April 2011 - Monetization Magic

Are you getting complaints that your website is slow or are you noticing that your bounce rate is increasing? Are you approaching the limits on your hosting contract? Your WordPress website might need to be optimized. Following these 10 steps will take you a long way toward improving your site performance:

Use Firebug and Yslow

You’ll need to strike a baseline to determine what the speed is before you begin to optimize so that you’ll be able to determine if what you’re doing is making things better or worse. Using Firebug in conjunction with YSlow will provide you detailed information on how long it takes to download your website as well as how much bandwidth it uses up. Use the Blog Workbook from the your 7-Day Blogging eCourse to record your bandwidth and disc space usage.

“Smush” the Pictures

When you take a digital picture a lot of information is stored with that picture such as type of camera, the lens that was used and lots of other information. You want to use the highest quality images you can with the smallest file size without losing quality. The best way to accomplish this is to save bandwidth and thus decrease your loading time by removing the unnecessary information from pictures. SmushIt is a WordPress plugin that automatically decreases the size of images, without losing any quality, anytime you upload an image to your blog which dramatically increases your blog speed.

Upgrade WordPress

Upgrading your WordPress version is just a good move because upgrades usually include several performance upgrades, security enhancements and fix issues which could slow down your server. WordPress is great about notifying you when there’s an upgrade available and you can set it to upgrade automatically for you.

Pick the Right Web-host

Your webhost is where your website lives. The equipment that the webhost uses will determine how fast your website is served up to your readers. I have had many compliments on how fast my websites are delivered to my readers. I offer webhosting at Monetization Magic for very modest prices. My hosting is built on the same type of backbone as HostGator. HostGator is the only other hosting service that I can reasonably recommend. Use Coupon Code “MonetizeMe” to receive a discount of $9.94 off the package price. Coupon codes will not apply to domain names or any service which is not a hosting account.

Reducing the Number of Plug-ins

Obviously this is an essential step to decrease the load time. Every WordPress blogger uses lots of plug-ins but are they all really needed? Just ask yourself whether a plug-in adds value to your blog. If it does than keep it running, otherwise get rid of it. Basically run a clean, well maintained machine for best performance.

Optimize your Database Every Week

Optimizing your database is important because it reduces the load time. You can either do this manually or just use a plugin, either way should work fine. If you want to use the plugin then download the Optimize DB plug-in, upload it to your blog and activate it. Then go to Tools ? Optimize DB and click on Optimize Now. If you want to do this manually then go and log into phpMyAdmin. Find your WordPress tables and select all of them by clicking on the check boxes. At the bottom of the page you should then be able to choose the Optimize Table and/or Repair Table option. This will reduce the database size.

Delete Blog Post Revisions

Blog post revisions are the snapshots of the blog post every time you publish. If you’re like me, you will create the initial post, review it, revise it and then republish again. Repeat until satisfied with the outcome. There have been times when I revise a blog post 30 or more times before I’m satisfied! All the earlier versions where I wasn’t satisfied with them simply aren’t necessary. They are just cluttering up the database. To remove them, login to your control panel and use phpAdmin to access the database. Then enter this query to delete post revisions:

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = “revision”;

This command will delete all the revisions while keeping the actual current blog post intact.

Prevent Content Scrapers from Consuming your Bandwidth

There are a lot of content scrapers these days. What they usually do is to visit your website and simply copy some of your content. They then go ahead and paste this content onto their own site. The problem is that they usually also copy images which link back to your site. Every time a user takes a look at their copied content your server will have to serve the image which consumes bandwidth. This is also refer to as hotlinking. In order to prevent this add this code to the .htaccess file in the root directory and replace the blog and image URL:

RewriteEngine On

#Replace ?mysite.com/ with your blog url

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+.)?mysite.com/ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$

#Replace /images/nohotlink.jpg with your “don’t hotlink” image url

RewriteRule .*.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /images/nohotlink.jpg [L]

That should prevent content scrapers from hotlinking.

Use the Right Format when Saving Pictures

Some people make the mistake of using the wrong image formats when saving pictures. The three most popular image extensions are .png, .jpg and .gif. Each of these formats has different advantages. A picture image taken with a camera and without a lot of writing is best saved with the .jpg extension. Simple images with only a color background and some writing, without any fancy effects are best saved as .png or .gif. The best way to learn the correct format to use is to simply go ahead and save pictures in all three formats. Then take a look at the file size and the image quality. That way you will get a feel for when to use which image format.

Host Your Own Code and Images

Whenever you include a script, image or something similar from another website, the browser has to perform an additional DNS query for that website in order to find out its IP address. This additional query adds to the response time for your website. Note to Affiliate Marketers: Whenever you are deciding on promoting a product as an affiliate, don’t just copy and paste the code that is given to you on the affiliate page. Around 80% of these banners have a bigger file size then they should have. Be sure to download and optimize the pictures using Smush.it before uploading them to your blog. Sometimes also changing the image format helps to reduce the size of the banners.

If you’ve been to the grocery store recently, it is no doubt that you have noticed the cost of groceries rising. In terms of your budget, you can either cut expenses or increase your income. This particular downturn in the economy has been around for quite a while. What can you do when you’ve already cut your budget to the bone and beyond?

Basically you need to create new income right now. A 2010 survey by the Conference Research Group revealed that as many as 55 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with their current jobs. You could go out and get another job you hate and try to weave your life around that or you could create something with what you already have to bring in additional money while keeping your sanity. If you’re going to expend the effort, you might as well create something that you love, right? Obviously, we can’t just print money like the government does, so what can you do? You have expertise and interests that are your gifts to mankind. It is your duty to share those gifts with your fellow man! You will be amazed at what happens and how enriched your life becomes when you share your gifts.

1. Start your own blog about your passion. Starting a blog about your passion is very easy to do. There are many resources out on the internet including a FREE 7-Day eCourse on this very website. If you are passionate about a subject, chances are you know a great deal about it. Because you know a great deal about it, you won’t be struggling to find content to write for your blog and the time you invest will be pleasurable. This is an activity that can be performed any where you have an internet connection. When you use Google Adsense and visitors to your blog click on your links, you make money! Just concentrate on providing great value to your readers and the money will come.

2. Teach a class about your passion. Sharing your information and expertise about your topic is great and it’s even better when you meet other people with similar interests. The best way to do this is to teach a class about your topic. You will not only meet folks with similar interests but you will meet those who are looking for solutions to problems that are related to your topic. Take the time to speak with your new students and find out about them. Find out why they attending your class and ask them how you can be of assistance to them. Provided that you are not selling anything at your initial class, you will find many restaurants with meeting rooms who are willing to provide you with meeting space free of charge.

3. Offer services that surround your passion. Once you have had the opportunity to mingle with your students, you will have a good idea of what their needs are surrounding your passion. You can then either create services to solve their problems or find someone who already provides that service and you can negotiate a deal to be paid for putting their service in front of your students. When the students pay for the service, you get paid. You’ve saved the service provider money on advertising and you’ve helped to solve your students problems. By doing this, you have created value for all the people involved including yourself!

4. Sell products affiliated with your passion. You can also either create products that your readers and students want or you can find them and make them aware of the products. Once again, you will want to create an affiliate relationship with the vendor prior to introducing the product to your reader/student so that you can be paid when they purchase the product.

5. Write an e-book pertaining to your passion. Because you are so passionate about your topic and you have created hungry readers with your blog, you can easily write an electronic book or e-book to further education your audience on your topic of choice. Once the eBook is written, you can sell it on your blog for another influx of money. You might even consider creating a workbook that could be used as a complementary part of your classes.

Hopefully, this gets your creative juices flowing about how to begin to create avenues of income surrounding your passion. Creating value for your readers is your number one priority! As the old adage says, build it and they will come. You can be paid handsomely for solving problems for other people. The first step begins with your 7-Day eCourse. It’s free so sign up today!

Archives for April 2011