What is it that I have in mind, which you may not know about?  Well, I call it GAM, because it used to be named Google Ad Manager.  The name was changed last year to “Doubleclick for Publishers”.  I will call it GAM in this article, because that is the name that I am comfortable using.  When I say GAM, I am talking about Doubleclick for Publishers.

DoubleClick for Publishers - Google Ad Manager

So, what is GAM? Basically it is a free service from Google that delivers advertising on your site, it is ad server software, only running on Google’s server rather than your own.

Basically, GAM can deliver Google AdSense in conjunction with any other ads that you wish to serve on your site.  Or, you can totally eliminate the AdSense ads if you wish.  What is nice about GAM, though, is that it gives you the ability to rotate ads, which helps eliminate ad blindness (ad blindness is when regular visitors to your site no longer even notice the ads any longer, because they are used to seeing them all of the time).  The ability to rotate ads in the same slots means that you can serve up any number of different ads in certain slots, based on lots of different criteria.  You could say that the ads will rotate at random.  You could show certain ads to people from a certain country, while showing a different ad to visitors from another country.  You can show different ads based on the time of day.  There are lots of different criteria that you could choose to determine what ad shows to what visitor.  Generally, I rotate ads randomly, except in some cases where I sell ads to somebody and they specifically want the ads only shown to visitors from a certain part of the world.

Google App-Sphere

GAM will work best for you when you have a lot of different ads for it to put into the rotation.  Part of the reason for this is that your readers will see many different ads that might catch their attention when they visit.  If they see the same ad over and over, without a doubt they will become blind to it.  But if they visit today and see a graphic ad that is red, then tomorrow it is text based ad, then the next day the ad is blue… well, it will look different than normal, and draw their eyes.  This ability alone will help increase your earnings from your site.

You know what?  GAM goes one step further in helping you make money from your site.  Do you show AdSense ads on your site?  If so, GAM is for you.  Why?  Well, you can set up GAM in a way that it will show your ads (ads that you sold, affiliate ads, ads for your own products, etc), but if it has AdSense ads that will pay you more than your own ads do, then and only then will it show AdSense.  So, that means that it is going to show only high paying ads on your site! With AdSense you never know if a click is worth 10 cents or 10 dollars, but Google does know, and GAM will help you to not show those 10 cent ads, because frankly making 10 cents per click is not really worth your trouble.  I know that I’d much rather show an ad for one of my books or another service that I offer than to show an ad that has upside potential of only 10 cents.  This aspect of GAM alone makes it worthwhile to use it on your sites.

Now, there is a downside to GAM, though.  The learning curve is huge!  Using GAM is not easy to do, at least not at the beginning.  I have been using GAM for several years now, and I feel like I have a good handle on it.  I can do a lot of great things with GAM, but when I first started using it, I was lost and embarrassed to even admit that I had no idea what I was doing with GAM.  Now, though, I have spent enough time and effort on the software to make is very useful.  I feel that my online earnings are probably double because of my use of GAM.  It’s worth the time necessary to learn the software, the payoff will cover your time involved in learning the use of the system.

The good news is that like most other Google software, the use of GAM is free.

If you want to use GAM and need help in setting it up, contact me, and I can help you, it is a service that I offer through my Web-Earner service.

What do I mean by “platform”?  Well, I mean what kind of software will the site be built upon?  Maybe you won’t have a software platform at all, but these days, most sites do.  For me, I build nearly 100% of my sites on the WordPress platform.  WordPress is blogging software, but these days a lot of people are using it for Content Management as well.   What is Content Management?  Well, generally, Content Management, or CMS (Content Management System) is a piece of software that will help you arrange all of the articles (content) that you write for your site, put it into a presentable form that people can read.  Basically, it takes a bunch of articles that you have written and arranges them in a logical way so that your readers can have a nice experience on your site.

CMS Solution for your site

There are lots of CMS systems out there, and many of them, perhaps most, are free open source packages that anybody can use.  In the earlier days of CMS, there were popular packages that were not blogging software, rather they specialized in doing nothing but CMS.  Some names that come to mind would be Joomla or Mambo.  However, these CMS systems proved difficult to use for the average user.  They are complicated.  Some people still use them today, but I would venture to say that WordPress is not only the world’s most popular blogging software out there, but it is also the most popular software for CMS as well.  Let me point out that when I mention WordPress I am not talking about WordPress.com where you can set up a free blog on their site.  I am talking about WordPress software that you can install on your own site.

There are many CMS packages to choose from

Why would you want to use a CMS software for your site?  Back in the “old days” of the web, you used simple HTML language to write your articles and the basic setup of your site.  Well, when you use something like WordPress or another CMS package, you get not only your website that the public can view, but you get a backend as well, or an Administrative (or admin) area.  What is the admin area?  It is the place where you, the site owner, can go and write articles and do other things to control the look and feel of the site.  You can set up how your articles will appear on the site.  You can even tell it when the articles should appear.  Basically, when you go to the admin area, you have an entire operation center for your site.  This makes it easy to make your site look and feel the way you want it to, to give your readers a positive experience, the way you want to.  If you are just coding your site with HTML you don’t get this kind of “operation center” for your site.

I said in my previous article introducing this series that I had recently built a new site for a customer, and that I built it with money making in mind.  How does the platform play into the process of keeping money-making in mind during the construction of the new site?  Well, not too much, but it does make it easier to make changes to the advertising on the site.  You can quickly change out ads.  You can easily embed code into your site that is needed for putting money-making advertising and other money making methods into play on your site.  If you are using the old school method of coding HTML on your site, these kind of changes are a bit more cumbersome to do.

So, for a platform for your new site, my recommendation is without a doubt for you to use WordPress.  But, it is a personal choice, and if you are in the midst of designing a new site, I would recommend that you look into a number of CMS packages to see which one works best for you.  My bet is that you will settle with WordPress, but it’s good to learn before deciding.  One thing to keep in mind, though, is that since WordPress has by far the biggest user base, you will find support more readily for WordPress, since the user community is very large.

Tune in again as we continue the Designing a site series here on Virtual Earner!

So, if it is Really Simple Syndication, what does that mean? Well, simply put, it means that if you offer RSS on your site, people can subscribe to it and have it delivered to their desktop. When you publish an article on a site with RSS, that article will be pushed to your reader’s desktop in a matter of moments. If people choose to subscribe to your site, the text (and photos) of your articles will be available in the reader’s “Feed Reader.” Feed Reader is a piece of software that collects all of these RSS subscriptions and the reader uses this software to read the articles. Most current software, especially blog software (WordPress, Typepad and others) and other Content Management software (Joomla, Mambo and others) include RSS as part of the package. I would say that probably about 75% of current websites offer RSS of some form.

So, there are also special programs that a user can have on his PC for gathering his RSS subscriptions. There are dozens of Feed Readers out there. Bloglines, Google Reader and many many others. Personally, I like to read blogs from within my browser, and I use Firefox to gather RSS headlines, then I go to the site to do the reading.

The number of RSS subscriptions that you have has kind of become a way of measuring the success of a blogger. Personally, though, I feel that this is not a good metric for measuring success. You see, in my case, I don’t really push RSS or encourage people to subscribe.

Why don’t I encourage people to subscribe?

Well, if somebody is reading your site through an RSS reader, they generally don’t see the ads on your site. Let’s face it, I primarily blog to make money. I do it for other reasons too, but if I could not make money doing it, I would at lease have a lot fewer blogs than I do. If somebody reads through a feed reader, they don’t see my ads, and thus can’t partake in my advertiser’s products. Yes, you can also place ads in your RSS feed, but from everything I have read, those ads are not nearly as successful as ads on the website. Thus, I actually prefer it is people come to my site, rather than read me through their feed reader.

Now, I am not an expert on every topic, and I readily admit that I might be missing something here. So, if you are better educated on this topic, let me know where I am straying. For a writer who wants to make money from what he writes, how can he successfully convert readers to profits when they are using a feed reader to subscribe? Honestly, I hope that somebody can point me to something that I don’t know about this, because I might be missing some opportunities.

Any opinions?

One quick final note here. When it comes to reading, I love RSS. It’s just that I am looking for input on the writer’s side.

People want to comment!

The debate can be found on a site called Think Traffic.  I don’t normally follow this site, so I don’t know much about it.  A friend sent me the link to the article, Debate! Should You Allow Comments on Your Blog? Find Out What Two Remarkably Popular Bloggers Think, in which two popular bloggers debate the question about allowing comments.

Now, let me say, there are a lot of super-popular blogs that allow comments, and also a lot of super-popular blogs that don’t.  A few examples of blogs that don’t allow comments are Seth’s Blog, Zen Habits and Steve Pavlina.  Each of these sites is super-popular, and there is no way to interact with the writer (on Steve Pavlina’s site you can interact through their forum section, though).  I can’t argue with any of these because they are very successful.

In my case, though, I would never even consider turning off the comments on my blogs.  In the rest of the discussion, when I talk about my blog or my site, I will be talking about my Live in the Philippines Web Magazine, or LiP for short.  On LiP, my articles usually receive between 50 to 200 comments per article.  It is a lively group of readers who come to LiP, and the discussion we have through the comments fosters a growing community there.

Yes, community.  Community is what it is all about for me.  Commenting grows a community.  If you do not allow comments, your readers will know who you are, but they will have no idea who each other are.  By using comments, your readers not only know you, but they can know and interact with each other as well, which I believe is very important.

One of the most important things, in my opinion about comments is that you should respond to every comment that is directed at you.  Now, if “Steve” comments and addresses his comment toward “Mike” then you, as the writer of the article do not need to respond to Steve, although you certainly can if you wish to.  All in all, though, entering into a conversation with your readers, and engaging them through the comments does a number of things that will benefit you:

1. It helps grow your audience.  As people come to your site and check it out, when they see that you interact with the readers, they will feel more at home, and willing to talk to you, knowing that you take comments seriously.
2. Build trust.  By interacting with your readers, they will get to know you and consider you a friend.  When you gain this trust with your readers, you will have better success in selling them products that you endorse or produce yourself, like e-books.  You have to be careful, though, to always sell high quality stuff, and that way you will keep your reader’s trust.
3. Spur conversation and develop new ideas.  By engaging with your readers and listening to the comments that they leave, it spurs your own thinking process and gives you new ideas in life, and especially ideas of what topics to write about on your site.

Fact is, for me, it would be unthinkable to turn off the comments.  I believe that I am who I am today, blogging wise, and internet profile wise, because of the comments on my site.  As the site grew and grew, it was because of my comment policy and my responses to the comments that made my blog bigger, and made me more and more well known in the blogging community in my niche.

So, for me, I personally believe that using the comments to engage your readers is very important.  Yes, there are some big blogs out there who don’t do it, but overall, I think it’s the best way to go.

What do you think?

For today, let’s talk about Google AdSense. AdSense is probably the number one means of blog monetization around. There must be literally millions of people using Google to make money from their sites. I know that I do, and I bet you do too, if you have a site earning money for you already.

Google has rules for just about every aspect of using them to monetize your site. For example, there is a limit as to how many ad units you can put on any given page on your site. You can’t have a few sentences of content and 40 ads on the page! Google limits you to putting 3 ad units on a single page. Yes, they have other products that you can also include in the page, but for actual ad units you are limited to 3 such units on a single page. If you put 4, you are in violation of Google’s terms, and you risk losing your AdSense Account.

So, since you are allowed 3 ad units, you should make sure that you put 3 on each page, right?

NO.

Not Necessarily.

Sometimes, putting fewer ad units will earn you more money! Of course, a lot of people are reading this and thinking that I must be crazy. The more ads you put, the better chance somebody will click on one, right? That part may be true, but you should also consider that you can get MORE clicks, and still earn LESS. How can that be? Let’s have a look.

How does the whole advertising game work on AdSense? Well, if a company wants to advertise on the Web through Google, they open an AdWords account with Google. They sign up and they bid for keywords. For instance, they might choose the word “flowers” as the Keyword that they are targeting. And, they might say that they are willing to pay 50 Cents (US currency) for every time that somebody clicks on their ad. Another company may also choose the keyword “Flowers” and they might bid $1 for that Keyword. Other companies may also bid on that same word, and bid as little as 1 cent. So, for instance, let’s say that a total of 20 companies have bid on the Keyword “Flowers” and the bids range from $1.00 per click all the way down to 1 Cent per click.

OK, next, on your blog, you write a post about Flowers. Ding Ding Ding! Google sees that this post is about Flowers, and suddenly the whole process kicks in, and those people who bid for the keyword “Flowers” have their ads placed on your site. The person who bid the highest amount gets his ad placed first. The second place bidder gets his ad listed second, and so on. Now, if somebody clicks on those ads on your site, you get a share of that money that was bid for the click.

So, let’s say that you put the maximum of 3 ad units on your site. Each one of those ad units can have multiple ads, as many as 5 ads on each ad unit. So, if you put 3 ad units on the page, you may have as many as 15 different ads from Google. This would mean that you have the top 15 bidders advertising on your post about flowers. Advertiser #1 bid $1 per click. Advertiser #2 bid less, and Advertiser #3 bid even less than that. So, in having put 15 different advertisers on that one post, you may have a bunch of guys bidding 5 cents or even 1 cent per click! Those clicks are not worth very much. It takes a lot of 1 cent clicks to make up for just one click from the guy who bid $1.

Let’s say that you put just one ad unit on that post. Suddenly, you have only the top 5 bidders advertising, and the lowest click might be worth 50 cents or so still. So, in this case, you could get 10 clicks on that page that has 3 ad units, and make less than if you got just one click on that page with only 1 ad unit. It sounds kind of complicated, but if you think it through, you’ll find that it is actually quite simple!

So, if you are blogging in a niche that has few advertisers, you might explore the possibility of cutting back on the number of ads that you place on your site! You might make MORE money that way! One thing to keep in mind – it doesn’t hurt much to experiment and see what pays off best in your case. You can always switch back after a few days of testing!

Remember the old movie where there was a kind of “catch-phrase?” “If you build it, they will come.” This voice was ringing in the mind of Kevin Costner in the movie “Field of Dreams.” He built the baseball diamond in his cornfield, and sure enough, people came. It doesn’t necessarily happen that way on the web. People don’t go to websites that they don’t know about.

So, how do you make sure that people know about your new site?

Well, it can be a little tricky. Let’s assume that this is your first website, OK? In my opinion, the most effective thing you can do is to start visiting blogs that are on the same (or similar) topic as your site. Make comments. Join the discussion. Now, I am not talking about making a comment like this:

Hey everybody, visit my new blog! It is at: insert your url here

This kind of comment will never be of much help to you! Don’t do it. First of all, the people who read that know nothing about you, so why should they go visit your site? Secondly, the owner of the site where you post that will probably not be too happy. You see, the purpose of the comment section on blogs is not for people to go post their URL! The purpose is to participate in an educated discussion! When you leave your comment, your name will be linked over to your site. If you leave a comment that is intelligent, and adds to the discussion, I guarantee you that some of the readers will click on your name and go visit your site! When they see that you know what you are talking about, they will naturally be interested to go and read more of what you have to say!

Other things you can do to get traffic for a first website: participate in forums where you can leave your link (follow the same policy as with commenting on blogs – post important and relevant info along with your link); Participate in online mailing lists that are on-topic with your site; purchase some advertising! You can join Google AdWords, and place your own ad on many websites for very little money! All of these methods will get traffic for you! If you are a good writer, how about approaching owners of popular blogs in your field, and offer to do a guest post, or a series of guest posts? Usually, if you write a guest post, the blog owner is happy to link to your blog!

There are also offline ways that you can attract traffic. Print up some new business cards and make sure that your URL is prominently featured on the card. Same thing for new office stationary. If you are an expert in your field, make sure the local newspapers know about you, and that you will be a person to interview if a news story comes up in your area of expertise! Maybe you can even do a guest spot on a radio or TV show. Seek out opportunities to speak at events, and make sure that your website is mentioned. Just think of it like this – use every opportunity possible to get your blog URL known to the public!

Now, keep this in mind. If you work really hard and build up your profile so that you become well known in your area of expertise, you can launch new websites with ease! After you become well known, you launch a new site, announce it on your original site (which has become well known through your hard work), and instantly people who like you will start reading the new site too! It is that easy! I know this for a fact, because it is the model that I have followed, and I have a lot of blogs, and they each have a good readership! You can do that too.

And, you may ask, what is the advantage of getting a lot of readers? What is the advantage of becoming an expert in your field? Well, honestly, the more of an expert you become, the more of a “go-to” person you become, the more money you will make. Building your profile online is the best way to make money start rolling in. When you get big enough, people start coming to you with deals to make money. People want you to endorse something of theirs, and they will pay you to do so.

Believe me. I know.

Yes, on January First, I was doing some blog reading, and checked in on one of my favorite sites, Mike’s Life.  MikeCJ, as he calls himself, has not been blogging for very long, only a couple or three years, I think, but he has become a blog powerhouse in that short time.  How did he do it?  He did things right!  Well, Mike had a new blog post about a Blog Housekeeping Checklist, things that you need to do for your blog and your online presence in 2011 to get the new year kicked off right.  I already do, or should do all of the things on his list, and even a few more, but it was his blog post that clicked in my mind and reminded me that it is that time of year again.

2011 - Time to get to work!

So what are Mike and Bob’s recommendations for 2011?

Check them dates!

Yes, for every blog or website that you have, it is likely that in the footer (or somewhere) you have a Copyright statement with the year listed.  Yikes!  I just went and looked at some of mine… most were 2010, but I found one that said Copyright 2007!  Wow, better update that one quick.  Yes, go check all your sites and make sure they have the current year in the copyright statement.  It will make it obvious that you are paying attention, and are serious about what you do.

Update your Avatar!

Set Goals - You'll be happy you did!

Do you have an avatar, a picture of you, that shows up on your website, or elsewhere on the net when you leave a comment?  If so, how long have you been using the same photo?  Maybe it’s time that you update to a newer image of yourself!  Keep up with what you really look like, not that handsome guy that you were 20 years ago!  Doing this will again show that you are not stagnant, and also will draw more attention, because it’s something new, not just the same as before.

Pricing

If you are offering services or products on any of your sites, take a look at your prices.  Are they current?  Are they accurate.  Are they still the right prices that you should be charging.  If you answer no to any of those questions, update the prices – either up or down – and charge what you should.

Profiles

Every one of your websites either does have or should have your profile on it.   Something telling a bit about yourself.  It helps readers make more of a personal connection with who you are, and makes them feel like they are your friends.  What about your profile on your Social Networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn?  Read these over and make sure they are up to date.  Also, you should massage each profile a bit and make it a bit different on each of your sites, to fit in with the theme of what the site is all about.  Do it now, and keep it up every New Year!

About Pages

Just like Profile, your sites should have an “About” page to tell what the site is all about, who you are, who your company is and such.  No information is static, and things change often, so every year you should go and make sure that your “About” page is up to date, and accurate.

Take a retreat

One of my new year habits is that I try to take a retreat for a day or two – just me, nobody else.  Why?  To reflect on the past year, and decide the path for the coming year.  You will be amazed how much more you can accomplish if you make a conscience decision as to your path for the coming year.  You will get a lot more done, and you will do a lot less of things that are disruptive, or downright destructive of your goal.  So, take some private, “alone time” with yourself and nobody else to map out your goals in the new year.  You will be glad that you did.  I like to take a retreat to somewhere remote, where it is hard for anybody to reach me.  If you can’t do that for some reason, just lock yourself in your office.  This is a very important thing for you to do, in my opinion.

Make a list

When you take your retreat, make several lists.  Goals list.  List of things you want to avoid doing.  that sort of thing.  Get it on paper, and keep it handy.  Refer to your lists at least once each week in the new year to make sure you are staying on target.  If you do this, by the end of the year you will be very surprised at how much you accomplished in 2011.

Happy New Year to you…  now get busy!  I have to run now, my list is not yet complete!

First steps first, you need to have a place to put up a blog.  There are lots of free blogging platforms out there like Blogger, Blogspot, Blogster, WordPress.com and many others.  However, I do not recommend having a hosted blog!  What I recommend is having your own blog and hosting it yourself on your own server.  I would bet that 70% of people who start up blogs do so on some hosted free blog service like those I mentioned, so why shouldn’t you do so?  Well, I have a number of reasons, let’s look at a few:

1. If you are putting up your blog posts on somebody else’s service, without a doubt you are giving up some of the ownership of your post.  You are freely storing the info and publishing the info on somebody else’s platform, and thus they get some ownership of the information you post.  If you get your own hosting account on a shared server, you rent the space, and this have some ownership of the space.  The service provider does not own the content- you do.
2. Think about this – let’s say that you build up a blog that becomes popular and influential.  A lot of people know about your blog and follow it regularly.  I have a number of blogs that fit this category.  Then, let’s say that the blog hosting service you are using goes out of business.  Or, what if you post something on your blog that is against the terms of service of the host, and they kick you out of the service?  Your blog is gone.  Sure, you can move to your own server at that time, but how many of your loyal readers will find you?  It’s like starting over, and you may never build up your blog to the point where it was.
3. I always prefer having control over my activities, not letting others have control.

So, because of these, I simply believe that it is best to go on your own.  So, what steps are involved in getting started with your own blog on your own server?  Let’s look:

1. Choose a domain name.  This is simple, choose a domain name that fits in with the topic you want to blog about, or just with you.  For example, I have a blog about Mindanao, and my domain is “Mindanao.com.”  I have a blog about Living in the Philippines, and the domain is “LiveInThePhilippines.com.”  Choose a name that fits in with what you want to talk about, or a very generic name that can be used for everything.  Another way you might go is to register your name.  For example, although it’s already taken by somebody else with my same name, I could have registered “BobMartin.com” and then I could have even had multiple blogs on that domain.  Let’s say I wanted to blog about fishing, I could have then started a subdomain for that blog:  fishing.BobMartin.com, etc.
2. After choosing what domain you want (and making sure that nobody else has it yet), you will need to register that domain.  There are many places where you can register a domain, I use a company called GoDaddy.com.  For under $9 per year, they will register the name for you.  It’s cheap, and their service is very reliable in my experience.
3. Next, you will need a host where you can put up your blog.  I use a company called ServInt.net, but they are mostly for people with needs for a bigger server than you will probably need.  You will want a Linux server, in my estimation, because if you want to run WordPress (the blogging software that I prefer) it runs on Linux, not Windows.  You can get a web host for anywhere from $3 to $10 per month.  Look for somebody who has a one button installer for WordPress, a program like Fantastico would be very good for that.  With Fantastico, you can install WordPress (and other web software) at the click of a button.
4. Once you have your domain name and hosting in place, you are ready to go!

OK, that’s going to be it for this post.  You have enough to do with getting everything set up!  On the next post, let’s look at the next steps in starting up with blogging.

So, there are two tricks that you need to pull off.  One way to get more traffic is by bringing more people to your site.  Another way to get more traffic, and the one I will talk about in this post, is by having those same visitors look at more pages on your site.  The longer they stay on your site, the bigger the chance that they will respond to the advertising present.  Also, if you are doing some CPM (cost per thousand views) advertising on the site, the move pages they view, you will automatically earn more money!

More traffic....

So, how can you get them to view more of your site.  Most people who surf the web will come to your page, take a quick look, maybe skim over your latest article on the site, and quickly move on to another site.  I have found a way, though, to get a few more page views, and keep people on your site longer.  I started doing this a few months ago, but I have found a way to revolutionize it and make it much easier!

On one of my sites, I have a blog, which is the main part of the site.  I also have a photo gallery that you can click over to if you want to view photos.  But, I never made a huge amount from the Gallery.  I knew it had potential, though.  I started putting links to photos from within my posts.  For example, let’s say that in one of my posts I mentioned something about Cebu City.  I would link the words “Cebu City” to a Photo Gallery of Cebu City.  Or, if I mentioned a race car, I might link to a photo of a race car that was in my gallery.  The more opportunities that I would give people to look at something else on my site, the more pages they would view, and the more odds that they would act on the ad that happened to be on one of those pages.  It also kept them surfing my site longer than they would have if I didn’t link over to that race car that they wanted to see.

All of this was OK, but it’s kind of cumbersome to have to keep putting in those links every time you write an article.  Sometimes you forget to put a link to something, and that blows the whole concept.  Well, luckily, I found a plug-in for my wordpress blog called “ALinks” which does this automatically.  What you do is that you make a list of keywords that you want to have linking to other pages.  After you have done this, every single time you type that word into your post it will link over to the page where you tell it to go!  It’s all automatic.  For example, if you enter the term “race car” into the list on ALinks, and tell it to go to a certain URL that has that race car photo, then every time that the term “race car” appears on your blog, it will link to that photo!  No need to manually do the hyperlink any longer!  Cool, don’t you think?

I just set this up on one of my blogs two days ago, and my advertising earnings on my Photo Gallery are now 10 times what they ever have been!  I consider ALinks a great success on my site!  Give it a try.

Why so hush-hush?

Problem is, it seems like a big job to set up a blogroll to your various sites if you have a lot of them.  For me, if I really set up a full blogroll to all of my sites and individual pages that way it should be done, I have about 60 different links in my blogroll (not even counting if I want to link to other people’s sites).  But, sitting there and typing in 60 or more links into your blogroll is a big job.  It takes time to do something like that.

WordPress - My Software of choice!

My software of choice for nearly all of my sites is WordPress.  Even for sites that are not really blogs, I find that WordPress does a great job for me.  In fact, I use WordPress on all of my websites, except for e-commerce sites, where there are shopping cart programs that are more robust than any shopping application you can do on WordPress currently.  What? You didn’t know you could do a shopping cart on WordPress?  Well, you can, but it’s not quite as robust as what I would like to see yet.  Someday it will be, though, I believe.

OK, getting back to blogrolls.  A few months back, I did a major revamp on one of my websites.  I’m not talking about changing the way it looks – oh, I did that, but I changed the complete functionality of the site too.  As part of the process, I set up various Blogroll Categories, with multiple links in each Category.  In all, I had nearly 70 links in 4 different categories.  A few weeks later, I was setting up a new website, and I wanted to have all those same links, in the exact same format for the new site.  What a job to type all of that in, though!

Why doesn’t WordPress have the ability to import/export Blogrolls?

Well, I was surprised to learn that they do!  Yes, they seemingly try to hide it, but you can actually export the blogroll from one of your blogs, and import it into another blog!  So, what would take hours to do can be done in minutes instead!

How?

Well, it is not hard to do, once you know how.  Problem is that WordPress does not really tell you how to do it!  So, I will.

Here is how to export your blogroll from a WordPress blog where you have all your links as you want them:

1. Go to your blog that you wish to export from, but use a slightly different URL:  http://PathToYourBlogHere.com/wp-links-opml.php
2. When you go to that URL structure, you will get an XML file of your blogroll.  Just save that as an XML file.
3. Once you have completed steps one and two, you are finished with the exporting part of the job.

Next, you will need to import those links to the new blog where you want to have the links:

1. Go to your WordPress admin area, and go to the Tools menu.
2. Click Import.
3. You will be given a list of things you can import, choose “Blogroll” which should be second on the list.
4. Select the file on your hard drive, and click “Import OPML File” and once it finishes importing you are finished!

Another, even easier way to do this is to follow steps 1 and 2 from the Import task above, and then just enter the URL of your blog that you want to get links from.  Don’t forget to add the “wp-links-opml.php” at the end, though.  Once you do this, click on “Import OPML File” and you are done!

So, save yourself from all of the hard work!  Use the import function to move your links from one blog to another!  Why does WordPress not promote this more to make the job easier for thousands?