Monetize Monday ~ are you starting your week organized? If not I suggest working with a Tickler File, this can help you be organized so that you can start your week focusing on the right tasks and build momentum to your week.  Monetize Monday is a day where we focus on items that bring revenue into your business – new accounts, outstanding invoice reminders and staying connected with your “audience”.

This week is dedicated to wordpress plugins – stick with us we are going to start basic today and work this week through more and more details on plugins for your blog site, some recommended by others and some recommended by Wealth And Abundance Today based on using them and their success!  (you can use the print button at the bottom of the post to print this week’s material out if you want to refer back to it later as well) {there are plugins for the different blogging platforms like Joomla out there, I am just not a Joomla user – it is an awesome platform as well just a different learning curve}

Do you have your blog site set up yet?  Do you have the necessary plugins and the helpful plugins?

Are you asking yourself…

What the heck are Plugins?

When you first install your wordpress website, it comes with the basic structure or framework to be a web blog.  A plugin is an “addition” you install into your wordpress to make it do a certain function. They are programs written in code that when installed add a behavior to your blog site or amend the visual look of your blog site.  Like allow your readers to share your post or have pictures do a slideshow on your front page or to print your posts or to keep reader and visit stats – the list goes ON forever!  There are free plugins and premium paid plugins.  You can see where your manage plugins on your main dashboard in wordpress: There are usually two Akismet & Hello Dolly that come pre-installed in wordpress.  Just a note, when plugins are installed they are not “activated” – you will go into the dashboard area for plugins and activate them manually.  This gives you the owner more control being able to turn the plugins on and off.

Akismet is one of those plugins that is a MUST to activate – you hear a lot of people talk about receiving spam comments and there were so many and it took so much of their time to read and delete them that their blog was a pain – this is one of those plugins that make your blog life a joy!  It is a comment spam catcher and it works GREAT!  There is a link you will follow to create an account, there is a free one and a paid one – both are great.  Once your account is set up you will be given a “key” number you will input into your plugin area and it starts working.

Once it is installed you will find an easy access to its controls. back on your main blog dashboard.  There are settings and a small amount of configuring to do once it is installed and activated but most plugins are EASY and have detailed instructions to walk you through these stages – it will take 10 mins tops!  Besides adding the key in there are two choices to check off or not and you are done!

Don’t let plugins and this post start to overwhelm you…

If you are saying to yourself, “I just want a blog and don’t want to deal with additions like plugins”, that really is not an option in the blogging world.  Plugins are what make your blog “personal” and unique to YOU.  The object is to find the plugins that will make your life not only easier, like Aksimet but will also help in drawing attention to YOU and YOUR MESSAGE.  There are bling bling plugins, there are message sharing plugins, there are picture plugins, there are video player & audio player plugins, there are SEO plugins (to better your search engine optimization) and like I said earlier the list goes on and on.

Don’t let the idea of plugins and plugin management stress you out or overwhelm you – they are simple to work with for the most part, I won’t kid you there are some that are more advanced then even I would go but I choose not to use those as you can choose your level of “usage” as well.  Through thise week we will discuss several plugins for you, review them, and give you links to them to read more.  Some plugins we discuss will be free and some plugins we discuss will be paid ones. We look forward to taking the learning curve out of “not knowing” what you have available to you with wordpress plugins for those readers that have not started their blog yet.  We also look forward to helping current bloggers with some suggestions that they might not have known about yet….

As always, if you have any questions feel free to comment or contact us through our contact page  🙂