of those few sites to build & expand your brand.

We have seen that success of any one tool gives rise to other thousands of other tools & websites around the main one.

With the success of Twitter for example, you have at least 50 new applications trying to get the bloggers attention. Many of them are unique while many are simply not essential – they are nice, but just good to have!

Although FriendFeed has much room to grow, they are finding it hard to differentiate themselves in a way that would make them attractive.

Very similar to the Twitter tool, is the world of social networking websites. It is time for bloggers to evaluate again which ones to concentrate on – since not all of them seem to be as popular as they used to be.

The key to choosing the right social networking websites are:

(a) does the social site cater to the same geographic region where your customers & readers would be

(b) do the regions speak the same language as your blog

(c) how familiar are you with the mindset of the people who are members of these social networking sites

(d) what are the applications available to the members to help them promote their brands in the network better

(e) do the social networking sites have enough funding for the next few years

Facebook continues to grow & some of the Facebook applications are extremely useful for networking & brand promotions. Myspace on the other hand remains popular with the artists, musicians & dating population. LinkedIn emerged slowly but effectively as the networking site for the blue collar professionals.

Lately, LinkedIn added new applications that could help feed your blog posts on your profile page, thus allowing some bit of content propagation.

Recommendations for using Social networking sites & social networking tools for bloggers:

• Focus on 1 or 2 social networking websites & social networking tools & build your customer & reader base well. It would be unwise to have too many profiles on too many sites & not being able to give due importance to any
• The best websites that we recommend for social networking are Facebook & LinkedIn
• The best tools that we recommend for bloggers are Twitter & FriendFeed

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/stats-comparison-for-the-best-social-networking-tool-for-bloggers-2009-compete/feed/ 1 http://www.promediablog.com/google-adsense-problems-google-adsense-alternatives-for-blogs/ http://www.promediablog.com/google-adsense-problems-google-adsense-alternatives-for-blogs/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:18:17 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=964 There are too many reports of Google Adsense errors lately. There are reports of incorrect status reports on Google Adsense, incorrect click reports of Google Adsense & even incorrect & late reports on Google Adsense.

This is nothing new to publishers, but lately Google has been quite non-responsive to these publishers’ issues. Last year Google announced that in it’s reponse to publisher’s concerns regarding Adsense, it was launching the list of known issues with Adsense.

But it is clear that Google engineers did not wish to keep the publishers updated on all the issues. The page now displays no information on the immense delays on reporting Google Adsense stats, Adsense earning issues etc.

While in a post on Webmaterworld forum Google announced a site maintenance. I may have missed the email from Google, but I cannot recall them announcing that maintenance either. While I would still tend to believe when Google says that “all clicks will be tracked & no Adsense earnings will be lost” during the periods when Google Adsense faces these issues, several reports from individual publishers point otherwise.

A report on incorrect Google Adsense clicks from Pinoy Money Talks raises the concerns that even the clicks may not be tracked correctly. Publishers have no way of writing to Google & getting some prompt response either. This hard attitude from Google is making it difficult for many bloggers to keep depending on Google Adsense as their sole means to make money online.

I have personally faced these issues with Google Adsense on & often. But I always had a great Adsense back-up plan in case I run into issues with Google. Especially in a bad economy, publishers need to balance income from blogging effectively.

Since blog advertising still remain one of the most popular ways to make money from blogs, I have focused equally on other ad agencies apart from Google Adsense. And so goes my suggestion to anyone who wants to build their income from blogs.

You can either depend completely on Google & hope that they are doing the best to help publishers & advertisers with effective advertising & profiting from blog ads, you have no way of convincing yourself that it is always true.

Refer to my detailed article on All the Ways to Make Money from Blogging, Google Adsense alternatives & some of the popular Shopping Ad systems for blogs.

The point behind the interview analysis & the case studies were to show how the scammers run their online work-from-home businesses scams.

Chris runs her organization identifying the scamming companies & often helping unsuspecting job seekers fall prey to the tempting offers like Make 3000 Dollars in A Week with No Experience!

John & Chris looks into the online ads for work at home business, like stuffing envelopes to make $800 a week. They all advertise for their beginners kit for less than $50 & promises to make you anything from $300 to $800 a week, with no prior experience.

Chris estimates that such fake websites are often run by individual scammers & often in international rings. Each receive over a million hits a month & Chris believes that the scammers make over a few million dollars a year from innocent job seekers trying to make quick money.

John Stossel & Chris suggest a few ways to either identify such scammers:

• the phrase “work from home” is used as a bait on search engines. If you are looking for work-at-home opportunities, prefer not to search in Google or any other search engines for “Work at home”
• avoid any job or opportunity that promises big money in a short time
• avoid ads for jobs or work-from-home opportunities that ask for no experience but sure success
• avoid ads for jobs that ask for a “kit to get started” – in most of the cases that John & Chris investigated for abc.com, that “kit” never arrived
• avoid ads that pictorially depicts big success – big mansions, yachts, fancy cars etc
• avoid companies that shows the same person in the ads in different websites but conveying the same messages
• look for contact name, telephone numbers or email contacts. Write to them or speak to them before you get started. Most scamming websites do not have any contact address, or never return phone calls or emails to avoid being tracked

Always research the opportunities before you invest even a dollar. Ask a friend or as for references, try to establish contact with the company through email or phone.

And last of all, check with BBB to see if anyone has filed any complaints & the BBB rating for that company. This is a less effective means since most of the time these online scammers keep changing their names & registrations & are often not listed with BBB.

All these systems allow bloggers to simply insert a small code on their blogs, like a Shop Now or Add to Cart buttons, and they can take in credit card transactions for selling from their websites.

Many of these systems also have the ability to redirect the visitors to different sites or pages upon a successful credit card sale or to some different sites or blog pages if the credit card sale failed for some reason.

Bloggers who make money on the internet & use any of these credit card processing systems, either sell their own product or resell some other products, like affiliate products. ejunkie is a great Paypal alternative & also a great alternative for Google Checkout systems.

The most important things to look for when signing up for any of these online credit card processing systems are:

• is the system reputed enough to handle secured information, like you bank details, your login & passwords & your email & personal details
• is there enough information on their website, along with any help desk number to call, if you need any help
• what is the commission structure – do the commission rates & the commission structure work for your type of sales
• is there any annual maintenance fee that is not clearly spelled out
• is the system available 24 hours a day 365 days a week to help you sell day in day out
• is there an affiliate program where they can share their income with bloggers who promote them
• are the reports good enough for your needs
• is there a forum for all the users where you can discuss issues, suggestions & resolutions

While people have used PayPal & Google Checkout for a long time, the one system proferred by bloggers is the ejunkie. This has become extremely popular with bloggers for a few simple reasons:

1. ejunkie systems are as secured as Paypal or Google. This is a great alternative to Paypal & Google Checkout
2. ejunkie has a flat fee structures for bloggers, especially small online sellers, who can keep the transactional costs low
3. ejunkie lets you create your own online shop with your own url
4. ejunkie offers secured downloads that can be used across multiple blogs. This can also be used to sell clickbank products and any other affiliate products
5. ejunkie also allows you to create & run your own affiliate network, setting your own affiliate revenue share
6. ejunkie has a great affiliate program where they share their revenue with bloggers who use ejunkie
7. ejunkie was created with bloggers & affiliate sellers in mind, they offer more facilities for affiliate sales, small internet resellers & for bloggers who simply wish to sell products from their blogs with a simple shopping cart

You can sign up for ejunkie & start selling from your blogs, start your won affiliate networks & allow secured downloads from your blogs.

And all that anyone who wishes to participate in this innovative Twitter contest is to follow Ben on Twitter & send him a simple Tweet with the following message: @BenBehrouzi Ben count me in the MacBook Air Giveaway!

The lucky draw will be on March 31st 2009, when one lucky winner will carry home a brand new MacBook Air free.

Online entrepreneurs have used innovative & sometimes exciting techniques to urge other Twitter users to become followers. We have seen John Chow give out a $500 blogging workbook to one of the new followers he gathered on Twitter. However, Ben seems to have broken the barrier with one of the most attractive giveaways – A MacBook Air.

Whether the quality of followers gathered on Twitter by giving away freebies is good, is debatable, but prizes like MacBook Air certainly raises heads. A top of the line, $2000 laptop will definitely see a beeline of Twitter users trying to win the prize. And slowly over time, Ben should be able to lead his Twitter enthusiasts into his business model.

Ben is the founder CEO of a high tech venture capital firm in California. He is an experienced techology expert & an online entreprenuer especially in the business of online lead generation techniques. And this Twitter give away certainly shows that he thinks big even when it comes to using Twitter to build his online community.

A landing page is the page (or the URL) that a visitor sees when he first comes to a website. The index page is definitely one important landing page of any website.

Apart from that, when someone searches for certain terms in a search engine, many more pages apart from your index page could show up. The user could click on any of the search results, that could include the index page or any sub pages or posts.

So the visitor could click on any of the links that the search engine shows & any page could become a potential landing page. This is especially true for blogs where there are more posts compared to pages making posts more likely to show up on searches.

According to Edward Jackson of the Google Website Optimizer Team, website visitors only spend a few seconds scanning the page they reach after they’ve clicked on an ad & if the product or service they’re looking for isn’t immediately visible, they will leave.

Simple Ways to Make a Great Effective Landing Page

• Have a clear description of your product(s) and service(s) – keep them limited to a few. Assuming that each product or service will also have dedicated pages, you may want to describe 1 or 2 product(s) or service(s) in details
• Keep the Title, Description & Keywords META tags correct & in lines with the content of the page
• make sure that Sitemap.xml file is updated every time the pages are updated
• Do not over kill on keywords. Have key words & key phrases spread normally across the content with a stress on the specific product(s) that are detailed on the page
• Do not clutter information and make it confusing for the visitor to navigate – follow the usual presentation rules of clear content, well designed layout & color schemes – keep your pitch clear & no spelling mistakes
• Keep navigation clear
• Do not fill page with ads – they throw off the visitors concentration & also makes indexing in Search Engines difficult
• Search Engines love new content – you may want to update some portions of the landing page periodically or build in RSS feeds to show updated content frequently
• Link to these landing pages from related external websites
• Do not hide keywords in the page – this is done by coloring keywords with he color of the background making them invisible to the reader, but they are visible in the “eyes” of the search engines
• Try not to have link ads & pop-ads on the landing pages. This is difficult for blog posts but this can be eliminated for blog pages at least. Link Ads or pop-ads are great reasons for the visitor to leave your website

These are very Simple SEO Tips to Create  an Excellent Landing Page & give you high conversions.

The Marketing Ads Theme is a multi-ads theme for Wordpress Blog sites & is useful for small online businesses who want to build their online brand, market & sell their products online & make money from multiple-ads.

You can read about & download the new multi-ads Theme in details on the Wordpress Marketing theme page. There is also a live demo where you could see the Marketing Ads Theme in action.

The Wordpress Marketing Ads Theme is a 3 column theme in a modular structure. The multiple ads in the theme are in modular, so that you can optimize your theme ad space by letting one ad compete with another for the highest rates.

The Marketing Theme also has 2 additional modules that you can customize to show either special deals & promotions or can also be used to display standard ads. More over each post has a built in place to show general ads or sponsored links & buttons.

The theme has 2 sidebar widgets & the footer is widgetized with 3 columns. The sidebars can hold additional high paying ad formats 300px. However, since the ads are already built into the theme, the sidebars could be used to show other text, data or feeds.

You can see a live demo & download the theme from the Wordpress Marketing theme page.

In fact, there is a Twitter Political Widget that shows Capitol updates on Twitter. Called Capitol Tweets, it shows the latest tweets from members of Congress who use Twitter. The Sunlight Foundation’s Capitol Tweets widget updates you every 10 minutes with the latest tweets from members of Congress.

A recent post on how Twitter is used for Business refers a market study that shows Twitter is used as a business-to-business marketing platform, alongside its emerging utility for consumer marketing. The article highlights the social media consultant Rodney Rumford’s views on Twitter being used for business.

1. small businesses are using Twitter to advertise
2. marketers use Twitter for reaching out to customers with promotional messages
3. get feedback on ad campaigns
4. track consumer behavior & customer sentiments by following Twitter conversations
5. promote press releases

Twitter has been used for advertising for Small Business. But if done the wrong way, wrong Twitter use could hurt your brand & your business as well. Here are some innovative thoughts how using Twitter to help grow your business & build your brand.

• invite your email contacts to start using Twitter, then add them as followers. This grows your Twitter followers immediately. It is just not important to have followers – it is only important to have the right followers
• request your friends to Re-Tweet your posts in their networks causing a viral effect. You can also request your followers to get more followers. You can also get into arrangements with other Twitter users to help promote yourselves mutually
• run a social campaign on Twitter to create a buzz. Social campaigns get a lot of attention & you will also be associating yourself with a good cause
• start using your Twitter URL in your email signature & business cards
• join conversations related to your business. You can use Twitter Search to find out similar businesses
• put a business logo on your Twitter profile
• help promote your Twitter followers by using a Twitter widget. Widgetbox has a free Twitter widget for your website & blogs for download

You could follow Pro Media Blog on Twitter for more interesting updates on setting up & running a profitable online business.

Couple of things are happening all at once which will bring down the overall revenue from blogging. Unless you have planned your risks & shared your online revenue across different channels, you may be hurt badly.

There is a detailed page on all the best ways of making money from blogs. The Best 15 Ways of Making Money from your Blog shows you all the ways in which you can monetize. This also helps to plan all the different money making channels, so that if one of the channels fail, you may still be able to make money from blogs through the other channels.

• Due to the economic downturn, businesses are spending less money on online ads. This leads to less ads showing up on your blogs, thus bringing the ad revenue down. Usually when advertising agencies (like Google for example) does not have the right ad to show, they either do not show anything or show low PPC non-contextual ads. Such back fill ads have poor click rates and hence the money earned from blog ads come down
• Due to the economic downturn, businesses who are spending on online advertising, are budgeting less per click. Which means, the same advertiser who was paying out say, 50 cents per click, is now paying say, 15 cents per click. So while bloggers were making 50 cents from the ad earlier, is now making only 15 cents. This also brings the total earnings from ads down for the same number of clicks
• Advertisers who were paying bloggers for blog reviews or product reviews are either stopping their advertisements or paying out less per review. If you have a large portion of your online income was coming from sponsored paid blog reviews, this low spending by the blog advertisers will affect your earning from blogs
• With a large number of online shops either cutting down their online advertising & some going out of business, the high PPC shopping ads are becoming rare. Again, due to low spending power of the buyer, many people are not finally buying the products. This causes any revenues from CPA ads to go down

The other side of the story is there is an increased demand for online shopping coupons, especially free Cash Advance & Loans, free Gas Money, free Grocery Coupons, free Lunch Coupons,  free shopping coupons & things of daily & essential use.

If you sign up with Never Blue, you will be able to post a lot of these free online coupons on your blogs. People have reported an increase in the revenues from online coupon sales lately & it is likely to go up further in the coming months.

My personal experience with MLM had been mixed – but I have to admit that the MLM experts who brought the whole idea to me a decade ago did a pretty good job of explaining the MLM pitfalls.

Now when I look into the various promotional offers from various MLM business owners, I can spot right away which ones are going to be long term success and which ones will struggle to a slow death.

The above ad seems familiar? Can you identify the reasons why this is not the right network to partner with? There are hundreds & thousands of business people who have set up similar pages & desperately trying to convince others to buy from them!

While I shall reiterate the lessons I learned from the best MLM leaders, you will see all the 10 Biggest Pitfalls that MLM marketers make in the ad above.

1. MLM Pitfall 1 – not believe in the spirit of the marketing itself. If you don’t believe in what you are selling, you will come out cheap & untrustworthy when you preach. In the ad above, the MLM marketer promises the moon with practically no effort! The right MLM partner will do everything possible to build your trust & confidence.
2. MLM Pitfall 2 – set the wrong expectations while wooing new partners & followers. Give your prospects all the right information from the moment you start talking MLM. Help them set right targets & anticipate failures. In the example above, the advertiser promised “Thousands in Your Pockets Lightning Fast”. Unless you are the only marketer available on the face of the planet, that is not going to happen. There is no secret weapon that is only available to you & not the rest of the marketers.
3. MLM Pitfall 3 – a successful MLM marketer has to lead by example. Cash flow requires products to be consumed & sold. A MLM system that is based solely based on the principle of taking in new downstream members & making them consume products to keep the cash flow, is short lived. In the ad above, if you are not prospecting, creating leads or following up on sales, the only way you can move products is by consuming yourself. So you, as a downstream member, can only profit if people down your chain consumes more than you do. Wrong principle!
4. MLM Pitfall 4 – choose your downline members well. Spend time in identifying your downline teams & mentor them well on your marketing strategies. All of it takes time & 1 out of 25 people who join your team will ever turn out to make money for you. In the above ad, the marketer “Build your MLM Business Lightning Fast”. This is the worst pitfall ever – you have wrong people in your team & your business will never take off the ground!
5. MLM Pitfall 5 – be prepared to get rejected. Anyone who has experience on Door-To-Door selling will know the first principle of direct selling – if someone closes the door on you, move on to the next & pitch again. You will be rejected, once, twice, thrice & soon, countless time. That is part of the whole process of building your business. The ad above boldly says “without Getting Rejected Ever Again” – there could not be a more incorrect statement in a serious business.
]]> http://www.promediablog.com/10-common-pitfalls-of-bad-mlm-how-to-choose-mlm-partners-avoid-failures/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/our-new-wordpress-business-cms-theme-for-mlm-online-marketing-wordpress-marketing-ads-theme/ http://www.promediablog.com/our-new-wordpress-business-cms-theme-for-mlm-online-marketing-wordpress-marketing-ads-theme/#comments Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:43:46 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=863 Our new Wordpress Business CMS Theme is the multi-ads Marketing Ads Theme. The request came in from several online small business owners, MLM & affiliate online marketers to create a practical theme that is bold, professional & effective especially for the landing pages.

The Wordpress Marketing Ads Theme combines online promotional tools, with focus on making the landing pages more effective.

The new Marketing Ads Theme integrates multiple ads of the high paying ad formats to maximize the ad revenue from these websites. The theme, like other Business CMS Themes we published on Pro Media Blog, are modular in nature. Each page can be very easily customized to suit your own specific marketing needs.

The Marketing Ads Theme not only allows the online business owner to market & promote their own products & services, but also to earn money from affiliate sales. The high paying ads formats built into the multiple-ads theme also help to earn money from ads.



The Marketing Ads Theme is a practical solution for any online business owners who want to promote their products & services on the online market place. The bold color theme makes the theme stand out while the key features of this Business CMS Theme helps to make money online.

The highlights of the Wordpress Business CMS Marketing Ads Theme are:

• focus on the landing pages with multiple promotions & ability to generate pass-through sales
• multiple high paying formats of ads built into the theme to maximize advertising revenues
• built in social networking tools to help promote website & specific products & services through social media marketing
• single line ads (728px x 15px format) built into the headers to maximize ad spaces
• content slider built into single post pages that can be linked to other pages, posts or external websites for increased affiliate revenue
• 3 column footer is widgetized that can have custom content
• built in author page for MLM business owners
• very efficient theme that loads fast on the browsers & highly optimized for search engines

Read more on the features & customizations on the Marketing Ads Theme page.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/our-new-wordpress-business-cms-theme-for-mlm-online-marketing-wordpress-marketing-ads-theme/feed/ 1 http://www.promediablog.com/get-wordpress-business-themes-wordpress-ad-themes-on-business-themes-site/ http://www.promediablog.com/get-wordpress-business-themes-wordpress-ad-themes-on-business-themes-site/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:12:56 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=850 We will continue to focus on Wordpress Business CMS Themes for Small Business, MLM Business owners & for any web entrepreneur who wishes to make money from ads by publishing good quality content.

We wanted to publish a small note on the pricing. Our pricing are based on a few factors & we wish to share our thoughts with our readers as well. Our prices are based to enable new bloggers to make use of the best commercial Wordpress Business Themes available.

We also wanted to make sure that having a small price tag allows our users to differentiate themselves from the free users. You may have noticed that many of the reputable advertisers do not wish to enroll publishers who publish on free hosts? A small differentiation, but it matters a lot.

The second reason, obviously, is that it takes a lot of time for us to create requirements from experienced MLM business owners & online profit making publishers for new Wordpress Commercial Themes. It is a core focus area for us & we wish to be amongst the best.

The third reason is the fact that our Themes come with only one price structure – single use or multi-use, you just pay the price of one. That is a big money saver for online business owners & online affiliates who run more than just a few websites. Imagine a webmaster who makes $20,000 a month from affiliate marketing & runs 100+ niche websites, using our Wordpress Business CMS Themes on their websites would save thousands of dollars.

We have priced all of our commercial themes at less than $10! Our market servey shows that there are numerous free themes available on the internet. But the good ones, the ones for commercial use, cost an average of over $50 per user. We are one of the least priced Wordpress Business CMS Themes publishers.

If you have a great idea for a Business Theme, please write to us. We are always looking for good ideas that could help online business owners make more money on the internet.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/get-wordpress-business-themes-wordpress-ad-themes-on-business-themes-site/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/10-mistakes-people-make-with-twitter-10-ways-of-how-not-to-use-twitter/ http://www.promediablog.com/10-mistakes-people-make-with-twitter-10-ways-of-how-not-to-use-twitter/#comments Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:54:50 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=845 Twitter has emerged as one of the most powerful social networking tool. I have posted earlier about 10 Ways to Get Popular on Twitter. While Twitter could help Small Business & Independent Business Owners generate buzz, network & get valuable feedback from others, many people are prone to making mistakes in using Twitter.

Apart from being banned by Twitter’s own spam filtering system, over time, incorrect usage of Twitter will drop you off the radar of other important people. It does not matter whether you are following them, or they are following you. Once people have known you as “just another Twitter ID”, Twitter popularity means nothing to you anymore!

I have compiled a list of the 10 most frequent mistakes people make while using Twitter:

1. Have a funny or ridiculous ID – Take Twitter seriously & create an ID that sounds meaningful & sincere. Think of it, if you are a business owner trying to network on Twitter, would you believe that anyone with an ID “Hot Donna” (just an example from The 70’s Show) could do you any good as a business peer? Of course, an ID is just an ID and “Hot Donna” could be the best in the industry. But more often than not, people form an idea of who you are from your ID.
2. Remain anonymous & obscure – Many people do not take the time to set up a small bio data, or create a link to their website & online business. Why would anyone take you seriously if you do not take your own profile & business with enough seriousness?
3. Have no picture or post a ridiculous picture of some obscure place – There is a place on each profile to post the author’s picture. People often post some scenery or some odd picture in place of their’s. I never understood why. A picture is more than a 1000 words & on Twitter, as with any networking website, a profile picture helps people to build confidence on the person.
4. Have multiple Twitter IDs – I have seen numerous IDs of the same person, different IDs but the same person. It could be either that their earlier IDs have been banned by Twitter as spam, or they simply believe that having many IDs would help generate more traffic to their websites. Wrong! If Twitter was intelligent enough to spam you, all the Twitter readers will too. Have one ID & keep that profile updated.
5. Use a distracting background image on the profile – Twitter background image is an image. It does not allow links nor can anyone scroll the background. Some people use very complex backgrounds which often become distracting. I have found some people who would add their contact emails & phone numbers on the background image. That is an excellent idea. And being an image, that information cannot be used automatically by systems that scour the internet for email IDs & phone numbers.
6. Advertise for New Followers – I have seen bloggers run online contests & give out prizes encouraging other Twitter users to become followers. Well, there is nothing wrong with it, but if you are “tempting to pay” users to follow you, they are nor interested in your updates. They are interested in your prize. Twitter followers should come naturally.
7. Post the same item over & over again – this is no different from spamming. Some people Tweet the same posts & the same links over & over again to get more people come onto their landing page. Again, there is nothing wrong with that, but Twitter is supposed to be a conversation between the author & the followers. Where is the conversation? The very fact that one has to write the same Tweet over & over again means that not enough people find your updates interesting!
8. Have multiple Twitter IDs for multiple websites – Twitter is meant to be an interactive system between 2 or more people. The key word is “People”. So even if each have multiple websites, a single Twitter ID is good enough. Having one Twitter ID for each website is a bad idea. Not only do you have to keep each of the profiles updated, but people (& Twitter) could identify you as a spammer & block you for ever.
9. Keep the Twitter conversation one sided – Twitter is supposed to be “conversational”, but many people simply keep Twitter as a one-way-conversation. Again, there is nothing wrong with it, but if you do not actively participate in conversations, you will be left out very soon from other conversations.
10. Not use the Twitter Block feature rightly – Many people add other Twitter users by looking into your Twitter connections. In fact, your connections are an important factor of being added by others. Think about it – are you more likely to follow someone who has all the reputed online bloggers on their Follower’s list or would you be more interested to follow someone who has other obscure followers? You need to use the Block feature correctly to accept only the people with the right profile following you. True, it will limit the number of people following you, but it will help you create a group of like-minded serious followers.

These are very simple but bad mistakes people make while using Twitter. Twitter is not a public broadcasting tool, nor is it a competition to create more IDs or just increase the number of people following you.

Practice Twitter seriously & you can realize how powerful a tool it is for your online business.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/10-mistakes-people-make-with-twitter-10-ways-of-how-not-to-use-twitter/feed/ 1 http://www.promediablog.com/blog-advertising-making-money-by-blogging/ http://www.promediablog.com/blog-advertising-making-money-by-blogging/#comments Mon, 23 Feb 2009 04:51:51 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=841 I have mentioned several times here that reviews of products & services are an important part of a blogger’s revenue stream. Although there are several options available to bloggers, blog advertising to the serious bloggers are a true way of standing out in the crowd.

You have to do your homework well before you advertise on blogs. From my personal experience I look into 5 important aspects. You can form your own selection criteria, but knowing these could help you make a more informed choice.


Before I go into the criteria, here are the 2 reasons why I am so serious about blog advertising:

• Blog Advertising has a viral effect – if you are able to choose your blogs right, within a strong & a network of people who are held in high respect among the blogging community, you are more likely to be referred from one blog to another. This viral effect could help you get new & serious visitors very fast.
• Generate back links – back links are very important when you are planning for a good SEO strategy. A recent article why back links are important for SEO shows that it helps to improve the Page Rank & the search positions.

So what do I look for in blogs when you think of Blog Advertising?

• the credibility of the blog in terms of its content – I personally follow the blog for sometime, reading every post, reading the comments to see how serious it’s readers are & then form my opinions on whether to advertise or not
• the credibility of the author – I do my research on social networking sites, Google the name to know about the author & read as much of the author’s work as possible. I try to identify if the author has been through the same phases of blogging as I. And only when I find the resemblance, I become confident that the readers would likely be my readers too
• the blog statistics – this is commonly available from Compete or any similar data source. The few statistics that I look for are the (a) daily visitors (b) average page loads (c) number of comments left by readers (d) the average time readers spend on the pages & (e) the frequency with which the blog is updated
• the blog design & the advertising that shows up on the blogs – if the blog is too crowded by ads, I would rather not show my ad. The type of ads are also important – whether it shows more affiliate ads that are currently in demand, or is it too niche for my blog
• whether the blog allows other reputed bloggers to post or whether it is a personal blog – very often popular blogs allow other members of its network to publish on that blog, while others maintain a solo performance. Both have their own advantages & disadvantages but the fact that a blog is open to publications from its members attract me more simply because they always have influence over a bigger audience

I often write to the owner for discounts & in case there are no advertising at all, I have also written to find out the author’s thought on allowing me to show a sponsored ads. They have often worked out well for me, getting me information that was not available anywhere else.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/blog-advertising-making-money-by-blogging/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-multiple-ads-magazine-theme-released-download-business-magazine-ads-theme/ http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-multiple-ads-magazine-theme-released-download-business-magazine-ads-theme/#comments Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:40:20 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=838 As promised last week to roll out the multiple ads magazine theme, we have released the Wordpress Business Magazine Theme & a live preview is now available.

Over the past week we have modified the theme a little bit to include some of the feedback that came in from our Twitter Followers. One of the most applauded feature of the Wordpress Business Magazine Theme is freeing up the sidebars from showing  ads.

In most themes you will see, the sidebars are mainly used to display ads. While this is a little easier in terms of quick changes, it has quite a few disadvantages as well. One of the worst disadvantage of having ads on the sidebars is that it could be far away from the context leading to poor quality ads.

The Wordpress Business Magazine Theme is a combination of a Business CMS Theme with a Magazine flavor. The Magazine style often helps better styling & improves the look & feel. This theme can be effectively used for a professional business website & have all the benefits of a magazine display.

Using the Business Magazine Theme is very simple. Most of the ad sections are built into the content areas & can be customized with your own ads. Depending on your choice, you can decide not to show any ads in any particular ad section, while you can also show more than one ad in any one too!

You can view & download the Wordpress Business Magazine Theme & also read more on the Wordpress Business Magazine Theme’s features & capabilities.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-multiple-ads-magazine-theme-released-download-business-magazine-ads-theme/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/social-media-for-business-advertising-using-web-20-to-market-your-business-on-twitter-facebook-audio-ads/ http://www.promediablog.com/social-media-for-business-advertising-using-web-20-to-market-your-business-on-twitter-facebook-audio-ads/#comments Fri, 20 Feb 2009 05:27:20 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=833 There is a great article on Business Week on using social media to market your business. The main idea behind the article was to take Web 2.0 Social Media capabilities seriously & use systems like Twitter, Friendfeed & networking sites like Facebook & MySpace effectively.

The Business Week article focuses on six areas that a serious business owner should focus upon to get the maximum value in marketing their business. However, there is another definite area that I would like to highlight.

Micro-conversation or micro-blogging, as many of these services promote, is the next generation tool for collaboration & interaction. There are large sections of serious business owners who use any of these Web 2.0 online networking tools day in & day out. Google for one has been trying to understand these 140 letter conversations to display contextual ads.

GMail & Hotmail shows relevant ads on any of their pages. If you have noticed, the ads are fairly relevant to the texts that show up on any of these pages. There have been great improvements in finding more contextual ad logic.

Advertising on Social Media websites & tools are still not so popular yet. Facebook for one is encouraging people to show their ads on Facebook pages by enticing them with $25 free credits. Many of the business owners who have paid for ads on similar Web 2.0 Social Networking tools, have mixed results.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/social-media-for-business-advertising-using-web-20-to-market-your-business-on-twitter-facebook-audio-ads/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/affiliate-marketing-tips-5-more-beginner-tips-for-affiliates/ http://www.promediablog.com/affiliate-marketing-tips-5-more-beginner-tips-for-affiliates/#comments Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:59:10 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=826 Done right, Affiliate Marketing could help you make a lot of money online. Successful Affiliates earn more money from Affiliate Sales over advertising revenues. However, as we said earlier in Beginners Tips for Affiliate Marketing, it has to be done right.

Successful Affiliate Marketing is a combination of strategy, choice of products & ability to set up your online shop right. I shall write of 5 more affiliate tips for beginners.

Affiliate Tip for Beginners – 1 : Take time to choose the affiliate programs you sign up for. Most beginners rush to sign up with multiple different affiliate programs and fail to understand if they could sell any of the products that are offered.

Take time to read the products & services offered by the affiliate program. Read their blogs & search the internet for feedback from other affiliates.

If you have a question or doubt, write to the affiliate program managers. Very few people do this – simply because they are too busy signing up & do not focus on the credibility of the programs. If you have your social networks, post your questions on Twitter etc & read what others have to say.

Another important point to focus during your initial investigation is to understand their payment terms – what is the commission structure, when are commissions paid, how do they resolve affiliates issues on commissions. Some of the best affiliate programs have a tiered commission structure – you earn higher percentage commissions when you sell more.

Affiliate Tip for Beginners – 2 : Choose your product & service lines carefully. People who try to sell everything, almost always end up selling nothing. Choose products & services from your affiliate programs that you think you can sell.

One good way to start is to sell products that we all know sells well – technology products, electronic gadgets, fashion items etc. Another approach is to choose products from a very niche category. The commissions on these niche products sales are usually higher than other fast selling products.

Many people spend too much time trying to sell everything all at once. People new to affiliate marketing should take one step at a time. Start off with a few products that you can write about & promote easily. Then start expanding your product lines.

When I began, I started to market only photography products. I went into deep selling – I sold only Nikon products along with custom products made for Nikon cameras. It was easy for me since I knew almost everything on Nikon & could easily sell a lot!

Affiliate Tip for Beginners – 3 : Plan your advertising budget well in advance. Advertising helps you bring in genuine traffic, visitors who are looking for your products & are looking to buy. But do not go overboard on buying keywords. You could end up buying keywords for over 5 dollars for a product that could be less than 10 dollars when you sell.

We have a list of some of the best advertisers for beginners. They let you advertise text & images & give good returns. Track your advertising budget & also your website visitor data to understand which ads result in true sales. With this information you can fine tune your advertising pitch.

Affiliate Tip for Beginners – 4 : Be professional with your online web store. Many people ignore how their website looks & expect visitors to be impressed with what they are selling! It just does not work that way. Your website may not have the “WoW” factor but at the same time it should convince the visitor that you are serious about your business.

Set up an online store with a great theme. There are many professional Business CMS themes at less than 10 dollars that you can easily customize & create your own online brand.

Focus on your websites SEO too, but again, SEO alone will not help you much to sell. SEO with a great convincing content is what will give you high sales from your websites. So the website designs become very important.

Pro Media Blog also has a lot of professionally designed Wordpress Themes for affiliate business. Few of the most downloaded Themes for Affiliate Marketing & Sales are:

• Online Web Store Theme
• Shopping Theme
• Pro Affiliate Theme

Affiliate Tip for Beginners – 5 : Make the best use of your social networks to promote your brand, products & services. Web 2.0 technology, that is built into Wordpress for example, lets you post to blogs & social networks.

Generate true followers & convert followers into customers. Generate Buzz with exciting product news & keep the network alive with regular communications. A word of caution for people who are new to social networks.

While building your brand on reputed networks like Twitter or Facebook etc, be sure not to come out as a spammer. That will ruin all your efforts in creating your sales channels from these social networks. Add value to your network by providing information that could be used – like a great shopping discount that you are offering, for example.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/affiliate-marketing-tips-5-more-beginner-tips-for-affiliates/feed/ 2 http://www.promediablog.com/high-selling-wordpress-multiple-ads-theme-from-promediablog-bold-ads-theme-for-small-business/ http://www.promediablog.com/high-selling-wordpress-multiple-ads-theme-from-promediablog-bold-ads-theme-for-small-business/#comments Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:24:28 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=824 We publish resources for new bloggers & small business, MLM business owners, Affiliate marketers & bloggers who wish to make money on the internet. One of our core creative areas are Wordpress Business CMS Themes for Bloggers & Small Businesses who wish to sell on the internet & earn money from advertisements.

We also have detailed resources on some of the best CPC CPA & CPM Advertisers very suitable for new bloggers & small businesses. There is also a detailed list of popular & high paying Shopping Ad networks. Shopping Ads are very essential for bloggers who sell products from their blogs.

One of our most popular Wordpress Multiple Ads Theme is the Bold Ads Theme. The Bold Ads Theme is one of our first themes & quite naturally it has been downloaded the most so far.

The Bold Ads Theme is a 3 column widgetised theme with a very simple but effective design. The ads are built either in the content or surrounding the content, making the ads that show up very contextual. The ads also do not distract the readers from the content.

The Bold Ads Theme is created to display all the high paying ad formats. To help you understand the ad layouts, formats & placements better, we have details on the effectiveness of blog ads in the 4 part series:

• Best Ads & Best Ad Formats Part 1
• Best Ads & Best Ad Formats Part 2
• Best Ads & Best Ad Formats Part 3
• Best Ads & Best Ad Formats Part 4

You could see a live demo of the Bold Ads Theme & download it for your personal or business use & start making smart money online from blog ads.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/high-selling-wordpress-multiple-ads-theme-from-promediablog-bold-ads-theme-for-small-business/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/our-next-wordpress-business-cms-theme-business-magazine-theme/ http://www.promediablog.com/our-next-wordpress-business-cms-theme-business-magazine-theme/#comments Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:25:16 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=808 Our next Multiple Ads Business CMS Theme for Wordpress is the Business Magazine Theme. This multiple ads theme is suitable for online business owners who wish to have a magazine style of their blog layout.

We will release the Wordpress Business Magazine Theme by the end of this week. But we wanted to give a small preview to the new work & get some quick feedback.

We are currently running tests on this Business Magazine Theme. We shall try to include any feedback that we gather from you during the week.

The most important features of the new Business Magazine Wordpress theme are:

• professional layout & design
• very light theme – loads extremely fast
• 3 column theme with 2 widgets
• the theme contains multiple ads spots – the ads are integrated with the content so that the widgets could be used for other purposes
• efficient use of space by using either tabbed content or drop down lists
• high paying ad formats built into the pages & the contents leaving the sidebars for other content

The new Wordpress Business Magazine Theme will be available for downloads from later this week. We shall also post a detailed feature & benefit list of the new Business Magazine Theme.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/our-next-wordpress-business-cms-theme-business-magazine-theme/feed/ 4 http://www.promediablog.com/business-cms-themes-personal-blog-themes-for-wordpress/ http://www.promediablog.com/business-cms-themes-personal-blog-themes-for-wordpress/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:24:48 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=801 Since we started publishing Business CMS Themes for Wordpress, we have heard our readers ask why is it so important to have a business theme for a professional blog. Why can’t any Wordpress Theme be used as a Business Theme?

The answer lies in 4 factors. In this post we will give our thoughts as to why themes should be classified as Business Themes rather than just another “Theme” .

And why it makes sense to choose the right Business CMS Theme for your blog. You can browse though some of our Best Business CMS & Multiple Ads Themes & see the difference.

For you to understand our approach, you have to separate the two words – Blog & Business. When we design Business Themes for Wordpress, we merely think of creating a new front-end user interface for business. The technology driving the content could be anything – it could be Microsoft .Net framework, it could be Java or it could be static HTML.

Now a days, most of the popular websites are built on blogs – CNN, Yahoo! News, People, Forbes, New York Times are great examples of websites that run on blogging software.

So our Business Themes, if properly converted for any of the underlying technologies, would work equally great! We call our Themes, Wordpress Business CMS Themes since they sit perfectly well on the Web 2.0 Wordpress software.

1. A Business CMS Theme should solve one or more business objectives – our Business Themes solve multiple objectives right away.

• our professionally designed themes help you stand out immediately. You immediately get the attention of your visitor simply because of the way the blog is designed
• our Business Themes help you to showcase your products & services in an innovative way. Unlike a normal product gallery, our Business Shopping Themes help you to show specific products & services to your visitor
• our Business Themes include advertisements. Integrated seamlessly within your website, these multiple Ads help business owners to maximize their ad revenues

2. A Business CMS Theme should help build & maintain a Brand – internet business increases exponentially over time. Hence it is extremely important that you build & maintain your brand image through your blogs / websites. Our Business CMS Themes solve multiple objectives right away.

• the professionally designed Business CMS Themes helps you to create & maintain a high level of professionalism in the minds of your visitors
• most of the Business CMS Themes are created to display your logo. We use the professional services of Business Logo Design for our logos
• our Business Themes also help you to stand out from the crowd thus helping your brand building exercise

3. A Business CMS Theme should aid in marketing initiatives. Our professional Business CMS Themes for Wordpress solves couple of marketing objectives, some of them purely due to the way Wordpress works.

• make your website popular with social networking sites. Our Business Themes focus on using social networking tools to popularize posts & blog articles. Our themes also include popular networking sites’ links like Twitter, Facebook etc to help market your brand within selected communities
• make the best of Web 2.0 ping feature to update search engines on your blog website updates
• ability to gather subscribers either through email or on any RSS readers

4. A Business CMS Theme should be easy to set up & customize to your specific needs. Our Business CMS Themes solve multiple objectives here.

• our Business Themes are designed to be set up & installed very fast. There are segments that can be customized & there are portions that are created through automatic updates. In the Shopping Theme for example, you can customize the gallery & you can also customize the slide show to display ads or external affiliate sites or even pages from your own blog
• our Business Themes are fairly optimized for search engines. The designs are table less structures & use very few images that could slow down your website. This makes the sites load faster on the browser
• our themes are also tested on all the popular web browsers including mobile browsers

You can browse all our articles & Business Themes on Pro Media or you can see them on the dedicated site for Business CMS Themes for Wordpress.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/business-cms-themes-personal-blog-themes-for-wordpress/feed/ 2 http://www.promediablog.com/small-business-planning-ahead-for-web-30-how-web-30-will-help-small-business-save-more-offer-more-to-customers/ http://www.promediablog.com/small-business-planning-ahead-for-web-30-how-web-30-will-help-small-business-save-more-offer-more-to-customers/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:42:14 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=793 In our previous articles on Gearing Up for Web 3.0 & Web 3.0 for Small Business, we highlighted some of the important facts regarding Web 3.0. Also known as cloud computing, Web 3.0 is slowing emerging as a strong business model for the coming decade.

The past had been on Web 2.0 where businesses, big & small, grew their brands, sales & revenue, by using their social networks. Web 2.0 has seen some great online networking sites & tools, the more famous being the Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace & LinkedIn.

When technology moves onto Web 3.0, you will still get to use all the Web 2.0 features. But Web 3.0 will be a lot more than just helping you to be popular in the social networks.

Also called cloud computing, Web 3.0 will offer your complete software & IT systems on a pay-per-use model. For example, today, if you need to use a digital photo editing software, you have to spend your money & buy off the shelf. You also have to continue to pay for all future upgrades & any additional support services that you might need to have the software running.

With Web 3.0 cloud computing, you do not need to pay & buy your own software. Some vendor will own the software & will be able to let you use it. You will only pay for as much as you use. You will also not have to worry about upgrades, or it’s support. It will be the vendor’s responsibility to keep the software up-to-date & running. The vendor will simply charge you on your usage. Much like your utilities bills.

This is a very simple example to explain how Web 3.0 could be useful to you. You will probably not bother to go into these offerings when it comes to software as cheap as 100 dollars. But think of a situation where every month you need to process your customer’s bills with special financial software.

You may not be able to afford to either buy, maintain or run these complex systems. But when it comes to a pay-per-use system, these top-class software could all be available to you at a small cost.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/small-business-planning-ahead-for-web-30-how-web-30-will-help-small-business-save-more-offer-more-to-customers/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/11-multiple-ads-themes-for-mlm-business-affiliate-sales-online-web-stores-wordpress-business-cms-themes/ http://www.promediablog.com/11-multiple-ads-themes-for-mlm-business-affiliate-sales-online-web-stores-wordpress-business-cms-themes/#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:39:02 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=785 Pro Media Blog focuses on various online business opportunities & helps bloggers, small business owners, MLM business professionals & personal bloggers to make money on the internet.

Our resources include the best & high paying advertising options, shopping ads, social media marketing, website hosting tools & tools to create Business CMS Themes.

Our Business CMS Themes are made for small business owners, online sales professionals & people who want to make money online. We support Wordpress & all our themes & contents are primarily meant for blogs & websites that run on Wordpress.

Our popular Multiple Ads Themes & Wordpress Business CMS Themes include:

• Affiliate Ads Themes – a great Wordpress Multi-Ads theme for affiliates who sell from their online blogs. The theme is completely customizable & helps affiliates to sell effectively & display multiple ads for extra online ad revenue
• Online Web Store Theme – a great Wordpress multiple ads theme for setting up an online web store. The Online Web Store Theme converts your blog into an online store. This is a great theme for online sales professionals who wish to set up an online store & start earning money selling products on the internet
• Shopping Theme – a great Wordpress theme for an Online Shopping Blog. Shopping Blog includes the customizable product gallery & a list of important features to showcase high selling & high revenue products. The Shopping Blog Theme immediately increased the exposure of your best selling products & increases online earnings
• MLM Theme – a great Theme created specifically for MLM business owners. The MLM Theme exposes the best of your multi-level network. The MLM Theme is high on social media marketing & networking within other online MLM Business partners
• Pro Affiliates Theme – a great theme for professional online affiliates to increase their online affiliate business. The Pro Affiliates Theme focuses on online sales as well as increasing the affiliate’s reach through effective social online networking
• Quick Ads Theme – a great multiple ads theme for any blogger who wishes to increase their online revenue from ads. The professionally designed Quick Ads Theme combines all the high paying ad formats effectively with the content to provide for great contextual ads. The Quick Ads Theme is quick to set up & bloggers could be on their way to earning ad money in less than 5 minutes!
• Modern Ads Theme – a great Wordpress Multiple Ads theme meant for regular bloggers & sales professionals to combine sales & personal blogging. The Modern Ads Theme is available in 2 professional color themes – aqua & monochrome. It also includes a customizable product gallery slideshow for bloggers who wish to sell from their blogs
• Bold Ads Theme – a highly successful multiple ads theme that follow a traditional look & feel of a blog & combines the power of all the high paying ad formats with the contents. The design of the ad placements automatically makes the ads contextual thus increasing the click through rates & increasing the ad revenue
• Blue Ads Theme – a simple but very effective multiple ads theme that takes less than a couple of minutes to install. This is great for new bloggers who need to experiment with their own specific ad placements. The multiple ads theme is very customizable  to help new bloggers find their own best ad combination
• Red Ads Theme – this is another simple multiple ads theme for new bloggers who are starting to earn money online from ads. This multiple ads theme is easy to set up & holds all the high paying ad formats. The multiple ads theme helps new bloggers to experiment ad positioning & try out multiple formats to find out which works best for them
• Signature Theme – the Signature Theme was created to be an accompanying blog theme to help business owners & sales professionals create their personal brand identity. Personal Identity & Personal Brands are the most vital strengths to any online seller. The Signature Theme helps you to create, build & grow your personal brand on the internet

Our Themes are all optimized for search engines, made extremely light to load fast & has a strong focus on social media & internet networking. The themes are widgetized & completely customizable to suit your specific selling & brand building needs.

The Multiple Ads Themes are all designed with the inputs & recommendations of professional bloggers & MLM Business owners. These themes not only increase the potential to earn more but is designed to increase per-ad earning by increasing the contextuality of the ads.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/11-multiple-ads-themes-for-mlm-business-affiliate-sales-online-web-stores-wordpress-business-cms-themes/feed/ 1 http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-theme-with-multiple-ads-for-mlm-sales-bloggers-quick-ads-theme/ http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-theme-with-multiple-ads-for-mlm-sales-bloggers-quick-ads-theme/#comments Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:04:27 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=781 We have released another great Wordpress Multiple Ads Theme the Quick Ads Theme. This is a great theme for almost any sales or MLM websites as well as for personal bloggers who want to earn money online from ads.

Quick Ads Theme is easy to set up & the Multiple Ads Theme could be customized to display all the high paying ad formats. The professional design of the Quick Ads Theme seamlessly places ads in the hot spots, increasing the click through rates.

You can Download the theme & see a Demo of the Quick Ads Theme in the details page.

The Quick Ads Theme makes the best use of your web space without making it seem over complicated. The ads are placed so that they do not distract the reader. Being close to the main content, the ads have a higher click-through-rates.



The key features of the Quick Ads Theme that make it suitable for MLM Owners, Affiliate Sales professionals & Small Business owners are:

• professional design that combines content & ads effectively
• optimized use of web space that maximizes your ad revenue
• displays all the high paying ad formats – 300×250px, 728×90px, 160×600px & the 468×60px formats
• ad placements help better contextual ad content leading to higher Click Rates
• a content slider to display any number of posts from one or a combination of categories
• 3 column widgetized design with 2 left columns
• very light theme & highly optimized for search engines
• optimized for social networking with links to all the popular social media websites like Flickr, FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace etc
• optimized for increased traffic with distinct post based sharing with sites like Technoratti, Reddit, Netvibes etc

The Wordpress Multiple Ads Theme the Quick Ads Theme is ideal if you want to maximize your online ad revenues.

Whether you are running a professional sales blog or a personal blog, the Multiple Ads Quick Ads Theme will integrate with your content & help you increase your online earning.

View a Demo & Download the Wordpress Multiple Ads Theme the Quick Ads Theme.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-theme-with-multiple-ads-for-mlm-sales-bloggers-quick-ads-theme/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/web-30-for-small-business-blogs-save-money-on-softwares-by-using-saas/ http://www.promediablog.com/web-30-for-small-business-blogs-save-money-on-softwares-by-using-saas/#comments Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:40:06 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=753 Web 3.0, also known as cloud-computing, is once again changing the way people use computers.

In very layman’s terms, Web 3.0 cloud computing means that the user does not have to own all the computers & softwares, but can use them from the internet, and pay for them according to the usage.

Much like you pay for your house utilities every month, you will use software as a service & pay when & how you you use them.

Web 3.0 & cloud computing will bring immense value especially to small business & online business operations.

Large corporations like IBM, Google & Microsofts of the world are spending large amount of money in getting ready for cloud computing. The first challenge these companies face is the ability to support the infrastructural needs.

The increased computing power of their servers, the ability of their software to support millions & millions of online transactions, the immense amount of space needed to store the users’ data & the bandwidth required to provide lightening fast responses.



The concepts & some of the systems of Web 3 & cloud computing have been available for a log time. Hotmail for example, is one of the first to offer web-based email. You were no longer required to have emails on your own computer. You can write, send, read & receive emails from anywhere in the world. All the emails & the software remained on the internet!

Google Apps & Zoho are 2 great examples where business software were made available to users from the internet. You no longer need to buy the expensive Microsoft Office Suites. You can access almost any of the software required to create documents, worksheets & presentations from the internet.

Storage systems had been very costly at some time. Now you can buy gigabytes of memory stick at less that 10 dollars! Now internet based storage systems are available for commercial use. Small Business could save a lot of money by using online storage systems.

They offer much more than just storage space – they back-up your data & files, they provide a secured protected system to share your data with other users & they protect your data from virus & malware – many of which are sometimes ignored if you are owning your own hard drives!

Box.net is one great example. It is a complete data & file hosting service at a very cheap price. Your data is completely secured from viruses, unauthorized users & there is no shortage of spaces.

With Web 3.0 cloud computing small businesses will have the option of not owning or maintaining their own software & computer systems. This saves huge amount of money in the form of upfront expenses & long term running costs. That apart, since the software & services are offered as services, you pay only as you use them (Software as a Service or SaaS model).

It would take time for small business owners to switch completely onto the Web 3.0 cloud computing mode of working. However, that is going to be the next big change & makes complete sense to start thinking & planning on a smooth transition.

If you are planning to invest in your computer systems for your small home based business, stop & think if any of them are already available as a service? Many services like Google Apps for example, are offered free of cost. Why not start using them now?

While the big IT companies’ challenge is to create the IT infrastructure & a billing model for the users, the biggest challenge for users is adoption of the new facilities. The earlier you adopt, the more you will save going forward.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/web-30-for-small-business-blogs-save-money-on-softwares-by-using-saas/feed/ 5 http://www.promediablog.com/convert-blog-into-online-web-store-wordpress-business-theme-webstore/ http://www.promediablog.com/convert-blog-into-online-web-store-wordpress-business-theme-webstore/#comments Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:09:15 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=749 We had written earlier about the Web Store Theme – a Wordpress Business CMS theme created to help you convert your blog into an online sales store easily.

The Web Store Theme is now available for downloads. It is a business theme for sales & marketing professionals who want to convert their blogs into online sales stores &  sell from blogs.

The Business CMS Theme was designed with the inputs & recommendations from MLM & Affiliate marketers. It can be easily customized as any MLM Theme or Affiliate Theme.

You can see a demo & download the theme from the Web Store Theme page.

The Wordpress Business CMS Theme Web Store Theme is completely customizable to suit your business style & needs. The feature packed business theme provides 4  key advantages over other similar business themes:

1. a completely custom product gallery that you could link to external pages or to your own product pages

2. product display gallery can be used in different formats on different pages. The gallery can be paged to display as many product lines as you want

3. custom sliding gallery, popularly known as slideshow gallery. This is a slide show of either one or multiple posts on your blog. This is also customizable to suit your needs. Example, it can be customozed to show only top selling products, or products that currently has discounts etc

4. a rotating image gallery – this is a great feature of this Business CMS Theme. This 300px x 250px rotator that can be used either to display product images or to display multiple ads

The Wordpress Business CMS Theme Web Store Theme is now available for downloads.

There are several MLM Themes & Affiliate Themes available in the market that comes as a hefty price. The Wordpress WebStore Theme is affordable & completely flexible to work as any pro MLM Theme or a pro Affiliate Theme.

You can browse Pro Media Blog for more Wordpress Business & Sales Themes.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/convert-blog-into-online-web-store-wordpress-business-theme-webstore/feed/ 2 http://www.promediablog.com/new-wordpress-theme-for-online-webstore-blogs-web-store-theme-for-wordpress/ http://www.promediablog.com/new-wordpress-theme-for-online-webstore-blogs-web-store-theme-for-wordpress/#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:58:22 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=725 We are working very hard to release another great Wordpress Theme, the WebStore Theme, for online blog stores.

This will help many bloggers, small business people & MLM marketers to set up online web stores on Wordpress blogs.

Suggestions & recommendations on how the Wordpress WebStore Theme would look like, and what the Web Store Theme will accomplish, have come in from experienced bloggers & online retailers.

The Web Store Theme is a sales & marketing theme for those who want to sell from blogs. You have to option of going for a web portal like application, but that could cost you a few hundred thousand dollars!

If you want to benefit from the advantages of a Web 2.0 application & use a blog to publish & sell at the same time, the Wordpress Web Store Theme is right for you.

With small customizations you can set up your online store quickly. Once set up, it requires very little time to update & maintain.

The Web Store Theme allows you to sell from your own website as well as generate commission from sell through. It allows you to link to external websites & affiliate products easily & even show their products in your web store.

Here are some of the important features of the Wordpress Web Store Theme:

• maximum utilization of your web space – sliding content, rotating banners & paged gallery design all help in making the best use of the online space
• sliding content of one or more category of contents
• time based customizable rotating ad banners or affiliate banners
• customizable online product display gallery – it can be easily configured to show high selling products & link to either specific posts or specific categories or pages or even to external websites
• widgetized theme with 3 sidebars & 3 footer widgets
• ability to show high paying CPA CPM & CPC multiple ads
• show sponsored links & ads on headers & post pages
• additionally posts can also display affiliate buttons if desired
• contains relevant feeds from popular digg posts to increase search engine optimization

The Wordpress Web Store Theme is completely customizable. We are in the final phase of designing & programming this great sales & marketing theme. We shall set up the demo & allow downloads by the first week of February 2009.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/new-wordpress-theme-for-online-webstore-blogs-web-store-theme-for-wordpress/feed/ 1 http://www.promediablog.com/download-pro-affiliates-theme-ideal-for-online-mlm-affiliates-blogs/ http://www.promediablog.com/download-pro-affiliates-theme-ideal-for-online-mlm-affiliates-blogs/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:09:33 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=722 The Wordpress MLM & Affiliates Blogging theme Pro Affiliates Theme is now available for downloads. This is a great Wordpress Magazine style theme for online affiliates & MLM business owners.

The Pro Affiliate Theme combines information, sales deals, promotional items with a personal touch. This is a great theme to use even if you are using the website with contributions from your affiliates.

The author page helps to set up individual identity, while the overall theme also helps creating your MLM business brand. The photoshop logo files are included along with extensive documentation to help you install the theme quickly.

The theme also displays multiple ads, to that in addition to your affiliate sales, you can earn extra money from advertising revenues from multiple ads.

The theme can be further customized to suit your individual needs. The magazine style theme can be set up to focus on any particular category, or a group of them all at once. The built in slideshows & the tickers help to make the best of the spaces & delivers maximum impact.

The slideshows & the tickers are programmed in basic scripts. This means that they will work even if Wordpress upgrades. Unlike many plugins that have problems with upgrades, this one will perform great with all newer Wordpress versions.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/download-pro-affiliates-theme-ideal-for-online-mlm-affiliates-blogs/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-shopping-theme-download-set-up-your-wordpress-shop-in-minutes/ http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-shopping-theme-download-set-up-your-wordpress-shop-in-minutes/#comments Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:01:29 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=715 The Wordpress Shopping Theme, designed to help small online retailers & small business to quickly set up an online blog store, is now available for downloads.

The Shopping Theme was designed with inputs from MLM business owners, small internet bloggers who sell & a lot of affiliate sales professionals. The theme was designed to help them sell more & also show multiple ads to boost their online ad income.

The Shopping Theme was released in Beta a few weeks ago & now incorporates a lot of the feedback from the online marketers. The Theme is now available for downloads & use.

Some of the key aspects of the Wordpress Shopping Theme are:

• meant for online retailers to increase sales
• appropriately displays multiple ads to increase earnings from advertisements
• ability to show CPA ads by optimizing the ad spaces
• highlight special discounts & weekly sale notices on posts
• highly optimized for search engines

The design is bound to expose a lot more of your high selling products & increase the sales. It is ideal for bloggers who wish to set up & run their own web front without spending much money on the set-up.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-shopping-theme-download-set-up-your-wordpress-shop-in-minutes/feed/ 1 http://www.promediablog.com/get-onto-twitter-10-ways-to-get-popular-on-twitter/ http://www.promediablog.com/get-onto-twitter-10-ways-to-get-popular-on-twitter/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:32:05 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=699 One of the best ways of creating your own online community is using Twitter. Enough has been said & written about Twitter. But as a new blogger, you will find it rather difficult to create your own community on Twitter.

The first part of the challenge is to get good followers. The second part of the challenge is to engage your followers, or the people you are following, into more meaningful conversations.

Simply following, or being followed, does not help anyone.

Getting popular on Twitter is not easy – simply because its too crowded already. It has famous people twittering & it has spammers crying for attention. Creating your own conversing Twitter community is going to take time. You can begin with the simple tips that had helped me get started:

1. Tweet regularly, but Tweet sense. Think of what all could be essential to your followers – what you think could add some value to their time & Tweet about that. You have to keep it less than 140 words!

2. Use the Twitter Plugin for Wordpress. This helps you send a Tweet anytime you post. You may wish not to publish certains posts on Tweet & the plugin has the option to do that too.

3. Show your Tweeter activities on your blog sidebar. This is a nifty way to let your readers know what you are busy with at that moment.

4. Use Twitter apps to search for popular Tweets. Addictomatic helps you search for the hot Tweets & TweetBeep sends you an email alert every time Twitter finds a match to your search. With these you can easily find out the other people on Twitter who are talking about topics useful to you, or you can contribute too.

5. Follow some of the more respected people on Twitter. They may not even know who you are, but you can follow them to learn from them – how they tweet, what they tweet, when they tweet, how they respond to tweets etc – a complete range of behavior.

6. Say Thanks & Say it often. Well you are thankful to anyone who is following you, but you should be specially thankful who are willing to engage in more meaningful conversations with you. They are equally inclined to build an online Twitter community with you. Return the favor with contributions & a simple thank you.

7. Re-Tweet – I picked this up from Kevin Rose, the architect & founder of Digg. Kevin explains retweeting as broadcasting a tweet to your group. This is a viral way of spreading any messages from one network to another.

8. Create activities in your twitter groups – I used to do a lot of “asking questions” & “asking for suggestions” to my Twitter groups. Many of the people following me would not respond, simply because they are busy following people. There would always be some who would take the time to respond. They are very valuable members of your Twitter followers. Track them carefully.

9. Create your Twitter profile with all the essential information. I always suggest to post a picture of your self – this helps people to put a face to a name. If you are serious about your Twitter community, do not post a scenery on your profile. Most suspicious people & spammers would put up a vague picture. I usually block such followers. Use your primary website or blog as a link to your portfolio.

10. Answer questions in your twitter community. If anyone has asked for information or help, respond with your thoughts & follow through. It is all right if you do not know what to answer, but if you do, reach out to help! Online communities are all about helping & co-operation. If you cannot help while you can, you will not be helped either.

I have followed most of the above when I began using Twitter. I had reasonable success & I got to know of quite a few people in various other networks through my Twitter friends.

I must say it was not always easy. You will ask questions & no one will answer. You will answer to someone’s question & you will not hear back. Do not be disappointed, keep doing it & over a period of time, you will get through to the right people.

The one thing I would stress is to be cautious of your image & identity. If you are a serious internet blogger & want to make money from blogging, you should create your online identity accordingly. And done right, Twitter could help you in the long run.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/get-onto-twitter-10-ways-to-get-popular-on-twitter/feed/ 1 http://www.promediablog.com/10-focus-areas-for-small-business-in-slow-economy-tips-for-new-internet-business-owners/ http://www.promediablog.com/10-focus-areas-for-small-business-in-slow-economy-tips-for-new-internet-business-owners/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2009 01:51:35 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=692 The economy has hit everyone. The finance industry, the manufacturing, oil & real estate are all in bad shapes. It is quite possible that the bad economy will last for 12 – 18 months & could occur again.

More & more competent individuals looking at the internet to earn extra money & some generating significant money from the internet.

Although the slow economy could slow their plans, there are some areas where you can focus on right now. These can help you make good money even in tough times & do even better when the economy improves.


1. Re look into your website design & see if you can make any improvements. While you do that, also check if your website has all the Web 2.0 tools. A few of them are the social networking options, polling options & the ability to ping. If you are using Wordpress, we have a lot of essential Wordpress codes to help you get more traffic. Twitter tools are also very important to your blogs.

2. Look into your web hosting services. We have a list of the best performing & cost effective web hosting services. Very recently we saved almost $ 500 a year by consolidating our websites. You may also like to stop all the non-performing websites. That would also save you money, time & frustration.

3. In the same lines, take a close look at your CPC CPA & CPM advertisers. Many advertisers are finding it hard to provide good ads. Google too is suffering in the slow economy – not only has the contextual ad quality gone down, but the PPC rates are very low. You may also start signing up for Shopping Ads. Data shows that the slow economy has made more people look for online deals & shop online – saving fuel, time & getting the best deals.

4. Submit your websites regularly to search engines. Remember to submit not just to Google but submit to all popular search engines as well. In the long run your online success would depend not only on Google but also on Ask.com, MSN.com, yahoo.com & some of the European & Asian search engines as well. It is a bad idea to ignore them now.

5. Compile your website & blog visitor statistics. Look into the posts & articles that are popular. Research those topics more & post updates again. While you are researching website statistics, look at all the different countries your visitors are coming from. In case these countries do not have the same language as your website, you may want to have a translation plugin.

6. Write paid freelance articles. Numerous websites hire freelancers for professional articles. Start your work-at-home career for $7.00. Get direct access to thousands of freelance and home-based jobs. Click here to find work now. This gives you the flexibility to control your own income & balance between all your businesses. Many also let you post your own link, allowing you to build your website’s incoming links.

7. Write reviews of products & review websites & get paid for writing. You can Sign up for free with Blog Reviews set your own review price & then bid on open review opportunities. Advertisers pay from as low as $ 10 for a review to as high as $ 500 for the reputed authors & blogs.

Another option is to get your post sponsored. Internet businesses buy posts from bloggers. This helps them in their marketing & also helps them increase their page rank.

8. Build your followers on social networks. Twitter, LinkedIn & FaceBook are excellent places to start building your online communities. Socialize with the intent of socializing & not with the intent of getting more visitors. If your followers like you & see your contributions valuable, they will usually stay with you. Otherwise you are just spamming the system!

9.  Invite your readers & people from your community to write on your blog. Guest posts, though not as popular, also helps in link building. You can also offer money to review your website or blogs. They build great inbound links & over time proves to be an inexpensive way to build link popularity.

10. The biggest effect of a tough economy is people’s unwillingness to spend money. This is a great opportunity for you to offer things at a discount, or more appropriately free. Free always does not been bad quality.

You should give things for free that your readers would otherwise love to pay money & buy. If you offer something useless for free, no one would anyway buy it. Worse, it would spoil your brand reputation. I think it is also a good choice to mention why you are giving something for free.

Many bloggers & online business owners request an email subscription to their newsletters in return for some free download. This is a great way to generate new subscribers. You should also be aware that just because someone is signing up does not mean that you get a proper subscriber. Many use bogus email accounts to sign up! But then again, I always hope that people respect business model & do not commit that nuisance.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/10-focus-areas-for-small-business-in-slow-economy-tips-for-new-internet-business-owners/feed/ 2 http://www.promediablog.com/using-a-slow-blackberry-storm-resetting-blackberry-storm-solves-the-problem-of-speed/ http://www.promediablog.com/using-a-slow-blackberry-storm-resetting-blackberry-storm-solves-the-problem-of-speed/#comments Sun, 25 Jan 2009 04:20:21 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=688 I have been using my Blackberry Storm for most of my personal work now a days. Although it has significantly reduced my dependence on my laptop for accessing all my emails & posting on my websites, every now & then the performance of Blackberry Storm drops drastically.

The upgrade helped improve speed of the Blackberry Storm, but it has not been consistent. Lately, even after the upgrade, the Blackberry Storm seems to be running very slow again.

Last week, the performance had been dreadful. I know the mobile Yahoo! Messenger takes up a lot of memory on Blackberry Storm. So I had to switch off YIM. Microsoft Messenger has also started to give a connection error every time I try to either add a contact or delete one. So I logged off all the mobile messenger clients on my Blackberry Storm hoping that it will free up the memory.

But it did not. Finally, I had to reset the Blackberry Storm every other day. I take the battery out for about 15 – 20 seconds & then connect the battery back. This frees up all the memory & the performance gets lightening fast. But this is obviously no way to solve the memory leak!

It would be impossible to run the Blackberry Storm in a productive way if I have to switch off all my instant messengers or keep resetting the Blackberry Storm once everyday. Their help desk had no clue on this problem. Maybe because no one reported the issue.

I did find out, by trial & error, that the radio connection is taking up an awful lot of memory as well as battery. It could be, and its just a guess, that the memory leak occurs with every radio connection. Since the Blackberry Storm does not have WiFi, it connects to the internet by setting up a radio connection.

Anytime you want to connect to the internet to browse a website, or check emails, the Blackberry Storm makes a radio connection with the internet & that allows you to surf the net & view your emails. Each such connection could be leading to using up a lot of system memory & battery.

Once the free memory space goes down, the Blackberry Storm’s performance deteriorates. And over time, that is if you have kept your Blackberry Storm running for over 48 hours or so, the entire memory is used up & you can no longer actively use your device.

The only way I could come out of such a siatuation is to plug the battery out for 15 – 20 seconds & reset the device. I have reported this problem in the hopes that RIM will be able to fix the Blackberry Storm’s memory leak issue & give us a patch to get over it!

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/using-a-slow-blackberry-storm-resetting-blackberry-storm-solves-the-problem-of-speed/feed/ 9 http://www.promediablog.com/the-best-wordpress-gurus-7-wordpress-experts-you-must-follow/ http://www.promediablog.com/the-best-wordpress-gurus-7-wordpress-experts-you-must-follow/#comments Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:36:46 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=684 I have always been a Wordpress fan. I have been with them for over 4 years now & enjoyed every bit of it. I have come to trust the immense power of Wordpress with every release.

In my early days with Wordpress, I had taken a lot of help from some of the experts on Wordpress. I am fairly experienced now, although my focus has always been to use a powerful system like Wordpress to further online business & money making opportunities.

My core area of expertize is to help internet MLM business owners. And even though I have become very familiar with how Wordpress works, I still use a lot of help from some of the Wordpress Gurus.

Lately they launched Wordpress TV – a fantastic & innovative way to train people on Wordpress!

Here is a small list of 10 people who I regard to be the best of the best in what they have to offer on Wordpress. Their statements are clear, explanations simple & offerings extremely useful.

Many of them have written various plugins & Wordpress themes that can be very easily adapted to help you in your internet money making efforts.

• Matt – the owner founder of Automattic, the brainchild behind Wordpress. You will get some of the best information on the fundamentals of Wordpress, the power of open-source & heads up an all Wordpress developments. The bog apart, one of the key plugins that Matt provides is Akismet – the intelligent spam catcher.
• Ryan Boren – a constant blogger on Wordpress, and one of the key team members of Automattic, he keeps providing all the important wordpress developments in Wordpress.
• Alex King – Alex is an icon in the Wordpress community. He has continued to provide extremely important hacks on Wordpress & some of the best plugins that are absolutely essential to anyone wishing to do well with Wordpress blogs.
• Michael Torbert – A prolific Wordpress developer & an SEO expert, Michael has a lot of Wordpress related information to offer. He is also the publisher of the SEO plugin that is so essential in the internet business community.
• Arne Brachhold – Arne is also a Wordpress expert with a focus on Search Engineering & Social media tools. Arne constantly publishes critical Wordpress hacks & has released some of the best documentation on optimizing Wordpress for search engines & social networks.
• Aodhan Cullen – Aodhan is an online entrepreneur & one of his greatest creations is the Stat Counter, a free service to track website visitors. Aodhan was also awarded the Internet Hero in the eircom Golden Spider Awards. A lot of important information is published on his blog on visitor statistics & internet click frauds.
• Lester Gamerz Chan – Lester is a fantastic programmer & publishes some very popular wordpress plugins. Very well respected in the Wordpress community, Lester is the creator of essential plugins like DBManager, DownloadManager, PostViews & Polls.
• Lorelle VanFossen – Lorelle is one of the first people I started following when I began blogging. She provides tips on blogging & brings out the ethical & professional aspect of blogging.

If you read their profile, you will notice that apart from Wordpress Gurus, they are all enthusiastic photographers. You will see some great pictures on their personal blogs too.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/the-best-wordpress-gurus-7-wordpress-experts-you-must-follow/feed/ 2 http://www.promediablog.com/add-new-ad-feature-to-your-websites-custom-popup-ad-builder-for-mlm-affiliate-blogs-websites/ http://www.promediablog.com/add-new-ad-feature-to-your-websites-custom-popup-ad-builder-for-mlm-affiliate-blogs-websites/#comments Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:27:52 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=681 Pop Up ads have always been shunned for its distracting nature. Depending on which ad agency you choose to show popup ads, you can never customize your popup ads or show the ones you wish.

We have released a great new feature from Pro Media Blog that you can add to any blog or website & show customized popup ads.

The package is so simple & customizable that you can show any type of ads, in any number, in various options with this Custom Pop Up Ad builder.

Although popup ads earn more money for the publisher, people often hesitate to show them because the ad’s cannot be controlled. Very often the ads are sourced poorly and they crash browsers or open up so many browsers that the user has to shut down the computer.

Now, with the custom popup ad builder you can completely customize the popup ads you show in a pop-up window. You can also combine your own text along with the popup ad so as not to violate any of the advertiser’s policies.

A demo of the custom pop up ad builder & the complete list of features are listed on the Custom Pop Ad builder page.

The key features of the custom pop-up ad builder are:

• add the feature to any sort of website – a blog, a standard website or even a portal
• customize the color theme to match your website or blog’s theme
• customize the shape & size of the popup box
• show as many ads as you wish, you can embed the ad code you want into the popup box
• add text around the ads or add any other images along with the ads
• customize features like how long to show the ads, where all to show the ads

The Custom Pop Ad builder is a great tool for any internet business owners, MLM business owners or for anyone who wishes to have control over the pop ad blocks.

The pop-up box can also be used for purposes other than just showing ads. It can be used to show some new features or new product released, or pop a window with your newsletter sign up information!

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/add-new-ad-feature-to-your-websites-custom-popup-ad-builder-for-mlm-affiliate-blogs-websites/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/franchising-business-opportunities-in-uk/ http://www.promediablog.com/franchising-business-opportunities-in-uk/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:18:05 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=666 Franchising is another good option to start off your own business. Modern franchises stress as much on using the internet as any other traditional marketing & sales channels to drive more business.

With changing economic conditions, unpredictable wage rates & the uncertainty of the traditional job market, many people are taking a very serious look at all the francise opportunities available to them.

The success of a  franchise business depends on the strength of the brand in the international market, the ability to localize the product or the service in your community & the willingness of the parent company to provide for market development in your geographic areas.

In today’s world, even though there are numerous franchise opportunity available, a new business has to get all the right information to help them decide which one to adopt. Franchise Gator UK, the online portal for all franchise UK opportunities, is one great place to start looking for great business cases.

The website contain a wealth of information on all the profitable franchise business in the UK. Ranging from the business that requires an investment of as low as GBP 5,000, to the ones that could require over a million GBP in initial investments.

The portal classifies each opportunity into various marketing segments – by industry type, geographic location & the approximate amount of cash required to run, allowing new business professionals to slide & dice the data & make meaningful conclusions.

There are 2 other aspects which make this franchise portal very helpful:

1. wide coverage of the industry segments – the portal covers all the standard, traditional & the new emerging franchise markets. This includes the technology dependent & highly focused areas like B2C & B2B franchise businesses

2. latest news & updates from the franchise market – the accompanying blog & the news letters provide the latest news, views & data on all the latest opportunities available.

Research & homework is very important before any investment. And the Franchise Gator UK franchise portal has done a great job assimilating the current franchise information from the UK business market.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/franchising-business-opportunities-in-uk/feed/ 2 http://www.promediablog.com/google-ads-ppc-mlm-combining-google-ppc-with-other-ads-for-mlm/ http://www.promediablog.com/google-ads-ppc-mlm-combining-google-ppc-with-other-ads-for-mlm/#comments Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:39:03 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=617 Combining Google Ads with other PPC & CPM display ads could help make a significant money even on MLM sites.

Although various MLM business have their own rules, the most that I have come across, is a simple landing page with a Pitch at the beginning, ending in an effort to sell.

I have not seen many MLM business owners even trying to show Google PPC ads to supplement their MLM income. There could be various reasons for that, including the MLM rules & regulations, as well as restrictions by many advertisers to show their ads on MLM sales pages.

Let us look at some of the popular internet PPC advertising companies & see what their policies are towards MLM sites.

Google: The Google Adsense Policies do not restrict any publisher from showing Google PPC or Google Image ads on MLM websites. However, Google mentions that ads from other companies – be it MLM company or any other source, should not be displayed in a way to confuse the reader that such ads are also from Google.

Although ability to combine Google ads with others could result in better earnings from ads for sure, Google policy does not talk specifically about CPM betting on Adsense ads. However, Google does say that the ads cannot appear on a pop up window but should always be on the main page.

Most of the ad servers do allow for Google Adsense to compete for CPM. Ad brite for example. It is one of the best ad servers for new bloggers & allows you to bid Google Adsense with other competing ads.

Google ads can be placed on any website as long as the site runs on the given Google Adsense rules of advertising. You can show MLM ads or other CPC, CPM & CPA ads along with Google Ads on your MLM & business websites.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/google-ads-ppc-mlm-combining-google-ppc-with-other-ads-for-mlm/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/what-ads-to-use-choosing-between-cpc-cpm-cpa-ads-for-blogs-with-multiple-ads/ http://www.promediablog.com/what-ads-to-use-choosing-between-cpc-cpm-cpa-ads-for-blogs-with-multiple-ads/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:19:07 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=652 Ads are one of the main money earners for bloggers. One of the most interesting questions that I am constantly asked is what sort of ads to use on the blogs? Should it be text ads, or image ads? Should it be the CPM ads or the CPC ads?

Though there is no empirical formula to decide that, the are various ways to figure out what works for you.

In the context of new bloggers, people who have just started seriously to make money on the internet, the answer is quite simple. I will tell you from my experience what has worked for mein making money from ads  & what has not!

Let’s look at the payouts of each of these ad types:

CPC Ads pay per click. If anyone clicks on the ads shown on your website, you get to make some money. The payout depends on the rates set by the advertiser – it could be as low as 1 cent per click to as high as US$ 1.50 per click. I have seen both the extremes.

When I was advertising, very often I had to payout as high as 70 cents an average for some keywords, while in general my CPC payout varied from about 20 cents to 30 cents per click!

CPM Ads pay per 1000 visits. In some cases, advertisers pay only for unique visits, which in some, advertisers pay per 1000 page loads. What that means for Unique Visits is, if you have a visitor who sees one page of your website & goes away, the advertiser who showed their CPM ad on that page will pay you by the CPM rate for 1 impression. If the visitor visited 10 pages & the same advertisement showed up 10 times, the advertiser will still pay for only 1 visit.

When the advertiser is paying for page loads, then you get paid by the advertiser every time your page shows up & their ad is shown. In order to avoid malpractices, various ad agencies have rules as to make sure that the visitor is genuinely interested in your page. Google only pays for CPM after analysing Time on Page, Bounce Rate & other parameters. You can read the details of all the important parameters on the Google’s page.

CPA Ads pay per action. CPA ads result in the advertiser getting what they desired. Some ask for email IDs, some ask for contact numbers whicle some ask for a credit card number. The action depends on the advertiser. But for the publisher, any time a visitor clicks on a CPA ad & completes a set of actions like the ones I mentioned, the advertiser pays out a referral amount.

CPA advertisers do not care if you have low hit rates, or even if your pages are very popular. You get to make as much money as your visitors do the actions that the advertisers wants. The payouts on CPA ads vary from about a dollar to over US $100 per action depending on what the advertiser is trying to sell.

Now lets look at which of the above advertisers logically make sense for new bloggers.

CPM Ad earnings:

• if your website or blog is new & you have only a few hundred visitors a day, that is like having about 5000 – 6000 page loads a month, even with the best CPM rates, you can only make a couple of bucks a month. Lesser monthly page views would result in even lesser CPM earnings
• if you webaite or blog is fairly old & has over 20,000 page views a month, with at least about 10,000 unique page views a month, you can fairly make close to about US $100 a month from the CPM ads

CPC Ad earnings:

• if your website or blog has the correct search keyword you have a very high possibility of making a few hundred dollars a month, even with page views between 5,000 to 10,000 a month. CPC earnings depend on how good your content is, how well your page shows up on the searched keywords & where your ads are placed
• the earning I mentioned above can vary depending on the relevance of the ads shown. Some advertisers provide very contextual ads whicle some dont. I have assumed that the ads shown on your pages are very relevant to the page’s content

CPA Ad earnings:

• you can safely assume an earning of a couple of dollars from CPA ads, unless your blog is very reputed & visitors can trust you.  Generally, free giveaway ads tend to get more attention & the users often do not mind giving out their email addresses for something free
• serious CPA ads often payout well over US $100. These ads however require visitors to buy something, or requires visitors to pay some money. For a new blog, the chances are low that the reader could trust your lead & spend a large sum of money on a product that you are referring

In summary, for a new blogger, the CPC ads make more sense & could make you a few hundred dollars every month. The important aspects in all these 3 ad channels are:

• the quality of your website – the value the reader finds on your blog page. When the readers see a lot of value on your page, they are likely to stay longer & explore
• the quality of ads served – the advertiser should have the ability to understand your content & provide relevant ads. You have to choose your advertisers well. Refer to the list of some of the best CPC CPA & CPM advertisers
• the design of your blog – this lets you show ads of the right formats, in the right places & should not distract the serious readers. Pro Media Blog has a lot of great themes that are designed especially for people who want to show ads & make money
]]> http://www.promediablog.com/what-ads-to-use-choosing-between-cpc-cpm-cpa-ads-for-blogs-with-multiple-ads/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-themes-for-small-business-mlm-affiliates-at-pro-media-blog/ http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-themes-for-small-business-mlm-affiliates-at-pro-media-blog/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:52:08 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=643 Over the last 2 months, from December 2008 through January 2009, we have worked very hard to release some of the best Wordpress Themes ideal for internet business.

We have spent hours in understanding the needs of online business owners, MLM marketers & small web store retailers. And we have added a Demo site for all users to try out the themes before they download!

Many of our friends, associates & our Tweeters have responded with so much of enthusiasm on our new releases. We hope our Business Themes make their internet business successful!

Here is a quick recap of the themes released so far.

1. Affiliate Ad Theme – a great Wordpress Theme for internet affiliates who wish to sell on the internet & earn extra money by showing ads. This is a widgetized multi ad theme created specially for affiliate business owners.

2. Wordpress Shopping Theme – a great Wordpress Theme for small shoppers & especially a great theme for online amazon & ebay retailers. This professionally designed theme packs functionalities that will help small online business owners sell more & promote more products & services online.

3. Wordpress MLM Theme – this is a unique theme designed for MLM business owners & online business professionals. The Wordpress MLM Theme is created with the MLM business owners in mind. The design addresses some of the key success crtieria of the internet based MLM business & tends to help affiliates promote services & action based ads.

The MLM Theme is jam packed with features – custome searches with custom sponsored links, widgetized footers to add more content, built-in top digg posts to increase search engine effectiveness, ads placements in line with the content, re-defined index page to show mutiple channels or posts are a few.

4. Wordpress Modern Ads Theme – this is a multiple ads theme with some great features. One of the best is the built in slide show. The design is simple & the features are built on basic programming tools, which makes it robust. The slide shows are completely customizable & can include several distinct galleries.

The Wordpress Modern Ads Theme is available in 2 popular color choices – Aqua & Monochrome.

5. Wordpress Bold Ads Theme – this theme is already becoming very popular. The Theme allows users to show multiple ads, yet the layout is designed in a way not to distract the readers. This theme is great on social networking too. The Wordpress Bold Ads Theme is highly optimized for search engines & you can see the effect on your visitor counts within weeks of implementation.

6. Blue Ads Theme – this is a simplisctic Wordpress Theme for multiple ads. The 3 column design allows the users to show high paying CPC CPM & CPA ads on their sites. This is a core theme – meaning that it can be customized very easily to include ads either in widgets or in the text areas.

7. Red Ads Theme – this is another very light theme designed in 3 columns. The theme is widgetized & allows the user to show multiple ads on there themes. Apparently this is one of the simplest themes we have designed. But we feel that this is a great theme especially for new bloggers.

It is important for new bloggers to experiment with ad placements, ad sizes & formats. The Red Ads Theme offers the flexibility to the new bloggers to try our various combinations of ads & evaluate what works for them.

In summary, we have published 7 great themes in less than 8 weeks! We are delighted. And we have received some great feedback & emails too on some of the tests we ran. We did an extensive Beta testing for the MLM Theme & we have included some of the feedbacks from the MLM professionals.

What’s coming up?

We are working on 2 new themes, again! The first one is a Pro Affiliate Theme, for those bloggers who have some experience in online MLM & Affiliate business sales. It is going to be a combination of a typical web store type of blog & a content driven web page. We hope to release the Pro Affiliate Theme later in Jan 2009.

The other one is a Personal Blog Theme. The intent is to create a theme that professionals could use along with their business blogs. However, all the ones we tested, seemed to scream for attention! So we went ahead, did some market study on what the professionals really wanted on their personal blog & the result is “Signature“.

We hope to release signature by Jan 21, 2009. The Personal Wordpress Theme Signature is currently being tested & will be ready for release on Pro Media Blog within a week.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-themes-for-small-business-mlm-affiliates-at-pro-media-blog/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-shopping-theme-set-up-online-store-shopping-blog-in-minutes/ http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-shopping-theme-set-up-online-store-shopping-blog-in-minutes/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:41:51 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=640 The Wordpress Shopping Theme is out! A completely functional theme packed with essential features that can help you set up & start an Online Web Shopping Blog in minutes.

I had earlier announced that the Wordpress Shopping Theme is about to be released. After thorough testing over the last weekend, the Shopping Theme is finally released!

You can read more & see a Demo of Wordpress Shopping Theme.

This Shopping Theme is created for bloggers who also want to display their own products & sell from their blogs. So apart from having all the benefits of a Web 2.0 technology, this Shopping Theme also packs in some key selling tricks:

• built in product showcase to show as many products as you wish – the product blog slideshow is custom built and with minor configuration, you can show case your best products in a professional way
• the Shopping Blog Theme allows you to display product specific discounts & promotions. This is available on the post pages where the discounts can be shown. At the same time, this feature can be easily used to run general campaigns across your blog
• display 6 top categories of your wish & display recent posts from these categories
• display an infinite number of text ads! This is the most valuable feature where text ads can be rotated in 3 different locations in the header. The ads holders are designed in a way that they form an integral part of the shopping blog theme



• there are place holders for other high paying ad formats like the 300px x 250px or the leader board formats
• social networking bookmarks are built into the theme
• brand your own business with your logo & message

These are only some of the features of the professionally designed Wordpress Shopping blog Theme. It is completely modular in nature – meaning that you can customize this theme very easily.

The Wordpress Shopping Theme is a 3 column theme & is fairly optimized for search engines. We also encourage you to use the other essential plugins & popular plugins that could help more.

So download the Online Web Shopping Theme & convert your blog into an online webstore in minutes!

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-shopping-theme-set-up-online-store-shopping-blog-in-minutes/feed/ 2 http://www.promediablog.com/new-wordpress-shopping-theme-start-your-shopping-blog-in-minutes-with-shopping-theme/ http://www.promediablog.com/new-wordpress-shopping-theme-start-your-shopping-blog-in-minutes-with-shopping-theme/#comments Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:01:47 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=623 I have been working for a long time to create a Wordpress Shopping Theme. It is almost done & I have a small snap shot of how it’s going to look once it is complete.

When I was looking for a Wordpress Theme that would help me to sell well & sell smart, I fell short of a good one. Most of the Wordpress Themes are meant for publishing textual content.

There was not one that were geared towards selling! So I went ahead and created a great Wordpress Shopping Theme.

The Wordpress Shopping Theme is primarily meant for people who wish to sell products. It is completely designed from grounds up & is quite optimized for search engines.

The Shopping Theme is a 3 column widgetized theme with additional spotlights on top selling products & high revenue products. A unique Wordpress slideshow is set up on the index pages that can be used in many ways.

If you want to introduce a new product to the market, or if you want to highlight any specific products to your buyers, the Wordpress slideshow on top of the page is the right place to do.



The biggest challenge while designing the Wordpress Shopping Theme is the placement of advertisements. The ad placements have to be carefully designed so as not to be intrusive or appear “out of place”. How many times have you seen a Google Adsense ad on the Best Buy website? Probably never!

The Shopping Theme lets your show high revenue ad formats while at the same time, it tucks away 3 different ads in the headers. I imagine these header ads could be used to promote your products or just regular textual ads. These ad holders are designed to rotate multiple ads in the same place.

The regular post pages, which I image could be used to describe products, features or unique promotions, have been designed to include special events, or shopping promotions. These information are tucked away under normal viewing, but if the buyerss wish, they can expand the links to see more, without moving away from the page.

There are a lot more features in the new unique Wordpress Shopping Theme. With minimum configuration changes, the Wordpress Shopping Theme could set up your internet shopping blog in minutes & you could start selling in less than 5 minutes.

The design is independent of the Wordpress versions, so you do not have to worry if any part of the theme would stop working when you upgrade!

I shall set up the demo for the Wordpress Shopping Theme in the coming week for an initial preview & feedback before I release it.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/new-wordpress-shopping-theme-start-your-shopping-blog-in-minutes-with-shopping-theme/feed/ 1 http://www.promediablog.com/multiple-ads-theme-for-affiliates-mlm-business-released-modern-ads-theme-with-slideshows-multiple-ads/ http://www.promediablog.com/multiple-ads-theme-for-affiliates-mlm-business-released-modern-ads-theme-with-slideshows-multiple-ads/#comments Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:01:12 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=598 Pro Media Blog released the Modern Ads Theme – a great Wordpress theme for internet Affiliate & MLM business. It’s available in 2 great color choices of Aqua & Monochrome.

The theme is on a minimalistic design but includes all the key features that would help MLM & affiliate sales business, sell more & sell more effectively.

While networking, social bookmarking are also the other important aspects of a successful internet business, videos & slide shows also add to the effectiveness of adding convincing evidence of success.

The ideas, features & the design of this Wordpress Modern Ads Theme have all come in from successful internet business professionals. They all started small & gathered success with various trial & error tactics.

The Wordpress Modern Ads Theme includes several of their important learning that made them successful.

This Wordpress Modern Ads Theme solves 2 key MLM & Affiliate business issues.

For one, the problem of networking easily on the internet. The web holds the greatest possibility of networking with people who are interested in your business. It also has millions of potential buys & millions of potential members for your MLM business.

The social networking ability of the Wordpress Modern Ads Theme solves the problem of people finding you, following you on popular social networks like Twitter & Facebook. The author page with the credentials are important to building relations on the internet.



Secondly, this Wordpress Modern Ads Theme allows you to professionally showcase your most successful products, services as well as display events, success stories & messages with a professional Wordpress slide show. A very generic slide show is built into the theme that can be very easily customized to your needs.

Being generic, the slide show is not quite dependent on what version of Wordpress you use – it will not stop working just because you have upgraded or changed your technology. Moreover, you can group your messages into many different chapters or slideshow galleries so that the visitor can choose what to see.

The important aspects of the design of this Wordpress Modern Ads Theme are:

• minimalistic but professional design makes it very light weight so that it can load very fast
• 3 column widgetized design that can hold most high paying ad formats to make money from popular ads
• index page has 2 columns for content – they can show specific categories or a combination of categories, depending on your need
• includes a slideshow that can be completely customized to suite your needs. The slideshows can be grouped in several galleries or just one & each of the slides can be linked to specific pages
• the Smoothgallery slideshow is generic code using open source software MooTools & created by Jonathan Schemoul & is completely customizable. It does not depend on the versions of wordpress. Moreover, the Modern Ads Theme is designed in such a way that you can include the slideshow on any page you want
• if you later decide to implement another theme, you can copy & paste the slideshow code quickly & easily
• the theme has options to show multiple ads in key locations without distracting the readers from your key content. You may opt not to show ads in any of these locations at all
• ability to brand your business with logos on the header & the footer as well as pictures on author pages
• author page for all registered authors showing key details like author descriptions, websites & pictures
• well optimized for search engines but you can also use other essential plugins

This Wordpress Modern Ads Theme for MLM & Affiliate business to show multiple ads & key promotions is tested on Internet Explorer 7+, Mozilla Firefox 3+, Flock 2+ & Safari. The slideshow too has been tested on Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer 6 and 7 & Safari. The credits for the slideshow goes entirely to Jonathan.

If you require any additional customizations or have any suggestions to improve this theme, please leave a comment or email back. We have released the Wordpress Modern Ads Theme with different theme color options – Aqua & Monochrome.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/multiple-ads-theme-for-affiliates-mlm-business-released-modern-ads-theme-with-slideshows-multiple-ads/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-mlm-theme-feedback-updates-new-author-page/ http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-mlm-theme-feedback-updates-new-author-page/#comments Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:23:11 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=540 Thank you all who responded to the feedback request on the Wordpress MLM Theme. I have started to implement portions of the feedback. The first that I did was include the Author Page.

The idea behind an Author Page is to display & promote all the members in the network. Moreover, if all your MLM networking members have their own websites, it is a good way to link your MLM blog to their website as well.

No ads have been placed on the Author Page so that readers can concentrate on the profile itself. However, it is still open to your feedback.

If most of you give me the feedback that there is a need for additional ads on the Author Profile page, I might just go ahead & include one.

There are a couple of options that I can think of:

1. You display a general ad, or an affiliate ad similar to what is there on the theme header or the top of posts

2. Authors can display their own specific ad on their profile

3. Random ads – rotate ads from one profile page to another

4. Include special links like they appear as Sponsored Links on each posts or search result pages

Please send me your feedback as to what is it that you think should be the best.



This is how a typical Author Page would look like. It has the option of displaying the picture of the author. In case there is no picture, it will show a dummy image.

All that the users need to do is to upload a 100 x 100 px square image (or could be slightly more than that) and save it in the “uploads” directory by the name of user_id.jpg. Going by the user_ID ensures that there will be no duplicate images.

The Author page shows only the Author’s website & Email address for now. But it can be designed to show other IDs like the Yahoo! Messenger ID, Google Talk ID, Jabber ID etc (that is all the data that the user is required to set up on their Wordpress Profile page).

I am still looking for feedback on the new Wordpress MLM Theme, so if you are a MLM business owner or an Affiliate Marketer, your feedback will help me design & give out a good MLM Theme.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-mlm-theme-feedback-updates-new-author-page/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-affiliate-ads-theme-released-great-theme-for-increasing-affiliate-sales-ad-revenue/ http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-affiliate-ads-theme-released-great-theme-for-increasing-affiliate-sales-ad-revenue/#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:54:45 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=569 Pro Media Blog has released yet another professional Wordpress Theme for Affiliate Ads. This theme is designed specifically for people who are into internet MLM Business or Affiliate Sales Business.

The Wordpress Affiliate Ads Theme includes the feedback & suggestions from a large number of internet MLM Business & Affiliate Business owners.

Many of them are very experienced & know all the tips & tricks that work successfully on the internet.

The Wordpress Affiliate Ads Theme has included the most valuable recommendations from the successful internet business owners. The Theme is designed to promote products that are hot selling, products & services that are high revenue earners.

The most important highlights of the Wordpress Affiliate Ads Theme are:

• professionally design & created with the intent of increasing internet Affiliate sales & MLM business
• 3 column theme with widgetized sidebars & widgetized footers
• built in author page with author image, website & contact information to help branding
• multiple ways to show high paying ads to increase ad revenue



• ability to show sponsored links in search reducing dependency on Google search
• ability to show high paying affiliate products & services within post
• video ready widgets to show multimedia productions like trainings, product demos etc
• networking ability with large buttons for social network bookmarking

The Wordpress Affiliate Ads Theme is highly optimized for search engines. But we also recommend using other essential plugins & popular wordpress plugins to increase search visibility.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-affiliate-ads-theme-released-great-theme-for-increasing-affiliate-sales-ad-revenue/feed/ 3 http://www.promediablog.com/welcoming-2009-looking-back-at-2008-plans-for-2009/ http://www.promediablog.com/welcoming-2009-looking-back-at-2008-plans-for-2009/#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:21:29 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=576 We at Pro Media Blog wanted to wish our readers a Prosperous & Fruitful 2009 ahead. While the new year brings new promises, we hope to keep providing you with all the relevant information, great themes & a lot of tips on how to set up & run your own internet business.

We thank you for your support in 2008 & we hope that you will find value in our internet business blog. We look forward to working with you in the coming year.

We also wanted to share how we fared in 2008. Although it is just 9 months that our blog is active (from the mid of April 2008), we have attracted serious readers from all over the globe.

The chart below is created by merging 5 day’s of data from this week (Dec 28, 2008 through Jan 1, 2009). We are doing very good across Europe (UK, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium are the top in our list), US (California, Washington, New York, Illinois, Colorado, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, Ohio & Kentucky top our list), Asia (Eastern China, Indonesia, India, Philippines & Japan primarily) & parts of Eastern Australia.

We have some readers from South American countries & we wish to have more from there. Canada also looks promising, although we do not have enough data from there as well.



Although this is a small snap shot of all the places that Pro Media Blog has it’s readers, it is still a good indicator of our spread in the various geographies.

In the coming years, we want to build strong relationships with affiliate business owners, small & home business owners & experienced IT people who focus on start-ups & small internet business operations.

Information technology will take a turn in the coming years – Web 2.0 will be a matter of the past & Web 3.0 will be making significant differences to the human buying & selling habits on the internet.

We wish to bring our recommendations for all the small business owners, MLM business owners, Affiliate Sales professionals on how to use the new technologies to increase their internet business.

This year our focus had been on people who are new to internet business – who have either just started or are determined to start making some serious money working from home. We will continue to help new comers with all our resources. In order to encourage more people to look at alternative income sources, we shall continue to provide most of our resources for free.

We have also started to focus on Affiliate Business owners & MLM Business owners. We have released great themes for MLM & Multiple Ads for the experienced business owner as well as for the new comers. While we shall keep most of our resources free, we may have to charge a nominal amount for some of the specialized resources to keep our teams & systems up & running.

We are hoping to have your continued support, cooperation & feedback on all our work. We will succeed only when our readers succeed & we are committed to providing our best to help you win!

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/welcoming-2009-looking-back-at-2008-plans-for-2009/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/clickfraud-heatmap-of-the-world-clickfraud-at-16-in-q3-2008/ http://www.promediablog.com/clickfraud-heatmap-of-the-world-clickfraud-at-16-in-q3-2008/#comments Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:07:36 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=544 According to the Click Forensics report, the click fraud in Q3 2008 is at 16%. Click fraud, in layman’s terms, is when a link is clicked without the intent of visiting the website.

When you pay out to ad agencies to display your website ad on relevant searches, for example, you expect people who are interested in what you are selling to come to your website by clicking on the ad.

These are supposed to be the visitors who are seriously looking for your content & could be a potential customer. You pay money for every such click on your ads.

Click Fraud could become a nightmare especially when the frauds are working in large networks who click on each other’s ads. This article looks at click fraud as an organized crime that is getting very difficult & expensive to prevent.

Smaller businesses & individuals who have a limited advertising budget could be badly hit by click frauds. There are ways in which you can identify & prevent some of these click frauds, although there is a possibility that the larger part will go unnoticed.



The key findings from the latest Click Forensic report are:

• The overall industry average click fraud rate was 16.0 percent for Q3 2008. That’s down slightly from the 16.2 percent rate reported for both Q2 2008 and Q3 2007.

• The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 27.1 percent. That’s down from the 27.6 percent rate reported for Q2 2008 and the 28.1 percent average click fraud rate reported for Q3 2007.

• Traffic from botnets was responsible for 27.6 percent of all click fraud traffic in Q3 2008. That’s up from 25.2 percent for Q2 2008.

• In Q3 2008, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside North America came from Russia (4.9 percent), France (4.8 percent) and the U.K. (3.5 percent).

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/clickfraud-heatmap-of-the-world-clickfraud-at-16-in-q3-2008/feed/ 2 http://www.promediablog.com/how-much-money-do-you-make-from-blogs-some-make-over-20000-a-month/ http://www.promediablog.com/how-much-money-do-you-make-from-blogs-some-make-over-20000-a-month/#comments Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:07:31 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=527 I would not like to confuse making money from blogs with running your business on blogs. Darren Rowse is running a poll on his blog asking people to tell how much money they are making every month from blogging.

Darren Rowse is one of the most successful professional bloggers who have been providing excellent tips & suggestions on how to excel in blogging.

And he is also one of those who make a six figure income from blogs.

Although the data till date is from about 6000 bloggers who follow Darren, it still highlights a few important aspects of the money that bloggers make.

I am hoping that more people contribute to this poll so as to get a more meaningful data from the statistics. 6000 is not a number that could prove anything, but at least these are the bloggers who follow Darren Rowse & hence, a good assumption is, they are serious about making money from blogging.



• There are a large number of people who blog with the intent of expressing themselves. They do it out of love & probably out of a desire to socialize with like minded people in areas that interest them.
• A few of them probably show Google ads or similar but making money from their blogs may not be their primary intent & hence their incomes lie within $50 a month. Understandable.
• Then there are people on the other end of the spectrum who make over $250,000 a year. They are probably the serious ones, who are into internet business & blog either to connect or with the intent to sell. They are not the casual bloggers.
• Then there is this large section of bloggers who make anything from $50 to about $3,000 a month. This section represents people who are still experimenting with various ways to earn more. They are serious in their intent to make it big, but lack the networking power to help them cross the $5,000 a month earning barrier.
• The number of people who make anything from $5,000 a month to $20,000 a month from blogging is fairly less. I am sure that is because such bloggers have not entered their data.
• This small snapshot of data shows that there are probably three major earning barrier marks – the $100 a month from blogging is the first, the $3,000 a month from blogging is the second while the last seems to be on the higher side of making over $20,000 a month from blogging.

Where are you today? And where do you wish to be a month from now?

Many small business professionals have also started to use blogs to set up a communication channel with their customers. They also make quite some money from blog ads.

What this poll does not show is how many of the bloggers are basically compounding their regular business income with additional ad money from blogs. That will skew the data considerably.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/how-much-money-do-you-make-from-blogs-some-make-over-20000-a-month/feed/ 1 http://www.promediablog.com/gearing-up-for-web-30-working-technologically-smart-could-make-your-business-win/ http://www.promediablog.com/gearing-up-for-web-30-working-technologically-smart-could-make-your-business-win/#comments Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:50:19 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=516 It took over 5 years for Web 2.0 to catch up with the large number of bloggers. Business houses continued to maintain the older web formats until they found that the least they need to have is the RSS feed.

And in a matter of 2 years after, there are over a million people using Web 2 technology to sell on the internet.

TechCrunch reported impressive Wordpress growth in 2008 – Two million new blogs created for the year & 35 million new blog posts (up from 20 million in 2007).

Technology could be a major deal maker for all businesses, including small business & home professionals. It is time for individuals to take a look at what Web 3.0 is bringing to the table. It is important that you know how technology is changing  & what is available to you that could radically change your business.

Whether you decide to implement any of them, or decide not to, is a matter of choice. But as a small business owner, you cannot afford not to know the changes that are about to happen. And most of them will be free software, if not, they will be no doubt cheap. So it could be rather easy to afford many of the newer technologies.

The major change that we expect in Web 3.0 is the seamless integration of all applications – from software programs, to databases to presentations. That is easier said than done, but when in place, there will be enormous possibilities of peer-to-peer business operations. There is also a good amount of information on Web 3.0 on Wikipedia.

Google & a few of the advanced advertising companies are already working very hard to understand micro-conversations. It is like figuring out what 2 people are talking on Twitter, or the meaning of the Status on a Facebook profile!

Facebook, for example, have been trying to show ads on profiles that are contextual to the messages displayed on them. They have not been very successful yet, but soon ad researchers will find out how to put the right advertisement by reading these small messages.

From the perspective of a small business or a home business professional, I would keep an eye on a few of the ongoing & upcoming developments on Web 3.0:

• more use collaborative systems – it could be as simple as using Safe Online File Sharing & Storage services
• virtualization tools – these systems increased both productivity & save thousands of dollars in expenses. A great example is Virtual Phone & Fax, that includes 300 FREE Fax Pages per month
• peer-to-peer communications & networking – this is one technical area that will explode with possibilities. With all the major computer companies, from Yahoo! to Google, encouraging freelancers from around the globe, there will be numerous applications that will help business professionals connect with peers & customers very fast. This will also lead way to larger trading business – that is also known as “sell through” or “affiliate” business
• mobile applications – iPhone, Google Android & Blackberry led the way to create a mobile environment for business. Google realized the potential of the market within mobile phone users & have been going strong with their mobile ads. Your webstore has got to be accessible on mobile devices & customers or affiliates should be able to pass on a sale from any mobile communicator
• professional web stores – web stores that allow fast creation & sale within a secured system that lets the customer shop in peace. Advanced internet stores will let businesses Reach new customers, grow online sales, and accelerate business growth.
• effective use of multi-media – Web 3.0 will integrate all forms of communication making it easier to combine audio, video & text in a more meaningful way. This means that you cannot depend only on a text-based blog to make it big. Videos & on-demand multimedia presentations will be used widely to impress the customers.

Not everything will be rosy though. While most people will find good use of the technical progress, a successful business professional will also have to protect his interests in the virtual world. Identity theft, website hacking, credit card frauds, advertising click frauds will also increase.

As a small business house you would have a limited amount of time & money to invest in protecting your business interests against these future threats. There are ways in which you can prevent these online frauds from reaching you or your customers.

• use cost effective professional online store fronts like that from ProStores (an eBay Company) These companies protect their customers, like you & a thousand other small business professionals, from online frauds
• use online theft protection like credit checks – Life Lock is the only Identity Theft Prevention Solution backed by a one-million dollar guarantee!
• if you are hosting your own website or blog, do so with an established web hosting provider. I have listed out the best & the most affordable web hosting providers. They are committed to keeping your online business up, running & protected from internet hackers, viruses & malware.
]]> http://www.promediablog.com/gearing-up-for-web-30-working-technologically-smart-could-make-your-business-win/feed/ 9 http://www.promediablog.com/web-traffic-secrets-enough-said-but-what-works-tips-for-new-bloggers/ http://www.promediablog.com/web-traffic-secrets-enough-said-but-what-works-tips-for-new-bloggers/#comments Sun, 28 Dec 2008 12:02:52 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=510 Who would ever pay close to $400 for a folder that says “Web Traffic Secrets“? Apparently these books, or ebooks sells. I was watching John Chow give away one of these so called miracle Web Traffic Secret book to Bonnie.

Her blog did not show up on compete for any measurable traffic yet, but hopefully when Bonnie puts all the $400 miracles to work, the blog might show up!

You can Snoop on the competition with Compete Pro. It gives you all the necessary information on internet traffic to make your own strategies. But if you spend as much time understanding what people are saying to build traffic as I do, you will see these e-books sell for $50 at almost every SEO website!

I happened to talk to a few of the SEO experts who are professionally employed by Fortune 50 companies & their remark was very candid – “If it does not work, blame it on the content! E-books have a disclaimer on what you write!” That’s easy!

And think of it, with hundreds of millions of websites, getting a consistent traffic of 50,000 a month could be good enough for anyone to earn $70,000 a year. But most of the bloggers get stuck at the dreadful 4000 hits-a-month number! It has more to do with just the content.

Spending a large sum of money every month on Google Adwords or any other advertising company is not really an option when new bloggers are not really selling anything. All they put up is content for sale. How much of traffic do you really think that a search engine could drive on that?

When I began, I was struggling to cross the ominous 4,000 hits-a-month number. I experimented with content, layout (or Themes), ad positioning, advertisement optimization & even networking. You will find all that information on this blog.You could also subscribe by email or follow me on Twitter.

Fortunately, I hit on the things that work pretty quick. Well, many of the standard things that I kept reading on the internet from the so called “experts” did not work – mainly because one was not different from the rest!

The reason why I was able to cross that hit barrier was I decided to opt for one of the two options to begin with:

• should I earn the most I could from whatever hits I have, or
• should I try to get more hits & expect my earning to go up?

There is a subtle difference. Once I got more experienced, I implemented a combination of revenue optimization & high hit counts.

It is true that if your search engine traffic goes up, your earning from ads & even affiliates will increase. But when you are beginning, focus on what is in your control – optimize your earnings from what hits you have.It is easy & fast to implement.

As a long term strategy, continue to create your content so that eventually it will start bringing in search engine visitors. But while you do, do not lose out on all the money that your blog can bring in today!

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/web-traffic-secrets-enough-said-but-what-works-tips-for-new-bloggers/feed/ 1 http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-mlm-theme-released-seeking-feedback-from-mlm-affiliate-marketers/ http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-mlm-theme-released-seeking-feedback-from-mlm-affiliate-marketers/#comments Sat, 27 Dec 2008 21:11:53 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=524 I announced earlier that I am working on a new Wordpress Theme that can be used for professional MLM & Affiliate Sales business owners. I have finished the project & have released version 1.0 of Wordpress-MLM-Theme.

ProMediaBlog is now live on the Wordpress-MLM-Theme.

I need your help. I need your feedback on how to make it better & what other functionalities should be included to make MLM & Affiliate Business owners can benefit from this theme. I shall start improving this theme in the subsequent versions.

From the first set of feedback that I received from my Twitter partners was interesting. I have included a few in the first release of the Wordpress-MLM-Theme version 1.0.

• built in dynamic content for search engines – have built in Digg Top Posts in the pages from the Business & Finance sections that is relevant to your business
• altered Best Selling Products to make it a dynamic height so that smaller buttons & text could be included easily. The one on Pro Media Blog now shows all 125 x 125 px buttons. Since these are dynamic links, be sure to include the ALT tag for any image that you are showing
• collapsible Post Header Ad space so that if you do not have an advertisement to display, the space just folds in

A few of the additional feedback that I have not included yet, are:

• setting up a custom registration page – this could be essential for good networking
• a contact form using any of the Wordpress plugins
• a logo at the footer
• include the author picture in the post
• include author brief at the end of the post that could contain a link to the associate’s website

These are excellent feedback & I will work on them slowly. However, if you are a MLM professional or an Affiliate Business owner, please review this theme & help others who want to use it to increase their internet business.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/wordpress-mlm-theme-released-seeking-feedback-from-mlm-affiliate-marketers/feed/ 2 http://www.promediablog.com/15-easy-ways-to-build-traffic-to-a-new-blog-or-new-website-tips-for-new-bloggers/ http://www.promediablog.com/15-easy-ways-to-build-traffic-to-a-new-blog-or-new-website-tips-for-new-bloggers/#comments Fri, 26 Dec 2008 11:30:03 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=492 The most difficult task faced by New Bloggers & people who have just started publishing a new blog or a new website, is to bring readers to their new websites.

It could take months before a new blog or a new website could get enough traffic to make good money from their internet business.

Though there are no standard steps that could be used, there are various time tested means that could help. When I started off, I followed some of them & then over time, I have refined some of these techniques.

The easier part of the challenge is to bring traffic, the bigger challenge is to bring in relevant traffic. What I mean by relevant traffic, is that anyone who visits your blog or website, is actually looking for that information.

Here is a list of 15 Easy Ways to Get Visitors & Tips to Build Traffic to a New Blog or a New Website:

1. Focus on creating content – do not create content just for search engines. Eventually people will stop coming if your content is useless.
2. Create New Content. This is easier said than done. Or you could create different content. As an example, you will find thousands of websites showing how to set up a free blog on Wordpress. There is nothing new you can write about it. However, you can create a demo video about that. That’s different! Off course, there has to be good text around the video to please the search engines as well.
3. Look for exciting topics that people have consistently looked for. Typically, if your blog is not as famous as the New York Times or the CNN, people will most likely not come to you to find out what is the latest development in national politics! Instead focus on something that has proved to be popular for a long time.
4. Keep your blog software updated. Older versions often do not have many unique functionalities to make your presentation attractive. Google, for instance, noted that it will index Wordpress blogs that use the most updated versions to prevent security flaws.
5. Create content regularly. And when you do, do not repeat your previous articles blatantly. Regularity is very important. It serves 2 purposes – search engines always look for newer, updated content to index & deliver in search results & keeps your blog fresh in the minds of your readers.
6. Write sincerely on the subject. Allow due credits in case you are using someone else’s content. Be cautious that you do not end up creating another set of links. There are too many directories with links telling what others are doing. There is always a serious need to sincere people who are offering something new.
7. If you have to show ads, then show them. But keep in mind that ads distract readers. Especially flashing ads, pop-ups, pop-unders, exit ads irritate the users. Moreover, such ads often conflict with the readers’ browser causing them to crash inadvertently. Go with Text & Image ads or Shopping Ads to begin with.
8. Get to know people who are equally trying to get traffic. Social networking is very important in the long run. But it could be a challenge to have your links up on the blog of a famous blogger. So look for other bloggers who are starting new & you could start sharing links with them. When I began, I used to request everyone to share my RSS feeds. Many did and many more did not. But whoever did, helped me in getting attention from their friends.
9. Write with facts. There is a saying that controversy gets attention. This is true. You can definitely write about something controversial, but at the same time, be open to criticism. Controversy also gets you harsh comments & critics. Also, while talking on a controversial subject, do not write false information. Keep the facts straight.
10. Write is very lucid language. Think of the reader while you write. Read your own post before publishing & correct grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes & data errors.
11. Be open to ask for opinions. Not every readers would bother to write a comment, some will. Comments often form a sort of a mini-forum for your readers to talk on the subject. Remember to moderate such comments & always allow a healthy discussion.
12. Submit to search engines regularly, especially when you blog is very new. Once in a couple of months is a good time to submit your blog to search engines. If you are publishing a blog, submit to blog search engines as well. We have listed the important search engines that you should consider submitting your blogs.
13. Allow readers more than one way to keep in touch. Twitter, Facebook, Technorati are good examples that millions of readers use to track authors. Subscribing to feeds is another non-intrusive way to connect with your readers.
14. Join popular link exchange programs. They are like free advertising for your blog without paying any money for it. It is a simple system when you show other people’s ads & in turn they show yours.
15. Be consistent on your subject. You may have decided to create niche content or publish general content. But if readers want to keep coming back is because they find you as an expert or someone with good sincere opinion on the subject. If you have too much variety, like you talk to movies & physics in the same blog, you are trying to become a small mediocre news magazine.

And lastly, follow ProMediaBlog. We have learned most of the technics the hard way, after experimenting a lot. And in ProMediaBlog we share our experiences so that you can save yourself the time & succeed faster. We are still learning & we publish as we learn.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/15-easy-ways-to-build-traffic-to-a-new-blog-or-new-website-tips-for-new-bloggers/feed/ 1 http://www.promediablog.com/making-money-by-blogging-choosing-advertising-affiliate-marketing-tactics-for-new-bloggers/ http://www.promediablog.com/making-money-by-blogging-choosing-advertising-affiliate-marketing-tactics-for-new-bloggers/#comments Thu, 25 Dec 2008 10:10:22 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=488 Many people blog for fun, many people blog for the excitement of connecting with like minded people. There are also many people who use the blogging technology to make large internet incomes.

People show ads on their blogs, Google Adsense, or choose from a large number of advertising network.

The most common advertisers are the CPC advertisers & the Shopping Ads.

Many of the “leisure bloggers” who write for fun struggle to earn $100 a month from advertising. However, people who seriously write for money, make 6 figure income in this internet business model. How much you could make would depend on what you want to achieve by writing on blogs.

There is not much difference between writing in a blog and publishing on a standard website, expect that you could port your blog’s content easily to different places. This allows others people to find you easily.

New bloggers often struggle with the dilemma of choosing between advertising earning & affiliate marketing. I struggled with the same issue for months. Now, less than 10% of my income comes from advertising. But as a new blogger, advertising was close to 95% of my monthly internet income.

In the first couple of months I was earning about $100 from advertising, but my income grew very rapidly when I started affiliate marketing. And within months my income from the internet was close to $1000 a month. Not bad, considering I was writing for about 2 hours a day & that I could still work on my full time job.

It is perfectly all right if you have decided to make money just from advertising. You can still make thousands of dollars provided you have a large number of visitors coming to your website every month.

However, if your business model is affiliate marketing, it will take you a little longer to start making serious money, but when you do, it will be much more than what you could make from advertising. There are certain subtle differences in approach to affiliate marketing.

Especially when anyone & everyone can be an affiliate. Especially when you may not have anything more to offer to your readers & customers from the next affiliate.

I am a self made internet affiliate marketer. I have made several mistakes & learned from them. I also learned a lot by experimenting & reading a lot of books.

A successful affiliate marketing blog has to be compelling in many ways:

• extremely professional look & feel – that is, the theme should be designed to impress. We publish a lot of great free Wordpress themes for advertising blogs
• you need to have a networking strategy – not everyone in a network could be an ally in affiliate marketing. Many affiliates follow other competitor affiliates on twitter or through email subscriptions to be aware of what competition is offering
• your content has to be compelling enough for users to buy off your website. The “call to action” in your posts & pages have to be strong & effective
• your content has to be complete in all matters of the product or service you are marketing. If your information is incomplete, readers will simply move away to other places that provide more detailed information
• think for the buyer & write for the buyer – it is easy to copy the affiliate promotional material onto your blog. That is what most bloggers do & they all appear the same to the readers. If you are not different, do not expect to earn any more than the millions of other copy cats
• since affiliate sales include monetary transactions, providing a contact email or telephone number adds to the confidence of the buyer. However you have to respond to email & messages in time too. If you cannot help in any particular situation guide them to the right person. This is where many of the casual affiliate marketers lose out – they are just not serious enough
• read, read, read & read – read as many books as possible on internet marketing, read books written by successful internet affiliate marketers & read all about technology to make it work right for you
• subscribe to Pro Media Blog – we have gone through the entire process of setting up, establishing & publishing successful  affiliate marketing blogs & we know that even when a million people would read this, only few will put this to use. You could be one of the few.

Write to us or leave a comment if you find this useful or you have a question.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/making-money-by-blogging-choosing-advertising-affiliate-marketing-tactics-for-new-bloggers/feed/ 5 http://www.promediablog.com/new-wordpress-theme-for-mlm-affiliate-sales-increase-mlm-sales-create-new-customers-with-wordpress-mlm-theme/ http://www.promediablog.com/new-wordpress-theme-for-mlm-affiliate-sales-increase-mlm-sales-create-new-customers-with-wordpress-mlm-theme/#comments Wed, 24 Dec 2008 22:37:39 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=496 I am working very hard to create a great Wordpress Theme for MLM & Affiliate Sales websites.

Named the Wordpress MLM-Theme, the basic purpose of this theme is to help multi-level marketing people to set up their websites & blogs in minutes.

I have been in affiliate sales for a long time. I started from scratch & used to work with the themes that were available.

While all the themes that I have used were excellent, they did not serve 2 basic functions that are essential to anyone who wants to grow their MLM Business or Affiliate Business online.

1. One, it did not help show the great line of products that were “hot” &
2. Two, it did not offer visitors enough reasons to join my team. Both Affiliate Sales & MLM success require that you sell well & expand your network.

I am designing the new Wordpress MLM Theme keeping these 2 important success factors in mind.

This is a small image from a section of the index page. The important features that I am building in the Wordpress theme for MLM & Affiliate Sales are:



• display 125px x 125px affiliate banners for top selling Affiliate products & top selling MLM services
• promote a couple of MLM products & Affiliate products on all the pages
• display high paying text & image ads in places where visitors are likely to notice, thus increasing the chances of ad clicks
• easily share posts on most popular social networking websites like Technorati, Digg, Newsvine etc
• easily connect with the readers through email signups & RSS feeds
• custom search pages where you can show your own sponsored advertisers. This is a great option especially for MLM marketers & Affiliate sales people who want to promote the top selling products
• 3 column theme with side widgets & footer widgets
• deep display of the relevant pages so that no page goes unnoticed by the readers

I am almost done with this MLM Theme. I am still testing it out thoroughly & making slight modifications. I wish to publish it by January 1, 2009. Meanwhile you can browse all the other free Wordpress Ad Themes we have published.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/new-wordpress-theme-for-mlm-affiliate-sales-increase-mlm-sales-create-new-customers-with-wordpress-mlm-theme/feed/ 6 http://www.promediablog.com/free-wordpress-themes-for-high-ctr-ads-get-wordpress-bold-ads-theme-for-free/ http://www.promediablog.com/free-wordpress-themes-for-high-ctr-ads-get-wordpress-bold-ads-theme-for-free/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:31:32 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=479 Pro Media Blog has released a new impressive free Wordpress Theme great for new bloggers who want to show ads.

The Free Wordpress Bold Ads Theme is a professionally designed theme that focuses on effective layout of content & ads.

The ad spaces are laid out to show all the high payout ad formats including the 300×250 px, 160×600, 120×600 & the 728×90 leader board formats.

The Free Wordpress Bold Ads Theme is a 3 column design with 2 left sidebar widgets. The theme is designed so that posts & articles could be shared with the popular social networking websites like StumbleUpon, Technorati, Digg & Facebook etc.

The theme also allows you to display your own logo on the header. If you don’t have a logo yet, you can design Business Logo at a very effective price.



The main features of the free Wordpress Bold Ads Theme that make it very effective to gain high ad CTR are:

• 3 column design with left colums designed to show ads – that is where the hot-spots are
• the design allows the blogger to show all the high paying ad formats
• partially widgetized with 2 left widgets
• optimized for search engines. We would still recommend using SEO plugins to help boost the optimization
• well designed content layout to keep the focus on the content
• Wordpress Bold Ads theme includes all the popular social bookmarking sites so that readers could share your posts instantaneously across millions of other readers
• the Wordpress Bold Ads theme includes a place for your blog or company’s logo on the header. You can replace it with any image with text too
• the theme allows navigation either with categories in the header or pages in the footer
• the Wordpress Bold Ads theme is very light with minimal use of images

The theme is tested out on all the popular browsers including IE, Firefox, Safari & Flock. The Wordpress Bold Ads Theme is free for use.

You can download it from the  Free Wordpress Bold Ads Theme page. Please retain the footer credits.

]]> http://www.promediablog.com/free-wordpress-themes-for-high-ctr-ads-get-wordpress-bold-ads-theme-for-free/feed/ 0 http://www.promediablog.com/mlm-network-or-affiliate-marketing-how-to-choose-what-is-right-for-you/ http://www.promediablog.com/mlm-network-or-affiliate-marketing-how-to-choose-what-is-right-for-you/#comments Sat, 20 Dec 2008 11:26:01 +0000 Ranjay Mitra http://www.promediablog.com/?p=466 In a previous article on How to Succeed in MLM Business, I had referred to facts that a new joinee should look at before deciding to start MLM business.

MLM business model has changed over the years, and so has ways to make money in MLM business.

Merely making a list of all your friends & family who you could pitch, consuming products yourself, making phone calls to prospective downline members or even attending the MLM meetings may not bring you any money at all.

The few of my friends who started MLM all followed the traditional ways their business owners had preached. Some even spend hours in shopping malls in the hope of finding someone who they could entice. If they had put the same amount of effort in Affiliate marketing, they could have been more successful.

Affiliate marketing is nothing more than MLM without the uplines & downlines. In affiliate marketing you put in all your efforts to grow your own business. And you keep all the money. You dont waste time prospecting downlines in the hope that someday they will work so hard that you will have millions of dollars in residual income!

Affiliate marketing is nothing but MLM with all its money making benefits and without the pains of traditional MLM networking.

Shopping Affiliates are the most successful. I have listed some of the most