Question asked; question answered! Here's a question posed from the Ask Kesha segment of the blog. I've seen a lot written on getting more subscribers. With WP (Wordpress) running for me for just around a month (I write pretty much every day), I'm wondering what effective plugins I can use to build subscribers and traffic. I know there is tons of advice out there. So much it's difficult to take it all in. I guess I looking for something a little more direct. I'd be really grateful for any tidbits of assistance you can offer. Many thanks! Marty, http://lifechapters.net Answer Great question Marty. I, too, understand the frustration and confusion one can have with the plethora of information online today about getting traffic and building subscribers. So in an effort to help you, here are my initial thoughts.

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Promote others to promote yourself! Zig Ziglar said it best: “You will get everything in life that you want if you just help enough other people get what they want." That’s it! This is one of those killer best practice marketing strategies that if done genuinely and often enough, can reap you mountainous results. Okay, so let me get the obvious out of the way: before anybody will promote you, you must have quality products, services, and ultimately have a winning, positive attitude about yourself and what you do. No one wants to promote crappy products or negative, close-minded, conceited, know-it-alls. Common sense, right? Well, common sense isn’t evenly distributed so sometimes I have to clarify Now that we have that disclaimer out of the way, let me give you a few excellent examples. Online:

• Heather Stephens, creator of Clever Marketer, implemented a blog commenting tribe, which is a great community of

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I remember reading something dosh dosh wrote once that resonated with me. He said: "Know one thing for sure: what you put on your site allows visitors to form judgments about your personal and business brand." He also offers the following exercise I urge you to do right now: If you own a website or blog, take a look at it today.

• What information are you sharing? What does that say about your site?
• What content topics or types do you not publish on your site?
• How does your content currently define your personal or blog brand?
• What are your peers and competitors publishing (and not publishing)?

So I started thinking...I wonder how people perceive my website and what judgments are being formed. Am I providing useful, relevant content for my audience? Am I on the right track with my topics? As a web designer and offline business coach, ...

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As a web designer, I have to most often explain to my clients aspects of 1) web usability, 2) design principles, and 3) importance of engaging content and other elements for a successful business web presence, which is not a problem as my goal is to help them succeed online. However, sometimes, my ideas for the above 3 items conflict with what clients want. For instance, people seem to still want flash intros/splash pages, blinking words, and scrolling text on their websites. Can you say MySpace? Ugh! Not only did these things go out in the 90s with high top fades, stone washed jeans, and curls but they are not very attractive and/or not useful for visitors. This is my stance against websites developed completely in flash and blinking and scrolling text. Don't Do It! Who's with ...

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People ask me all the time where I find images for my blog posts and I've been meaning to create a post describing how to do so. Well, look no further! I've found two video resources that explain extremely well what I do to find free killer blog images. As an aside, I'm one of those people who look at imagery (along with the blog title of course) to help me decide if I'm going to read a post or not becasue we all know that pictures are worth a thousand words. So check out the resources below and have fun finding those great images for your next blog posts! Resources

• Search Creative Commons
• Finding Images on Google
• Update: Marty has so graciously suggested a plugin called Photo Dropper, which searches for Creative Commons licensed photos and

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