Miss out on these and you will miss out on a lot of traffic and success and income.

Even if you are familiar with some of the tasks in this New WordPress Install Checklist – chances are you will be missing out on some key tasks, that can make the difference between success and failure.

New WordPress Install – Checklist and Guide

Getting the best out of your new WordPress site requires some tweaking and changes to the standard setup, starting with….

1. Create a SEO Friendly Permalink Structure

This is the first and most important task in every new WordPress install for me.

Permalinks are the permanent URLs (address in simple words) to your individual blog posts, pages and categories. The URL to each blog post should be permanent, and never change hence permalink.

To change WordPress permalink structure, go to Settings -> Permalinks and select your desired permalink structure.

Your URL structure should be as simple as possible. It is recommended to use Post name as your permalink. It is more readable and search engine friendly.

Bad permalink Structure: http://www.example.com/?p=123

Good permalink structure: http://www.example.com/image-seo

Google recommend that you use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) in your URLs. You should read article about simple URL structure by Google to learn more.

2. Delete Default Post/Page And Rename Category

Don’t forget to delete (or Edit) default sample post and page. Go to Post > Categories and rename default category.

I am always quite amazed at the number of blogs that still have their default “HELLO WORLD” first post!. Please don’t let that happen on you next new WordPress install!

3. Create Welcome Post And About Page

After deleting default post and page create a welcome post and about us page. About us page is very important, Read 9 Simple Tips For Making An About Us Page That Works For Your Brand by Ben Austin at MOZ blog.

4. Complete User Profile

Go to Uses > Your Profile and complete your profile. Add your first name, last name, website URL and Biographical Info. Signup for Gravtar.com account and upload your picture.

‘Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site – gravatar.com’

5. General Settings – Title, Tagline And Time Zone

Go to the Settings > General settings page to add your site title and tagline. (wp-admin/options-general.php)

Also, when there, select time zone, date & time format and site language.

If you want to allow people to register on your site select Anyone can register checkbox and set default user role for new members.

6. Choose A Mobile Friendly Theme

In February 2015, Google announced that the mobile-friendly update will boost the rankings of mobile-friendly pages. Read FAQ’s about Google’s Mobile Friendly Update.

Conversely, pages designed for only large screens may see a significant decrease in rankings in mobile search results –  Google Developers Blog

Choose your theme wisely. Make sure it is fully responsive and mobile friendly. There are thousands of free and premium themes available.

Default WordPress themes such as TwentySixteen and TwentyFifteen are very popular themes. You don’t need a theme with hundreds of features you may never use. Choose a theme which suits your needs.

If your theme is not responsive and mobile friendly, install and activate the mobile theme for your site. JetPack has a mobile theme module.

7. Widgets And Navigation Menus

Add necessary widgets to your sidebar area. Recent post, recent comments and categorize widget are common.

Create a navigation menu and add the most important link in the main navigation menu. Make sure your navigation menu has a logical structure and menu is responsive and mobile friendly.

Recommended Read: 17 Major Main Menu Mistakes – an article by Marvin Russell on how to optimize your navigation menus.

8. Install Essential Plugins: Akismet And Jetpack

JetPack is one of the most popular plugin with more than 30 modules for different features. You can activate JetPack stats module to view how many people visit your website daily.

JetPack’s mobile theme can make your website mobile friendly and with sharing module you can add social media sharing buttons. Site Icon, Site Verification Activate and Sitemaps are very useful features.

Spam is a challenge for Bloggers – but fortunately there are Plugins that will help – such as LH Zero Spam

LH Zero Spam blocks registration spam and spam in comments automatically without any config or setup.

And of course there is also the Akismet:  Anti-Spam Plugin for WordPress

9. Install SEO Plugin + Read SEO Basics

Search Engine Optimization is a must for every website and blog.

Install Plugins such as: Project Supremacy (14 Day Free Trial), Yoast SEO, All in one SEO or any other SEO plugin to optimize your content for Search Engines.

Read some articles about SEO to learn how to write SEO Friendly Content. 

Optimize every blog post for Search Engines. Target keywords.

Optimize images for SEO as well – see Optimize images for SEO

Read Google’s image publishing guidelines and follow these guidelines for better search engine ranking.

10. Verify Website And Social Media Account

Make sure Search Engine can crawl your website properly. Go to settings > Reading and make sure * Discourage search engines from indexing this site* option is unchecked.

Use Yoast SEO or Jetpack Site Verification module to verify your website. Add your websites to Google webmaster tools and Set preferred domain (www or non-www).

The preferred domain is the one that you would like to use to index your site’s pages (sometimes this is referred to as the canonical domain). Links may point to your site using both the www and non-www versions of the URL (for instance, http://www.example.com and http://example.com). The preferred domain is the version that you want to use for your site in the search results – for more information see Google Search Console Help

11. Create Contact Page

Make it easy for people to contact you. Create a Contact us page and add a contact form. Contact form 7 is the most popular plugin to create contact forms, if you are using Jetpack, Go to Jetpack Settings page and activate contact form module.

12. Optimize Website For Speed

If your website takes too much time to load, You will lose your visitors. 83% of visitors expect sites to load in less than 3 seconds. So make sure to choose a reliable and fast hosting provider. The excellent infographic below (from KISSmetrics) explains how loading time affects your bottom line! [Click image to view]

According to a report by Kissmetrics, 47% of consumers anticipate a website page to load within two seconds. If it does not, they are unlikely to stay around.

There are many free and premium plugins available to optimize your website for speed. Install caching (W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache) and image optimization WP SmushIt plugins. Choose a lightweight theme from an experienced developer.

You don’t need to install dozens if plugins. Install most important plugins only. If you are not going to publish a lot of images, don’t install an image optimization plugin. Use an online Image Compression Service to optimize images for each blog post.

Read 16 Ways to Speed Up Your WordPress Website Today!

13. Install Security Plugins

As of March 2016, Google reports that over 50 million website users have been greeted with some form of warning that websites visited were either trying to steal information or install malicious software. Securi has published a report How Websites Get Hacked and the Malware Used.

WordPress websites are considered possible targets for many hackers. make sure website is secure and safe because hackers are always out there trying to invade.

Don’t use Admin as your username, choose a complex password. Install and activate two-factor authentication plugin to secure your login page.

There are dozens of free and premium WordPress Security plugins available. Wordfence Security is very popular free security plugin. Read Hardning WordPress guide at WordPress Codex to learn more about WordPress security.

Themes and Plug-ins also need to be updated. You should always update all plugins and themes regularly. If you are not using any plugin or theme delete it. There is no point in keeping it. Try to avoid free and premium themes. Download free themes from trusted developers.

WordPress Theme directory is the best place to find free themes. If you can afford a premium theme buy a premium theme as they tend to be faster, safer and better coded.

14. Regular Back Ups

Backing up your entire WordPress site is simple and easy. Free and premium plugins will do hard work for you. Must install a free or premium backup plugin.

Site backups are essential because problems inevitably occur and you need to be in a position to take action when disaster strikes. Spending a few minutes to make an easy, convenient backup of your database will allow you to spend even more time being creative and productive with your website – WordPress Backups

I personally use VaultPress for daily backups. It makes it easy to keep an up-to-date backup of your site with both daily and realtimereal time syncing of all your WordPress content. Basic plan (daily backups) is starting from $5/month.

BackUpWordPress is a free plugin to backup your entire site including your database and all your files on a schedule that suits you.

15. Start Collecting Emails: Build Your List

Email marketing is the king of the marketing kingdom and I have seen results like 3800% ROI and $38 for every $1 spent. Read 70 email marketing stats to learn more.

email is not dead. write great content and ask your readers to join your email list. Email marketing gives your blog an edge in the tough market. daily, weekly or even monthly email will keep your blog in your subscriber mind.

Add an email sign up form in the header section, below post and sidebar. Offer something exciting. people are more likely to join your email list if you will offer them something interesting (ebook, video course, free templates etc).

The world famous popup software from PopupDomination is the perfect Web App for collecting email subscriptions.

16. Limit the number of posts revisions

WordPress post revisions are on by default, WordPress automatically creates revisions of posts and pages, the old version is retained so user can revert back at any time.

The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons) – WordPress Revisions

Older revisions are never deleted. WordPress stores post revisions in the database. By reducing the database size, we can also speed up your WordPress site.

It is possible to limit the number of posts revisions that WordPress stores in the database. Post revision limit can be set in wp-config.php. (access usually via your CPanel)

Simply add following line of code in your wp-config.php file.

define( ‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, 3 );

Above line of code will save only three revisions of every blog post.

For a more detailed explanation of this process (which can come with some risks if done wrongly) check out this Blog Post on WordPress Post Revisions

Fortunately, there is much easier option in the form of a PLUGIN – called WP Revisions Limit – which will be the best option for most of us!

17. Disable WordPress Login Hints

By default, WordPress shows error messages whenever an incorrect username or password is used on the login page. These error messages can be used as a hint to guess a username, email address, or password.

You can disable login hints in WordPress login error messages with a simple function. Just add the following code in your functions.php file. Source GitHub

function no_wordpress_errors(){

return ‘Nothing to see here, move along!’;

}

add_filter( ‘login_errors’, ‘no_wordpress_errors’ );

18. Enable 2-Factor Authentication

Two Factor Authentication is an extra layer of security that requires not only a password and username but also an additional code.

Logging in with a password is single-step authentication. It relies only on something you know. Two-step authentication, by definition, is a system where you use two of the three possible factors to prove your identity, instead of just one. In practice, however, current two-step implementations still rely on a password you know, but use your Phone or another device to authenticate with something you have – WordPress Two Step Authentication

Google Authenticator is a free WordPress plugin to add two-factor authentication to your blog. You will have to install the Google Authenticator app for Android/iPhone/Blackberry.

19. Add Favicon And Mobile Icons

The WordPress site icon is used as a favicon and mobile icon for your site, and will persist between theme switches.

Favicon is a small icon that is displayed next to the URL of your site in a browser’s address bar and It also is used when you bookmark a webpage.

From WordPress 4.3 onwards, You can use the Site Icon feature that is built into WordPress. To add a new site icon go to Appearance -> Customize and click on Site Identity.

20. Remove WP Generator Meta Tag (WordPress Version)

Quite often bloggers do not update to the latest version of WordPress – and this can become a security risk that hackers will exploit. (because outdated versions of WordPress sometimes have known security flaws)

For this reason it is advised that you don’t make your WordPress version visible. (public)

To remove details of the WordPress version you need to place the following code in your theme’s functions.php file.

remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’);

Again there is a Plugin to do the job – try WP Remove Generator Meta Tag

Of course you should also update to the latest version of WordPress on a regular basis.

About Author

Tahir Taous if founder of JustLearnWP.com, where he you can find in-depth article and tutorials about WordPress, Theme Development and Blogging. 

Additional Reading:

10 Things to Do on Day One of Your Blog

The post New WordPress Install – 20 Things You Must Do [Checklist] appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

That would be Matt Mullenweg, the 29-year-old at the heart of WordPress. With 60 million websites built with WordPress (including this one), it is by far the most popular blogging platform in the world.

From the beginning, Mullenweg has done business differently:  WordPress was open-sourced , which means that the code was free to be developed by anybody who wanted to contribute. Mullenweg is also a vocal advocate of distributed work and 130 of Automattic’s 150 employees work outside of their San Francisco headquarters.

Let’s dig in and find out who Matt Mullenweg is, with an eye for learning from his innovative business strategies, productive work habits, and his best quotes.

Who is Matthew Mullenweg?

• Born January 11, 1984
• Studied Political Science at The University of Houston before dropping out in 2004
• Founded Automattic in 2005, the company behind WordPress
• Matthew lives in San Francisco, CA but he travels as many as 200 days a year
• Hobbies include photography and music
• Mullenweg maintains his own blog, Ma.tt

Photo Credit:  : kwightca via cc

5 Business Lessons from Matthew Mullenweg

#1  Occupy the Space Left Open by Competition

Mullenweg would have never started WordPress if another platform hadn’t disappeared overnight. Back in 2003, Mullenweg was a teenager volunteering some of his time coding for B2/cafelog — an open source blogging platform that was employed on about 2,000 blogs [wikipedia].

One day the leader developer disappeared, leaving Mullenweg and the rest of the volunteer programmers without a project. Matt decided to step up to fill the void. He wrote a blog post to the community, rallying them to join him in starting a new open source blogging platform. Mike Little commented on the post, “You serious about this? Let’s work on it together.” The two had never met. Mike was in the UK and Matt was in Houston, Texas. But the partnership worked. “We just started collaborating over the Internet,” Mullenweg explained. WordPress was born.

WordPress caught it’s big break the following year, when one of its leading competitors — Movable Type — decided to start charging its users. Hordes of thrifty bloggers abandoned Movable Type for the best free content management system available:  WordPress.

#2  Seek to Better Understand Your Users

“It’s my responsibility to meet as many users as possible and direct the software project in a way that reflects their interests. Last year, I probably met 2,000 or 3,000 people who make their living from WordPress.”

Matt Mullenweg

Knowing your end user is the first step to being able to give them what they want. Mullenweg is one of most well-informed founders in the world when it comes to understanding his audience. His robust travel schedule brings him to scores of WordPress conferences every year.

#3  Know Your Creed

“If you’re building a startup or any sort of organization, take a few moments to reflect on the qualities that the people you most enjoy working with embody and the user experience of new people joining your organization, from the offer letter to their first day.”

Matt Mullenweg, from ‘Why Your Company Should Have a Creed’

According to Mullenweg, a creed is “basically a statement of things important to us, written in the first person.” And Matt’s such a big believer in creeds and their influence on company culture that he’s put Automattic’s creed above the signature on every new employee’s contract. He described the move as “an easy change that had a big impact on the company.”

In case you’re curious, I’ve included the entire Automattic creed at the bottom of the page.

#4  There’s Always Room to Grow

“There’s 6.999 billion people who don’t have a blog yet, don’t have a website yet, don’t have WordPress yet.”

Matthew Mullenweg, from Unreasonable.is

Matt is a mild-mannered Texas native, but his ambition is anything but mild. When asked how he felt about his platform serving 17% of the web, he said, “I obsess over that other 83% of the web that we don’t have yet.” Matt said in an interview, “There’s a much longer road ahead of us than what we’ve done so far.”

#5  Eat, Breathe, and Sleep Your Business

“WordPress is a part of who I am. Like eating, breathing, music, I can’t not work on WordPress.”

Matthew Mullenweg, from Ma.tt

We work best on the projects that are aligned with the core of who we are. That’s what Mullenweg has with WordPress. He has said, “I go to sleep and I wake up thinking about WordPress,” and “I consider myself very lucky to be able to work on something I love so much.”

10 Productivity Tips from Mullenweg

Back in June 2009, Matthew Mullenweg told Liz Welch about his day-to-day habits running WordPress in a piece called, “The Way I Work.” The next ten productivity tips have been culled from Mullenberg’s account of his highly-effective work habits.

 Photo Credit:  Khalid Almasoud cc

#1 Wake Naturally

Waking with the daylight instead of to a screeching alarm helps you go to work with a calm and focused mind. It’s also linked to higher blood pressure (ABC News, 2011)

Mullenweg says he tries to “avoid alarm clocks as much as possible.”

#2 Have an Unplugged Morning

Mullenweg told Inc. that one of us his goals was “to avoid looking at the computer or checking email for at least an hour after I wake up.” Starting your day unplugged gives you time for reflection and calm at the beginning of your day.

#3 Ditch the Coffee

To many, caffeine is a prerequisite for productivity. Not for Mullenweg. “I’ve got enough stimulating things in my life already,” he says.

Going without caffeine has been linked to increased calmness, less anxiety, and better sleep. But I must confess, I took a sip of green tea before writing this sentence.

#4 Know Your Prime Times

Mullenweg has noticed that he’s more productive at particular times of the day. Matt has said, “I do my best stuff midmorning and superlate at night. Even though midmorning is prime working time, Matt doesn’t do meetings in the mornings. “The earliest I’ll do a meeting is 11 am,” he told Inc.

Everybody has times of the day (or night) during which they can be particularly productive. Try to make sure you’re working during the times when you do your best work.

#5 Respect Flow

Mullenweg on flow:  “When you’re coding, you really have to be in the zone… if you are taken out of the flow, if that little toaster pops up that says you’ve got mail – and you look at it, you’ve lost it.”

To me, being in a state of ‘flow’ means being totally immersed in the task at hand. When I’m flowing – whether I’m writing, editing a video, or making music – I find that my work comes easily, happily, and inspired.

You can increase your chances of achieving flow by turning off your cell phone and your computer’s Internet connection. One of Mullenweg’s methods is listening to music.

#6 Music is a Focus Tool

“Music helps me when I’m coding… I’ll listen to a single song, over and over on repeat, like a hundred times.”

Matthew Mullenweg, The Way I Work

Mullenweg’s favorite musicians include Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Jay-Z, and Beyonce.

#7 Rescue Your Time

A couple years ago, I recommended adopting Rescue Time as a great New Years resolution for entrepreneurs.

Turns out Mullenweg is also a big fan of the productivity app. He called Rescue Time, “one of my favorite programs that I didn’t make.”

#8 Cut Back on Email

Reports suggest that the average office worker spends a quarter of their day in their inbox (about two and a half hours). Mullenweg has made a concerted effort to avoid the great email time-suck:

“I realized that even though I was doing e-mail only a couple of minutes at at time, it was adding up to a couple of hours a day. So I’m trying to reduce that.”

#9 Multiple Monitors, Multiple Devices

“In my home office, I have two large, 30-inch computer monitors — a Mac and a PC. They share the same mouse and keyboard, so I can type or copy and paste between them. I’ll typically do Web stuff on the Mac and e-mail and chat stuff on the PC. I also have a laptop, which I have with me all the time, whether I’m going overseas or to the doctor’s office.”

Matt Mullenweg, The Way I Work

Notice the way that Matt talks about his various digital tools: each one has different responsibilities and roles. If you can afford it, try boosting productivity by using specific devices for specific tasks.

#10 Hire Well, Manage Sparingly

Sometimes the key to productivity is setting things up so that they require less work. That’s how Mullenweg has turned management into something that takes very little time out of his workweek.

“My management strategy is to find extremely self-motivated and talented people and then let them go.” Mullenweg explained.

Note:  for more, see our list of 7 Surprising Productivity Tips for Self-Employed Entrepreneurs

10 Best Matt Mullenweg Quotes

Photo Credit:  Kris Krug cc

#10  “If you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version, you waited too long.”

#9 “I don’t have big ideas. I sometimes I have small ideas, which seem to work out.”

#8 “Technology is best when it brings people together.”

#7 “As the web becomes more and more of a part of our everyday lives, it would be a horrible tragedy if it was looked up inside of companies and proprietary software.”

#6 “Do what you love and don’t focus on the money. Life is too short.”

#5 “For me, it always comes back to the blogger, the author, the designer, the developer. You build software for that core individual person, and then smart organizations adopt it and dumb organizations die.”

#4 “You can’t teach taste.”

#3  “My own personal dream is that a majority of the web runs on open source software.”

#2  “I am an optimist, and I believe that people are inherently good and that if you give everyone a voice and freedom of expression, the truth and the good will outweigh the bad. So, on the whole, I think the power that online distribution confers is a positive thing for society. Online we can act as a fifth estate.”

#1  “We are much better at writing code than haikus.”

Note:  if you like quotes, take a look at our list of the Top 40 Blogging Quotes.

The Automattic Creed

As promised, I’ve included Automattic’s official creed (posted by Mullenweg in September 2011):

I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.

This is a robust set of values that lays out not just how to be a good employee at Automattic, but how to build a successful business or achieve any great goal. I hope that you’ve found these lessons, productivity tips, and quotes from Mullenweg instructive and inspirational.

If you like learning from the founders of the top Internet startups, you may enjoy our 21 Lessons from the Life of Steve Jobs.

The post 25 Lessons, Quotes, and Productivity Tips from WordPress Founder Matthew Mullenweg appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

That’s a quote by the Chinese philosopher Laozi and it’s particularly relevant to new bloggers. That first step is the most important one, but what does it entail?

Let’s say you bought a domain, set up hosting, and installed WordPress. What comes next? How do you start blogging with the end in mind? Here are ten things you should do on day one of your blog (or today, if you’re past day one).

Let’s Assume You’ve Done Your Research

Before you purchase a domain, there a number of things you need to consider. For the sake of this article, we’re going to assume that you already:

1. Chose a specific audience with problems that you know how to solve.
   Always start with an audience, not a topic. Choose to help people that you are qualified to help.
2. Found and subscribed to the top related blogs in your niche.
   Use the How to Get Bloggers to See and Follow Your Blog post to find out how to find other bloggers in your niche. Then subscribe to their feed and start following their posts.
3. Read free posts, ebooks, and resources from your niche.
   Once you’re subscribed, spend a few days reading the free posts and ebooks they give you. Read both for the content and to see how they do what they do.

If you’d like more of my thoughts on any of these steps, let me know in the comments.

Technical Tasks for Your Blog

Here are three technical components of your blog that you need to take care of prior to writing a single post.

1. Place Opt-In Forms

The money is in the list … If I could do one thing differently, I would have started building my list earlier … The most important call to action for bloggers is to encourage people to subscribe.

You’ve heard all of that countless times. You can’t start building your list until your site has opt-in forms.

We use Aweber for our email marketing.

No matter which email platform you use, the process of putting opt-in forms on your site is, in most cases, a matter of copy/pasting the code. Here are a few places to put those forms:

1. Right side of the header.
2. Top of the sidebar.
3. Bottom of posts.
4. Footer area.
5. Featured on the homepage.
6. Lightbox with Popup Domination.

2. Write Your About Page

Your about page will be one of the most viewed pages on your site because readers like to know the people behind the site.

I was listening to a Derek Halpern interview on Smart Passive Income the other day, and this was Derek’s advice on how you should organize your about page:

1. What will this website do for the visitor? Followed by an opt-in box.
2. Establish yourself as an expert. Followed by an opt-in box.
3. Build a personal connection with your story. Finish it up with an opt-in box.

Treat your about page as a sales letter for why somebody should follow you and your site. If you do a good job, they’ll want more information from you, hence the opt-in.

3. Create a Contact Page

Once you have an about page, the only other page you need to launch your blog is a contact page. I include two things on my contact page:

1. Contact information.
   I list my email, Skype ID, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google Plus.
2. Contact form.
   Sometimes people prefer to email you directly from the site. Include a contact form by using the Contact Form 7 and Really Simple CAPTCHA plugins.

Planning Content for Your Blog

Once you have the technical components of your blog worked out, it’s time to focus on the most important part, the content.

4. Choose Your Categories

Within WordPress, you create categories for your posts. These categories help organize your site both for your readers and for search engines.

Category pages display your archived posts based on the category you choose.

To set up your category pages, go to Posts > Categories and be sure to include your meta data as well as an introductory headline/content.

5. Pick Your Pillar Articles

After you create the category pages, think about how you can create a pillar article for each category.

A pillar article is different than a category page in that it’s an ultimate resource post (i.e. 101 Ways to Make Money Online) with links to your in-depth articles.

These posts get lots of traffic. You can even create a secondary navigation menu, like the one on Income Diary, to highlight the pillar articles on your blog.

6. Brainstorm a List of Blog Posts

Once you’ve chosen your categories and pillars, start brainstorming different posts that solve problems and fit within the scope of those categories. I like to brainstorm with a notebook and a white board.

To aid in and filter down this brainstormed list, do a little keyword research to figure out which keywords and blog post topics people are searching for.

7. Find Out What Keywords Get The Most Traffic

To do this, go to Ahrefs and type in your keywords in their keyword explorer tool. It will tell you how many people are searching for your search term.

This is a very important step. If you create a post using keywords that no one searches for, you won’t get much traffic.

8. Create an Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is a fancy term for planning which blog posts you’re going to write and publish on which days.

You can simply schedule your blog posts in a planner/calendar. If you’d like to take this process to the next level, you can use the Editorial Calendar plugin.

This step isn’t necessary but it will keep you focused and on schedule for creating content for your blog.

9. Write a Ton of Posts

One of the biggest mistakes that new bloggers make is that the start telling people about their blog when they only have a few posts written. As soon as you start telling people about it, you have a responsibility to keep it updated.

Based on how seriously you want to take your blog, this is how many blog posts you need to write prior to publishing the first post:

1. Recreational Blogger: 5 posts
   If you’re testing the blogging waters, start with writing 5 posts. Publish the first three, tell people about them, and schedule the next two.
2. Intermediate Blogger: 10 posts
   If you’re fairly certain you want to keep up with blogging, write 10 posts to see if it’s something that you enjoy doing.
3. Serious Blogger: 20 posts
   If you’re blogging to better your business, start by writing 20 posts.
4. Career Blogger: 50 posts
   If blogging is your business, write 50 posts before you tell anyone. As soon as you launch, it’s going to be tough to keep up with a rigorous posting schedule. It’ll be nice to have a couple dozen posts sitting in the queue.

If you’ve already launched your blog, there’s a good chance your posting schedule has waned since the first few months. Consider taking a hiatus so you can build up a stockpile of focused content and re-launch it in a few months.

10. Strategize Your Funnel System

Man, you’ve had a busy day. The final thing you need to figure out before you start telling people about your new blog is your funnel system.

The first step in developing your funnel system is figuring out what you want people to do. Maybe it’s to become a subscriber or purchase a product. This is the goal of your site.

Whether your goal is to get them to subscribe or to purchase, I think your funnel system should be the same:

Read > Subscribe > Free Report/Auto-Responder Series > Blog Post Broadcast > Purchase

Getting somebody to purchase something from your site is like asking them to marry you. You can’t pop the question right away. You need to start by getting their phone number or email. Begin building trust by hanging out with them, giving them free content. After awhile, you’ll be in a relationship. Then one day they’ll trust you enough to buy.

The Final Word

I have a feeling that you’re past day one on your blog. That’s ok. These things still matter. Even if you’ve been blogging for years, these tips will help revitalize your blogging as though it’s day one all over again.

Sometimes it’s nice to go back to day one. You were probably pretty excited about what you’re doing now. Keep up that enthusiasm and let me know how I can help.

Read more: ‘The 20 Biggest Benefits of Blogging’

The post 10 Things to Do on Day One of Your Blog appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Getting traffic to a website is not just about how they get to your website but it’s also about keeping them there and getting them to come back.

Best WordPress Plugins For Getting Traffic From Search Engines

WordPress SEO by Yoast

This has got to be one of my favorite SEO plugins because it allows you to check how search engine friendly your content is, before you actually post it.

You’re provided with a preview of what your post will look like in Google, and then you can input focus keyword(s) to see how many times they throughout the post, title, URL, etc. You can then change how the title appears in Google, as well as the description too, meaning that you can takes steps to make your content more SEO friendly, and make people want to click on them.

All of this is edited from the post editor page, and it just becomes a part of how you finish up your posts, along with tags, excerpt, category and featured image.

All in One SEO Pack

This is one among the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress. It’s incredibly easy to use and works with most WordPress plugins by automatically generating META tags and optimizing your titles for search engines.

It’s been downloaded more than 9 million times, making it one of the most popular WordPress plugins for SEO. It takes a lot of the hard work out of the equation, and doesn’t rely on you knowing the sort of knowledge that professional SEO guys know, to start getting good results.

This is the sort of plugin that everyone should put on their blog if they’re trying to get a better response with Google, because Google is hard to understand, so it’s easier to leave it up to someone else who understands better than you.

Best WordPress Plugins For Getting Traffic From Social Media

Sharebar – Social Media Slider

This plugin is actually the inspiration for this blog post, as we’ve been getting a lot of people asking us about it, and how we set it up.

The one that I use on ExpertPhotography is called Sharebar, but there other version such as Digg Digg, which is used on this site. They all do roughly the same thing though. They allow your readers to select the social media that they would like to share your content though, which makes it much easier for them, and encourages them to do so.

I’m sure you’ve probably noticed that it slides up and down the page as you’re browsing, so it stands out, and you know where to find it if you want to share anything.

Since starting my Twitter marketing, I’m always annoyed when a photography website doesn’t have this plugin, because it means that I have to go looking for a share button, which you shouldn’t have to do when you’re effectively doing them a favor.

Having this plugin, as apposed to no plugin at all, makes a huge difference, which I notice immediately. You can add your @profile to the end of the tweets, so that TweetDeck will alert you when someone tweets your content, and as soon as my plugin was installed, I started receiving a lot more alerts. This means that more people are seeing my website, as well as my Twitter account, where if they follow me, there’s a very good chance they’ll see my site again.

Tweet Old Post

I installed this plugin on a whim, thinking that it wouldn’t really do much, but it couldn’t hurt. I had all my latest content set up to tweet through TweetAdder, but nothing set up to encourage people to view my older pages, most of which I consider to be lost in the archive. You can change the settings to include links, add additional text, how many it posts a day, and much more, you can even select the URL shortener.

So, from 5 minutes of work, you can have all of your older posts contribute to your twitter marketing, and start sending you considerable traffic if you have a strong following. My following has grown to over 3500 in just a few months, and it’s continuing to grow, as well as sending people to my Facebook. Facebook insights showed me exactly how successful my linking to the Facebook was when I looked at my Insights, it said that within 1 month, 635 people had come to my page, just from my regularly tweeting about it.

Facebook Social Plugin

This is a plugin that almost every decent blog has, or at least a variation of it. The official Facebook version is probably a bit better than the one than most, but less in keeping with my theme. The official version is a large square box to attract the readers attention, with details on how many people like the Facebook page, as well as some of the names and faces of those who like it.

There’s also an option to click ‘Like’ right there on the page, without having to go through to Facebook, which I think is a real advantage to the alternatives as readers are more likely to click on it if they don’t have to leave the page. I switched to this plugin just recently, and I’m already noticing a big difference in the amount of likes that I’m receiving.

Post to Twitter

Post to Twitter is a plugin that takes any content that you post on WordPress and then posts it to Twitter, which immediately notifies all of your followers. This sort of automation is accepted on Twitter, but not Facebook, because the number of updates per day is a lot higher than Facebook.

Posting to Facebook is something that needs to be done manually because Facebook can detect what program is used to post, and that distances the fan from the post when they know that a machine wrote it. I’ve recently started to post less of other peoples material on my Twitter, and more about myself so that I can use it for traffic now, rather than growth of the Twitter page.

Facebook Comments for WordPress

This is a plugin that I’ve been meaning to get installed because of the way it works with Facebook, as well as WordPress.

Besides the fact that it makes it way easier for people to comment on a post, it also means that they can share what they’ve commented to their Facebook page with the ‘post to Facebook’ function. By clicking on this function, it enables the readers to share their opinions in their Facebook feed, which is also sharing your website with all of their friends.

By making it easier for them to comment, you’re actually helping people to find your website where they wouldn’t have before. The image below is from the black theme, but it’s also available in white.

Best WordPress Plugins To Lower Bounce Rate

Reorder Posts Plugin

This is a great plugin for lowering your bounce rate. When visitors look through your category pages for more posts, one big problem is, they see posts by most recent.

What we have found is, if we reorder it to show our favorite and most popular posts, readers visit a lot more pages.

Featured Post Plugin

We use this plugin to show our favorite posts on the homepage and below blog posts. Most sites show related, recent or popular posts but we prefer to control the posts that are shown because we feel we can show users more useful posts if we do it manually.

Broken Link Checker

This plugin is a must for all WordPress websites. It tells you every time a link on your website is broken.

This is important because firstly, if a website is broken, it’s not good for SEO. If you have broken links, then Google will think your website is outdated.

Secondly, its important because it gives users a bad experience with your website.

Sometimes you add a link to a post, or change a link URL and a link can be broken and unless you are always checking the links, yo may not notice it. But thanks to this plugin, you will not have this problem.

One last top tip for increasing your traffic to your website is to use the PopUp Domination webapp.

It use to be a plugin, now we host everything to give users a better experience.

It helps you get more traffic by increasing the amount of subscribers you can get from your website (it increased our conversions by over 500%). Then whenever you want to get traffic to your website, all you need to do is email your subscribers.

There you have it, our 10 top tips for the best WordPress plugins to use on your website to get more traffic.

Read more: ‘25 Best SEO Tools For Successful Blogging’

The post 10 Best WordPress Plugins For Getting More Traffic To Your Website appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

As some of you may know, my father, Barry Dunlop recently got to spend 6 days on Necker Island with a small group of amazing entrepreneurs and Sir Richard Branson the Billionaire Founder of the Virgin Group.

The stories and feedback I have had from not only my father but many of the other entrepreneurs has quite literally blown my socks off!

Fortunately for me and my readers, my father recorded some of the brainstorming on video and fortunately several of the entrepreneurs also recorded exclusive videos just me.

Below are three of the videos:
1) Matt Mullenweg the founding developer of WordPress, the blogging software that runs this website (WOW!)
2) Tellman Knudson of OvercomeEverything.com
3) Adam Schran of FinallyFast.com

By the way – while there, this remarkable group of entrepreneurs also presented Sir Richard Branson with a $447,000 Cheque for the Virgin Unite Charity.

A core belief at Virgin Unite is that…

“Business has the capacity to improve the human condition – the same visionary thinking and problem-solving skills that make entrepreneurs successful can be channeled into solving the world’s social and environmental crises.”

Video 1: Matt Mullenweg speaking to Barry Dunlop in Necker Island — Sir Richard Branson’s private Island

In this video Matt Mullenweg delivers some essential advice for young entrepreneurs everywhere — like, don’t get really attached to your idea and honestly the idea is probably the least valuable thing you’ll have. Revolutionary advice from the new breed of young entrepreneurs?

Video 2:Tellman Knudson speaking to Barry Dunlop in Necker Island

Tellman Knudson Quote:

When your life is over, when everything is done, do you just want to have made some money, or do you want to have made something happen?

Video 3: Adam Schran speaking to Barry Dunlop in Necker Island

Adam Schran Quote:

“Entrepreneurs get paid, in my opinion, to bust through and do the things that cause you discomfort. Everyone can do ten out of fifteen things that is easy and is in their comfort zone, but to do the difficult stuff, it’s annoying and it’s tough. Your brain will try to talk you out it and trick you out of it, but that’s what you get paid to do.

PS: Check Out:
http://runtellmanrun.com — Coast to coast Run — barefoot for charity!

http://www.virginunite.com

31-year-old Entrepreneur Tellman Knudson will run 3,000 miles coast to coast across America to raise one hundred million dollars to help homeless kids find home, health and happiness again as they rebuild their lives with the help of Virgin Unite and The RE*Generation USA network of shelters and volunteers.

If you would like to support Tellman — please visit the above site — and please pass the word along…

The post Entrepreneurial Wisdom From Necker Island appeared first on How To Make Money Online.