I put out a call a few weeks ago for guest bloggers and received some applicants. Marcella Glenn is a freelance writer fascinated by words. She marvels at how three, four, words paint a vivid picture. Through he book of poems, Piece of Life, another avenue is discovered. She writes non-fiction. Look at her blog at http://critiqueandwrite.blogspot.com
She stretches , molds, her characters into a friend,enemy, and/or the wanna-can-be. It’s evident in her novel, Grave Street House.

Those are her words and look for her guest posts to begin soon here at The NMP Network!

Welcome Marcella…looking forward to reading more!

Popularity: 6% [?]

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When you are trying to make money with articles, the beauty of it is that you don’t really need previous career related experience and that you can learn the ropes as you go. That being said, there are some skills that you will need to teach yourself or pick up along the way to make your sites successful. You can’t go in not knowing anything, not learning anything, and still expect to make a good income (or any income at all).

First, you will need to know how to pick out the correct articles to make your sites successful. There are many types of content, from free content to high dollar content, and each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages (although high dollar content is more likely to give you a successful site in the end).

Second, you will need to know how to choose keywords that can help you get a good amount of traffic, without being too competitive to get on the first or second page. If you choose highly competitive keywords that are used by large, mammoth website, you are likely to never get up to those much needed first two pages.

Third, you will need to know how to optimize your websites for various search engines. Search engine optimization skills will allow you to get high rankings for your chosen niche keywords, which will help to get visitors and make profit.

Fourth, if you opt for a large website that you will focus most of your internet marketing career on, you will also need to know how to market your website to your intended audience through paid banner ads and text links. If you prefer very small 2-5 page niche sites, then promoting all of them this way will not be cost effective and will eat up more profits than it is worth.

If you can capture some of these skills and attack them aggressively during your first few small websites or the first few months of a larger website, then you will eventually become an expert. Since you can learn the ropes first hand on your own, the only thing that you will need to do before you begin your new career is to read up on how to get started (maybe purchase an internet marketing e-book or two) and make sure that you have the funds available to start a small site.

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Just wanted to take a moment to update everyone regarding some changes I’ve made to the site. For starters, I’m almost finished with managing my sidebars. I’ve been assigning widgets to specific areas of the site where I think it makes sense to display them. Speaking of sidebars and widgets, you should be able to see the Jeffro2pt0 poll back on the front page. I’ve also added my link blog which is nothing more than a list of shared items from my feed reader. Last but not least, I’ve added a text widget on the about page which allows me to cut the length of the page in half.

As for the About Jeffro2pt0 and WordPress Weekly pages, I have gone through and updated them with relevant information. For the WordPress Weekly page, I have included special notes regarding where to find show notes for episodes 1-22 and 23-current. This was mentioned by Andrew Rickmann and so I’ve included directions on how to obtain those show notes. As for the About Page, I’ve revamped it keeping most of the history in tact while adding personal information to the sidebar. At the bottom of the about page, I’ve included a list of sites and podcasts for which I am working with or for. I’ll be updating the page as necessary to keep everyone up to date.

Last but not least, I’ve fixed the styling issues for the Page-Navi plugin. When you update Lester’s Page-Navi plugin, the CSS files are overwritten and thus, I lost my changes. Thank goodness for backups. I’ve also changed the header from my favorite forest look to a Winter look as we are now officially in the Winter season.

In Closing:

It’s these types of changes that if left undone for a period of time, end up amounting to a ton of grunt work. It’s usually the easiest, simplest things which are left undone. At any rate, I should be all set to start off the new year fresh on this blog. I have no idea what will happen but I do know that I plan on continuing this journey I’m on. I’ve made some incredible pit stops along the way to what I hope will be a successful career in podcasting/writing. I’ve still got plenty to learn and much to improve upon but that will come in due time. One things for sure, I know that there is a core group of people out there that really support my work and what I do. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support (even though I’m trying to right now) but it means a lot to me.

With that said, I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday! P.S., I’m 25 years of age now, woot!

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To make money with articles that you place on websites, you will also need a variety of good affiliate links that will help to generate revenue. It is important that you know where to find affiliates and that you choose the best affiliates for you and your niche site.

When you pick an affiliate, it is important that you determine which companies you will profit best from based on the frequency that the product is likely to sell. There are several types of affiliates and some will offer you more money from a sale than others will. Before you get hazy-eyed by dollar signs, however, remember some products are bound to sell more than others. If you sell on product four times a year from a little known company that gives you $100 per sale or sell a well known product 3 times a week at the rate of $10 per sale, then you will make much more money with the $10 per sale product. Often times large well known companies will offer a very small profit per sale because they are established and know that their product is likely to sell well. Small, unknown companies, on the other hand, need all of the promotion they can get. Also, because they are unknown, their products are likely to sell less frequently.

The most important rule when picking affiliates to promote on your site is to pick products that would be of interest to those who would likely visit your niche site. Otherwise you will be promoting a product to a group of people who do not even want nor need it. If your niche site targets parents of young children, then promote baby products. If you niche site targets gardeners, then promote gardening products. If you promote baby products to gardeners, you are almost guaranteed to not make a profit no matter how much money the affiliate company offers for a sale.

Lastly, there are two main ways to find an affiliate company for your niche website. You can sign up with a company that manages the accounts of hundreds of companies, big and small, and apply for the products within these accounts or you can do a web search for companies that would match well with your niche, visit their websites, and see if they advertise an affiliate program.

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I suppose it’s that time again where I outline the various plugins that are in use on this blog. The list has changed quite a bit since the first compilation post published in October of 2007. Over the course of time, plugins come and go but some make the cut and stick around. I’ve had a few people ask me to compile the list and so, here it is.

Admin Favicon - Adds a custom favicon to your WP-Admin Console. It can be configured under the “Settings” tab. By John Kolbert.

Admin Menu Editor - Lets you directly edit the WordPress admin menu. You can re-order, hide or rename existing menus, add custom menus and more. Beta. By Janis Elsts.

Comment Quicktags Reloaded - Inserts a quicktag toolbar on the blog comment form. WP 2.2 support by Ibrahim Faour By Owen Winkler.

Contact Form 7 - Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible. By Takayuki Miyoshi.

Digg This - Adds Digg story link on detection on digg referer By Aviran Mordo

Executable PHP Widget - Like the Text widget, but it will take PHP code as well. Heavily derived from the Text widget code in WordPress. By Otto.

FeedBurner FeedSmith - Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. By FeedBurner.

Feed Combiner - Combine multiple feeds into one mega feed (the universe). By Kaspars Dambis. (Not Actually in use by me yet but it will be soon)

Filosofo Comments Preview - Filosofo Comments Preview lets you preview WordPress comments before you submit them. By Austin Matzko.

Google XML Sitemaps - This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold.

Highlight Author Comments - Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author. By Rob Marsh, SJ.

Insights - Insights allows you to quickly access and insert information (links, images, videos, maps..) into your blog posts. By Vladimir Prelovac.

KB Advanced RSS Widget - Gives user complete control over how feeds are displayed. By Adam R. Brown.

KG Archives - Yet another sortable archives from katesgasis.com. By Kates Gasis.

Lijit Search - Search Powered Web Applications for Publishers. Click here to configure the Lijit Plugin. By Crowd Favorite for Lijit Networks Inc.

No Self Pings - Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site. By Michael D. Adams.

Subscribe To Comments - Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess By Mark Jaquith.

Tabbed Widgets - Place widgets into tabbed and accordion type interface blocks. Configuration options are available under Design » Tabbed Widgets. By Kaspars Dambis.

Thumbnail Viewer - Thumbnail Viewer is a simple plugin for showing larger images of your thumbnails. It’s very similar to Lightbox, only much smaller. Add the rel=”thumbnail” attribute to any link tag to activate the thumbnail viewer. It’s based the wp-lightbox plugin and on the Image Thumbnail Viewer from Dynamic Drive. By Tyler Longren.

Widget Context - Display widgets in context. By Kaspars Dambis. This plugin is what allows me to control which widgets show up where.

Woopra - This plugin adds Woopra’s real-time analytics to any WordPress installation. Simply sign up at Woopra.com, then activate the plugin and configure your site ID in the Woopra settings. By Elie El Khoury.

WP-Cache - Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”. By Ricardo Galli Granada.

WP-PagNavi - Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.

WP-Polls - Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.

WP-PostViews - Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.

WP-Stats - Display your WordPress blog statistics. Ranging from general total statistics, some of my plugins statistics and top 10 statistics. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.

WP Ajax Edit Comments - Allows users and admin to edit their comments inline. Admin and editors can edit all comments. By Ronald Huereca.

WP Comment Remix - Adds much needed comment functionality to Wordpress By Jason DeVelvis.

YARPP Yet Another Related Posts Plugin - Returns a list of the related entries based on a unique algorithm using titles, post bodies, tags, and categories. Now with RSS feed support! By mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine).

As for the comment reply feature, that is the result of some code that Kaspars was gracious enough to lend me as it works a treat!