Anyone who runs their own blog knows that the biggest battle they face is first acquiring the initial traffic to come and visit it, and then to convince that traffic to come back again and again. Visitors to blogs are usually seeking either to be informed or entertained and if they decide upon viewing a blog that there is nothing interesting there, they may never come back again. The strategy of creating an environment where traffic doesn’t want to leave a blog, but instead wants to stay and explore it more fully is called making it sticky.

Having traffic stick around for as long as possible is the kind of thing that can lead to a blog becoming a big success. One of the best ways to keep these visitors coming back is to use various plugins that add unique and sometimes entertaining options to the content provided on the blog. Most serious bloggers already use the Wordpress blogging platform to handle the mechanics of their site and it comes with thousands of plugins available that perform a number of different features. Here is a look at five Wordpress plugins that are designed to make a blog more sticky.

Show Top Commentators
One of the best ways for a blogger to have their blog become successful is to help it develop into a true community. Nothing fosters a feeling of community more than communication, and in blogging that communication usually takes place in the form of comments made in response to the individual blog posts. There is no better way to reward the readers who comment most than by using the Show Top Commentators plugin which will display in the sidebar the name or names of the people leaving the most comments. When blog readers see their name on display for all to see, they will only be encouraged more to participate in the ongoing discussions. Full Story »

Facebook has quickly become on of the top social networking sites in the world. It continues to add hundreds of thousands of new users each week. The closest competitors would be MySpace and Twitter. Facebook adds tremendous value to the social aspect of social networking.This is particularly helpful for people who are looking to do some advertising with Facebook. Internet marketers are jumping all over the new advertising possibilities with social networking and Facebook is at the top of the list of delivering effective promotions. This is made possible because of the millions of people who have made Facebook a daily part of their lives.

Facebook Ads For Targeted Advertising

Facebook has an advertising program they released to the public in 2008 that is a competitor to Google Adwords. Launched in a small Beta program first, Facebook Ads, has become a very strong leader in pay-per-click advertising. The best thing about Facebook Ads is that your ads are extremely targeted based on the profiles of Facebook users. Full Story »

Every so often, a new unexpected method of becoming wealthy or at least making large amounts of money appears on the horizon. The more forward thinking individuals with a vision, move quickly into action and become wealthy, financially independent, or at least better-off than they were previously. One such lucrative method towards attaining this wealth is Facebook. Facebook has fast become the internet’s newest method of making money. It boasts the ability to reach more than 200 million active members. All of these members are potential consumers interested in one product or another. The capability of connecting merchants to these consumers through the use of Facebook Ads becomes practical.

Advertising on Facebook is relatively simple and fairly inexpensive. The ability to target your audience by such particulars as location, age, gender, or areas of interests, make marketing on Facebook an extremely attractive venture. Having a greater control over the amount spent on advertising is also appealing and you have that option as Facebook offers both paying by impressions (CPM) and paying per click (CPC). Full Story »

I was sitting at my local neighborhood coffeehouse the other day and couldn’t get over how many of the people with laptops were on Facebook at the time. Out of the thirty or so people that were there at the time 18 people had a laptop opened on their table. As I casually strolled around the store, engrossed in my informal survey, I counted 13 on Facebook.I am also an active Facebook user, but never really looked into the power this social networking website had over the current culture. Facebook has ingrained itself into the very life, and daily activities, of over 200 millions users. I enjoy the way I can keep in touch with friends, family, business associates, and people who enjoy some of the same hobbies I do.

Just the other day I connected with a friend of mine I had in the 8th grade but lost touch with after he moved away near the end of the year. We had a great time checking out each other’s photos, and talking on Facebook’s chatting application. Full Story »

If you have been lost at sea for about three years then you probably haven’t heard of the social networking phenomenon Facebook. Or maybe you have. In any account, Facebook has proved to be the king of the social networking sites by toppling MySpace in new sign ups and regular users. In fact, recent surveys suggest that Facebook has integrated itself into the daily routines of it’s users.

By recent counts over 200 million people are regularly active on Facebook. That’s a lot of people updating their statuses, sending pokes, buying and selling friends, writing on walls, commenting on pictures, and the thousands of other things you can do with Facebook. Again, in recent surveys people said the reasons they were active on Facebook included: Full Story »

With well over 200 million members globally, Facebook is now the number one social networking site worldwide. What began as a sensation on college campuses has now become a place where individuals can keep their family and friends updated about their personal lives online. This is because, unlike the MySpace environment, Facebook members for the most part share their actual information online with their family and trusted friends. One could even venture to say that this might be the reason for its rapid growth and success.When invited by a friend or family member to join the site, the user quickly learns that the information being given is genuine. This provides the incentive for the user to do the same and post their very own factual data. Not only does the individual have the ability to connect with family and friends, but Facebook also allows the user to join other networks to meet and converse with others who share like interests. Full Story »

Continually updating a blog with new and interesting information can be fun, but it can also be challenging. This is especially true When operating a blog over a long period of time, it is often hard to decide what exactly write about next. What is it that the readers of a blog are wanting to read about? What kind of information are they specifically looking for? How does a blogger go about writing blog posts that their readers are craving?

One of the best ways to know what type of posts and information that the readers of a blog are wanting is to check into the traffic stats of the blog itself. Within traffic stats that are available to most bloggers, there is a section denoting search terms. These are search terms that people typed into search engines that led to them visiting that blog. By evaluating what search terms are being used by the traffic that is coming to a blog, the blog owner can then create posts and pages that are centered around those terms. It is logical to think that those people, as well as other people, will continue to search for those terms and then click the links that come up. By capitalizing on that search information, a blogger can then continue to fill their blog up with the exact kind of information and posts that people in that niche are already looking for. Full Story »

Blogging is a popular activity these days and sometimes it is done well and sometimes it is done poorly. It is possible for someone to make a full-time living by blogging, it is also possible for someone to lose money by blogging if they don’t do it correctly.

Prospective bloggers cannot just enter into this new venture without doing some investigation and research first. People who have never blogged before but wish to start now need to know that there are some simple and easy tips that will make the process both easier, as well as giving them the best chance for success.

Blog Specifically, Not Generally
While at one time it may have been possible to run a successful blog online that had no specific content. The blogger may blog about their favorite television show on Monday, political scandals on Tuesday, a sporting event on Wednesday, and so on. Presently, this sporadic and almost random style of blogging makes it hard to be successful. Full Story »

Blogging is a very popular activity that is being done by a number of people around the world. Every blogger dreams that one day their blog will become the next biggest thing. The only true way for a blog to become a huge success though is to see that it covers just one subject, or niche. By doing so, the blog can benefit in a number of ways. A blog that covers just one niche subject in an in-depth manner has a much better chance of succeeding than a general blog that covers nearly every subject superficially does.

Here is a look at three reasons to blog about a specific niche.

The Narrowing of the Audience
By blogging about a specific niche subject, you are narrowing your audience down to only those interested in what you have to say. When bloggers make the decision to build a general blog that covers nearly every subject there is, they fail to connect with a specific audience. People with specific interests will not find enough information on general subject blogs to stick around. By blogging about a specific niche subject, a blogger is able to turn their blog into a quality source for reliable information on that subject. Full Story »

If you hand code your Web sites, you don’t really have a lot of tools available to help debug your code or find problems with your CSS. Even if you use a GUI editor, you can’t really test a site until you upload it to the Web and test it in your browser. Then, when you need to make changes, you’ll have to flit backwards and forwards between your browser and your editor to make the changes, upload them, and then test them. Well, help is at hand in the form of Firebug, which is a tool that can help you develop a site by providing an interface for working directly with the code.

Downloading Firebug

Firebug is a Firefox extension that adds Web development functionality into the browser. If you haven’t used extensions before, an extension is a small program that you download and install into your browser. Firebug works with Firefox, so you need to install and launch Firefox first. When you’ve done this, visit www.getfirebug.com and install the extension.

Firebug works with any Web site, so you can use it to work on a Web site you are developing and you can also use it to poke around other people’s Web sites. Once Firebug is installed, whenever you load a Web page, you will see a small indicator in the bottom right corner of the Firefox window. A green tick indicates that the page has loaded correctly and a red cross indicates that there were problems with the page. Click on this indicator to open the Firebug panel. Full Story »