No-one wants to see their blog hacked, a random message on the home page, messages deleted, links to unsavory websites across the website and so on. So it is essential that you take a few sensible safety precautions with your blog to protect it.

As the most popular blogging platform seems to be WordPress, I’ll talk from the WordPress point of view, but on the whole the safety issues will apply equally well to any blogging platform that you use. With some platforms, for example Blogger, you won’t be in control of various aspects like most recent versions, but there are plenty of tips that apply.

1 ) Keep Up To Date
If a new version of the blogging software is released, it is for a reason. There may be new features, but there may also be extra security releases. So update your blog to the latest version of the software as soon as you can, especially if you are on a version of WordPress older than 2.8.4 as there is a worm that can attack these versions.

2 ) Protect Your Machine
The same also goes for your own machine, keep the virus protection up to date and a firewall running. Try to avoid using unsecured wifi networks and internet cafes that you aren’t sure about.

3 ) Maintain Your Username
Everyone who uses WordPress knows where the logon screen is – many themes actually link to it! And the default user id is Admin, so it is quite easy for hackers to run a script against your blog that starts trying likely passwords.

To prevent this, sign on as admin, create a new username with an admin role, sign off, sign on as the new username and then delete the standard Admin account. When you delete it, you should get the option to move all posts over to your new name. Now hackers have to guess username and password.

4 ) Create An Author Username
If you might be posting from third party wifi networks and computers, then setup a new username and just give it author access. Use this whilst you are away and if the networks aren’t as secure as they can be and someone gets the logon details, they can only edit the new posts and submit new posts. Earlier posts and the admin of your blog is secured.

You can move the posts back to your main username once safely back on a secure computer.

5 ) Change Your Nickname
The biggest clue that you haven’t deleted the Admin user is that all posts are from Admin. To prevent hackers from working out your new admin user name from looking at name attributed to the post, go to profiles and give your username a different nickname. Then in the next box choose to display your nickname, rather than the username.

6 ) Don’t Use Obvious Passwords
If your username is unguessable then you are a long way there, but also make your password strong. Look at the indicator when you type in the password. A combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and maybe a few odd keyboard characters.

7 ) Don’t Display Versions
Remove from the footer of your theme any displays of version of theme or WordPress that you are using. If you are late updating to the new version, you don’t want to be telling hackers!

8 ) Spam Protect Your Blog
Make sure that the Akismet pluggin is installed, activated and you have entered the key to run it. But don’t give spammers a clue about how successful Akismet is at detecting their spam by displaying how many comments it has blocked.

9 ) Use A Backup
Search the plugins database for a backup plugin that works for you and use it regularly. If you are hacked, then as long as you have a few of the most recent versions of the blog backed up you will be able to recover all posts and settings.

And lastly, keep reading about security as when new security loopholes are found, someone somewhere will plug them. If you want to keep up with the latest on How to Prevent Someone Hacking Into Your Blog or you just want to find out more about starting a new blog, then do call over to our website for more up to the minute information.

Keith Lunt

A disclosure page is an essential in every blog and all bloggers are encouraged to have one. But what is it? What are the options? Why must you even have one?

If you have any desire at all in blogging to earn an income, it is better for you if you ensure that you make it clear that you will be being rewarded for some of your blogging and that the subjects of some of the posts, if not the content, will be swayed and chosen by advertisers.

Why Disclose?
A disclosure policy means that you are being open, honest and transparent about what is affecting you and your choice of subjects to blog about. You should disclose affiliate relationships, advertising compensation, paid posts, guest posts and any products or gifts received as either rewards or freebies to review.

When Do You Disclose?
Even if you are just displaying contextual advertising, I would recommend some kind of disclosure policy on your website. There are various marketing standards that dictate what we bloggers can do and what is acceptable, so make sure that you are fulfilling these requirements.

There are two kinds of disclosure to choose from, although as much as possible I will use both on my websites:

On Post Disclosure
This is the basic form of disclosure and requires you to mention in each post that is in any way sponsored that it is a sponsored post. Maybe you thank the advertiser or just mention that the post is sponsored.

Some paid to post system insist on this type of disclosure with every post whilst other advertisers want to try to hide the link and, therefore prefer a site wide disclosure.

Site Wide Disclosure
This basically means adding a post or a page to your blog and making sure that this post or page is linked to from everywhere else on the blog, or at the very least the sponsored posts. Add a link to your disclosure policy on the main navigation of your website or include a badge in the main side column of links.

A site wide disclosure that is linked to from ever post means that you are always covered and again, there are systems that insist that is how you work if taking work from them. By having a site wide disclosure you cannot be accused of misleading readers, but those landing on your posts might not see it and that is why I think an in post disclosure is better.

In Post Or Site Wide?
Aside from the requirements of the person paying you, which should you choose? Well, I always add a site wide disclosure policy to my blogs and that is what is recommended. I will then quite often add an in post disclosure where allowed (if nothing else, it can get the word count up!).

So I think that the answer is not either / or, it is to use them both as much as allowed. That way, regular readers know that you do take paid posts and know which of your posts you are being paid for. If openness and transparency is what the disclosure is for, the combination must achieve this the best. Visit disclosurepolicy.org for some help creating your own disclosure page.

Keith Lunt

Guest posting is talked about as a way of generating potentially huge amounts of genuine visitors to your website. Can it be true? Does it really work?

I have just been reading a claim from a blogger that he attributes 80% of his $50,000 annual blog income last year to the effects of guest blogging. This is an amazing claim and yet, he had nothing to gain from this claim. He was not directly selling a product, just the source of an interview. So should we believe him?

Backing Up The Claim

I don’t see why not. A few years ago one of my financial websites was making $3,000 – $4,000 per month on Google Adsense alone, without any paid marketing. This income, which lasted about 4 – 5 months, was through just search engine visitors. I was devastated when the site dropped 5 pages through the Google listings.

And this was just mainly fresh visitors. OK, they were arriving on a high income site. A site about mortgages is worth a lot more in Google Adsense revenue than potentially one about blogging.

But on the downside, one about blogging would have repeat visitors. It would have visitors subscribing to RSS feeds and newsletters. These visitors would return and be prone to buying into recommended products.

So yes, I believe his claims could be true. But why then guest blogging? Why not just article writing?

What’s Wrong With Articles?

Well with article writing you might get a good following of readers through the directory, but the main aim is to produce work that is listed for reprints. It is great for building inbound links and depending on the article directory’s traffic, you should receive some visitors.

But guest blogging is different. Here you are posting directly to the blogs, hopefully blogs which have good readerships. By writing quality material you are enticing the readers of that blog to wander over to yours and become readers on your blog also.

The Experiment

That’s the theory. Whether it is actually that much better is open to question and that is why I have to find out! So keep watching this post and I’ll mention which blogs I have guest posted to and which have resulted in traffic.

Starting a blog is not about planning. It is about starting to write and share your thoughts. A detailed plan of action might destroy your blog!

Starting a blog should be quite an easy task, but many people turn it into a headache. The problem is the old business maxim:

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

But I believe this does not apply to blogging, even as a business. If you want to blog, whether just to share your thoughts or because you want to turn it into an income, then planning every details could be the downfall before you even start.

A blog style is personal to you

A blog is a collection of your thoughts, ideas, doings and so on. If you really think that you need to put down a plan of action in writing, then where is the best place to do it?

Yes, the best place to plan your blog is in your blog. Create the blog and then the first few posts can detail what you are planning to do. This makes logical sense as anyone reading it will know that it is a new blog anyway, and by listing what you have planned it might interest them to come back at a later date.

Planning your blog within the blog is also a good way of starting to build up initial content before you are getting any real visitors to the site. It is starting to pad out the content of your website ready for when the search engines find it and begin to start sending you visitors.

What is involved in blogging?

The thing is, planning a blog does not entail that much. Register a URL, host it, upload WordPress, choose a theme and start writing. Plans going forward for making an income can change by the day, as offers are made and other opportunities appear.

The only plan you might have – building traffic

Planning your traffic building is also not something that you should set in stone. Keep looking around and trying different things. If you plan to spend a week article writing and a week commenting on other people’s blogs and so on, it is not really realistic. For a start, you will not know for certain which is working and secondly, if something really takes off then you need to stick at it, not follow to the letter a plan you have put down in writing.

It is far better that your plan is to experiment with different ideas as you go along rather than you will follow a set structure that will take you from A to B.

Flexible, not planned to the letter

In business, especially on large scale projects, planning is essential. But blogging should be about enjoying what you do, reacting to events and just seeing what is working for you and what does not work for you. That is about as much of a blogging plan that you should really make to start off with, keep it open and flexible for maximum benefits down the line. And if you really must put it down in writing, then make it your first post!

Keith Lunt

Thanks to today’s sponsor – used cars.

Most recent posts links are in almost every blog theme, but they are not the most efficient way of channeling visitors and page rank around the site. Read why I think you should replace it with different page navigation.

Most blogs that I visit proudly display a list of most recent posts. But is there any point in this? Could it even be an unecessary distraction that loses traffic for you? Lets look at it from the point of view of humans and search engines.

Humans visitor

To start with, brand new visitors to your website need to be sold on your website. Your most recent posts might be your best ever work, but more likely they are just average. Instead you want to alert them to your best writing, which is probably your most read writing. So a list of your most popular posts could just attract the attention of a few new readers and persuade them to read on.

The problem is there is limited space on a screen and if you have a recent posts and a most popular posts set of links, you are giving your visitors too much information. You need to steer them towards those posts that attract attention and hope this will get them to subscribe to your writings.

But what about existing readers? These do need to be told of your latest posts. But these will probably be following your RSS feeds or subscribing to your newsletter. Both of these will be alerting them to the new writings. Also, existing readers coming directly to your website are most likely to land on your homepage rather than a post. If your homepage has the links to your newest work, then that satisfies their needs.

So for human visitors, whether they are new to you and have arrived on a post or existing readers arriving from your RSS read, then steering them to your most popular work is the best way of ensuring more page views.

Search Engines

But surely for search engines it is far better to link to new posts from every page of your website? That way as soon as a search engine visits any page of your website then they are alerted to the presence of new posts? This ensures rapid caching of the pages? Right?

Wrong!

For a start, if you are using any descent sort of blogging platform new posts will ping the search engines. This is where you tell the search engines that the new post exists. Secondly, there are far better ways of doing this function without distracting from guiding your visitors around the site.

To make sure that search engines do pick up all new posts it is better to install a sitemap plugin. These will tell search engines which pages are new and updated in the format that they prefer to work with. You can also use services such as Twitter to announce the arrival of new pages.

Also, by removing the list of new posts from every page, you are helping to channel the page rank around the site. Instead of it always pointing temprarily to new posts you are pointing it to the most valuable posts in your arsenal. This might just lift these posts slightly higher in the search engines and increase your traffic even more.

So get rid of your most recent posts list and replace it with a most popular posts list.

Ethical or not, for bloggers, being paid to write a post can be a good way to earn some extra cash. On a very good blog, it can be a decent income. But how do you get started?

If you are blogging, either for fun or with the aim of earning a decent income, then one of the methods that you might look at for earning an income is sponsored posts.

Is sponsored posting ethical?
There is a great debate as to whether these are ethical or not. You are selling to your audience a website, company or a link on the pretense that you are recommending it out of interest. But in actual fact, you might only have first heard of the website 5 minutes ago when you were asked to write about them.

Finding work
That aside, they can be a good earning potential. You can deal directly with various contacts for sponsored posts, or use one of the many main providers on the marketplace. Dealing direct does earn a lot more cash, but it is more difficult to find the people wanting to advertise on your website.

So, how do you go about it? Well, find a site or two that you like the looks of and sign up. You give them your basic blog details, the address, a description etc, and then they quite often give you a claim sentence to publish in a post, e.g.

This sentence is utter nonsense and is designed just to prove that you do actually have permissions to update the blog. You add the sentence to a recent post that appears on the home page and then you are away.

Posting sponsored content
After that, you just have to sit down and wait for some opportunities to arrive. As they do, and they will if your blog is good enough, you read the requirements, write a post and then tell the system the URL of the new post. There will probably be an automated check of the correct links and then the advertiser gets to review your post. If everything passes, you then receive payment a month later.

On site disclosure
It sounds easy, and usually is. But you to have to be wary that a recent change to advertising standards mean that you have to disclose that you are being paid to write that post so that your readers know it is not just a website that you have found and want to promote. They have the right to know there is a financial incentive for you to write that post.

How this is dealt with varies from scheme to scheme. Some insist that every post carries a disclosure whilst others insist that your site carries a disclosure page. Personally, I try to do both as much as possible.

Variations
Not all sponsored posts schemes work the same way. For example, the one I work with the most just suggests what to do, a minimum word count and the links and lets you get on with it. Another scheme just wants a link in a post of relevant content.

These schemes are mainly about tricking the search engines into seeing more inbound links, again a little dubious, but there is also another system in which all links are nofollowed. This is quite a clever set-up, which I have only just started to use and there is currently little work available. If it starts to grow it will get it’s own write-up, but its main aim is just to get bloggers talking about their advertisers.

Keith Lunt