A few days back I was reading this interesting post on BloggingTips.com on how to plug an eBook on your blog and I instantly remembered all those ugly looking eBook sales/landing pages that you STILL find all over the Internet, like we’re still way back in ’98.

Do you have a good product to sell on your blog? Then why not give it a real chance. Why tell your visitors straight from the sales page that they are either stupid (“Please X, let me buy your book for only $29.99!) or that your have no idea how to make a unique presentation for a unique item!

Yes, I’m sure that almost every internet marketer will tell you how those ugly pages are effective, and how their “call to action” phrases and messages are really effective. Allow me to disagree! I hate them. You hate them. We run away the second we land on them!

A sale is not make by the number of colors and fonts you use on your landing page. It’s not made by the number of screen scrolls a user has to make in order to get to the part where the “call to action” makes him feel small and stupid compared to you, the big internet marketing guru!

A sale is made based on the quality of your products and ease of the (guided) buying process!
Click here to read the full blog post!

Setting up correctly the permalinks in WordPress is one of the things that contribute to your blog’s better search engine optimization (SEO). Using relevant slugs for categories, pages and posts will help improve your general ranking. Those looking to get the most out of these permalinks will want to remove the ‘category base’.

There are about a dozen tutorials out there, telling you how to handle this job on your own, editing PHP files, the .htaccess file and adjusting WordPress settings, but what you actually need is one small and efficient plugin that does it all for your, with no extra effort, other than the download and installation process.

WP No Category Base

The WP No Category Base plugin will remove the category base from all your linkd in a SEO friendly way, using 301 redirects for all your old permalinks to the new ones. Also, it is compatible with other Sitemap plugins and works with multi-level categories.
Click here to read the full blog post!

Let’s play! Today’s post is a fun, creative exercise that I’d be happy to complete with your help through the comments section. What is the exercise about? Blogging tips, of course.

This post is part of the change I wish to bring to Blogsessive and get closer to you folks, your needs and thoughts!

What I will do: Using the ODD letters (A, C, E, G, I, K, M, O, Q, S, U, W, Y) of the English alphabet I will list 13 blogging tips, each in a sentence starting with that letter.

What you could do: Share your tips and views by completing the sentences starting with EVEN letters (B, D, F, H, J, L, N, P, R, T, V, X, Z).

I’m sure that each and everyone of you has something to share with the community, so let’s get creative!

The Blogging Alphabet of Blog Tips

A. Acknowledge the latest trends in your area of blogging. Always stay up to date, informed.

B. …

C. Connect with other people, with bloggers in your niche. Offer help. Network. Friends are some of bloggers’ greatest “assets”.
Click here to read the full blog post!

A new wave of phishing attempts makes its way through the direct messages (DM) system on Twitter.

You might receive a DM from one of the people you follow that could look like this:

Username: haha, that u on here? http://videos.ds*****w.com/

Clicking the link will take you to a page that for the untrained eye looks exactly like the Twitter login page. DO NOT enter your username & password. It’s not a Twitter API or anything. You’d just be giving away your authentication data.

Also, don’t be quick to judge the one sending you the DM as a spammer and report him/her. He might only be the victim of one such attack.

Most internet marketing gurus preach only two important things for your website to be successful – Great content and great promotion. All other things that you do to a website are merely complementary to either of these two jobs.

Most webmasters, in order to diversify income and minimize risk often put their eggs in more than one basket, by owning multiple websites in multiple niches. It is a great strategy, but it ends up becoming a cumbersome process in managing a gamut of websites. There are webmasters who own as many as 50-70 websites. How do you ensure that each of these blogs are updated regularly with content, are promoted equally? This requires a lot of organizing effort from the webmaster.

The first step in getting to better management is to list down all your blogs. I would recommend the use of a software like Microsoft Excel to create and manage the list. You may always use this master database to add new websites or delete domains from the list when you have decided that a certain website is dead for you.

An important thing you need to realize is that not all niches are the same. The quantity of content, the frequency of updates and the competition in each niche are all different. Let us take two niches for example: “technology tips” and “Russian Mafia tattoos”. I would classify these two websites on the two extremes of all the factors mentioned. “Technology news/tips” has a lot of content to cover, needs a high update frequency and also has an amazingly high competition. “Russian Mafia tattoos” is a niche with very little content to add, does not require frequent updates and has little to no competition.
Click here to read the full blog post!

I say FRIEND, in bold and caps, because if you’re reading this, that is what you are to me. Friends are there for you, for better or worse, and considering the events that lead to such a huge gap in article publishing in Blogsessive, you the ones that are still accessing the blog and are still subscribed to its RSS are definitely good friends.

To write about everything that happened in the past 2 to 3 months would take me at least twice the amount of time. Changes and events in every single aspect of my life, most of them for the worse. All these events kept me away from you, from the blog, from being in contact with the faithful readers.

I’ve been also struggling with the idea of selling the blog in order to allow it to survive and evolve while I took care of my personal life. I couldn’t. For the past year and a half this blog has been my home, the home where I’ve welcomed each and everyone of you. The home where all of you have been fantastic guests. I couldn’t give it up.

Instead, with the risk of falling back a few steps, I’ve decided to focus my whole energy in getting through this period only to find out that GOOD THINGS HAPPEN to those who wait, those who have faith and patience.

So, here I am, once again before you, thanking you for being here (which is one way of manifesting your support, even though none knew it was needed)!

Good things happen and will happen once more on Blogsessive. There will be a change in this blogs perspective. It will open up more to the community, and that’s why, for the “come back article” I have prepared a very useful post from the talented blogger Anand Srinivasan who will be sharing with us some of his tips on managing and prioritizing the management of a larger blog or website portfolio.

Also, among the new posts I’ve been preparing, the release of new, free WordPress theme is imminent. For now, a quick preview of this theme, called Corporate WP

See you all back tomorrow!

Alex