Well I guess it depends what you are using your blog for. If it is just a personal blog then you probably want to install social type plugins such as photo galleries, news feeds and such.

If you are like me and want to earn a living from your blog then a whole different set of plugins are required. These are usually tagged as SEO type plugins. Other types are those that will help to maintain or secure your blog against loss of data.

Personally I find that a lot of bloggers install so many plugins that they lose site of what most of them are for. Also it is usually found that that there are several plugins installed that essentially do the same thing and in a lot of cases contradict or cancel out each other.

I am now going to list which Wordpress plugins I think are essential as a minimum for a clean operation of a blog in the SEO and Blog security area.

• The Akismet Plugin.

  The most annoying thing about blogs is that people are always trying to spam you. They do this by finding your blog and then firing comments at it. Most of these comments are just rubbish and are essentially to get their URL on your blog so that they get a return link. Apart from making sure that you have set that comments can only be publish by being a registered member and being moderated by you, you want to make sure that that you do net get hundreds of these to moderate. Akismet is a plugin that intercepts these comments and assesses them for spam and only lets those that it considers good. The rest it retains and actually informs you how many have been intercepted. You can either have a look at them or just get rid of them by a simple click of a button. Akismet by intercepting these spam comments stops you getting those hundreds of e-mails saying you have a comment to moderate.And don’t think those spammers won’t find you, because they will. For this reason this is one of the plugins that is essential to have installed. So much so that Wordpress has already installed it for you so all you have to do is activate it.

• A Database Manager.

  After a while you will have a lot of stuff on your database. If this database get corrupted or lost you need to reconstruct it. The only way you can do this is by backing up your Mysql Database periodically. If you have hundreds of articles on your database and they are lost there is  no way you are going to rewrite them without saving the database.I recommend that you use the WP-DBManager.

• Wordpress Automatic Upgrade.

  In the past it was quite difficult especially for those without a technical bent to keep the current Wordpress version up to date. Because of this people tended to just keep their old version for years. This means that they cannot use all those new and fantastic plugins available. Now there is a fantastic plugin available that makes upgrading of your Wordpress blog as easy as a-b-c.Go to the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade site to obtain it.

At this time there is no plugin I can find that will backup your whole Wordpress installation. At present I do this by using the Linux/Unix “tar” command and setting “cron” to execute this periodically. I will be writing later a post on how to do this but I will still keep searching for a plugin that will perform this.

The above recommendations are what can be called “Blog” maintenance plugins and these I believe are those required as a minimum on your blog. I will now discuss what can be called SEO type plugins.

SEO plugins are those considered necessary for your blog to be found on the “World Wide Web” These are required if you want “traffic” to your blog.

• All in One SEO Pack.

  Now I think this is a beauty. The “All in One SEO Pack” virtually supercedes all other types of plugins that manage your meta’s such as the “title” tag, the “description” tag and the “keywords” tag. As well as a heap of other things.I like it because not only can you set all these tags for your home page you can also set the same on all your posts and pages it allows you to overwrite the global tags with individual tags whenever you write a post. This means that you can set your title, description and keywords to match exactly what your post is about. I think this is one of the best SEO style plugins to come out. You should get it and chuck out all your other plugins that manage this area. I will be writing a post that will detail exactly what to do to set it up. In the meantime get the “All in One SEO Pack”. There is just one word of caution. You should look in the “header.php” of your particular theme and remove any meta tags for title, description and keywords if any as you will end up with duplicate metas if you don’t.

• Social Bookmarks.

  With the advent of social networking having “social bookmarking” icons on your post is becoming essential. They enable readers to show their appreciation of your article by clicking an icon and bookmarking your post on a variety of bookmarking sites.You can download this plugin at the “dountsis” site.

• Tagalize It.

  Now this is a plugin I feel is needed as I found out that Wordpress does not use the ping list to ping social sites for “pages” it only pings “posts”. What this plugin does is allow you to put tags on your keywords or phrases in your pages. These are only available for “Technorati” and “Ice” at this time but this is better than none at all. You need to go to the “Tagalize It” website to get this plugin.

Well that’s it folks. There are more plugins that you will believe yourself that are required. For example I have not mentioned plugins that “monetize” your site as there are a plethora of these out there and you should obtain these to fit the needs of your blog.

Now I am not one of those people who want to rip Google off. I create some blogs, put good content on and then hope to earn some sort of pittance by encouraging people to visit them. Great! I followed and implemented great free advice from webinaires such as “Stompernet” “The 30 day challenge” and a few others. Fantastic they are. Now I do not want to crucify Google or the like but I am a very technical guy. I have spent most of my life analyzing blooming great computer dumps from huge mainframes trying to find out what there was a crash. (Big banks do not like that) So I became quite proficient at detecting anomalies across reams and reams of digital readouts.

I started on the “workfromhome” thing when I retired and I decided that I would spend a certain portion of my time looking at certain aspects of SEO. (Sorry! “Search Engine Optimization”).

During my startup in the “Work From Home” arena I was very unimpressed on my earnings from Adsense. Yes I invested in a few of those great “Earn millions with Adsense” programs to no avail. I eventually got caught up with the “30 day challenge” I followed their challenge and created a blog called “Windows XP Slow Startup” To my surprise I was suddenly at #2 on a Google search on the same search phrase. (“Windows XP slow startup”) Wow I thought. I earned more in one month on Adsense that I had done all the previous year. Mind you it wasn’t world shattering but I was getting income virtually every day.

This convinced me that I should follow the right implementation of constructing a blog that will be recognized as good by Google.

The thing I used as a guide to people visiting my blog was “Google impressions” I thought that although this is not considered a finite interpretation of traffic it was good enough for me. If Google recorded an impression then someone has visited my blog. Not interested that they may visit multiple time, if they did the more likely they may click on an Adsense advert.

I became puzzled why ther were some big dips and high. So due to my technical curiosity I decided to look at “searches” and at the same time look at what hyphenating key phrases, URLs and certain words that can be hyphenated( e.g. “startup” can be “startup”, “start up” or “start-up”) and see what affect these had on searches.

As with all analysis’s some unexpected things can turn up and this was no exception especially when I decided to cover the three great search engines. “Goggle”, “Yahoo” and “MSN”.

I decided to search on my search phrase “windows XP slow startup” and as I mentioned earlier this can be represented by: - “windowsxpslowstartup”, “windows xp slow startup” and “windows-xp-slow-startup”. What would the difference be searching on the different representation of the phrase. I used “quotes” for all search phrases.

This was the difference for “windowsxpslowstartup”:

Google search: 134 returns where my site was listed #1
Yahoo search: 128 returns where my site was listed #1
MSN search: 380 returns where my site was listed None but heaps of social site entries. But MSN seems to have some intelligence that worked out that I may have meant “windows XP slow startup” but it gave me the option of just showing the results for :windowsxpslowstartup” where it gave me a result of 19. It did not show my home page but all the results were from social sites.

This was the difference for “windows XP slow startup”

Google search: 2230 returns where my site was listed #2
Yahoo search: 3660 returns where my site was listed #7 but I had a couple of social sites listed higher.
MSN search: 381 returns where my site was listed #4 but not my home page but the archive page (http://www.windowsxpslowstartup.how-do-you-do.info/windows-xp-slow-startup/)

Now for the interesting one. (windows-XP-slow-startup)

Google search: 2230 returns where my site was listed #2
Yahoo search: 3660 returns where my site was listed #7 but I had a couple of social sites listed higher.
MSN search: 382 returns where my site was listed #7 but not my home page but the archive page (http://www.windowsxpslowstartup.how-do-you-do.info/windows-xp-slow-startup/)

So what do we have here. It would appear that hyphens make really no difference in the search but the term “windowsxpslowstartup” does with the exception of MSN where it seems to have a more intelligent search engine but also seems to search on different criteria.

The thing that puzzled me was Google. With the repeated searches I sometimes got 2230 results and sometimes 70 results. I was still #2 but what gives. One other thing I did was a search by region and selected USA and did not get mentioned except in social sites.

What the heck Google. Is your search engine flaky. My website is on a USA based server so what gives. I give up.

So what are we supposed to think. As always it will be our fault configuration of my browser or something but this belies the fact that I get listed second when all regions are selected but do not show as listed when the USA region is selected.

I did another test. I did a search on broad the broad based term. That is I searched without the quotes which meant a search was done looking for all the keyword in “windows XP slow start up” wherever they appeared but all of them have to be there. I got a result of 353,000 and was listed #5. When I selected the USA region I was not listed at all. This is crazy. This sort of thing does not make one rely on the integrity of the search engines. I also did a search on other English speaking regions but still did not get listed except on social sites. Not sure what is happening with the Google search engine but sure does not seem reliable.

Or am I missing something. Soldier on I will.

That is why I like Michael Cheney’s “Start Your Profits Today “. It assumes that the person he is progressing to earning an income on line is a novice. He explains everything in a none effectual manner that actually induces the learner to continue.

He starts from the basics. His basic basic is “I am going to teach you to earn $$$$”. He does not promise the world because the world is entirely dependent on how you embrace his teachings. Effort is required in everything that is needed to create income, effort in learning and effort in applying that learning.

The majority of people striving to earn an income on the Internet think that it can be done without effort. His teaching does not say that. Effort and consistency is what is needed.

But let’s be honest with ourselves and this is what a lot of people do not realize. The effort in creating n income on the Internet is a lot less that that you had to go through to be able to hold down a job in the normal sense. I do not understand why people do not compare this and expect to put not even a tiny portion of that effort into practice.

The amazing thing is that people also do not realize the amount of effort they apply to none effectual application of some of these “get rich quick” schemes that abound on the Internet these days. They do not realize that running an online business is the same as any other business offline or online. You have to learn to do it.

The “Start your Profits Today” training course starts the newcomer off explaining each step in detail sidestepping any technical details that are not relevant at this stage of learning. It ends with the person establishing a fully functional blog that he then steps you through what you need to do to establish your presence on the internet and what you need to do to expand that presence.

Once completed you have a complete knowledge on how to create further blogs to create more wealth for yourself.

My assessment in what people at various levels get out of this course is a s follows:

1. Those who know nothing.

Your will end up knowing just how to create a Blog and how to populate it so as to induce people to look at it. In effect your are creating a “storefront”. You will also learn what you need to do to get people to look at your “storefront”. In all you will progress to knowing nothing to knowing 80 -90% what you need to get an online business off the ground.

2. Those who have tried.

This course will bring you down to reality. It will teach you all the extras that you need to implement and encourage you to get away from the here then there, bits and pieces syndrome.

3. Those who feel they know everything about an online business.

Well why are you here? Are you making money in your online business? There is always something to learn. This is a good course for you to promote in your own online business. If you are a person who thinks they already know everything then go away. You are unable to learn anything else.

In conclusion the “Start Your Profits Today ” course will start the student on a profitable path to earning on line. But this is just the start.

*Message Boards - Message boards are a good source of information as well. Follow the discussions and see what things people are interested in and need to know more about. I have written many articles from information I read on the boards.

*Email Discussion Groups - Get involved in discussions. Find what information people are looking for. Not only can you get ideas for your articles, but also you can learn a lot as well by making new contacts. Go to Yahoo or google and do some searching for the right type of group for your business.

*Internet News Sites - Keeping up with Internet marketing news is important. Not only for writing articles but also for keeping abreast of new developments, ideas, technology, etc. Research your articles before writing them and keep your readers informed as well.

*Read your email - Take note of what people are asking you about and what they are most concerned with. Keep a file on hand and record all questions that can be used to create a great article.

*Subscribe to ezines - They can be little goldmines of information and ideas. They let you to keep up to date on the latest products, programs, business opportunities, etc. Some of this information makes great articles.

*Do a survey - Write a two or three question survey and send it out to friends or discussion group members or even better, your subscribers. Give your readers the information and news they are looking for.

For example: What questions do you have about Internet marketing? What resources do you need that you cannot find? Questions like this can give you some great article ideas.

*Read other articles - By reading other articles, you can come up with an unusual twist or angle for an overused idea. It sometimes helps to get different views and insights on the same old idea.

*What would YOU like to know more about - Pick a topic that you will find useful to know, do some research and turn it into a fantastic article.

Always keep an eye out for article ideas. After awhile you will begin to get ideas automatically all over the net. Keep a something to write on handy and when you think of an idea write it down. If you don’t write you ideas down straight away you tend to forget them.

Remember, people want and need basic, straight forward, helpful information. Keep fancy words down to a minimum. You do not want your readers to have to grab a dictionary every second word.

Give your articles a bit of yourself; give them personality and humour. Best of all write as if you were talking personally to the reader and give them the impression you want to help them.

Writing Articles are one of the best ways to get your blog noticed. Having good content makes your readers come back again and again.

They are generally used for traffic exchanges because that are fast loading with minimal content. They are designed to get the main message across.

The reason they need to be fast loading is because typically there is are only 15 - 30 seconds of viewing time in traffic exchanges before the next one is viewed. Consequently if the page can be fully loaded in the first couple of seconds this maximises the time the full message is displayed.

One other reason is if you are into advertizing with “google” and are doing this through “adsense” you will find that google dissaproves advertising through traffic exchanges especially with paid to surf TE’s.

With a flash page a click through to your own website hides this from google.

For example.

The flash page showing on the traffic exchange is set to open another window if your link is clicked in the TE. The page opened may be your site which describes your site in your own words before forwarding to your sponsor site for signup.

Your site could have adsense adverts on it which can create you adsense income if the surfer decides to click on them.

Because your site is essentially about money making opportunities most of the adverts would be about this. You may not be a member of any of these opportunities but your additional income is derived from them through google adsense.

Your site blog could also have some of your other income opportunities that the viewer my find more intersesting as well as adverts for clickbank, Amazon etc.

In essence the flash page acts as a funnel to your wider opportunities but it is important that the main theme should be about what the flash page is advertising. After all that is why they clicked on your flash page instead of just clicking to the next TE advert.

It should be noted that flash pages should not be used for “The Million Dollar Blueprint” sales page as the use of a flash page negates the “NZPCS” cookie unless the viewer actually clicks on the link in the flash page.

Regards

Wilf.