Resources

Comprehensive resource collection for bloggers and Internet marketers. To this page I have collected the best resources and tools, most of which I use personally as well. Make sure you bookmark the page, so you can come back here when needed.

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Resource List Table of Contents (T.O.C)

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Forums


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Blogging Forums


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Internet Marketing Forums


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Domain Registrations

  • Register your domains on a reliable domain registrar.
  • You do not have to register domains with the same service provider you get hosting from, and
  • I recommend for you to get domains from separate domain registrar.

This will make possible selling of the domain and/or blog much easier, which you should prepare even if you have no plans to sell when you start. Think of it as "not putting all eggs in the same basket", if you will.

There are three domain registration services I recommend:

Moniker

Domainers use Moniker for reliability and great service - and since people making a living with domains use it, Moniker is amazingly good for the average domain registrar too. Moniker is among the cheapest options when you count the additional services, e.g. WHOIS privacy, domain transfers, etc.

  • Moniker - trusted domain registrar
    • .com $8.02 / year
    • .net $6.64 / year
    • .org $8.02 / year

Namecheap

  • Namecheap - another great domain registrar
    • .com, .net & .org all cost $9.69 / year

DreamHost

At the beginning, I registered my domains with my web hosting provider (convenient, but not necessary the smartest thing), which is DreamHost. Domain registrations cost a bit more than from other registrars, but taking the WHOIS privacy into account, it's quite even. By having my main domains on the same account, the billing is simple, and DreamHost offers WHOIS privacy for free and automatically renews my domains too.


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Hosting

DreamHost is the host I use and I've been very happy with it. I only recommend hosting service providers that have proven to offer good hosting on all levels.

This means reliability (close to 100% uptime), enough capacity to manage occasional spikes on in traffic and essential web performance tweaks, like ability to edit .htaccess for mod_deflate compression and browser cache configuration. If you have no idea what .htaccess or mod_deflate is, don't worry, you don't have to, but you do need to know that hosts on my list have everything you need.

As an affiliate for these hosting providers, I have set special promotions just for my readers, giving you great hosting with great price. See below for details, you'll get these discounts only using my hosting coupons and links.

DreamHost

Here's an exclusive DreamHost coupon only for my readers (saving over 50% for the first year):

  • Use the promo code: ZEMALF when signing up
    • First year = $4,85 / month (saving over $60 total from the normal $9,95/month)

In addition to my special discount, by default, DreamHost gives you

  • 97-day money-back guarantee
  • 1 free domain registration (with free WHOIS privacy!)
  • unlimited number of domains, unlimited email accounts
  • unlimited bandwidth, and highly reliable host for your sites

I have removed all but DreamHost from my recommended hosting services, until I verify what hosts are good for website performance and site speed, something I'm deeply passionate about.


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eBooks and Coaching

Here are some eBooks (or eCourses, where materials are delivered via email) that have tremendously helped me to improve my blog and blogging skills, in addition to learning about marketing and Internet business. I think the free eBooks are excellent resources for any bloggers and Internet business owner, so I recommend you read them as you will learn a lot.

Most of the free eBooks have been released to promote a coaching course or another product by the authors. You can get the free information and you don't have to pay or buy anything unless you so choose to. However, if after reading the free information you feel like you could benefit learning more, the coaching courses are great, I've taken a couple of them...

I have personally been a student in Become a Blogger, Blog Mastermind and Blog Masters Club, and my blog wouldn't be the same as it is now if I hadn't had the chance to learn from the experts like Yaro Starak, Gideon Shalwick and David Risley. Because of that, I am proud to recommend their courses to you (and use my affiliate link).

You can find more great (free) eBooks here:


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Free WordPress Themes

There are thousands of free WordPress themes, available at WordPress.org, which is a great starting point for you and your blog. Or you can take a look at these free themes not available on the WordPress.org:


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Premium WordPress Themes

If you want more unique and more customizable design, take a look at these premium WordPress themes:

WooThemes

  • WooThemes are quality themes that look great and make visitors go "Woo", thus the name :)
  • New themes are published every month, so there's plenty to choose from
  • They also have a theme club, which gives an access to all their themes

StudioPress WordPress Themes

  • StudioPress has loads of well designed and optimized themes for you to choose from.

Unique Blog Designs

  • Unique Blog Designs does, as it name states, unique blog designs on hire.
  • They also offer a free guide and free theme on signup (at least check that out)
  • UDB also has a site called Theme Wars, where two theme designs battle out and the winner is put on sale.

UBD also sells out-of-the-box themes, specifically designed for Internet marketing, Squeeze Theme and Affiliate Theme. These themes have spesific purpose, help you set up landing pages, sales pages and product pages. They are not so good for normal blogging, so I wouldn't go buying these if you're new to blogging and looking for your first theme.

Squeeze Theme

  • DO NOT TRY TO RUN "NORMAL" BLOG WITH SQUUEZE THEME
  • Squeeze Theme is a theme designed to make opt-in pages (and only that!)
  • Squeeze pages are used most commonly to grow an email list
    • "squeezing" email addresses from the visitors.

Affiliate Theme

  • DO NOT TRY TO RUN "NORMAL" BLOG WITH AFFILIATE THEME
  • Affiliate Theme is spesifically designed for affiliate marketing and setting up sales pages and product pages
  • If you're running Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns and need to quickly set up sites, you might try this one.
  • I don't like Affiliate Theme very much. I've run it on several blogs, and it works OK, but there are better options, and Affiliate Theme is too restricting on what you can do with it. Also, Affiliate Theme is quite costly compared to the alternatives. The interviews, guides and bonuses were great - theme itself, not so much.

Elegant Themes

  • ElegantThemes offers a subscription for $19.95 which gives you unlimited access all the themes there.

Press75

  • Professional WP themes for any purpose, e.g. photo blog, news, video site, small business blog, etc.
  • Packages and access to all the themes also available.


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Recommended WordPress Plugins

Most of the WordPress plugins are free, available through WordPress Plugins Directory.

Quick and easy install directly from WordPress Dashboard: Plugins --> Add New.

Must-have / Essential WordPress Plugins

Here are the most essential plugins for WordPress I use and recommended:

  1. Akismet
    • Default spam filter (and a good one!)
    • Protects your blog from most blog comment spam
  2. Google XML Sitemaps
    • Generates and submits XML sitemap for search engines
    • Great for SEO
    • Lots of options
    • Easy to use
    • Updated regularly
  3. W3 Total Cache
    • The ultimate caching solution for WordPress
    • Yes, forget WP Super-Cache, this is way better.
    • Bit technical and difficult to get running, but once you do, this one
      • caches the pages
      • caches the database connection
      • minifies and caches javascript and CSS
      • automatically manages the media library with content delivery network (CDN), like Amazon S3
      • allows caching via Memcache and APC (advanced, not for shared hosting)
    • Read my detailed step-by-step W3 Total Cache guide to learn how to install and configure the plugin for ultimate caching solution.
  4. WP-DBManager
  5. WP Smush.it
    • Automatically optimize the images you upload for web
    • Install once and you don't have to do anything afterwards,
    • this one compresses and optimizes the images while you upload as normal
  6. All in One SEO Pack
    • Search engine optimization
    • Even if you have SEO-friendly theme, this will help you maintain the settings easier
  7. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
    • Great for SEO
    • Users can see related content that they may like = very "relevant" to the page
  8. Redirection
    • Manage 301 redirects.
    • Track the number of clicks
    • Use for affiliate links
    • Automatically monitor changing post URLs and set 301 redirects
    • Manually set 301's for easy affiliate link management and tracking
    • Monitors and logs 404 errors

Each and every blog I setup and install has the above plugins installed, for a reason, I have tried and tested the alternatives, and found that the above have worked the best for me. I keep the list of recommended list of WP plugins short for a reason, because I think one should only use what is really needed for both performance and maintenance reasons, but I also add great plugins to the list if I choose to use them myself after testing them out.

More Great WordPress plugins

Here are more recommended plugins, which are all great, but not needed on each and every blog I run...

In addition to the above, I also use Yoast Breadcrumbs, Contact Form 7 on my contact page and WP-Pagenavi for improved page navigation and Sociable for social bookmarking (uses CSS-Sprites!).


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Tools

Useful tools for blogging and Internet business activities.


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RSS Feed Distribution Services

  1. FeedFury
  2. FeedBomb
  3. Plazoo
  4. RSS Micro (Doesn't accept large RSS Feeds)
  5. 2RSS
  6. RSS Feeds
  7. Feeds4all
  8. Postami
  9. Feedest
  10. DaytimeNews
  11. MySpace RSS (coutry-based redirection kept me off this one)
  12. RSS Feeds Submission Directory
  13. MillionRSS (ToDo: Get 468x60 banner done before submitting to this one)
  14. Yahoo RSS (ToDo: Look into "add to my Yahoo" button)
  15. Feed Base
  16. RSS Motron
  17. Blog Digger
  18. Feed 24 (Unavailable service 2009-July-01)
  19. Feed Boy RSS Directory
  20. Chordata
  21. Golden Feed
  22. Read A Blog
  23. Newgie (Bad Request (Invalid Hostname) 2009-July-01)
  24. Jordo Media RSS
  25. RSS Network (Was up, but gave errors. Try it, might work for you)
  26. Ice Rocket
  27. Blog Pulse
  28. Feed Shark
  29. Feed Plex
  30. Blog Burst

References:

http://susansuarez.com/36-rss-feed-distributions-to-promote-yourself/


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Directories of Web Directories


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Blog and Website Directories

Special

PR 9

PR8

PR7

PR6

PR5

PR4

PR3

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Directory Submission Services


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The Automatic Ping List for Blogs

Consider installing MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer -plugin (plugin is free, but requires a registration.) to

  • make pinging as efficient as possible and
  • to ensure that your blog is not labeled for spamming the pings

Copy and paste this list to the

  • Settings >> Writing -- Update Services -field
  • or in the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer settings

The Short and Optimized Ping List

This is the ping list I use and recommend you use too. It contains the most essential ping services, nothing more, nothing less.

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

Reference: Vladimir's WordPress Ping List

The Massive Ping List

If you want to make sure you ping each and every service out there, you might want to use this list instead.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc..php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Reference: XML-RPC Ping Services (for English Blogs) at WordPress Codex


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Multipinging Services

..remember that WordPress does this automatically, and you can set service like FeedBurner to do this too (if you are burning your RSS feed there as you should). Just check the "PingShot" inside the FeedBurner control area.

http://pingomatic.com/?oldpinger

http://www.pingoat.com/

http://www.ipings.com/

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