MonkeyBit.Com

Information is something you always need and never seem to have the perfect place to store all that you have. If you are like me you find all sorts of great sites as you click around the web just bursting with information you really want to keep. Now that I am seriously attempting to develop this blog, I need a place to store all those great pages of information I find. Things like “Six Top Linking Strategies” from JohnChow.Com or the “23 Ideas for finding new readers for your blog” by Darrin Rowse from ProBlogger.

I have tried lots of online services, Pocket PC devices, BlackBerries and tons of other ways to keep the information readily available but most fell miserably short of what I needed. Since I travel a great deal I am often on any number of machines when I visit the web and that just complicates the issue even more. Up until today I hadn’t found a one size fits all type solution but luckily I finally stumbled on it and it was right under my fingers the whole time.

Wordpress has a nifty little thing called Pages that most people (including myself) use to generate pages of info that fall outside the normal realm of posts. Well if you SAVE these pages versus PUBLISHing them, they don’t get automatically added to your navigation bar but are still readily available for you to use as needed. Solution! Best of all I can create and access these pages from anywhere. Perfect!

I know I am not the first person to discover the pages portion of Wordpress and more than likely not the first one to use it in this way but at least for now I am glowing with the knowledge that I solved a plaguing issue without tons of cash or countless hours mashing something together. If you have a Wordpress blog (and if you don’t you need to get one!) then give these pages a try. I bet you will be as happy with the outcome as I am.

I have decided to add a To Do List to the blog. Initially it will be a simple list over in the sidebar, and if things go the way I have planned, it could be my first WordPress widget (I know, like the world needs another widget right?) Anyway, basically it will be a list of things I plan To Do to the blog to help increase traffic, SEO, monetization, and overall value of the blog. Each item will have its own post that will be updated as things I accomplish a portion of the item, or close it out completely.

Hopefully this will inspire others of you out there to put together your own To Do list and share it with the world. Who knows we might even start a To Do sharing service. Anyway, on to the creation of the List. As always comments are welcome.

Many of you have read my posts on the blog ad network PayPerPost.Com and hopefully more than a few of you have taken the opportunity to check out the service and even join. For those of you who haven’t yet tried PayPerPost.Com there is yet another reason to click on over and see what all this is about. PayPerPost.Com has a new segmentation system that awards those bloggers who have developed truly high traffic blogs.

Some items to note is that PayPerPost.Com only charges a 35% service fee compared to ReviewMe.Com which currently has a 100% service fee. In simply terms if the blog ad is worth a $10 then the PayPerPost would only charge a $3.50 service fee, where ReviewMe.Com charges $10. It doesn’t take long to realize that you can clear more money working with PayPerPost.

Hey but even if you don’t have a high traffic blog you can still benefit from PayPerPost. Many blogs that are still working their way up the traffic ladder, like this one and probably your own, can drive more traffic to their site, and benefit from that traffic more, with a program like PayPerPost. Please note, in the interest of making sure everyone knows you are being paid for a post, you are required to put a standard disclosure on your blog. This helps ensure your readers know you are being compensated.
So hopefully this has convinced you to try PayPerPost. If so great, drop me a comment and let me know how it is going. If not then let me know that as well. Good luck!

I stumbled on this little option in the MistyLook theme called Asides and just had to try it out.

I have decided to redo the template theme and color scheme for the site. The Fresh theme was just too… perky for my liking. Nothing against that theme it looked great and worked even better, I simply decided that I wanted a bit more of a muted layout. A quick look at themes.wordpress.net and I found MistyLook 3.1 an awesome theme straight off the download. Of course it was still a bit bright so I played around with the style.css and changed the color scheme to one that used very few colors. Basically I changed the B (RGB) setting for Black (#000000) by 30% each time and laid out what I think is a rather nice scheme. I also applied an orange to highlight certain areas to give it a bit of pop.

I am still not 100% happy with the colors so there might be a few more adjustments but basically I am going to try and stick with the more muted colors and see if I can make something decent. Big thank yous to the creators of MistyLook 3.1 and Fresh. Both of these are awesome themes and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for a new Wordpress theme.