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Make Extra Money, Part 6.5: Why I Do It The Way I Do It
This is a follow-up to part 6 of the niche site walkthrough, Setting Up a Niche Site. If you haven’t read that post, this one won’t mean much. Go ahead. Read it. I’ll wait.
Several people have asked me to explain why I use the plugins and settings I use. In this installment of the Make Extra Money series, I’m going to explain every choice I recommended last time.
WordPress
WordPress is a site development dream. With the right themes and plugins, you can literally make a WordPress site look, feel, and behave in any way you wish. Even without digging too deep into plugins and premium themes like Headway, you can put together a niche site blog in very little time and know that it’s happening on a robust platform that is actively being improved.
Configuring WordPress
Updates
Keeping your site updated is the single most important thing you can do to avoid getting hacked. Since I haven’t yet figured out how to make hacking a terminal disease, I do the best I can to avoid letting them cause problems. Keeping your site updated is the condom of WordPress.
WWW
This is entirely a personal preference, but, after 20 years of reinforcing habits, most people type “www” by default. WordPress will automatically forward visitors correctly, so this isn’t actually a necessity.
The “Misc” Category
I don’t spend much time worrying about categories when I post, and sometimes I experiment with using external software to post from pools of articles, so I set up a default category. “Misc” is much nicer to see than “Uncategorized”, even if they mean the same thing.
Theme Selection
I like SimpleX because it is uncluttered and easy to navigate. It’s hardly the most powerful theme out there, but it doesn’t pretend to be. If I want more, I use Headway.
Plugins
Plugin Central
Plugin Central is just a plugin installer that lets you install and activate many plugins at once. Even knowing exactly what plugins you want, this easily saves half an hour of setup time.
All in One SEO Pack
SEO is important. In fact, it’s what I base my niche site traffic on. All in One SEO makes it easy to manage the SEO titles that search engines see and the meta descriptions that search engine’s display to visitors when they see your site after a search. Some themes do this themselves, but I still use this plugin.
Meta keywords are all but useless, but not entirely. Google and Bing don’t care, but some networking and sharing sites do.
I “noindex” the tag archives because I don’t want the search engines finding each page twice. Identical pages with different addresses will register as two pages with Google. How does it know which one I consider most important? It doesn’t, so I don’t give it the option of indexing my tag archives.
Contact Form 7
This is just a free and easy contact form. I haven’t found anything better for the price.
WordPress Database Backup
Backups are important. Always back up your data. Do you want to spend 3 weeks building a site, just to have your server crash, killing everything? 5 minutes now will save hours or days of headache later.
SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2
When someone comes to your site from a search engine, this plugin takes the term they searched for and appends it in a list at the end of the post the visitor found. This reinforces your site as a good result for that search term. It also provides a handy list of the most popular search terms people use to find your site.
Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress
I hate spam. If Akismet finds a spam comment being posted, this plugin will give the user a change to enter a CAPTCHA code to post the comment. Even if I turn off comments on a site, I keep this installed in case I ever change my mind. Real comments are good for SEO, so I occasionally test allowing the comments. I won’t waste the time moderating comments on a niche site, so this is a good compromise.
Date Exclusion SEO
If someone comes to a site and sees the last post was two years ago, they’ll leave. I don’t want a post to look like it’s outdated, so I suppress the dates.
Pretty Link Lite
This plugin lets me mask a link and set it to nofollow. Nofollow tells the search engines to discount the value of the link, which removes a spam-site indicator from their algorithms. Masking the link turns a messy affiliate link into a link that looks internal, making it easier for a visitor to click and allowing you to see how often a link is clicked.
Google XML Sitemaps
Making it easy for Google to find your entire site is a good thing. This plugin helps with that.
WP Policies
This plugin provides a long list of site policies, formatted for a WordPress page. The most important one is the disclaimer announcing the fact that your are making money on your site.
WP Super Cache
Super Cache creates a pre-generated copy of your page so the site doesn’t have to hit the database to rebuild it dynamically every time someone visits. It’s all about speed, which affects your search rank.
JetPack
I like using the WordPress.com stats instead of Google Analytics for most of my niche site. I don’t see a need to announce to Google that these 12 sites are owned by me, so I don’t. WordPress.com included their stats plugin in JetPack, then discontinued the standalone plugin, so I use JetPack.
Backup
If I subscribe to my own feed, I get every post in Google Reader. That means I don’t need to make a daily backup of any of my sites. For the amount of changes I make to my niche sites, weekly might still be overkill, but that’s what I do. I get the backups by email so I have a copy somewhere other than the host. I don’t believe in letting anyone control my money but me.
Settings
Discussion
Most comments to niche sites are spam comments, so I hide them without actually turning them off. Sometimes I test letting the comments through, because some niches might have great people that want to post good comments. I haven’t had a lot of luck with that, on my niche sites.
Permalinks
The default permalink structure is absolutely not recommended for search engine purposes. It’s also harder for someone to mention. I don’t put dates in the link for the same reason I hide dates in the posts: I don’t want anything to look outdated.
Menus
I keep the navigation menu simple. It has three purposes:
- Link to the page that’s designed to make money.
- Link to the pages that show Google and readers it is an active site.
- Link to the disclaimer that keeps my butt away from federal fines.
Anything else is wasted space.
Widgets
On my niche sites, I use widgets to help with navigation and to point people to the pages that will make the most money. I haven’t addressed how I do the second part yet, because I haven’t created those pages yet.
Posts
Right now, http://www.masterweddingplanning.net/ has exactly one post, and it’s a duplicated post from eZineArticles. It has served its purpose. This site is fully indexed by Google.
When I get the rest of the content written, I’ll delete that post.
There you have it, the reasons behind every choice I make during site creation. Did I miss anything? Do you have any other questions?
6 Questions to Financially Get to Know Each Other
This topic has been blatantly stolen from Budgets are Sexy.
1) How do you spend: cash, debit or credit? I use cash almost exclusively. I live in Minnesota and have two small children, so bundling the brats up to go inside the gas station to pay is nuts. Gas stations get the debit card. Online shopping, or automatic payments set up in the payee’s system are done on a credit card that gets paid off every month.
[ad name=”inlineright”]2) Do you bank online? How about use a financial aggregator (Mint, Wesabe, Yodlee, etc.)? I bank online. I use USBank for my daily cash flow, INGDirect for savings management and Wells Fargo for business. I used Mint strictly as a net worth calculator and alerting system. I use Quicken to manage my money and a spreadsheet for my budget, but I really like the quick, hands-off way that Mint gathers my account information and emails low balance alerts.
3) What recurring bills do you have set on autopay? Absolutely everything except daycare, 2 annual payments, and 1 quarterly payment.
4) How are your finances automated? I use USBank’s billpay system, instead of setting up autopayments at every possible payee. This gives me instant total control and reminders before each payment. The exceptions are my mortgage, netflix, and Dish. My mortgage company takes the money automatically from my checking. The other two hit a credit card automatically. Our paychecks are direct-deposited and automatically transferred to the different accounts and banks, as necessary.
5) Do you write checks? If so, how often? Once per week, for daycare. Occasionally for school fundraisers.
6) Where do you stash your short-term savings? I have quite a few savings accounts with INGDirect to meet all of my savings goals. For the truly short term, I add a line item in Quicken and just leave the money in my checking account.
Who’s next?
Money Problems: Day 11 – Extended Warranties
Today, I am continuing the series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances. The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances. It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear. Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.
I’m not running the series in 30 consecutive days. That’s not my schedule. Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us. Instead, it will run roughly once a week. To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.
On this, Day 11, we’re going to talk about extended warranties.
You’ve been there. You walk into a big box electronics store to buy a $10 cable for your DVD player and the boy in blue at the register tries to pressure you into spending $4 on an extended warranty in case the cable dies due to too much adult video…or something.
The same nameless blue and yellow store is currently selling a laptop for $349 with a 2 year extended warranty for $89. The sales pitch usually goes something along the line of “These things have a tendency to break. You need a warranty to make it worth purchasing.” Thanks, jerk. You just sent me to a competitor since your sales pitch involves telling me you’re selling garbage.
Seriously, getting an extended warranty on electronics is almost always a bad deal. Yes, almost 30% of laptops fail within three years. Most of those fail in the 3rd year. What’s a 2 year warranty going to do for you then? New laptops generally come with a 1 year warranty from the factory. That leaves you volunteering for a 25% markup in exchange for protecting your device for a year that is not statistically likely to include a laptop failure.
A much better idea is to create a warranty/repair fund. When you buy something and have a warranty offered, turn it down and put that money in a special savings account. That money will get set aside to repair your stuff when it breaks. If you do that with everything you buy, you’ll soon have a fund that can pay for most repairs, without stressing your budget. I’ve got $25 going into my repair fund every month, so I’ll never have to worry about an extended warranty again.
It’s called a self-warranty.
But what about a car warranty you ask?
This is where I differ from most people. I’m a fan of extended warranties on cars, with 2 caveats.
1. Use it. If you car has started shaking, knocking, or almost anything else, bring it in. You have a warranty, so get your dang car fixed. When you’re getting close to the end of your warranty, make up an excuse and get that car into the dealer. “My car’s making an intermittent knocking sound. Can you fix it? While you’re at it, please do your 90,000 point inspection and fix whatever you find.” There’s no reason that you can’t get your car running like new when it kicks over the 70,000 mile mark.
2. Negotiate it. The charge you see is typically twice the dealer’s cost. Let them make some profit, since that’s what makes the world go round, but don’t let them take advantage of you. If they offer you a warranty for $2000, counter with $1200.
If you can get a decent price and are willing to make sure you use the auto warranty, get it.
How do you feel about extended warranties? Please leave a comment below and let me know.
Teaching Kids about Money
Today, Mr Credit Card from www.askmrcreditcard.com is going to contribute with an article about things we can teach our kids about life and money. He asks that you check his best credit card offers page if you are looking for a new card
I honestly think teaching kids about money this is the most overlooked thing that most parents do not teach. Instead, kids learn from our behavior and how we treat money. But I really think the subject of how to manage money must be taught.
I have three kids and teaching them stuff is sure tough. But as a parent, I would like to instill good habits (including money habits). Here are some of the things I think we can do to teach them about various aspects of life that will affect their outlook about hard work and money.
Reward Hard Work hard and Not Just Results – Some kids are talented at certain things like math or baseball. Very often (in their early ages), they excel in school or sports without much effort because of talent. But very often, because of the talent, they do not develop the habit of working hard (because they do not have to). But as they grow older, they are going to face obstacles. If they do not learn the value of hard work and overcoming difficulties, they will hit the brick wall often. Teaching them the value of hard work (even if they are talented) is so important.
What has this got to do with money? Well, I think delayed gratification is one of the hardest thing to teach, so we try to praise our kids when they achieved something due to hard work. We tell them that they accomplished it because they worked at it and we explain that to be able to afford expensive things, they have to study hard, work hard and earn their own money!
Going to Shop Does Not Mean You Have to Shop! – There are various ways to go about doing it. One way is simply to explain concepts as they come along. For example, initially, my kids always wanted to buy stuff when they go to Toys R Us or anywhere else. To put a stop to this nonsense, we had to explain that just because we went to a shop does not mean we have to buy anything. We could be just looking, doing some research or simply buying a gift for someone else.
Ask Them What Happened To Stuff They Bought A While Ago – Another thing that we like to bring up to our kids when they want to buy something on impulse is to remind them of something they bought in the past and whether they are now still excited over it and playing with it. Chances are that they will say no! We found that this was a very effective way to make them realize that they should think twice before buying anything.
Teach Kids to Compare Price – Here is another technique we use: When we go grocery shopping, Mrs Credit Card asks the kids to compare prices of the cheapest cereals. We explain to them that even though they love a particular one, there are times when it is not the best time to buy it. They should only buy it if it is on sale. We also ask them to compare the price relative to the weight of the product to see which gives greater value for money. After a while, they catch on and only buy cereal that is on sale!
Make Them Work – I see lots of kids organizing lemonade stands outside their houses during summer. It could be to draw crowds for a garage sale or to raise money for a fundraiser. I think this is such a great thing as they can learn so many things just from selling lemonade. They can learn the the concept of selling things for a profit.
Another common task kids or teens take is to work to earn some money. It could be as simple as baby sitting, walking your neighbors dog or working at the ice-cream shop. Making them realize that they need to earn before they can spend is a good lesson.
Slowly Give Them More Responsibilities – As kids grow older, I believe in giving them more responsibility. It could be making the oldest kid look after their younger siblings. Or giving them tasks like clearing the trash, doing the dishes, etc. I know of some parents who give their teens prepaid credit cards to start teaching them about using “credit” (though it is not technically credit). Maybe that is a bad idea as you want them to know to manage a student credit card when they are old enough to get one.
Selling Things For Fund Raisers – One of the things that I admire about the Boys Scouts is that they are always doing fundraisers for their scouting trips and events (no money, no outings). It teaches them “cold calling” or more likely, approaching Dad and Mom’s friends to sell things like coffee beans and Christmas wreaths!
Teach Them Not To Waste Stuff – Another thing I like to emphasize to kids is not to waste stuff. Whether it is the water when they brush their teeth or making sure they do not waste food, we are pretty particular about this. I think this is a good mindset to instill in our kids.
Performance Matters More Than How Good Your Look – I find that kids like to buy fancy stuff and beyond a certain age, they are conscious about brands. I’ve mentioned this before, but when my kids first played baseball and soccer, they keep bugging me to get them the fancy gear. I had to keep telling my kids that how you perform matters more than your gear. After a couple of years of playing, I think they have finally come to realize this and no longer bug me about things.
It’s a Never-Ending Process – Teaching your kids about money and other things that are important is a never-ending process. But you have to do it when they are young because once they grow older, they tend not to listen to their parents anymore and are more likely to be influenced by peers.
Update: This post has been included in the Carnival of Debt Reduction.
Small Business Solutions to Aid Expansion
For most small businesses much of their strategy will be tailored towards expansion. The transition between being a small and medium sized enterprise can, however, be as tough as it is important. What makes a successful businessman or entrepreneur is the ability to spot the areas in which their business can effect simple changes which have far reaching implications for the success of their company.
Stability online
One of the first places any entrepreneur should look at is cost-effective and comprehensive insurance cover. Firms like Hiscox – Business Insurance Specialist can aid small businesses by looking at what areas of their current business are vulnerable and need cover.
A common problem for smaller businesses which operate largely online can be the type of server they use. Basic servers do not offer the stability a business needs to thrive. For a small business, time offline can be a disaster. Unfortunately, dedicated servers are often costly and, however useful they are in a number of ways, they tend to provide a service which reaches beyond the requirements of most small businesses.
Shared servers often do not provide the flexibility that small businesses need to make the transition to the next stage. As we’ve mentioned, dedicated servers are rarely a viable option for most small companies; instead, many opt to use a virtual private server which simulates many dedicated server features while remaining integrated into a larger, shared server.
Using a virtual private server is a cost-effective way for small businesses to take full control over their server and to apply upgrades as they see fit. The increased levels of performance and independence that virtual private servers can offer a small business can be vital to the realisation of their expansion dreams.
Be critical when considering opportunities
When your company begins to grow and succeed, things are likely to snowball. It is not uncommon for small businesses to face merger propositions and takeover offers. To many young entrepreneurs, this can seem an attractive prospect. Often such deals will involve impressive, short-term financial benefits that make them look appealing to the newly successful business owner.
While mergers and acquisitions can benefit all parties involved, it is important to remain level-headed when considering offers from other companies. For example, in Bain & Company’s 2004 study, they found that shareholder value did not increase in 70% of mergers. A further study conducted at Paris’s Sorbonne found that in excess of 90% of European mergers failed to meet their financial targets.*
Independence and success
The business world has changed rapidly in recent years with the inclusion of social media sites into many businesses’ marketing strategies. With this shift in marketing procedure, the playing field from which businesses are able to reach out to customers has been levelled. This has positive implications worth considering for the small business owner.
It is now possible for any small business to reach millions of people without spending a penny on advertising. Thus, the need for smaller companies to accept stubborn deals from larger companies is lessening. This is not to say that mergers are no longer a viable option for small businesses. Often the resources available to larger companies are indispensable to the smaller company. Instead, this shift in the market could well see small businesses being made more attractive deals by larger companies with a vested interest in the takeover of young and growing companies: just look at the recent Facebook purchase of Instagram.
If your business is facing a similar request or even considering the takeover of a smaller business, speaking with specialists is an invaluable option. Experts can offer advice on the way that such methods of expansion will affect your business and the premiums that you pay.
Utilize Social Media
The establishment of a successful business in today’s climate requires a shrewd and thorough reading of the options available to you online. With a huge proportion of business, small and large, creating a presence on social media and networking websites, this is an area that no small business can afford to ignore.
While business accounts with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are already seen as somewhat necessary tools to the success of a business, use of social media need not stop there. Entrepreneurs who want to get their business on top will be looking to new services such as Google Plus, ensuring that they are the first amongst their competitors to join. Whichever social media platform your business deals with, it is essential to keep your account active, positive and efficient.
*http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/05/21/merger.marriage/index.html
This is a guest post.
