I had not even done most of the things on this list!

WordPress is the most used blogging system and, thanks to the great community that works to enhance its features, nowadays it is used as full content management system. WordPress rocks, dude!
For these reasons it is (maybe) one of the most hacked CMS. In some cases a website proudly powered by WP could be slow without a correct configuration and administration.

There are some tricks that allow us to boost our WordPress installation in a few minutes. Below there is a list of useful tips to secure and speed up your blog system. Take your time for reading, they are very simple and they could be helpful to save your time in the future.

Read The Entire Article Here.

I came across the question of ‘outsourced blogging’ at Problogger this morning. As blogging becomes more profitable for people, I think it will become more common to see parts of the blogging process outsourced.

Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if a blogger outsourced technical parts of running a blog – coding, SEO, design etc. But are you really a blogger if you’re not writing? Sure – blogger to me is more synonymous with businessperson than it is with writer.

With that said, here are some tips to remember when it comes to outsourcing.

Deal With Legitimate People

When you start looking for people to outsource to, don’t just take the first person that comes along. You should deal with legitimate people only. There are a lot of people out there who are trying to make money by scamming you. You have to protect yourself. Get to know the person you’re dealing with, make sure they have a portfolio and ask for references. Doing this isn’t being difficult, it’s being safe.

Use A Third Party Arbitrator

Use a job board or freelance site like ODesk or Elance to make sure you get what you pay for. You can find great people on these sites and they have a lot of services to offer. ODesk and Elance both offer workrooms and other collaboration tools as well as timekeeping and invoicing tools. With these sites, you don’t have to pay until the work is done and if there are any questions, you’ll have someone to turn to in order to resolve the dispute.

You Get What You Pay For

If you buy a BMW, you’re getting a BMW. If you buy a Chevrolet, you’re getting a Chevrolet. If you buy a Pinto, well, you get the point. The same goes with outsourcing. Your budget will dictate the quality of work you should expect. If you’re a startup, this doesn’t mean you have to spend a lot of money; you will have to look harder to find someone who is willing to produce good work at a low price.

Stay in the States

This is some of the best advice I can give you – stay in the United States. Workers in other parts of the world may be cheaper and may offer a good solution for your business, but the headaches aren’t worth the reward. First, there is often a language barrier. Even if your potential parter speaks English, they probably don’t speak it well. Second, there is a time-zone difference. Remember, it’s day time in India when it’s night time here in the U.S. Thirdly – they probably have a different perspective than your audience.

Conclusion

In the end, you have to make the decision. Ask yourself if outsourcing is the right way to go. If it is, use these guidelines to make sure you don’t get burned.

If you’re just getting started as a blogger, you’re probably not seeing thousands of visitors per day and making lots of money. That’s OK – you’re blog still has a role.

Brandon Cox at Fuel Your Blogging has some tips for people who ‘fill out’ the blogosphere.

Some blogs lead, some don’t. That’s okay. Some blogs aren’t designed for leadership and that’s okay too. Some blogs inspire, some educate, and some just share silly pictures and funny videos. But… some blogs lead.

One of the perceptions of leadership in the blogosphere is that the “big blogs” are the leaders. These are the blogs listed in the Technorati Top 100. They are multi-author, celebrity driven, and corporately sponsored. I would contend, however, that a blog doesn’t have to be big to lead, but first let me define leadership. Leadership is influence, plain and simple. If you’re not influencing anyone, you’re not leading, you’re simply going for a walk!

Any blog can lead, and any blogger can influence others. We can shape thought and culture, motivate people to action, rally people to a cause, and provoke creativity.

If you’re blog isn’t ‘leading the way,’ it could be doing something worthwhile. It sounds a bit brash to say ‘know your role,’ but that’s about the best way to put it. Find where you fit in and make the best of that situation. You’ll have a chance to expand and grow in due time.

If you’re a freelancer, you probably spend a lot of time in your home office. Even if that’s your living room couch and your uniform is your pajamas, you do your work from somewhere.

Maximizing productivity is important. You need to get the most out of your working hours. You might not realize how much money you could be losing because of the condition of your home office. DesignM.ag has some tips for making your home office more comfortable.

The first is a comfortable desk chair:

Having a comfortable desk chair really is a necessity since you will be spending so much time in it. If you have an uncomfortable chair, you’re probably not enjoying your work as much as you could be. A good chair can cost a lot more than a cheap chair, but your health and comfort are worth the expense

Read the entire article here.

It’s amazing to see how much you can take in about blogging just in a single day. Today alone, I’ve read ___ great articles on blogging and I wanted to share them.

They come mostly from four different topics – design, blogging, writing and monetization.

All of these categories fit well inside my blog and I wanted to share some thoughts on each of these articles

5 Ways you are Unknowingly Harming Your Posts

If you have been blogging for a while, you should probably have a rough idea of what things you should and should not do while writing a blog post. But believe it or not, whether you know it or not, there are still quite a few things you have on your blog that are hurting it that you don’t realize.

Inside this post, I particularly liked the reference to dates. I still do dates, but after reading this – I’m reconsidering. Dates do give your blog a time stamp, which can be beneficial or detrimental, depending on your content.

5 Sure-Fire Sources for Headline Inspiration

Some days headlines are a breeze to write. The perfect words flow from brain to page in a flash of brilliance.

…

It can be intimidating, frustrating, and a little bit humbling . . . and worst of all it can grind your projects to a halt.

It doesn’t have to be that way — as long as you have a few sources of headline inspiration at your disposal.

This is a great idea post that will help you get going when you’re stuck. In addition, a commentor suggested a poetry book. I would also suggest newspapers. Journalists have been getting people to read boring stuff for a long time.

10 Elements of Highly Effective Articles

Here’s the bottom line: If you want to keep a majority of your visitors then you have to be able to produce amazing articles.  Period.

There are a lot of people out there not producing amazing articles who still do fine. Regardless, it’s important to try, right? By the way, never use the word amazing. It’s empty and means nothing.

Make Money Blogging

Do you want to make money blogging? If you do – you’re not alone. More and more bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having to get a part time job to get through college, or whether they’ve got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging – there are tens of thousands of bloggers making money from blogging.

This is an old favorite from Problogger. I still look back at it every now and then to see what I’m not doing or what I’m doing wrong.

Success Keys For Young Entrepreneurs: Simplify Your Life

No summary here, but this article has a good list of overall traits you should have if you want to be a successful blogger.

Regular blog readers know that some posts go on and on and on and on and on….. and on… and on. And then, they go on and on.

And pretty soon, it gets really boring or you just get lost altogether. That’s not a good thing, if you’re a blogger.

The folks over at Copyblogger, who I would consider the experts on blog writing, are generally agree that it’s important to keep your blog posts as short as possible.

Some writers don’t seem to know when to shut up. They ramble and pontificate and theorize, seemingly oblivious to the agony it’s causing everyone else.

To avoid this awful fate, you probably try to keep your posts short, chopping up longer ideas into a series of posts. No need to scare away readers by dumping too much information on them all at once, right?

If you know then, that it’s important to keep your posts relatively short – or at least, keep them shorter than War and Peace, the question becomes – how do you do it?

Again, we turn to Copyblogger for the answer. Here’s the list.

Write For Yourself

Edit For Your Readers

Stick to the Spine of Your Content

It’s all about Precision

Save the leftovers

For a long time in school, I was encouraged to write more. Then, I came to a Professor who wanted every paper to be less than one page long. The latter taught me a few things that I have stuck with me when it comes to articulating.

Write for a Knowledgeable Audience

Assume that the people you’re writing for know what they’re talking about. If they don’t know, chances are they are going to Wikipedia for the answer anyway.

Don’t Try to be Pretty

If you read the Copyblogger post, you got the point that plain is pretty when it comes to writing. If someone has to look up a word that a blogger uses, then it’s probably a sign that the writing is too extravagant.

Stick to the Limit

Newspaper writers and authors know that when an editor or publisher says X number of words, the editor or publisher means X number of words, not X words plus  a few.

If you have to, set yourself a limit and stick to it.

Sure, there are tons of reasons why you should blog — but really, why are you blogging? What’s your point? With that, what are you trying to achieve with your blog?

These are serious questions that every blogger and potential blogger should ask himself or herself. If you don’t understand your purpose or if you don’t have one altogether, then you could be in for a rough ride. Likewise, if you don’t have a consistent set of goals, you will quickly lose confidence and feel as if you’re accomplishing nothing.

A purpose goes hand in hand with goals. They should come together and be written down somewhere for reference. Having a purpose will help you stay on track and keep you productive. Having goals will keep you moving forward and build up your confidence. A quality discussion about purpose and goals is a unique characteristic of a good blog.

Before I go further, I should stress that there is a difference between purpose and goals. In some instances, the two can be overlapping terms but they are fundamentally different.

Purpose

A purpose is like a mission statement. It is more than just a reason and more than just why. Purpose is your underlying aim or objective. For example, I blog to share with the world what I know and hopefully, make a little money while doing so.

There are plenty of other purposes out there

1. Make Money
2. Earn Credibility
3. Share Your Work
4. Get Hired
5. Promote A Cause

That’s just to name a few. These can double as reasons why you should blog, but really – you can only have one primary purpose. Or should.

My purpose helps me increase productivity. I keep working inside my purpose to achieve my goals.

Goals

Goals are different than purpose in that goals are specific parameters within your purpose. For example, my long-term goal is 10,000 visitors and $150 in revenue per week.

I also have short term goals. I have goals for sharing and publicizing my site – like making sure I tweet a certain number of times per week and making sure I blog once per day.

Short-term goals help me build confidence toward achieving long-term goals. The more I accomplish, the better I feel – so to speak.

Why You Need a Purpose and Goals

I have already elaborated a bit on why you need a purpose and goals, but it’s important to reiterate. A purpose will help increase productivity and goals will help build confidence.

You need both of them to make sure you keep going.

If you don’t have them, get them. Tell me what your purpose and goals are.

In today’s economy, it’s important for businesses and/or individuals to build a successful model of online marketing. I guarantee you that includes a blog.

One industry that is taking particular advantage of blogging, its dynamically-generated content and the better search-engine results that come with it is the travel industry.

Those looking for a vacation used to be prohibited to brochures, travel agency and travel agents for information of prospective vacations or vacation hot-spots. That’s no longer the case.

Tourists now have the vast resources of the Internet to turn to when looking for the what, where, when, why and how of vacation. Travel blogs are becoming popular.

In 2008, The Telegraph published a list of the world’s best travel blog. Here’s the list of “best for practical advice.”

• travel-rants.com
• perrinpost.com
• escapeblog.com
• crankyflier.com
• seat61.com

Travel blogging is a great niche with tremendous potential. If you like to travel, or if you’re just interested in foreign locations and are knowledgeable, than travel blogging may be for you.

If you think so, then there are somethings you should know and do before you start your travel blog.

Offer Something Valuable

Most bloggers make the mistake of thinking they can just offer up their opinions and make millions. That’s wrong. You really need to offer some unique, valuable content that will keep readers coming back.

It’s not enough to tell me that there is good pizza in Italy or that France has beautiful countryside – I can figure that out from Wikipedia. Tell your readers something they won’t find through conventional methods.

Be Different

Another mistake a lot of bloggers make is they try to be too much like someone else. Stand out.

It’s not hard to be different. Maybe you want to just offer advice on food in Italy or food in Asia. Maybe your blog should just be on travel methods – like planes, trains and automobiles.

Whatever you decide to do, try to make it as uniquely branded and presented as possible.

Allow Readers to Interact

With a niche like travel, it’s important to allow your readers to interact. Obviously, unless you’re really wealthy, you won’t be able to go everywhere yourself. Let your readers do some work for you.

Let them submit reviews, ratings and even articles. Create a method that will allow your readers to give you information – even if only so you can give it back to others.

Conclusion

Nomadic Matt has a great e-book on how to develop and monetize a blogging website. It’s only $28 and includes six sections that cover everything from blog creation to tips and tricks on how to get traffic and sell advertisements.

If you’re starting a travel blog, I definitely suggest you try his e-book out for suggestions. It will help you get started and build on what we’ve discussed in this article.

There are a countless number of Ebooks across the Internet all trying to tell you how you can make money blogging. On the rare occasion one is actually of value, it’s worth sharing.

Daniel Scocco at Daily Blog Tips has released a free Ebook (perhaps that’s the best part) that covers everything from the most basic fundamentals, to some quality information on how to take your money-making venture to the next level.

The book includes:

• How to Pick a Host
• How to Pick a Platform
• How to Pick a Topic
• Creating Valuable Content
• Design
• Subscribers
• Networking
• Promotion
• Per Click Advertising
• Commission Advertising
• Direct Advertising

And much more! It’s a quick read at 54 pages, but is loaded with valuable content. In order to get it, all you have to do is sign up for his e-mail list, so go ahead!

There are always the essentials. The must-do’s. The absolutes. The things you must do or see before you do or see something else. Blogging is no different.

When you start a blog, there are some things you must know and do before you actually START the blog. Buying a domain, finding a platform and topic aside, I’ve compiled what I think is a list of 7 articles you must read before you start your blog.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging

Before you know what you should do, you should definitely know what you should not do. This is a comprehensive list of blogging no-no’s. Memorize them now.

Blogging Tips for Beginners

Darren Rowse at ProBlogger shares this newbie guide. Don’t be embarrassed, no, don’t be stupid — read this post if you’re new to blogging. For that matter, read it even if you’re not. In here is a great list of tips and how-to’s for beginning bloggers.

100+ Lists To Help You Become a Better Blogger

You think this list is helpful? Try this one. This post covers profit making, traffic, SEO, design and more. You’ll get lost – which is a good thing. Knowledge is Power.

7 Elements to Make Your Blog Look Great

An important part of a blog is its presentation. If your blog looks great and offers great content, then readers will come back. The people at ProBlogDesign can fill you in on the fundamentals of good blog design.

30 Ways to Increase Readability

Oops, wait. If you have a blog and you have good content, your readers better be able to read it and navigate it. Check this post to make sure your blog is fundamentaly readable.

9 Tips to Start Blogging

Another ProBlogger post that will help you get started. This post covers everything from crafting your URL’s to content to emotional advice when you start a blog.

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

Don’t miss this one. If you’re going to make your site live, check off this list before you get started – you won’t regret it.

19 Strategies for Finding Readers

Once you gte the blog and once you’ve made it live – let’s make sure you can get some readers, right? Here’s a hint: Content is King.