EzSEO Newsletter # 208

This week:

1. Wordpress For Affiliate Sites Community

2. Wordpress Tutorial - III

3. Upgrading from KRA to KRA Pro

4. Adding an RSS feeds to your site using a free script

Hi again

We have had some beautiful weather in Tenerife this week. It funny how blue skies and views of the sea on the horizon can lift your mood.

Mood?? Yes, I have been in a bad mood this week.

I ordered a camcorder from Simply Electronics (Amazon Marketplace) on the 16th June (estimated arrival 20 - 26th June).

This week it still had not arrived, and try as I might, I could not get through on the phone to speak to anyone. After being in their queue for 10 minutes, their “hold” music cut out and you got a message saying, “Sorry, but the support lines have closed. Please call between 8am and 4 pm Monday to Friday”. I don’t need to tell you that I WAS calling during support hours.

Just as bad, and even more frustrating, their email support appeared to be answered by people who didn’t bother to read my email before replying. You see, a day or two after they shipped the camera, I noticed on the courier site that the parcel was in customs and would stay there because it had “Wrong/Incorrect docs”. After emailing Simply Electronics about this problem, the replies I got back were that the order was OK, and everything was still on track for me to get my parcel in a couple of days. Clearly they did not check the couriers tracking page for my parcel, and obviously ingnored the information I posted in my email.

After about 2 hours trying to get through on the phone, including more of the 10 minute cut-offs because “support lines had closed…”, I finally talked to someone, and had to walk them through using THEIR courier tracking webpage (as they still insisted the documentation was correct). When I finally got the support girl to enter the correct details for my parcel, she saw the problem - “OK Sir, I’ll contact the courier”.

A few days later I called the courier and asked them what was happening. They said the parcel had been returned to Simply Electronics because they had still not received the documentation.

I have since cancelled the order, and am expecting the money back in my account any day. I have decided to fly to Madrid to get the camera instead.

I guess the moral of the story here is not to trust the ratings that companies in Amazon’s Marketplace receive. How this company gets a 93% positive rating is beyond comprehension. I posted my review up there, but the next day it had been displaced by 5 other “glowing reviews” that seemed to explicitly contradict my complaints of poor customer service.

Thanks Goodness it was sunny this week!

– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — –
1. Wordpress For Affiliate Sites Community
– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — –

This week, I have been snowed under with questions from subscribers about my Wordpress tutorial series and Wordpress in general. It seems that these tutorials are very popular, but a lot of people want even more, so I had an idea.

If there is sufficient interest, I am planning to open a Wordpress Community site. I will be building an affiliate site from scratch using Wordpress, and documenting every step with video and PDF. You can read the full details of this program here - “Wordpress for Affiliate Sites Community”.

If you are interested in this, please sign up on the notification list at the bottom of the “Wordpress for Affiliate Sites Community” page. This will give me a rough indication of numbers of interested people.

– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — –
2. Wordpress Tutorial - III
– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — –

If you have missed any parts of the tutorial, you can read them here - Wordpress Tutorials.

In the last couple of weeks, we have been laying the foundation for our site. We have installed Wordpress (manually I hope), and installed our first plugin.

Plugins are an integral part of Wordpress. Using a range of plugins will not only make your site building experience better (and easier), but plugins will enhance the qualities of your site, and can even help your pages rank better.

There are a lot of plugins I recommend you use, and so we don’t waste weeks installing one plugin at a time, I am going to list my top 10 Wordpress plugins which you need to download and install. All of the plugins I mention are fr.ee. Note that if you do not install these plugins, you will not be able to follow these tutorials, since your screens will not look the same as mine.

I have given you a short description of each plugin, so you have an idea of what it does, but we will look at these in more details when we start using the features of the plugins to build the site.

Unless specific instructions are given for a plugin, you can find these plugins over at the Wordpress Plugin Directory.

.. and search using the plugin name exactly as I have written it in the list.

If you still have a problem locating the plugins, there are links to all of them in my “Top 10 Wordpress Plugins” article at the Affiliate Minder site.

There may be one or two plugins that we need to install later on, but for now, here is my list of essential plugins:

1. Google XML Sitemaps - you installed this one last week.

2. TinyMCE Advanced - this plugin enhances the editor in Wordpress (where you write your content), and has a lot of nice features.

3. Lighter Menus - This plugin replaces the cumbersome menu system in Wordpress with nice drop down menus. This not only looks better, but also speeds up common tasks by making the menus easy to use.

4. All in One Adsense and YPN - There are other plugins that handle Adsense, but this one has a 5 start rating, so should be good.

5. Akismet - helps to filter out spam comments.

6. AddThis - Social Bookmarking plugin. Get this plugin from:

http://www.addthis.com/

a) Click on the “Get Your Button” image
b) Select Sharing/Bookmarking button from the first drop down list.
c) Select the look you like.
d) Select “On a blog” from the next drop down list.
e) Select Wordpress from the blog type.

You’ll then be taken to a page with further instructions. Follow the instructions to get your button.

You’ll eventually end up with some code that needs to be added to your Wordpress Template. Keep it safe until we are ready to use it.

7. Ultimate Google Analytics - this will be used with Google Analytics to track visitors.

8. Wordpress automatic upgrade - this will help you keep your copy of Wordpress up-to-date, which is an important security issue.

9. WP-DBManager - allow you to backup, restore and a whole lot more.

10. HeadSpace2 - Allows you to specify meta tags and page titles, plus a lot more if you need it.

That’s it for this week. Go and download these plugins, read the instructions and install them into your Wordpress blog.

– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — –
3. Upgrading from KRA to KRA Pro
– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — –

I am still getting a lot of KRA owners asking if they can get KRA Pro cheaper because they own KRA. The answer is YES. You can upgrade for the difference in price between the two tools.

To find out how to do this:

1. Open KRA.
2. Click the help menu, and select “Updates”.
3. The browser opens at the KRA owners site. Click on the link in the right hand menu “Upgrade to KRA Pro”.

Instructions are on that page. Any problems, just open a support ticket (click the “Contact Us” link on the webpage).

Currently, the upgrade price is $70.

– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — –
4. Adding an RSS feeds to your site using a free script
– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — –

I have used RSS feeds on my site for some time, and find them great for a number of reasons:

1. They change the page content frequently, which the search engines like.
2. Your visitors have access to current news items, which change to reflect the vaery latest news in your niche.
3. I have actually received traffic to pages with feeds on them, for terms that appeared in the RSS feed itself, and not from the content of my page.

Up until recently I used a commercial script for displaying RSS feeds. However, so that more people can benefit from this type of technology, I started looking around for a fr.ee script that I could use, so that I could show you how to add an RSS feed to your own site.

The script I settled on is called Carp. You can download it here:

Carp - RSS Feed

If you enter your details in the subscription box, you can get Carp SE for fr.ee.

NOTE: I personally have upgraded to the pro version (called Carp Evolution), because I want to start playing with Amazon feeds (and others) on some sites, and the features of the pro version give me much more flexibility. This is going to by new to me, and will take some effort to learn, but as I pointed out last week, learning new skills is part of the job, and anyone not prepared to do that should give up on Internet Marketing as a career.

OK, back to Carp SE.

I have written an article on my Affiliate Minder site, with screenshots, showing how to display a feed on a web site. I have used the feed from my ezSEO Newsletter blog as the example. If you have an Internet marketing site, feel free to add this feed to your site ;O)

You can read the tutorial here - “Adding RSS Feeds to Your Web Site Using Carp“.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions on the tutorial, please leave a comment after it. You do not need to register or login to post a comment.

Well, that’s it for this issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog:

http://ezseonews.com/blog/index.php

For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:

http://ezseonews.com/archives

Have a great week!

#######################################################
Visit the subscriber Bonus page for free reports and other subscriber-only:

REMOVED - SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please recommend it to your friends. Also if you have any tips of your own, questions or comments, please use my support forum at ezseonews.com/support.

Any tips or questions & answers I print in this newsletter will also be put up on the web version of the newsletter with a link to your site
if you want it. That’s extra free traffic for your site as well as an incoming link to your site.

Vote for ezSEO Newsletter

The contents of this newsletter is copyright 2008 Andrew Williams. If you want to republish any of the articles, you must get permission from the author.

This newsletter disclaims all responsibility for the advertising copy or the product advertised. You cannot rely on the fact that the newsletter has examined the product or recommends or endorses the product, unless it clearly says that it has, when you make your decision whether or not to purchase the product or interact with the advertiser. You are advised to do your own investigation before buying. Additionally, this newsletter may accept articles that we do not write or investigate the accuracy of and for which we may receive direct or indirect benefit or compensation. We specifically disclaim any responsibility for the content of such copy.

#######################################################