Internet Marketing at Weblennium

Plugins for the Wordpress platform are tons of fun and incredibly useful. You’ll find everything you need to turn your blog into something amazing that is every bit as great as you would have imagined. While there are many plugins out there that are worth your while, the five that follow are the cream of the crop.

Akismet

This plugin actually comes standard with your Wordpress installation. You will have to get a Wordpress.com API key to make it work, but after you do it’s pure bliss. This will help keep spam comments away automatically! Akismet is smart enough to put suspected spam into a separate folder, and it even learns from you as you go. You should always activate this plugin for the best results with your blog. It saves you a ton of time too!

Related Posts

Linking to different pages in your blog from every page is a great search engine optimization tactic. The problem with blogs is that it can be so hard to dig through old posts that are related and manually link them in your new post. Related posts solves that problem! This will automatically insert some relevant posts for your blog. It’s very hands-off and very effective. Both visitors and search engines love this plugin.

All in One SEO Pack

Once again, optimizing your site for the search engines is going to be one of the best ways you can make money with your blog. The higher you rank, the more traffic you recieve. The more traffic you receive, the more money you make! The All In One SEO pack makes your life easier because it allows you to specify the title, description (that will show up in the search engines), and keywords.

Wordpress Database Backup

Backing up your blog is crucial if you value your business. You never know what could happen to your server, and it would be awfully devastating to lose everything. You can easily back everything up by pressing a few simple buttons with this effective and very useful plugin.

Top Commentators

This plugin is greatly effective and it encourages a lot of interaction on your blog. It lists the people who have the most comments within your blog. They love this because they get the extra exposure. You love it because people really get into posting to try and be at the top. It also gives social proof. When people visit a blog for the first time they are more likely to stick around if there are clearly other people there who value your content. The fact that they can see others participating is a great thing.

There are an incredible number of different plugins out there that are ready for you to use. Install these essentials and you’ll be well-prepared to become the great blogger you’re going to become.

Wherever you are today with respect to growing your company or organization, systematizing your activities is an essential part of setting the conditions for success. Because it’s critical to establish a solid foundation before your business starts growing rapidly, this article offers seven ideas for developing systems and processes in your organization.

Before your company can respond to rapid shifts or prepare for expansion, you will want to look around for leaks and cracks. Ask, “How do communications and work products flow from suppliers, within the organization, and to customers? Who hands off what to whom? Is this ideal or should we optimize processes?”

The answers may reveal areas where no methods exist, where methods are still too vaguely defined to cement, and where critical gaps reside that should be sealed before everyone can perform effectively on a grander scale.

For example, it might be comfortable in the early stages of a business for people to communicate very informally. However, informal communication by itself cannot support a consistent way of operating once more people become involved. If you plan for growth by systematizing as soon as possible, you’ll lay a solid framework and avoid an “implosion” later.

Another major consideration is the amount of irreplaceable intellectual property that might be stored in the heads of your employees or contractors. Employees, contractors, and consultants might come and go without your retaining a fraction of what they know. Can you afford to let them walk away without capturing their wisdom in your company’s knowledgebase? Can employees take time off without causing routine business activities to come to a halt?

————————————————

Take Time to Do a Little “Task Triage”

————————————————

Look at each of the applicable areas of your business, such as:

. Administration

. Project management

. Production management

. Information technology

. Quality assurance

. Marketing/sales

. Customer support

. Other functional activities

In each area — and even more importantly, across areas — you’ll find possibilities for streamlining, strengthening, and documenting your processes. Many processes will begin in one functional area and continue through other areas before completion.

The handoffs between people or functions often represent the weakest links because of the possibilities for miscommunication, bottlenecks, delays, and data entry errors. So pay close attention to those possibilities!

————————————————

Seven Things to Consider When Systematizing Your Business

————————————————

As you proceed to develop and fine-tune your processes, consider the following.

1. How mature are your processes?

Especially while in a startup mode, many of your methods might be in a “mushy,” formative state. Observing a repeatable pattern for performing work can take time. Even if your business has operated for a while, new activities will inevitably emerge. Consider whether each is mature enough to justify formal documentation, or whether less formal “desk instructions” would suffice in the meantime.

2. Can you streamline processes before documenting them?

Before documenting your processes:

– Consider whether all of the tasks or steps are actually needed.

– Consider where activities can be simplified, automated, or eliminated.

– Research where obstacles to productivity exist.

– Ponder all areas with the greatest potential for waste, errors, mistakes, and hidden drains on your bottom line.

– Think about how streamlining each area would improve your profitability, customer satisfaction, and internal effectiveness, and prioritize your efforts accordingly.

3. Who should document your systems?

People often don’t have the “extra” time to document their own tasks, since they already spend all of their time doing their regular jobs. Another option might involve “job shadowing,” where an intern or new-hire continually observes, discusses, and documents what an expert performer does.

This relieves the expert of that burden, while providing a way for the intern to learn and contribute value immediately. Alternatively, you could hire a procedure specialist, and if a client engagement benefits enough to pay for it, that’s ideal!

The intern or specialist also can recommend ideas for improvement that surface from a having a fresh perspective. The expert can help fine-tune the resulting procedures, which would all become part of the company’s information library.

4. How can you go about systematizing?

Begin by asking, “How do we [...]?” and then fill in the blank with the activity you wish to systematize. Diagram all steps required to complete that process, across all functional areas.

You may discover that if you routinely perform certain steps in a given order, those are good candidates for step-by-step procedures. In areas where the steps vary based on the circumstances, a list of guidelines might be more appropriate. If you are able to automate procedures, consider using electronic support systems.

5. What types of documentation should you produce?

– Systems, at the highest level, represent collections of related processes.

– Processes, depicted as diagrams or process maps, provide overviews of tasks that transform inputs into outputs by adding value during each task step.

– Procedures cover the step-by-step, “how-to” details for performing task steps. Procedures might appear in training materials, job aids, and work instructions. Similarly, guidelines show what rules to follow in more variable situations.

6. What can you delegate or outsource?

If you have designed your processes to be easy to follow and repeatable, so that others can produce the same result each time, you are ready to delegate. And if you can hand off to someone with less expertise without losing speed or quality, hurray!

7. What can you continuously improve?

Always be alert for ways to eliminate, automate, or simplify every activity that you perform routinely. Your time is valuable, so your goal should be to spend time on the activities that will contribute most to your company’s profitability. For every step, ask, “What value does this add? What’s a faster, less complicated way of getting this done? Can a different view of this system expose new possibilities for streamlining?”

In conclusion, systematizing your business may seem like an overwhelming effort. By enlisting outside help, and prioritizing the areas to simplify and document according to what will have the greatest impact on your bottom line, you’ll achieve better results in a shorter period of time.

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to start making money online.  All you do is sign up with an affiliate program, which is free, and start promoting the product you have chosen through free methods.  Once you have learned how to create successful campaigns, only then should you consider creating your own website and building your own list.  It’s best to wait until you have found a product that you are having success with before you go to all that trouble.  Don’t make this harder than it really is.

1.  Article Writing:

One of the best ways to promote your product is through article writing.  You have found this article after putting in the keywords that brought you to this topic so you would do the same when promoting your product.  When writing about the product you are promoting, always remember to pre-sell your target audience and not outwardly sell.  If you write about the benefits your product can provide, that will entice them to click through to the link you have in your bio so that they can read and learn even more about the product itself.  Once they see that the product has all the benefits you have stated, they will then purchase the product and you have made a sale.

2.  Blog Posting:

Another way to promote your product is through writing blog posts.  You can set up a free blog through Blogger.com or Wordpress.com.  You can redirect your own domain name through Blogger.com if preferred.  Make your blog only about the subject of the product you are promoting.  Also give them information at the end of your post so they can click through to the product page and review that material as well.  You can also include the links to your site as well as an image of the product in your index.  

3.  RSS Feeds:

The third strategy is to take the RSS feeds from your articles author’s page as well as your blog and post them to the necessary sites so that others can read about the information you have posted.  You can do a Google search and find several sites to post your feeds to but the two I use are Feedage.com and Feedest.com.

These three simple strategies can get you up and running in no time at all with affiliate marketing.  Always remember that this is your business.  In order to have success with affiliate marketing you need to learn how to create successful campaigns and have the desire to succeed.  You also need to be dedicated and never give up.  Repetition is the key.