More Traffic Hacks – YouTube, Pinterest, and Linkedin

One billion unique Youtube viewers every month, 48.7 million pinners, 200 million linkedin members in over 200 countries – mind-blowing statistics and very difficult to visualize. You might as well be looking at the stars. But those numbers are real-time stats of real people who are interconnected, interwoven, and networked all across the world wide web. Wouldn’t you love it if all this traffic got sent your way? Of course, it could break your site but that can always be fixed.

Here are some of the traffic hacks shared during the last Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013:

YouTube

YouTube now allows you to create links to external pages

Enable monetization on external “clickable” link annotations. Send traffic to a squeeze page, Facebook page, or to your main money site.

Video Optimization:

Get more publicity to your videos by exposing it to a bigger market – the shared video loophole or use a paid service like shareyoutubevideos.com or videomarketingblaster.com if you are too busy to do it yourself.

Pinterest

Did you know that Pinterest outpaced Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined for share of referral traffic? Below is a sample on how you can get traffic followers, opt-ins, and sales from Pinterest:

Hold creative Pinterest Contests (sample below)

  1. Create 50 new images with quotes and the opt-in URL.
  2. Create a new page with all the images and the contest rules and prizes.
  3. Sendthe client’s list and FB fans (paid and organic) to the contest page.

When someone shares the images, they enter the contest and send their Pinterest followers to the opt-in page.

Conduct Teleseminars and uses memes like “Pin it to Win it” with urls linked to the squeeze page for the teleseminar</p

LinkedIn

Carl White shared a 5-minute agenda on how to monetize followings on big groups like LinkedIn:

What Carl does

  1. Find people with a big following or list (but aren’t currently monetizing it with continuity). Ex: go on Linkedin and type in a group (e.g. fitness, beer). Use lists available. If you can find them on Linkedin, try to find related group on Facebook. Compare fan numbers with involvement on Facebook (7.5% engagement is very high).
  2. Contact these people and see if they are monetizing their list. Ask the followers what they want to buy. Put the following post as a survey on the fan page, Linkedin page, send out an email, et cetera, “What is the one thing that you need the most help with?”
  3. Google it and find people that sell what the group wants to buy (e.g. white label solutions).

Take these hacks for a spin and see how it works out for you. We’d love to hear your results.

Eye-Catching Retina Display WordPress Themes

The shift towards high-definition in gadgets and devices has been around for a little while. Today, software and digital products are often described as“retina” display read which simply means that these products are graphically ready, in terms of clarity, contrast, and sharpness, to be displayed in high definition devices without diminishing in quality.

Here are some of the newest retina-ready WordPress themes you can try on your HD devices:

Novelty (Portfolio)

This portfolio and blog theme’s clean minimalist look is a perfect complement to outstanding artwork and projects normally displayed in a creative professional’s website. Photographers, design agencies, freelance creatives, and corporate sites will love to show off their pieces in high definition and this theme is ready to do that. It is also 100% responsive replicating that HD experience even on mobile devices.

!LesPaul (Multipurpose)

A multipurpose user friendly theme equipped with Sharp Retina (high DPI) graphics that will look beautiful on modern high resolution displays. The crisp and sharp design elements incorporated in this theme will look great on handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Supreme Magazine (Magazine)

Subscribers will enjoy browsing through your online publication built using this theme. Supreme Premium WordPress Theme is a revolutionary Retina Responsive Magazine/Blog theme integrated with clean, modern, and crystal clear graphics that can be effectively displayed in retina ready modern devices.

Eagle Logistics (Logistics/Forwarding/Shipping)

This premium theme was designed with the logistics industry in mind. It was conceptualized to turn websites into an effective solution for logistic transactions. The retina-ready capability of this theme is most effective in the use of images and text used in promoting products and services related to your logistics business. These crystal clear elements add that attention to detail factor and communicates professionalism necessary in any business especially in this type of industry.

Slurp (Modern Creative Grid Portfolio)

Creative professionals will fall in love with the edgy and modern style of this theme. Images and graphics take center stage on the homepage with the unique organic and asymmetrical manner that they are displayed creating that cool and edgy look. This retina ready and responsive theme will surely wow your users, clients, and potential clients no matter what device they use to view you site.

WordPress Themes 2014? What Does the Future Hold?

Did you know that there are approximately 8 months and 2 weeks till January 2014? What?! 2014 already? You might think that’s still too far away but in reality, big businesses usually have 2-year, 3-year, and 5-year plans already pencilled in place. It’s not unusual for them to think beyond today and they probably already have activities and processes scheduled even beyond that time frame.

So what’s our fearless forecast for 2014? Is it too early to tell? Let’s take a few “wild” but calculated guesses on what we think is to come.

Mobile – The Handheld and Portable Desktop

This forecast is not new and developments in the past 2 years or so have all been pointing to this direction. Smartphones, tablets, androids, iOs devices are more and more in stiff competition with each other as people rely more and more on their devices to get everything done. As this trend continues, WordPress theme authors and developers need to think of ways, as early as now, not just adapt to the move but perhaps innovate something revolutionary that will inspire a fresh way of doing things. The move towards drag, drop, click one button, one size fits all types of themes is great but could always be better – more personalized, easier to customize and brand, and perhaps an easy to maneuver app-like admin panel – especially on a tiny 3.5” inch display using a tiny unwieldy touch keyboard.

Retina Display

Manufacturers of LCD, LED, HD and all the other display devices are probably well into production already filled with orders for the Christmas season and early next year and we bet that retina display is high up in one of their specs somewhere. What to do? WordPress authors and developers need to update, create, and optimize themes in anticipation of that. Apple is already set to require retina display in their iOS apps which means all current apps need to be updated and all future apps need to be designed with this in mind. Android phones are probably not too far behind. Mobile versions of WordPress themes need to anticipate this as well.

User Friendly Analytics

As Google continues to purge the SERPS from “spammy” and over “optimized” websites, perhaps more simple and built-in tools to help provide the average WordPress user the statistics needed to analyze and improve key aspects of his or her website. There are numerous plugins that add functionalities like performance and analytics to determine site speed, word frequencies, user interactivity, analytics and all those wonderful tools but it would be nice to have all these capabilities, in simple user friendly format, already built into the theme to reduce risks of compatibility issues.

Design

Simple and minimalistic designs will continue on till the next year with designs becoming more and more intuitive eliminating a lot of code fear and analysis on the part of the user. Features will still be consumer driven but will eventually be trimmed down to the essentials as more and more WordPress users become more educated and less “awed” by multiple sliders and 1000+ ways to change colors and backgrounds.

More Social

Social networking through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and other similar websites have made it so simple for people to connect with each other. WordPress themes need features like these that make it as simple and as easy for the website owner to encourage more user interactivity within his website and his other social media networks. The flow from website to social networks needs to be seamless and streamlined to encourage more interconnectivity, engagement, and exchange. It’s part of the high quality ranking site Google equation.

Of course, nothing is carved in stone and anything can happen between now and then. These are fearless or fearful forecasts, you might say. It does help to understand how businesses move – whether they are aggressive or conservative in their strategies, and to keep abreast of what is going on in the whole web design industry in general. That way, your efforts as a WordPress professional will be more strategic and more deliberate.

30 Dark Web Sites For Inspiration

Only some people dare to use complete dark backgrounds against to regular cool and official colors. This decision makes their sites look unique and special, Today we have collected such sites which use dark backgrounds for their sites, so take a look and you will find some inspiration for sure, Enjoy….

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WordPress 3.6 Beta 1 Now Available

WordPress enthusiasts can start playing with the latest beta version (3.6. Beta 1) recently released. This new version is recommended to be run only on a test site and not in actual sites just yet. WordPress 3.5 was released a few months back and this new version has been in the development stage for the past 3 months. WordPress plugin or theme developers, authors, and host providers should start testing this new version before the official and stable version is released to make sure existing plugins and themes are compatible.

Here’s a summary of what’s new in WordPress 3.6:

Post Formats: Post Formats now have their own UI, and theme authors have access to templating functions to access the structured data.

Twenty Thirteen: We’re shipping this year’s default theme in our first release of the year. Twenty Thirteen is an opinionated, color-rich, blog-centric theme that makes full use of the new Post Formats support.

Audio/Video: You can embed audio and video files into your posts without relying on a plugin or a third party media hosting service.

Autosave: Posts are now autosaved locally. If your browser crashes, your computer dies, or the server goes offline as you’re saving, you won’t lose the your post.

Post Locking: See when someone is currently editing a post, and kick them out of it if they fall asleep at the keyboard.

Nav Menus: Nav menus have been simplified with an accordion-based UI, and a separate tab for bulk-assigning menus to locations.

Revisions: The all-new revisions UI features avatars, a slider that “scrubs” through history, and two-slider range comparisons.

Here’s a treat for the absolutely curious, the demo version of Twenty Thirteen! If you would like to participate, become a contributor, be a bug hunter, or a theme fixer, you are more than welcome to provide feedback to those awesome WordPress dev guys. Time to play!

Traffic Hacks using Facebook

If you could show your product or your business to approximately 1.06 billion users, would you? What if you could direct these 1.06 billion users to your website, would you do it? Whatever your thoughts are about Facebook, undeniably, it is obviously a huge dam of cheap, targeted, and more profitable potential traffic that your business could greatly benefit from.

Here are some tips and tricks shared during the last Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013 that you can use to start tapping into Facebook’s traffic potential.

Identify Your Goals and Targets

  • Do you want to get more fans?
  • Do you want to send users to your website?
  • Are you promoting an event or an activity? Where – on Facebook or on your website?

Get a Facebook Page for Yourself or Product

Setting up a Facebook page is free, easy and you can create as many pages as you need for yourself and for your business.

Use Page Post Ads, not Promoted Post

  • 90 characters of ad copy, then link to any landing page on or off FB.
  • Highlighted links- direct to landing page.
  • Add an image, link or video to stand out.

Use Facebook Offer Ads

  • These are like Groupon offers.
  • They are very specific offers and promotions that attract more qualified prospects.
  • This type of ads are perfect for live events and webinars.
  • You get free news feed activity when an offer is claimed.
  • International ads are cheap to run.

Promote to Custom Audiences.

  • You can upload your email list (or mobile phone list) and your ads will be shown to those people. It is easier to sell to those who you already know.
  • Tailor the creative to each segment of your list.

Test and Monitor Your Results Closely

Keep track of your ad activities to see which ads perform the best that way you can adjust and make changes accordingly making it less likely to waste money and closer to achieving your goals.

How To Improve Performance On Your WordPress Site

Great content is at the mercy of site speed. No matter how wonderful your content is, taking more than 4 seconds to load can mean significant loss of traffic and loss of potential income for your website. Why? People hate slow websites. The slower it takes for your page to load, the faster people leave it. Patience is not a virtue when it comes to the internet. That is why site speed is important.

Google is obsessed with site speed and has incorporated it as one of the signals for determining search rankings. In a previous article on determining a website’s quality score , we learned that user experience is now a major element and part of the equation in determining and improving your site’s ranking. A fast site creates satisfied users, improves user experience, and improves overall site quality and performance.

If your website is taking longer to load than necessary, it’s time to take stock and audit the elements causing the delay. Here’s a checklist of some of the things you need to consider as you work on improving your site’s performance:

  • Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to load heavy scripts and images and to lighten the load on your server.
  • Optimize caching – Browser caching stores cached versions of static resources. This speeds up page speed tremendously and reduces server lag.
  • Remove/Reduce/Compress large images, videos, and other content. Resize and optimize images for web use. Specify image dimensions and use the right image format.
  • Minify JavaScript and remove unused CSS files. Reduce HTTP loading requests for CSS style sheets, scripts, images, and HTML
  • Remove/Reduce/Deactivate unnecessary or unused widgets or plugins. Plugins and widgets are bandwidth thieves. Try deactivating all of your plugins to test your speed. Activate a widget or a plugin one at a time to see which one is the speed culprit.
  • Check the loading time of your ads or affiliate codes to see how they affect page speed.
  • Check your WordPress theme for compatibility issues with your WordPress version or your browsers.
  • Choose a good web host or switch to a better one with a proven uptime track record if necessary.

Here are some of the tools you can use to help you analyze your site’s performance:

Page Speed

Page Speed evaluates performance from the client point of view, typically measured as the page load time. This is the lapsed time between the moment a user requests a new page and the moment the page is fully rendered by the browser.

Yahoo! YSlow

Firefox/Firebug Add-on that analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance, based on a set of rules for high performance web pages.

Google Analytics Plugin by Yoast

Google Analytics for WordPress plugin allows you to track your blog easily and with lots of metadata: views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and page views.

Pingdom Website Speed Test

Pingdom offers cost-effective and reliable server, network and website monitoring. They use a global network of servers to monitor customers’ sites 24/7, all year long. The service includes statistics for uptime and response time, and can send out alerts via SMS, email, and more.

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is designed to improve user experience and page speed of your site by increasing server performance, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.

In conclusion, as far as website essentials go, the adage “less is more” is best. Sticking to only what’s necessary and throwing away what is not needed will help your website float to the top. The faster your website loads, the better your site performs and the experience your users have will be more pleasant, favorable, and hopefully more memorable, making them want to come back for more.

Easy and Consistent WordPress Backup Helpers

You know you should but you sometimes don’t. And just when you are about to, something goes wrong and it’s already a little too late. It gets a little more complicated when you are handling more than one website, maintaining several eCommerce sites, or handling sites with years and years of content. You could rely on your webhost to do it for you, but, that’s a little too risky for comfort. It’s what every website owner, webmaster, web host should do. Backup. Consistently. Why?

If these statements sound familiar,

“My site got hacked.”
“I accidentally deleted some code and it wiped out all my data.”
“I changed my theme and it messed up all my content.”
“I activated a plugin but it wasn’t compatible and it corrupted a whole bunch of my files.”

you know that you could have avoided the consequences of procrastination if you had kept a backup file before implementing any changes. On a larger scale, systems can shut down, natural disasters can hit, web hosting companies can go bankrupt or close shop. Without your own personal backup system, you could lose themes, plugins, content, images, widgets, customization and a whole lot more. It just makes sense to be ready all the time.

Here are some highly recommended backup options for your peace of mind:

myRepono WordPress Backup Plugin

myRepono WordPress Backup Plugin is an easy-to-install WordPress plugin which automates the myRepono API setup process, enabling you to setup automated WordPress backups in a matter of minutes. myRepono is an online website backup service which enables you to securely backup your WordPress web site files and mySQL database tables using an online and web-based management system. The myRepono online website backup service allows you to automate the process of backing up your entire WordPress website and database, including all post, comments and user data, and your WordPress PHP, template and plugin files.

WordPress Backup to Dropbox

WordPress Backup to Dropbox is a free plugin that keeps your website backed up to Dropbox regularly. The plugin’s simple interface lets you setup your backup cycle in minutes giving you peace of mind that your precious blog posts, media files and template changes are backed up. Simply choose a day, time, & frequency for your backup to be performed. In order to use the plugin you will need a Dropbox account.

BackWPup

BackWPup is a free plugin that creates flexible, scheduled WordPress backups to any location. The backup files can be used to save your whole installation including /wp-content/ and push them to an external Backup Service, if you don’t want to save the backups on the same server. With the single backup .zip file you are able to restore an installation. You can also purchase the pro version that has additional backup features.

VaultPress

VaultPress provides realtime, continuous backup and synchronization of every post, comment, media file, revision and dash­board setting across at least two separate cloud services in addition to the Automattic grid, ensuring no loss of content. Using WordPress hooks to receive alerts when information changes on your site, VaultPress immediately syncs all of your changes with their servers.

Snapshot

Make a quick and easy backup of all of your content, without fiddling with the server or signing up for an expensive backup solution, restore backups with one easy click, t backup all your regular WordPress stuff (posts, pages, comments, taxonomies etc.) and also every table of your database, for every plugin and theme you have with Snapshot, a premium plugin from WPMU Dev. With Snapshot you can create as many ‘Time Machine’ snapshots of your entire database (or individual tables) as you want, automatically schedule backups, save to Dropbox, Amazon S3 or by SFTP, and so much more.

The time, money and effort you exert in backing up your files is nothing compared to the price of losing all your website content, files, traffic and income, and the effort to recover (if possible) all of them. In this case, an ounce of prevention is indeed better than a pound of cure.

Stress-Free Beauty, Health, and Medical WordPress Themes

The beauty, health and wellness industry is a lucrative industry. People will always want to look good and be healthy. Setting up an impressive website for your beauty or health and wellness business is key to getting the type of clients you want. Here are some great WordPress themes to help you create the right aesthetic for your beauty and health business online:

Blush

Blush is a professionally designed salon/spa/health/ beauty theme from Aloha Themes. This premium theme is easy to customize with lots of features to choose from – from using your own logo, changing theme colors, using widgets or built in shortcodes – to create the signature look you want.

Health and Beauty Theme

Health and Beauty Theme from Organic Themes is a beautiful and cleanly designed premium theme that won’t disturb your zen. This calm and soothing theme complemented by the overall classy and professional aesthetics is perfect for promoting health and beauty services that will impress even the pickiest clients.

HairPress

HairPress is a fully responsive premium WordPress theme perfect for hair and beauty salons, wellness centers, and professional medical services. It includes several built-in page templates ready for you to use straight away. Hair concerns are not just for women. Men are just as vain when it comes to hair. HairPress is a theme that’s not too feminine and it has lots of customization features that will help you create a strong online presence that will appeal to both men and women.

The Beauty Salon

The Beauty Salon is a sleek, modern, and professional looking theme that speaks credibility and confidence all over. One of the many obstacles to getting clients to try a new service or a new store is the lack of confidence. It is important for business websites to create the impression that they know what they are doing to allay fears of potential customers. This premium theme does just that and more. It’s packed with advanced features such as a sliding menu card, a tiled gallery, custom page templates, and multiple shortcodes to create that wow factor you need. Give your website a total makeover with The Beauty Salon Premium WordPress Theme.

HealthPress

If you are a health or medical practitioner, a wellness center, or a healthcare or medical service institution wanting to create your own website, check out HealthPress Premium WordPress Theme. This responsive theme is perfect for health and medical professionals, clinics, centers, hospitals, and other related industries. Running a health or medical related business online is tricky because medical consultations are personal and real world connections are important. HealthPress contains features like galleries, bios, credentials, services, testimonials, and other info templates to create that connection between your users and your medical team.

WP-Venus

Named after the Roman goddess of beauty and love, WP-Venus has that soft and pretty aesthetic that will appeal to a more feminine audience. With its soft colors, clean, responsive layout and extreme versatility, WP-Venus is an ideal theme for an online health, wellness, beauty and fashion, and even entertainment magazine that can appeal to a broader audience.