Setting Up A Successful Birth Photography Website

If you are a birth photographer you need to set up your website quickly. According to a New York Times article, birth photography industry is growing pretty fast and competition is getting tight. Having a website is the best way to beat your competition.

The fact is, these days people are doing online research on vendors before meeting them. You need to make sure that when mothers and fathers go online to research on best birth photographers they will find you and not your competition.

What You Need To Know So That Online Visitors Find You And Not Your Rivals. 

If you Google the words "Birth Photographer" the following website comes top http://www.dfwbirthphotographer.com. One reason is this site is quoted as an authority in birth photography niche from this New York Times article. That is the secret of Google ranking. Getting power house brands to link to your site. You may never get a link from New York Times but you can get one from local magazines, enzines or newspaper. Don't go asking for a link because you will be turned down. Try offering them an interesting image on birth photography and only ask for a link to your site from there website.

How they link to you matters. If you cared to look at that NY Times article you will see our example site was linked with the Keywords "Birth Photographer" Choose appropriate Keywords.

According to Google Keyword tool, there are 1900 monthly searches for Birth photographer and nearly 300,000 searches for birth photography. My advise is you should try to rank for keywords related to your area. e.g birth photographer Los Angeles or birth photographer Seattle etc. Leave the broad terms and try to rank number one in your location.

Get a Free Domain Name for Your Birth Photography Site

Include the keywords birth photographer in your domain name. Something like www.yourlocationbirthphotographer.com. There is evidence that shows having a keyword in your domain name may boost your ranking on Google search engine. Domain names cost between $10 - $20 a year but I recommend you get a free domain name from Bluehost or web hosting hub. These two site hosting companies will give you a free domain name when your purchase web hosting from them.

Make Sure You Have A well Designed Birth Photography Website

My recommendation is build, set up or create your birth photography site using Wordpress. It is free and easy to use. If you have never used wordpress before, go to www.wordpress.com and register for a free blog site. Use that free blog to learn how wordpress work. I don't recommend you use it for business because it will look so unprofessional. Once you get comfortable, you can switch to a self hosted site.

For a very well designed wordpress template, check out my post on Best Birth Photography wordpress theme.

Food Blog Traffic Secrets From 9 Yr Old Food Blogger With 2 Million Hits

Getting traffic to a blog is hard work but a 9 year old food blogger made it look so easy when she got two million hits in unbelievable 6 weeks of blogging. 

The nine-year-old blogger is Martha Payne from Scotland. Martha set up a blog as a writing project and to help raise money for a school-meals charity and then she did something that brought a flood of visitors. 

Martha Food Blog Traffic Tips 

The girl  started posting images of uninspiring school meals — one consisted of two croquettes, a plain cheeseburger, three slices of cucumber and a lollipop — These images drew international attention.  

One of the food pictures. 

Martha, who lives in the coastal town of Lochgilphead, about 210 kilometres west of Edinburgh, gave each meal a “food-o-meter” rating, and offered an assessment of its contents.

“I’d really like to know where the chicken comes from,” she wrote in one entry about having chicken fajitas for lunch, “so I am going to write to the lady in charge to ask. I know it comes from a hen but I’d like to know where the hen lived.”

As she garnered fame and attention, major newspapers started writing about her food blog and linked to her blog. 

Local officials weren’t amused, and ordered the schoolgirl to stop taking pictures.

In a statement, Argyll and Bute Council said Payne’s photos were misleading and had caused distress to cafeteria staff. The council was particularly irked by a report about the blog in Scotland’s Daily Record newspaper headlined Fire the Dinner Ladies.

No news is bad news 

The ban quickly became an online talking point, with free speech group the Index on Censorship even weighing in on Payne’s behalf. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver tweeted “Stay strong Martha” to his more than 2 million followers. 

The controversy only helped to make her  food blog more famous. Attracting curious web users eager to know who is this 9 year old food blogger.

Lesson here is, to get traffic to your food blog, post unique images ( no one was posting images of unappetizing food before Martha came around. Cause controversy, people like talking and reading about controversial issue.  If you can embed this ideas to your blog, expect a flood of web traffic to your site.

To visit martha's blog go to neverseconds.blogspot.com

Tips For Troubleshooting a Slow Loading Website

Is your website loading slowly and you don't know what is causing the problem.  The problem could be your server, website software or something you added to your site. 

This article is a basic guide on how to troubleshoot a Slow Loading Website. 

To know where the problem is, you need to open your site homepage on a browser. Once you click enter, look at the status bar at the bottom or top. If the homepage does not open at all and the status bar permanently reads, connecting or connected, the problem could be the server or your database has a problem. In such a case you will see the message "server cannot be reached". 

If the site opens after a long time the problem is either the site software or something you added e.g plugin or image/video. In such a case look at the browser status bar and see which file is taking a long time to load. Is it an image, ad server or any other plugin.

Tips For Troubleshooting a Slow Loading Website

Have You Added Heavy Images. 

If you upload large size images to your site they will affect the performance of your site. It is always advisable to resize your images before uploading them.

Troubleshooting Plugins and Themes

Poorly coded plugins and themes will slow your site to a crawly. If your site is slow and you have recently added and activated a new plugin or theme, remove it and see how the site behaves. Plugins that serve ads are notoriously known for slowing a site load times.  

Another troubleshooting area is to check if you have changed your site code. If you don't remember the exact changes, return to the default. 

Troubleshooting Your Site Software

Web applications (like WordPress, Joomla, MediaWiki, and the like) are updated on a semi-regular basis, both to improve the application itself, and to block any security issues found in a previous version. For best performance, make sure that your installs are updated on a regular basis.

If your site is loading slowly start by updating your site software and see if the speed will improve.  

Troubleshooting Your Site Database

If your site database is hosted in a server running old version of PHP or MySQL the performance will be wanting. To know the version of software running on your server log in to your cpanel and on the right side bar there will be information on versions of software. If it is not there ask your host.

Wishing your site a speedy recovery.

How To Set Up A Blog Site For Your Cat

If you have an interesting Cat you should set a blog site where you can share it's life with the rest of the world. The cat story can be told in form of written text by you and posting of cat pictures and cat videos.

Securing Domain Name For Your Cat
The first step in setting up a cat blog is purchasing the domain name for your site. Cat.com is not available so your domain name should be something like maruthecat.com. The trick is combining your cat name plus the word cat.

Free Domain Name For Your Cat Blog
Domain names cost from $9.99 - $20. But you can get a free domain name from web hosting companies such as Bluehost and Web Hosting Hub. This companies will give you a free domain name when you purchase blog hosting service from them.

Build Your Cat Blog Using Wordpress
Wordpress is the best software to build and create your cat blog. It is easy to use and you don't need website skills to use it. If you have never used Wordpress, go and get a free blog site at wordpress.com. Registration will take 5 minutes and you can start blogging about, what your cat ate for breakfast, post a video of your cat chasing the neighbourhood cat and pictures of your cat during your summer vacation.

Best Hosting For A Cat Blog
For those who prefer having a self hosted Wordpress blog, you can never go wrong by purchasing hosting from my recommended blog hosting services.
WebHostingHub.com
Web Hosting Hub, is an award-winning hosting company, provides affordable web hosting services with the highest level of technical support and customer satisfaction. Their All-in-One hosting plan starts from only $3.95/mo and includes all the features you'll need to get your cat website or blog online fast.

Bluehost.com 
BlueHost has become well known for providing some excellent features at the low cost. At the same time, great customer service and excellent products is what really sets BlueHost apart from other web hosting companies. Their technical support is ranked as one of the best on the market. If you look around for your cat blog hosting, you might be able to find cheaper web hosting companies but with BlueHost you will get the best value for money.

Popular Cat Blogs That May Inspire Your Cat blog
One way to learn all about cat blogging is by following some of the most popular cat blogs in the web.  


Misha The Cat

Henry The cat

When your cat blog goes viral make sure to contact www.kickerhosting.com so that I may list your cat blog here.

Why Your Wordpress Blog is Loading Slowly & How To Make It Load Faster

The common reasons why a wordpress blog loads slowly are a poor theme, dubious hosting, extra widgets and plugins and heavy images.

If you notice your wordpress blog homepage takes a long time to load, you need to get to the bottom of the issue and act. Google these days is taking into consideration a site load speed when evaluating websites. Expect low rankings if your wordpress blog load times is long.

Why Your Wordpress Blog is Loading Slowly and How To Make It Load Faster

In this article I will share with you how to detect the problem and fix it.

Problem With Your Theme

A theme can break or make your site. The beauty of Wordpress is a pool of thousands of free themes. but the downside of that is there are a few poorly coded themes. Always visit your blog homepage after you install a new theme. If you notice the blog is loading slowly compared to before, know the theme has a problem.

Problem with your plugins. 

Plugins that serve ads are notoriously responsible for slowing a site down. Visit your site homepage after installing any new plugin. If you notice your wordpress blog is loading slowly compared to before, know the plugin has a problem. 

If you blog is running so many plugins it will impact on load times. The way to speed up the blog is remove unnecessary plugins or duplicate plugins.

Your Hosting Servers Slowing Your blog.

Hosting plays an important role in your blog’s loading speed. Many new bloggers ignore this, but adjusting hosting can have a big impact on increasing your blog speed. Majority of freelance bloggers use shared hosting which is cheap but shared hosting can slow down load times when the demands on the shared server are high. 

Images Slowing a Wordpress Blog

Many bloggers don’t focus on optimizing blog images, but it’s a very effective way to increase your blog’s loading speed. There are many, many plugins that can help you to optimize blog images, but  recommend you always resize your images using Wordpress uploader. 

Use W3 Total Cache Plugin

W3 Total Cache is a must-have plugin for any WordPress user. W3 Total Cache is plugin created to speed up a Wordpress blog load times. It generates HTML files that are served directly by Apache, without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. It’s compatible with most servers and server configurations, and gives you the choice of creating the cache on your own server.

Full List Of People & Companies That Applied For New Top Level Domains

“The Internet is about to change forever,” said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of Icann. When announcing full list of People and Companies that applied for new top level domain names.

The domains are the letters that follow the dot in Internet addresses, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as Icann, published a full list of the new requests.

The total request was 1930. There are 280 ccTLDs but only 22 “generics” in the domain name system right now, but that is all about to change.

Google and Amazon Lead in Applications.


Google proved to be one of the more ambitious applicants. It spent almost $18.7 million applying for more than 100 top-level domains, some expected, some not. Not surprisingly, the search giant wants .google, .youtube, .goog and .plus. It was the only applicant vying for .fly, .new and .eat. But it is going to have to fight Johnson & Johnson for .baby, Microsoft for .docs and .live, and Amazon for 17 top-level domains: .wow, .search, .shop, .drive, .free, .game, .mail, .map, .movie, .music, .play, .shop, .show, .spot, .store, .talk and .you.

Amazon also went after .tunes, .got, .author, .smile, .song, .joy, .bot, .like and .call. It does not appear that Facebook applied for any domain. Apple applied for .apple.

The most sought-after extension is .app, with 13 applicants though not Apple, which popularized the mobile application.

Another highly sought after extension was .blog, with 9 applicants. 

Some of the most interesting applications were, .boo, .ceo, .dot, .bot, .esq.



Icann is expected to approve hundreds of these extensions, the first of which should be in use by next year.

To read the full list of domain applicants go to ICANN Domain Listings.

Example of Affiliate Landing Page That Converts

If you are selling an affiliate product you need to make sure your landing pages are well designed and the copy is persuasive.A good landing page will ensure you convert visitors into buyers.

Example of Affiliate Landing Page That Converts

Bluehost recently redesigned their landing page for web hosting and affiliates are reporting the new landing page has increased sales by 2.3%

Compare these two Templates of Bluehost affiliate landing page

An Affiliate landing page should be super targeted

The new page is obviously targeted for those looking to start a WordPress blog, prominently displaying text like:

• “Welcome, WordPress Fans!”
• “Free 1-Click Installation of WordPress”
• “Hosting over 850,000 WordPress blogs”
• “WordPress.org Recommended Host Since 2005″
• “Not Just the Best Blogging Software”

The old landing page focused on web hosting and technology, as opposed to what the users were going to create with it – a blog.

The lesson here is make sure the landing does not talk about general stuff but be specific. Zero in on the actual product.