I did get just about everything restored on my blog, except for some of the comments. If you recently left a non-spamming comment and you don’t see it, then I didn’t erase it. I wasn’t able to restore it cause I have my WordPress database backup setup to save once per week.

Backup all of your Work…

I know it’s cliche, but the experts are right about backing up all of your work, especially your blogs and websites. We live in a unpredictable world and your sites could be hacked, or any number of things could happen to them at any given time. I was lucky because I was a little stubborn for the first year or so of internet marketing and I didn’t ever backup any of my work online. Until I had read an article about someone losing their entire blog they had spent a few years on. That scared me and I started Googling for the best way to backup my wordpress blogs.

How I backup my WordPress blogs…

It’s actually really easy to backup a wordpress blog. I installed the WordPress database backup plugin (WP-DB – Backup). This is a really easy plugin to use and has many functions on how and when you want your wordpress blogs backed up. I have mine set to email my backup to me once a week.

How to Restore your WordPress Blog easily…

Since I have very minimal tech skills, I thought it would be really difficult and take a lot of time for me to restore the content on my blog. I found this page Restoring your Database from Backup and followed their straight forward guide. All it took me was a couple minutes and everything was restored like nothing had happened. What’s really cool about restoring your WP blog this way is that even if someone did hack into your WordPress blog, you can restore it through your cpanel in your hosting and it will restore your old password, even if someone hacked into your WP blog and changed the password. Of course change the password once you get back in.

If you aren’t backing up your WordPress blogs and any other work you do online, then one day you could lose all of your hard work. I never thought it would happen to me but since it did, I’m so glad I started backing up my WP blogs. The process to backup and restore a WordPress blog is quick and simple, even for a non-techie like myself.

This isn’t the most exciting post or anything, but just in case it happens to anyone else, I figured I’d write about what happened and how I fixed my WordPress login error.

I had created another mini niche blog not to long ago and I was playing around in the dashboard under the “general settings”. For some odd reason I changed my blog url in the “WordPress address” url spot and pushed save. The next thing I notice is I can’t login to the WP-Admin and I get an error message saying that url doesn’t exist. On top of that my actual site had no WP theme, it was just a bunch of content and images and basically I took WordPress off of the site entirely and didn’t know what to do. I had one of those “what the **** moments” or simply put, confused.

This is how I fixed it…

Of course I did some Googling and found this very helpful page http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL

All I needed to do was enter my cpanel, went into my file manager, found my blog and edited the “WP-config.php”. I only had to enter these two lines below and hit save.

• define(‘WP_HOME’,'http://enter yoursite here.com’);
• define(‘WP_SITEURL’,'http://enter yoursite here.com’);

There’s even a better way of doing this and it’s explained in the link I gave you above. If you ever find yourself in the same situation or can’t login to your WP-admin for your wordpress blog, then this may work for you.

In this post I’ve really showcased my technical and design capabilities by kicking myself out of my own blog, only kidding. I have no skills and that is one reason why I use WordPress. It is very easy for just about anyone to use and any technical problems are usually quite simple to resolve on your own.

This is a great way for anyone new to internet or affiliate marketing to make their first dollar. After a little experience, you could easily produce a few of these mini niche sites per day and make quite a bit of extra money at home!

I like using WordPress for mini niche blogs because it’s a simple, yet effective way to make quick landing pages that look professional and they rank well in the search engines. If you’re already using WP to blog then why not make some extra money by spending a little time every week creating a mini niche site. Unless you’re already a successful blogger, these mini niche sites will probably end up bringing you more money than you’re blog does, easily.

Let’s get started…….

I’m not going into details or anything like that, I’m going to quickly go over the basic procedures. If you need some extra help, or don’t fully understand everything I’m talking about, then checkout some of my “popular posts” on the sidebar to the right or leave a comment.

1. Find a good affiliate product or service that pays out pretty well. I’ve found that clickbank products do quite well, but actually just about any good affiliate offer can work well too.

2. Look for a good domain name that’s relevant to your affiliate offer you chose. Also, choose a name that will help it to rank well in the serp’s.

3. After your domain has properly propagated over, install WP onto it. Should be as easy as a few clicks through your control panel. Depends on which hosting you have.

4. It’s time to find and install a relevant WordPress theme. I have a ton of premium themes but I also use the FREE Wp themes as well. Just depends on the affiliate product I am creating a niche site for. You may want to checkout this affiliate theme, which allows you to quickly and easily create just about any niche site using WP.

5. There are many different formats that you can use to make your niche site. I prefer the review style because it’s quick, simple and converts quite easily. Now there are two different types of review styles that are best. The “single review style” where you do a review and only write about the affiliate product you chose. Show the value of the product and the benefits for purchasing the product or service. Actually owning or purchasing the service or product first will make your review more believable and convert better, but not absolutely necessary.

Then there’s the “multiple comparison review style”. This is where you would choose usually 3 affiliate products that are all similar. Let’s say you are using a health niche, choose 3 products that help people lose weight. You do a little review and show the value of all three usually in a ordered list from #1 being the best product and the product you actually want them to purchase. All the way down to the #3, last product. This style allows your visitors to compare similar products and gives you a higher chance of making a sale. Trust me, it works!

Other than writing compelling content that presells your affiliate offer, it helps to add any relevant visuals. Like videos, images, background theme, header image and even banners from your affiliate product.

Another thing many affiliates like to add is a “optin-form” (giving your visitors something FREE if they sign-up like any relevant ebook or report will increase sign-ups) this will allow you to stay in contact with them and hopefully make a purchase with you later on.

6. Now it’s time to get traffic to your WP niche site that you just created. Here’s a plus for this type of site, you can get organic traffic to it via the search engines, bookmarking on social media sites, blog commenting and articles. Also, these type of “mini niche sites” can do well for Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising for certain keywords. Google Adwords is my favorite ppc program.

TIPS – the more value and insight you provide, the better. Also, don’t make your niche site look like a sales pitch. The more natural (meaning not just trying to make a sale thru your affiliate link) it looks to the reader, the better it will convert.

If you’re a internet or affiliate marketer already, you probably made dozens of these niche sites using WordPress. But for the new bloggers who use WP already, but never made a mini niche site, should definitely give this a try and you should be able to make some extra money on the side. I’ve found creating and marketing these type of sites can help sharpen your internet marketing skills, which you can also implement on your blogs.

Many people start a blog just to get their feet wet. They write and write and start churning out content every day. Some get few visitors and get discouraged. Some get lots of visitors and their blog keeps getting bigger and more popular. Whatever the case, at some point, they take a look at their blog and ask the classic question – How can I make money with this thing?

Luckily, with the worldwide popularity of WordPress, there are a whole slew of plugins that can help either a budding or experienced blogger make money. Some are free, some cost a little money to use, but whatever the price, here are 7 WordPress plugins that can make you money;

AdSense Manager
This WordPress plugin makes it incredibly easy to put up and maintain ads from Google’s AdSense program on your blog. Instead of having to go through complex steps in order to get the AdSense ads up on your blog, AdSense Manager does it for you, generating the AdSense code automatically and allowing you to place and change position of the ads through the use of widgets.

Ad Rotator
AdRotator is a wonderful little plugin for those of you who want to best use the ad space you currently have on your blog. This WordPress plugin will automatically rotate the ads you chose to appear on a certain place of your blog. This is controlled by text files created by the user. The great thing about this plugin is it can be used not only for AdSense, but also Clicksor, Chikita and other ad programs, as well as displaying text messages, photos, or almost anything you want to put in the space.

Smart Ads
This is an interesting WordPress plugin that is supposed to be kind to your regular readers by not throwing large amounts of ads at them, yet still monetize the archives of your blog. SmartAds will place ads both above and below your posts, yet implement a time delay. Instead of the ads going live the day you publish your post, they will appear when your posts are 10 days old or 30 days old and so on. Additionally, you can set the word length as an additional parameter – shorter posts get no ads, for example. Flexible and powerful.

FeedFooter
This little WordPress plugin allows the blogger to place footers under the RSS feed at the end of the post. This footer can be filled up with ads (maximum of 10 ads), images, affiliate banners or the html code of your choice. A nice way to get a click or two before your reader leaves.

WP125 Ad Management
This plugin is great for the person who has little 125×125 ads on their blog. It is a multi-functional plugin that allows you to maintain, change, deactivate and upload ads on your blog – all with incredible ease.

BayRSS2.0 )
While the name may not be catchy or fancy, this plugin can help generate money through not just ads, but affiliate sales. Diversifying the various sources of income one makes from their blog is always a good idea. Installing this RSS feed wrapper plugin will do just that, allowing you to make money from both eBay and Amazon affiliate sales.

WordPress Paypal Donation Plugin
Begging for money is not only an honorable profession it can also be quite lucrative. Take this old profession and update it for the internet age and your blog. This plugin installs a small “donate” button, allowing users who appreciate your posts but are unwilling to click on ads or buy something through Amazon to still financially support their favorite blogs.

So there you have it – 7 WordPress plugins that can make you money. Maybe you’ll get a lot, maybe enough to cover your hosting fees, maybe just enough for a cheap cup of coffee. But you’ll never know until you install them and give them a shot.

This guest post was submitted by Melissa Tamura. Melissa writes about medical coding certification for Zen College Life, a blog about online schools.

The creators of the Socrates WordPress theme are Dan Nickerson and Joel Comm, two of the top internet marketing experts in the world. They both have been around for a long time and have impeccable reputations.

Easily change the theme to 1000′s of different unique designs with just a few clicks and in a matter of minutes. Niche Bloggers and affiliate marketers will appreciate the low price and it’s capability to be used for almost any niche. Talk about REAL Point and Click formatting.

Make Money and Monetize your site with the optional built in Adsense and Clickbank feature. As you can see below, your adds will be nicely blended in, or change them around with just a few clicks!

Click Here to watch Socrates Theme Video

One of my favorite features is the Header Generator. Over 160 different headers are included like the ones below, or easily add your own.

Effortlessly change the sidebar layout from many different combinations, then point and click.

Socrates WordPress theme Features:

• 150+ Niche header designs
• built in header generator
• Create 1000′s of different designs within minutes!
• built in adsense and clickbank monetization
• Multiple sidebar layouts
• Lifetime upgrades for the Socrates theme
• Social media sliders
• Search engine optimized
• Pick and choose different backgrounds
• Custom navigation bars
• Customize styling and Color options
• Video tutorials to lead you step by step
• and much more………

This theme has some truly incredible features to easily customize just about anything you want. Other similar themes can cost you at least a couple hundred dollars. But you can Purchase Socrates theme for WordPress today for only $47 for a single domain license or $77 for unlimited domains.

This theme is especially great for beginners or internet marketers who create several different blogs in different niches. You should check it out and compare it to the other WP themes out there. I hope this Socrates theme review has shed a little light on what this theme is all about.

Ecommerce is an attractive way to do business, but the cost of entry can be prohibitive for small businesses and individuals who want to sell online. For this group of people there may be hope: ecommerce plugins are available that take the free open source WordPress blogging and content management system platform and convert it into a platform for online sales. Here are 8 plugins that transform WordPress into an ecommerce store!

1. Quick Shop: this plugin supports any WordPress installation that has sidebar widgets enabled. This is, in fact, a sidebar widget that displays the contents of the shopping cart and comes with a tool that allows you to add products to your blog posts. Quick Shop uses TinyMCE for inventory control and product listings. It integrates with the CFormsII API so it is easily customizable. Formatting for the Quick Shop add-in is governed by settings within the WordPress administration dashboard.

2. YAL Shopping Cart: for a simple shopping cart, YAK is quite a powerful solution. When plugged into WordPress, YAK associates merchandise with a blog post. In fact, the number of the post is what YAK uses for the code for each item. Customers can then browse through the available products, add them to the customizable shopping card, and check out. The admin login screen has a page for order management and processing, another for managing products, and another for reporting.

3. WP e-Commerce: this powerful addon for WordPress allows users to sell tangible products, digital downloads, and even services through the blogging platform. This free plugin integrates with PayPal, Google Checkout, and Payment Express to make payment processing painless. It also includes marketing tools that integrate with Facebook and email to help promote your store. You can use your own code to customize WP-e-Commerce and use built-in themes to make your WordPress store unique. Also, a premium version of WP eCommerce is available, so you can add even more features as your online business grows.

4. PHPurchase: if you need to offer options for products that affect price, PHPurchase may be the solution for you. You define the product variations available and the way they impact the item’s cost. You can also add custom fields for each item for sale to accept special details such as names for engraving and other information that you need to make sales of your products smooth and customer friendly. This flexibility comes with other strong features like an order management interface, store promotions, and shipping options. PHPurchase sells for $49 for a single site license. Other licensing options are also available.

5. Ecommerce Theme: for a fully functional store that works with WordPress out of box, Ecommerce Theme is a strong option. With this plugin installed, you can feature products on your site’s homepage, and have full control over the number and manner your products are displayed. Full search engine optimization options combine with powerful store management features to make this low cost WordPress store something to consider when you decide to sell online. This WordPress ecommerce platform sells for $79.95.

6. ArePayPal: this is a unique WordPress plugin that allows you to sell blog content online. Now you can sell your expertise rather than just giving it away. You have answers, customers have PayPal, setting up a win-win situation. When users come to the page that contains information they need, they are shown instructions on how to proceed in order to view the content.

7. WP Auctions: start using your WordPress blog to sell auction style with the addition of this simple plugin. You get to add some excitement to your selling while escaping the costly fees associated with popular auction sites. WP Auctions features product image management, buy it now options, rss feeds, and third party advertising. Convenient integration with PayPal makes buying from your auctions a pleasant experience. This plugin sells for $29.99.

8. Shopp: this is a commercial ecommerce plugin for WordPress that features drag and drop functionality for configuring product images, special product searches, order history information, shipping and discounts, as well as promotional coupon codes. A single site license costs $55.

This is a guest post brought to you by Tom Walker, a blogger who works with a specialist store offering HP supplies in the UK. He is also the lead editor for their blog where he focuses on the topics of print media and advertising design.

The Truth is, some people or some sites may not do well or like this type of method of promoting their offers and services. NOT everything works for every person and every site. Test it out and experiment until you find a combination that works well for your particular site. I know these two tools do have great potential if used properly.

Try them both out for FREE. Take advantage of their FREE trial versions below and see if you like them, or if they work well for your blogs/websites. If not, then no big loss to you, just remove them.

MaxBlogPress Stripe Ads

I actually have seen stripe ads on several sites before, but what made me finally implement it on some of my blogs is that I see Gmail and Yahoo use similar type of advertising. Go to your Gmail right now and look at the add on the top outlining of the Gmail inbox. Don’t you see the add in white lettering, and Yahoo does similar type of advertising. Obviously if they are using this type of promotion then it must work well. I’ve added this plugin a few weeks ago and have had a good click thru rate and have made 2 sales from using it. It’s all about your add, poor add, then low CTR.

MaxBlogPress Stripe Ads is a Word Press (WP) Plugin so it’s really easy to install. There is a FREE trial version of it but you will need to register for it, only takes a minute. It’s really great because you can alter it just about anyway you want to. Change the color, add as many affiliate links, offers or specials that you want. You can even alternate the adds to show different offers. It’s simple to use and may work wonders for you. You can even change the position of the stripe ads to appear on your blog.

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Ultimate Footer Ad

Many people may think that the ultimate footer add is a WordPress (WP) Plugin, when in fact it’s not. It can be used on just about any type of blog or website. I think using both tools (footer ad and stripe ads) on the same site may be a advertising overload, so I suggest to sticking with just one per site, but it also matters on what type of site and niche you are in. I wanted to test both of them out on different sites to see which one worked well for each site.

I’m telling you a secret that not many affiliate marketers may not tell you. To get the FREE 30 day trial Ultimate Footer Ad click on that link and then once on the site you can just exit out and a Special offer will appear for your free trial.

I really like the Ultimate Footer Add cause it’s really professional looking and you can change it up to add subscribers to your blogs/websites, newsletter signups, and create or increase your email list quickly. Many of the sites I’ve seen who use the ultimate footer add have immensely increased CTR’s and sign-ups. Most of them claim they are at least doubling their sales or sign ups.

Ultimate Footer Ad Video showing different templates

Purchase Ultimate Footer ad v2.1 which is their latest version and get a bonus of 72 footer graphics like in the video above , life time upgrades and their price has been dropped down to only $47. There is also a 365 day guarantee, so you have a long time to test it out. I tried to find a legit discount for it, but they were all old and no longer working.

I hope one of these tools or programs will help improve your conversions, subscribers, or sign-ups. Remember, they may work well for some niches and sites and they may not. Success with internet marketing is all about experimenting and testing things on your own.

Why Not use a FREE hosted blog?

Yes, there are several places to create a FREE hosted blog, but there are several disadvantages of not having your very own “self hosted blog” on your own domain name. With a FREE Hosted blog you are sharing their hosting and domain name. That means they can have complete control over your blog, so making money from it will be tough, or not even allowed. You won’t have a control panel for you to have complete access over your sites or be able to see all your stats. It’s very unprofessional and many won’t take your website seriously. Make sure you consider these things if you are planning on creating a online business, or making real money from your blog down the road. Also, having your own “self hosted blog” will make you more serious, committed and motivated on reaching success online. A FREE hosted blog url will be look like this, let’s say I’m using blogspot, then my domain name for this blog would be: mathewday.blogspot.com instead of www.mathewday.com.

The basic 3 things that you will need to create your own blog are, a domain name, hosting, and a blog platform. A domain name is the url like for my blog it’s mathewday.com. Hosting is where your blog is being stored at and allows the public to see it on the internet. Blogging platform will allow you to design, build and add content to your blog easily and quickly.

Why use WordPress (WP) the #1 blog platform?

WordPress is the simplest and fastest way for anyone to create professional looking blogs or websites with the least amount of effort. There are two different wordpress sites. WordPress.com is a place to create a “FREE hosted blog” and then there is WordPress.org which is for “self hosted blogs” and you will need your own hosting and domain. WordPress is the #1 blogging platform used by newbies and the Top Professional Bloggers. You don’t need to know any coding, programming or be a designer to have a awesome looking blog. WP uses plugins, which allow you to add just about anything to your blog with just a few clicks. Changing your theme or layout is easily done with the click of the mouse. Oh yeah, WordPress is 100% FREE, all you need is your own hosting.

Why Hostgator (HG)?

Hostgator is the #1 hosting company with millions of domains being hosted. They’ve received numerous awards and is the most dependable company I’ve ever used. You can host unlimited websites on one hosting account. WordPress can be installed with just a few clicks using HG, and this is the hosting I use as well. I changed over to Host gator a few years ago when I started having problems with my old hosting company and I couldn’t ever get in touch with their customer service. Everyone was telling me to changeover to hostgator, especially for WP blogs. Their customer service is intelligent and the BEST I’ve ever dealt with.  They have 24/7 live support, or you can contact them by email and phone. They make everything very easy for beginners with all their tutorials, forum and their easy to use Cpanel- it’s where you’ll be able to have full control over your websites or blogs. Very inexpensive pricing and features that can’t be beat. With prices starting at only $5 dollars a month, but I’ve got some coupon codes and discounts for you to use below.

Here are the basic steps below to Create your WordPress blog with hostgator……….

First off, if you don’t have your own hosting or want to transfer from your old host to HostGator then Click Here first and get a HG account. You’ll have to choose a domain name for your hosting account if this is your first one with them. Choose a domain name that either will be the name for your blog, brand name for your business or you can choose to just use your own name, like I did for this blog. One of my hosting accounts with HG is under this domain name “mathewday.com” but I have like 20 other domain names under this one hosting account. I suggest you get at least the Baby Plan which allows you to add unlimited websites or domains, plus all the other extras like, free transfers, FREE templates, site builder and much more. Choose whatever plan that best suits your needs.

I know of 2 Legit Hostgator discounts or coupon codes that still work currently. The first one is a 20% off your hosting purchase. This will be deducted automatically when you total everything up at checkout. This is a nice discount they give to new HG customers only. You’ll only get the 20% off one time, so you might want to pay for more than 1 month. The other discount is pay only 1 cent for your first month and you need to add coupon code wordpress if that no longer is working then enter hgc25 at the checkout and pay only 1 cent for your first month.

Now, for those of you who just opened a new account with HG it’s going to take a little time for your domain name servers (dns) to propagate properly before you can see your site/blog online. Also, you’ll get a email with details on how to get into your Cpanel (control panel). This shouldn’t take to long and if you have any questions about it just talk to your HG support and they’ll let you know the status.

How to install WordPress on hostgator

Once you have access, log into your cpanel for your HG hosting, scroll down and click on the Fantistico De Luxe icon in the software/services section.

Now, once your in, look on the left hand side and you’ll see all the different scripts you can install onto your domain. Click the wordpress link, then click on the new installation link and now choose what domain name you want to install wordpress onto. Fill out “Admin access data”, this is what you’ll need to access your WP dashboard, so remember this name and password. Fill out the “Base configuration” with the name you want shown for your posts that you write, email address and your website’s domain name for your blog. Click install if everything looks correct and then enter a email for them to send this information so you’ll have it just in case you need it in the future. Now you’re done and just installed WP on your new domain.

After you’ve installed WordPress onto your domain name, enter the domain name into your address bar and checkout your new WordPress blog.   Now look for the “Meta” section on the right sidebar and “login” to your WP blog. This is where you’ll be able to get into your WP dashboard and add content, change things around and change your theme/template with just a few clicks. Enter the admin nickname and password you previously created when you were installing wordpress onto this domain.

Once you are in your WP dashboard scroll down and look on the left for the section that says appearance. Now just click on “add new themes” and you’ll be able to find new themes or layouts and install them with a few clicks.

How to install WordPress if you already have hostgator hosting, but added another domain

This is the same steps you would take if you already had hostgator hosting and just added a domain to your hosting account. If you purchase another domain name with hostgator, remember to first change the dns for the domain to your hostgator servers after purchasing, and do a addon domain in your cpanel. After you do those two things, then you can add wordpress onto it just like above.

Now all you need to do is add content, SEO, and work on getting traffic to your blog. I know you’ll be happy with hostgator hosting and with wordpress. Honestly I barely have made any money online with my FREE hosted blogs, but once I got my own domains and used wordpress, I’ve created a real online business and do this full time now. I hope my tutorial on how to create a wordpress blog with hostgator was helpful and not to hard to follow. Let me know if you have any questions by sending me a email through the contact button on top.

What I like about the WhyDoWork Plugin

With this plugin, you can add Adsense adds on your WP blog with just a few clicks, without having to modify your template. Big Deal right, that’s what they all do. Here’s where it starts getting better. You can pick and choose where you Don’t want your adds to show up too, just enter the post ID or just use their no-adsense tag.

It’s gets even better, choose X amount of days you want adds to show up on certain posts. Choose 15 days and your adsense adds will only show up on your posts that are at least 15 days old, only. A ton of different variations are available through this feature. The best part of this option allows you to not directly affect any of your loyal readers with the adds, but will show the adds to traffic coming to your older posts, great for search engine traffic.

The Why-Do-Work Adsense Plugin took little time to set-up, and I’ve seen no problems with it so far. I’ve already seen a little increase of clicks with my adds, and it should definitely help me make more money with adsense as soon as I am more established, and get more search traffic. I was just content with my regular adsense plugin, but this one just has some really cool features. It’s totally FREE, so why not give it a try.

WP theme designers can submit their themes for battle and bloggers can vote for the theme they want to win.   Every week one theme will win and be added to Theme Wars site.  This is great for designers and bloggers for more exposure for designers and being able to choose what we bloggers actually want in a theme not just having to choose whatever they have to offer.

I heard the winning designers will make a nice percentage per every theme sold if their theme wins and bloggers and other people who are interested in purchasing any themes from theme wars can purchase single themes or pay a mthly membership like a wp themes club and have access to all of them.

If you’ve ever wanted to have your opinion heard about what type of wp themes you wanted available to purchase then vote now for this weeks battle against two great themes  at Theme Wars and help choose this weeks winner.