How to Use WordPress to Automate Your Business

If you haven't heard of WordPress, listen. WordPress is an amazing blogging platform -- but it's so much more than that. In fact, this article will teach you some things as to how to use WordPress to automate your website and therefore your business, leaving you time to do the things you enjoy without having to keep your finger on every little "nook and cranny" job that needs to be done. Here are just some of the things WordPress can do.

AdSense

If you use AdSense to earn extra income on your site, the AdSense Integrator can both dad and then manage the AdSense ads you put on your blog, effortlessly following the last AdSense rules and updates without your having to keep on top of them. This is one way when it comes to how to use WordPress that you can really earn passive income without having to do anything except for adding the initial plug-in.

Google Analytics

When it comes to how to use WordPress to track your customers, Google Analytics will help you keep track of who's visiting your page, where they're from, and a lot more information that's valuable when it comes to knowing your customers. The Google "Analyticater" offered by WordPress makes it very easy to add this to your website.

XML Sitemaps

The XML Sitemaps plug-in will make you much more visible to your customers -- in fact, if your customers can't find you, it's not likely you will have any business at all to speak of. However, Sitemaps easily makes you visible to search engines as they crawl your site, which gets you seen on the web -- and therefore gets you more customers.

AWeber

AWeber is a service that, although not free, can really help you explode your business. Used with WordPress, it's another way you can really automate your business. With this service, you can basically turn autoresponder functions into guaranteed customer draws. You can create website sign-up forms, which will help you attract customers; instead of simply having visitors anonymously visit your site and then go away, you can simply include a sign-up form on your blog using AWeber's simple "point-and-click" interactive functionality.

That's not all, though. While most auto responders will send canned messages to subscribers after sign-up and other functions, AWeber actually provides you the ability to give personalized e-mails to subscribers or customers in an automated sequence that's really going to give you the ability to connect with your customers -- and your potential customers, too. What's more, you can also schedule autoresponder functions so that they'll go up when you know your customers are likely to be thinking about reordering, as applicable. Again, this is all automatic, and he will only rarely have to lift a finger after initial setup.

All of this and more is available if you know how to use WordPress and associated plug-ins and services to fully automate your business. Of course, your business is still going to need you to run it, but automating it as much as possible for the simple day-to-day mundane tasks such as those described above will to free you up to focus on the really important part of your business, which is to provide quality products and/or services.

Website Creation - 4 Steps to Setup WordPress After a New Installation

You've got WordPress freshly installed into your hosting account, and you're ready to start posting content to the site and driving traffic to your content. Before you start that, there are 4 steps that you need to take after you install WordPress for the first time in order to extend WordPress' functionality.

These steps help you secure your website against spam comments, Add users and change the look and feel of your website. Here are the changes that you should implement as soon as you install WordPress to your hosting account: 

1. Change the default usernames, if any. If your hosting provider adds a user account named "admin" or any other pre-installed user into your WordPress installation, delete those users by going to the: Users control panel > select the user > click on delete under the user name
2. Configure the author, reader and comments defaults. If you want people to register before they can leave a comment, or if you want people to be able to register themselves to write on your site, you can set this up by going to: "Settings" > Under Membership > put a check mark in "Anyone can register" > Select a user mode for the new registrations. Be aware, that if you allow this functionality, anyone that registers on the site will be able to perform whatever function you allow them to. Be specially careful since people may be able to post spam articles to your site, if you allow them to
3. Configure your plugins. There are 2 plugins that you really want to have, one is akismet which is anti-spam the other plugin is SEO WordPress which will help you with your search engine optimization. There are others, but these 2 should be your primary ones. Before these plugins start working, you need to activate them. To do so, go to "Plugins" then select the plugin you want to install and select "Activate" from the menu on the right. You may need to obtain a WordPress API key, follow the instructions on the screen to obtain a key if you don't already have one.
4. Configure themes. Themes control the look and feel of your blog. There are many free and paid themes to pick from. Figuring out the look and feel of your site can take a lot of time, so make sure that you dedicate some attention to how your site looks. To change themes, go under: Appearance > Themes WordPress has a depository of themes that you can search through, but you can also perform an online search for "WordPress themes" and see if you find some that you like.

Web Hosting - FTP Tutorial

If you have a website and need to upload files, you will want to send them to the server of your web hosting FTP account. FTP stands for file transfer protocol, that's it, simply transferring files from your local computer to your web server. There are a few basic steps you need to take to upload your website files via FTP, we will review these steps in this tutorial.

The first thing you need to do is obtain your web hosting FTP information from your web host. This is usually sent in your signup email or accessed in your customer admin panel of the web server company. If you cannot find it, simply contact your website host to get this information, most companies respond very quick to these requests, as it is critical in setting up your website.

Once you have your web hosting FTP login information you need an FTP program, you can download some for free, and others are cheap. I recommend paying for a decent one, the reason is that I have used free FTP programs and they are sought after by hackers, it really is a bad situation when your FTP program gets hacked with all your saved passwords and all your sites get hacked. I highly recommend getting a low cost, but reliable and very secure program.

Once you have your program installed, then you can enter the login information your web server sent to you and click connect. You should ignore any advanced setting and if you have problems connecting, try Googling the problem and you should be able to figure it out, otherwise check the companies website for common issues connecting.

That's it! Everyone makes out web hosting FTP connecting as black magic voodoo, it is not, it is simple and a three year old could do it. Well, I hope this helps, now go upload some files and make some websites.