ProfitBlogger.com has been moved entirely to it’s new home at http://www.blogsell.com/tips/

Inline with the new BlogSell blogging software, the new blog will focus more on tips and ideas on making money from your blog, and less on WordPress plugins and themes.

The new blog will also include new tips and ideas on using BlogSell to monetize your blogs, manage content, as well as new feature announcements from time to time.

If you are subscribed to FeedBurner, you can hop onto the new FeedBurner URL here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogsell

This cool feature was in ancient time done by a plugin called “The Installer” but like most plugins, it eventually got forgotten amidst the never ending WordPress version updates. Now not only is it built-in by default, but you can also directly search the WordPress plugins repository and find your favorite plugins.

Or you can also select a plugin in ZIP format on your PC and use that.

The process is darn easy too, I’ll show you how to do it in this video:

Unfortunately sometimes due to heavy traffic or database connection problems, this may not work, But try again later and the auto-install feature will be back in action.

This new feature will definitely help us plugin-obsessed bloggers!

Main Index Template

In index.php, we need to remove all the leftover codes from what we’ve copied from the css library that we no longer need. Essentially, we only require the div tags, and anything outside these are unneeded. In the 2 column layout we are using right now, that would be the following:

<b>Content Column: <em>Fixed</em></b> <script type=”text/javascript”>filltext(45)</script>

Remove these and in its place we will paste in the WordPress codes:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<?php the_date(”,’<h2>’,'</h2>’); ?>

<div class=”post” id=”post-<?php the_ID(); ?>”>
<h2><a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” rel=”bookmark”><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<div class=”meta”><?php _e(“Filed under:”); ?> <?php the_category(‘,’) ?> — <?php the_tags(__(‘Tags: ‘), ‘, ‘, ‘ — ‘); ?> <?php the_author() ?> @ <?php the_time() ?> <?php edit_post_link(__(‘Edit This’)); ?></div>

<div class=”entry”>
<?php the_content(__(‘(more…)’)); ?>
</div>

<div class=”commentlist”>
<?php wp_link_pages(); ?>
<?php comments_popup_link(__(‘Comments (0)’), __(‘Comments (1)’), __(‘Comments (%)’)); ?>
</div>

</div>

<?php comments_template(); // Get wp-comments.php template ?>

<?php endwhile; else: ?>
<p><?php _e(‘Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.’); ?></p>
<?php endif; ?>

<?php posts_nav_link(‘ — ‘, __(‘&laquo; Older Posts’), __(‘Newer Posts &raquo;’)); ?>

After saving, add these to your style.css:

.post {
margin: 0 0 40px;
text-align: justify;
}

.post hr {
display: block;
}

.entry ul li:before, #sidebar ul ul li:before {
content: “0BB 020″;
}

.entry ol {
padding: 0 0 0 35px;
margin: 0;
}

.entry ol li {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

.postmetadata ul, .postmetadata li {
display: inline;
list-style-type: none;
list-style-image: none;
}

These are the div classes that corresponds to what we’ve just copied and pasted into the index.php. Again, this is taken from the WordPress default theme.

Single Page

Copy everything in your index.php and paste it into your single.php. Whenever you make changes to your index.php, you should do the same in single.php, unless you want your individual post or page to look different than your index.

You can also choose not to have a single.php file. This will result in WordPress using your index.php as the template. Doing this will save you time required to update your single.php file all the time, but it’s recommended to have a the single page file since some plugins requires you to edit that page.

Sidebar

It gets a little tricky here, since the theme we’re trying to create has 3 sidebars, but right now we only have one. But here is how a little ingenuity can actually help us get what we want. All we have to do is actually nest another 2 column layout into the single sidebar.

But rather than using the same 2 column layout codes from the css library, this time we’ll take the codes from the 3 column layout in order to make things a little simpler for us.

Before you start though, you should edit your style.css and sidebar to change the div class “leftcolumn” to “sidebar” instead. This is important because we do not want duplicate class names, which will mess up your theme. Right now you won’t see any duplicated class names, but the class “leftcolumn” also exist in the 3 column layout we’re about to copy from.

Following the steps from the previous post, copy and paste related codes from the library and into your theme. All you need is the codes for the 2 sidebars, so copy the rightcolumn and leftcolumn codes into your sidebar_right and sidebar_left pages as well as the corresponding css classes into your stylesheet.

Once that’s done, edit the css codes to fit with what you want:

#sidebar{
float: left;
width: 370px; /*Width of right column*/
margin-left: -400px; /*Set left margin to -(RightColumnWidth) */
background: #FFFFFF;
}

#leftcolumn{
float: left;
width: 185px; /*Width of left column in pixel*/
margin-left: -7px; /*Set margin to -(LeftColumnWidth + RightColumnWidth) 400*/
padding-left: 7px;
padding-top: 5px;
background: #FFFFFF;

}

#rightcolumn{
float: left;
width: 185px; /*Width of right column in pixels*/
margin-left: -7px; /*Set margin to -RightColumnWidth 200*/
background: #FBEAC5;
padding-left: 7px;
padding-top: 5px;
}

Earlier on, I’ve changed the width of my #maincontainer class to 960 pixels, which will be the total width of my theme. I’ve changed the sidebar width to 370px wide, and since I wanted both the left and right sidebar to be of equal size, I’ve set it to 185px each.

Take note that whenever you change the size of your sidebar, update the numbers in your contentcolumn class. The size should be the total size of your sidebar or slightly higher.

Play around with the background colors. If you’re not familiar with css, then check the html color code table.

Next, it’s time to widgetize your sidebars. Simply replace the non-div codes from your sidebars and add the following:

<?php if ( !function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’) || !dynamic_sidebar(’sidebar_right’) ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>

Don’t forget to change the sidebar name ’sidebar_right’ so you can tell which sidebar is which in your widgets tab.

Next, add these to your functions.php

<?php
if ( function_exists(‘register_sidebar’) ) {
register_sidebar( array(‘name’ => ’sidebar_left’, ‘before_widget’ => ”, ‘after_widget’ => ”, ‘before_title’ => ‘<h2>’, ‘after_title’ => ‘</h2>’) );
register_sidebar( array(‘name’ => ’sidebar_right’, ‘before_widget’ => ”, ‘after_widget’ => ”, ‘before_title’ => ‘<h2>’, ‘after_title’ => ‘</h2>’) );
}
?>

The above are the codes required in order for widgets to work. Again, don’t forget to update the sidebar names to match what you’ve used.

Now you’ll need to link the different sidebars together under sidebar.php. As usual, remove any non-div codes in your sidebar.php and replace it with this:

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/sidebar_top.php’); ?>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/sidebar_left.php’); ?>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/sidebar_right.php’); ?>

What this does is call the 3 different files and open it within the file that contains the codes – your sidebar.

Now save and view your blog to make sure that everything is working correctly. If the sidebar appears to be stacking (the 2nd sidebar is under the 1st instead of 2 separate sidebars) try reducing the size of each sidebar (leftcolumn and rightcolumn) or increasing the size of the sidebar itself.

I recommend widgetizing your left and right sidebars, but hardcode the contents of the top sidebar by yourself if you know some html. This is where you should add your rss, opt-in box, sell ads and so on.

Comments and Search Form

Simply copy the codes from the default WordPress theme for both comments.php and search.php into your theme’s own.

One of the most time consuming part of using this copy-paste approach is looking for the corresponding css classes and copying them over. The comments and search usually have a rather long list of classes, but to make your life simple, just download this file and copy them into your style.css.

The theme is now halfway there and if you’ve managed to come this far, then give yourself a pat on the back. You’ve already created the structure of the theme itself. We’re pretty much done with the “creating” part, next it’s time to get creative and start to make it look like how we want it. It will be time to “dress” the theme up.

Automoblog

This is a blog which tells us specifically about the new cars which are launched in the market. This blog also has detailed analysis of all the technical specifications and features about a car. The well explained analysis actually describes the advantages and disadvantages of a specific model and thus a prospective customer or a car lover can know almost everything about it. RSS feeds can be subscribed and the overall rating of this blog is 9.5 which is in actuality excellent.

Carazoo

This blog is one of the topmost car blogs in India. The differentiating thing of this blog is that it focuses on all the car news from India only. All of the recent posts are regarding the launch of Tata’s Nano, the state specific demands of cars, auto fairs in different parts of the season etc. A complete reference for almost all the major news with a detailed analysis in the domestic car market.

The Best Blog for Car Tips

Another blog which is created to derive passion and knowledge for the car loving fraternity. But this blog specifically focuses on the cost benefit analysis of various car models of different companies. Along with it the major categories mentioned are Car caution, Car news, Car services, Car tips and Car sale. It also talks about the launching date, availability to different clients and design specifications. The RSS feeds, syndication and related partners with links also offer extra knowledge and a practical know how of a reader.

RideLust

It is a top blog which actually focuses and gives information a very specific niche. The writer only focuses on the newly launched cars and draws a competitive advantage vis-à-vis other cars and this is very subtle in nature. A vivid reader of car blogs can understand how a car is actually better or lacks some qualities than another. It basically tries to focus on the positioning of a car with relevance to its target market and draws inferences of the probability of its market success.

The blog also has added benefits such as news and article on motor bikes, their launches, technical specifications etc. Another huge benefit in this blog is he extensive category list which offers substantial information about each and very allied information.

More than Used Cars

This blog focuses on the most interesting topic i.e. sales of used cars by including the scope of extensive market research and good investigation skills. There is a lot of relevant information for the used cars segment such as most sought after dealers, ways to cope up with the reduction in gas prices, car warranties and their expiry dates etc. All in all, a near perfect site with the facility of partnered links to track the used car which a customer intends to buy.

The Cars World Blog

Another high quality blog specializing in giving valuable tips and guidelines to the readers to make them understand the basic know how of the car industry. The blog along with writing on different models and cars basically maintains its USP in offering guidance such as saving gas, GPS tracking devices, auto insurance schemes etc. A well arranged website with good partnered links and a streamlined approach for the posts published.

Why Buy Used Cars

Now, this blog is different from the previous used cars blog because it shows the underlying understanding of the necessity of used cars and the need to buy them. This understanding has to be achieved by reading the posts which present the nuances of used car buys from personal life examples by the writer. Another, unique concept.

All these blogs are unique in nature and the services they offer have different USPs. The comparisons are made on the site content and relevant information, but not on the thoughts behind them.

Here are some 125×125 banners you can use:

Here are some 250×250 banners you can use:

Here are some standard banners:

I’ll be adding more banners soon including animated banners, so do check back soon. I’m personally testing these banners to track conversions and improve them.

I’ve also added a few product reviews, autoresponder emails and blog articles you can use as content to pre-sell our products and increase your conversion rate even further.

Existing affiliates can login to the affiliate center and get these banners immediately. If you’re not an affiliate yet please join our affiliate program now and have some banners up. Next month we have some exciting news and affiliate competitions where you can win amazing prizes, look out for my email updates.

You can use the Max Banner Ads plugin to easily add these banners to your blog and track their click-through rate. You can also rotate several banners in the same spot.

If you’re new to affiliate marketing, make sure you also get a copy of Super Affiliate Blogger and discover how to make a five-figure monthly income with affiliate programs.

In order to get success with blogs, producing good content on them is definitely the most important factor. Whilst getting your content to reach to the masses is another area of concern. To generate good revenue from either of the practices you get yourself involved into viz. Adsense, Affiliates, Ads, etc., you need to have a decent amount of traffic. Higher the traffic, better is the probability of striking gold! That’s the simple math every blogger who blogs for money is invariably aware of.

How to get that traffic juice into your blog?

When it comes to getting traffic for a blog, we have a lot of ways to help ourselves with. These include SEO, reciprocal link-backs, etc. One great way to draw traffic is to submit your blog to the world’s leading blog directories which look for submission. All you need to do it log on to the blog directory websites, register for an account(depending on the blog directory, if it needs you to), fill in the details about your blog and submit it! This would allow your blog to be classified on the directory. Doing this with a lot of directories is definitely an added advantage. Most of such services are free! Isn’t it a great way to evangelize your blog across the globe?

It’s time now for some action:

Based on my experience and research, I would like to share with you a list of top blog directories apart from Yahoo! and Google submissions, where you can get your blogs listed, for free!

9rules network – One of the best network of blogs which focuses on selection of quality content in order to get listed. A lot of top rated blogs are listed with the 9rules network. They’re know to put the best content from the independent web on their charts! They have an interesting set of 9 rules, and hence the name!

Technorati – This name needs no introduction. Techhnorati indexes the web within minutes of posting an article on a blog. This provides its users up-to-date information regarding the topics & authors one wishes to know about. They also have a featured list of top 100 blogs which have been exceptionally good with what they aim at.

Weblogs – It is a VeriSign service and a ping server which automatically notifies its subscribers whenever there is some new contenton the registered blog. Weblogs.com receives millions of pings every day from blogs that configure their publishing software, like wordpressto notify Weblogs.com the very moment content is published on them.

blo.gs – This is a Yahoo! acquired directory of weblogs and tools for tracking interesting and of course your favorite webloglets on which you keep an eye on. The best part of this service is that you can keep a track of your lists through the web and email, both. It also allows you to put a list on your blog/website as a blogroll which shall list whatever is new on the blog-o-sphere!

Blogarama – It is yet another free blog directory with more than 93000 listings. Apart from the free traffic that results from this service, Bograma also does paid advertisements for your blog, if and when needed. A good service to dirty your hands with. Try it out!

Bloggernity – It is a blogger search directory classified on a range of topics for easy access. Bloggernity is a bloggers’ hangout. One can search the directory from a neat search bar to get latest on entertainment, news, humor, political issues, etc. The list is updated almost daily.

BlogHop – This service helps match the blogs to readers. It has a concept of tagsurfing which allows a user to surf the blogs matching his/her interest and can lead to a good blog to read. Being a blogger, you may add your blog with an elaborated description of the same.

Bloghub.com – This is a directory listing and community website where members can gather and exchange ideas. A user can also look out for exciting blog templates, skins, etc. One can also create a blog of his own or be a part of the discussions at the Blogger forum.

GetBlogs – This blog directory is a comprehensive ‘human edited’ directory of more than 11,000 weblogs from across the world, categorized in more than 190 different categories for easy surfing and addition of blogs. You can submit your blog or search for more based on your interest. All for free!

NYC Bloggers – If you’re targetting the US audience, this is a must signup for you! Out of more than one million weblogs in the NY city, you get to find a lot of them here. Good service to get listed with, for bloggers targeting US based audience.

Feel free to add more to this list as a follow up via the comments section. Happy blogging!

It has been quite a few months while the stable version of WordPress, WP 2.51 has been around. Though there have been bugs and patches for them in a timeline, but somehow I have been satisfied with the way WordPress has evolved as the leading publishing platform. Some of the prominent bugs in the current stable release were reportedly:

• The Internet Explorer issue
• Error with the File Editor
• Auto save problem, etc.

You can find a lot of bugs currently being tracked and reported at WordPress trac. If interested, you may also submit the bugs you think you’ve tracked down. It’s another great way to learn!

The next release of WP is a beta1 release and is available for download here. If you’re interested in a stable version, I would request you to wait for the final release. Talking about the prominent changes in WP 2.6, the best ones include Post Revisions, which saves a history of edits made to a post, and support for Gears, which speeds up working with the admin screens to a great extend.

Other salient features of WP 2.6 b1 include:

• XMLRPC mechanism for listing and deleting media resources easily and efficiently.
• Admin SSL Support to allow visiting the admin over http or https with an option to force https.
• Support for the XML-RPC and Atom client APIs is turned off by default now. In order to use an external client for posting, you’ll need to turn these features on, under Settings/Writing section of the panel.
• While selecting themes, you now get to view a preview of how your site looks with the new theme before applying the change. This Theme preview feature is similar to the one at WordPress.com.
• The Gravatar service now also supports MonsterID, Wavatar, or Identicon icons in place of the default icon for those who do not have a Gravatar for them. You may select these options under Settings/Discussion.
• The plugin plugin management has been improved a lot. Active and inactive plugins are now listed separately. You may now ‘bulk activate’ or ‘bulk deactivate’ plugins. The unused plugins may now be deleted with the click of a button.
• A ‘Press This’ bookmarklet for quick posting, something similar to tumblelog.
• You may now relocate your content directory.
• You can also move wp-config.php, out of the root folder of your website.
• WP now has a word counter within the inbuilt editor. This is a blessing in disguise for writer who need to concentrate on words before publishing.
• The image editing dialog is improved over the previous versions. It now gives a lot of control over the images you embed in the posts.
• TinyMCE 3.1.0.1 with lots of bug fixes.
• WP has the latest jQuery 1.2.6 and jQuery UI 1.5 which provide some cool performance boost!

Now that was more than one could have asked them! WordPress is growing big and that too pretty fast. You may download and upgrade your current WP installation. For the professional blogs, I would however recommend to wait for the final release of WP 2.6 which shall anyhow be more stable.

It took 34 months of active development, 5 beta versions and 2 RC’s to get to this very moment. Hailed as the best browser in the whole wide world of the web, Mozilla’s creators have found mercy with us lowly Internet users and decided to finally put our minds at rest.

They take their development quite serious too if we are to believe their statement. Upon asked when the new version will be released they coolly say “when it’s ready”. Oh well, let’s hope that the long wait will be worth it after all.

For some reasons I do believe it will. I suppose it does take quite some work to make sure everything is compatible and enough feedback has been received to iron out the bugs before releasing version 3 to the masses.

So if that takes your fancy, you can host your own Mozilla party or attend one in your neck of the woods instead. So far there has been a lot of interest in the community and the folks at Mozilla want to set a new record. The Guinness World Record for the Most Software Downloaded in 24 Hours.

To be part of this massive event, check out their party site.

Take part in the Mozilla Guinness World Record Day and take your Pledge Now:

Got a blog you want to sell for some quick cash? Do it in our marketplace.

In fact you can sell blogs, advertising spots on your blog, custom WordPress themes and more. You can do it via standard auctions, or enable “Buy Out” or “Make an Offer” to get custom proposals for your items.

To get started, register now and you’ll receive USD2.00 account credits that you can use to pay for any additional listing options you choose.

My friend Kidino is selling his established website at www.ViagraZenerx.com starting from USD200 and the site itself can make you affiliate commissions between USD80 – USD230 a month. Do the maths and you’ll see that this is a great deal.

All fees have been reduced drastically to make it more affordable to everyone. Register now and start selling or buying.

Here’s how it works:

• There are 3x 125px banner ads spots that will appear on the blog, at the top right hand corner and each spot is sold differently
• Every time you see the image like the one you see on your right, you can click on it and be taken to the individual auction page
• You can register for the marketplace and make your bid on each individual ad spot or all of them if you want, there is no limitations
• You can also choose “BuyOut” to bypass the auction and grab an ad spot for the specified BuyOut price.
• You can place a banner ad to your own sites, products or affiliated sites, as long as the ads have nothing to do with politics, gambling, porn or sexual topics
• Each ad will be active for one month, after which they will be available again to new advertisers

Is it worth your money?

EasyWordpress.com gets about 200,000 unique page views every month, and about 90% of them go to the WordPress tutorials blog and the forum. On any other site with the same statistics, you can expect to pay between $90 – $200 per banner ad, so when you start at just $1 I don’t have to tell you it’s a good deal. Plus, unlike overpriced ad rates, our rate is 100% controlled by market demand, so you’ll always be getting the fair market value – or a “bang for buck” if you prefer.

All advertising revenue from these ads will be shared as follows:

• 50% goes to EasyWordpress.com to help us cover our costs and other expenses.
• 30% goes to any lucky EasyWordpress.com subscriber via our monthly cash giveaway. This will help the blogger to pay for some of his / her advertising and maintenance cost. Blogging isn’t cheap, in case you didn’t notice!
• 20% goes to any WordPress plugin developer in our WordPress developers list. There are a lot of WordPress developers out there who have developed fantastic plugins and they get get paid nothing for it, except for donations from users. It’s time we paid them for their efforts.