11 Ways to Grow Instagram Followers Organically
If you are using Instagram for becoming an influencer, aur you are simply following your passion by sharing your content on Instagram. This is an interesting and informative article that will let you know how to grow your followers on Instagram organically.
Before going further, Instagram is not for everybody. The only type of content that works on Instagram is visual content, so unless your content is or whatever you do is visually appealing, these suggestions will not work and great for you.
Should You Outsource SEO or Have an In-House SEO Team?
The short answer to this question is, is it depends on the kind of online business you have, the kind of budget you have, and the kind of objective you have. You also have to understand what is SEO and how it works, and whether it is right for your website
What is SEO and How Does it Work?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. If anyone is looking to get their web pages ranked in Google (or other search engines), they will have to optimize it for search engine. When someone is looking for something in Google or any other search engine, they type few words in the search bar. The search engine finds out the most relevant articles and ranks them for the user. The words the user types in a search are known as keywords. And the job of Search Engine Optimization is to optimize web pages for particular keywords so that your website appears when someone is searching for a particular keyword. Because someone who is searching for something may be looking for something to purchase, or someone to hire, or maybe they are looking for a simple solution to a problem they are facing.Sites that can afford in-house SEO
If your website talks about products or service, you are likely to have good margins compared to the website that offers a solution to a problem and is monetized by ads. So, if your website is in a business of a product or service, where there is a lot of competition, SEO can be quite expensive since everyone would be ready to spend a good amount of money to rank. And it also makes sense because there would be a nice ROI (return of investment). The second most profitable type of website is affiliate websites that talk about products or services from other businesses they are affiliated with and earn a commission every time a sale is made. It is slightly less profitable than selling your product or service. Still, since the cost of manufacturing or providing services is pretty much negligible, the whole of the commission is profit. Whether you outsource SEO for an in-house SEO, you will have to pay a premium to get better results. Like every other industry, you will have to spend extra money if you have to get quality work done. If you already have a workforce for your online business, even if they are working remotely, it would be a good idea to have someone on your team take care of the SEO. The reason being, you will only have to train them one, and everything will be taken care of by them. Whereas, if you outsource SEO, you might have to find the right one to understand what you are looking for. And you cannot say whether the person is working for your competition as well. Maybe they will be approached by your computer at a later date, and all your rankings can be jeopardized.Type of websites you shouldn’t have an inhouse SEO
The third category of the website would be the websites that monetize their content using contextual and banner ads. A large volume of visitors is required to earn a good amount of money. The cost of operation should be as minimized as possible, which does not leave the possibility of having your inhouse SEO. Surely, this does not apply when you have a big online Publication with millions of visitors and make a lot of money using different methods. But since you are reading my blog, chances are you are an independent publisher, and in that case, an in-house SEO wouldn’t make sense. Also, that revenue from ads is seasonal, and it fluctuates a lot. For example, in the holiday Seasons, you can make 150% to 200% more revenue than other days, so having someone on payroll wouldn’t be a good idea since you will have to pay them the same throughout the calendar. Evan Outsourcing shouldn’t be e your primary strategy to get traffic on your website because a good SEO would require you to spend a good amount of money. Surely there are services like fiver.com that have to give this starting from $5 onwards for a sore, but pretty much every gig is worthless because it is accessible to everyone, even the smallest of bloggers. So there is no competitive edge.Conclusion
So, to sum it up, I would suggest hiring an in-house SEO only if you have got a product or a service of your own to promote, as you can be lucrative since you won’t actively have to work on it. For another type of website, even for those monetized by affiliate products, Outsourcing is a better option since you can do it whenever you have a budget for it.Do You Really Need A WordPress Blog in the Age of Social Media?
The answer can be yes and no, depending on what kind of blog you are looking to create. A blog is quite a broad term. Asiogroup.net, which is you are currently reading, is also a blog. And Foodtippr.com, which has food recipes and videos embedded from YouTube, is also a blog. Most of Foodtipper content is video, which is already content views on YouTube.
I would elaborate on my first answer which is, NO.
If you want your voice to be heard, you don’t need a blog anymore if you want a presence on the web. Instead, you can create a Twitter, talk about anything you like, participate in discussions around a particular trending #hashtag to gain followers. If you have targeted traffic, you have more chances to get targeted followers, which is much better than getting random followers. Or you can create a Facebook page, or maybe, Instagram, perhaps. But if you are looking to build a brand and online business, you need a website.So let me elaborate on my second answer which is, Yes.
You can create a Twitter account, a Facebook page, an Instagram handle, or even a YouTube channel, but these particular companies will always own your content. You will have to live by their rules, and you can violate their policy and get suspended. But if you have got a website of your own, it is likely to remain there unless you share copyrighted material. You also get more control over the content you create; you get more features to create content by combining different formats, such as graphics, photos, typography, links, landing pages. You can still have social media accounts that will support your website by sharing your content on these platforms. Another reason for creating your blog is that it is a barrier a lot of people don’t dare to cross because it is tough, it requires money, to buy a domain and pay a monthly rental to service, maybe pay writers.It alone increases your chances of success.
At this blog, you will find many useful guides to walk you through creating your first blog, writing amazing content for it, promoting the content and monetizing it. If you are a beginner, start here.How to Increase Organic Traffic to Your Blog? One Strategy that Still Works in 2021
I have been blogging since the start of 2007, which is almost a decade and a half, and I have seen the trains changing over and over again. I remember when I used to write (or shall I say rewrite) an article, and it would rank 21 in Google without putting extra efforts into it.
This spoilt me so much that when Google improved their ranking algorithm, and everybody had to earn backlinks for their articles to rank in Google, I didn’t bother.
Google has already maintained that all you have to do is create great content, and visitors will find their way to your website.
While there is some truth in it, it is not the whole truth. You will have to create great content for the visitors to land on your website and read it and convert it into a customer or whatever your objective is.
So, at one time, I stopped blogging for getting organic traffic from Google search engines and started working on getting traffic from social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Surprisingly, these websites were sending a lot of traffic because these social media types were still growing why looking for ways to monetize them. And these days, there is hardly any social media traffic because the reach of organic posts has become worse.
But even when there was a lot of traffic coming from social media sites, it did not convert the way a search engine traffic inverted, especially for content monetized using Google AdSense or any other type of contextual ads.
While I was getting a lot of traffic from Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, it was always an effort to do it. I am in posting multiple times a day regularly. It felt like an admin job.
While for search traffic, you do not have to do anything actively. It is all passive. Once you have attained a certain ranking for your article in Google search, it remains there for some time, and you enjoy traffic without actively doing anything.
It was always a motivation to make it work, and after years of trial and error, I finally found a method that still works in 2021.
You can come up with an article that offers more value than the first five articles combined. Don’t write small articles. Write a guide. The longer, the better.
Do this for several keywords and write extensive articles around it. Also figured out a way to interlink them. Doing this gives readers a choice to read further if they want more information regarding a particular thing.
They stay on your website for a longer period, which again benefits the writing of your websites since it is one of the signals for the Google Search Algorithm.
Surely blogging is all about things you are passionate about, but even for the things your passionate about, it needs to have a fanbase/user base that cares about reading about it.
So, instead of writing things you want to write about, first do a Google search for it and see how other blogs cover it, which blogs are getting ranked.
Also, look at the related search queries that will give you more content ideas to write articles on.
This is why content planning is important, as it will allow you to have a constant flow ideas to create content. Use tools like Online Mind Mapping
There are more things you can do to create awesome content that will improve your organic traffic.
Analyze the first five results for a certain keyword.
You can come up with an article that offers more value than the first five articles combined. Don’t write small articles. Write a guide. The longer, the better.
Do this for several keywords and write extensive articles around it. Also figured out a way to interlink them. Doing this gives readers a choice to read further if they want more information regarding a particular thing.
They stay on your website for a longer period, which again benefits the writing of your websites since it is one of the signals for the Google Search Algorithm.
Write about the things that people are looking for.
Surely blogging is all about things you are passionate about, but even for the things your passionate about, it needs to have a fanbase/user base that cares about reading about it.
So, instead of writing things you want to write about, first do a Google search for it and see how other blogs cover it, which blogs are getting ranked.
Also, look at the related search queries that will give you more content ideas to write articles on.
Increase the Content Frequency
And, since it is 2021, you cannot get away with writing one article in a week. You will have to write content consistently. It has to be the best content available for that particular keyword.
This is why content planning is important, as it will allow you to have a constant flow ideas to create content. Use tools like Online Mind Mapping
There are more things you can do to create awesome content that will improve your organic traffic. Akismet Site Stats vs Google Analytics, Which One is More Accurate for Track Visitors?
Over the years, it has been one of the most asked questions by bloggers getting started.
Which of these analytics should they rely on, Akismet Site Stats or Google Analytics?
There is a difference in the visitor reports provided by Akismet Site Stats and Google Analytics.
Akismet Site Stats
Akismet is a WordPress Plugin developed by WordPress.Org. It offers additional features you can enable after you have activated the plugin. One of the features is site stats.Pros of having Site Stats in WordPress comparison
It is useful because it lets you look at the visitor Count on your website within your WordPress dashboard. When you log into your WordPress blog, the numbers can motivate you to write more content. It works well when you are getting started, but it is also so useful for advanced bloggers to look at how gradual the growth of the Year website is.Cons of having Site Stats in WordPress
While it is helpful to know the visitor Count on a day-to-day basis, sites that do not offer additional data apart from telling you how many people are coming from search engines and the reference websites that are sending traffic to your website. And sometimes you would want to know more about the visitor activity on your website. Again, it is where Google Analytics can come in handy. Also, if you are already using many plugins, it might not be good to have the site stats feature enabled in the Akismet plugin, as the more features you add to your blog, the more time it will take to load. And if you are in a space where a 1-second delay means putting off a certain percentage of visitors, you are looking at some serious revenue loss. My recommendation would be to test the speed of your side, both before and after enabling the feature, to see if it is impacting the loading speed of your site or not.Google Analytics
For most bloggers and Publishers, Google Analytics is enough to track user activity on their websites. In the last few years, Google Analytics has grown to offer analytic solutions for app developers and integrate Google Analytics into their apps.Pros of using Google Analytics
The amount of data it offers is quite extensive. If you learn to use Google Analytics properly, you will grow your online business by making content strategy for your website, changing the layout, putting your best content forward. And like I mentioned about site stats, which can impact the loading speed of your website. It is not the case with Google Analytics since it is a third-party analytics service, which does not strain your website servers.Cons of using Google Analytics
Apart from the inconvenience of logging into an additional dashboard to check out your site stats, there aren’t any serious cons to using Google Analytics. I can think of a con when many robots visit your website, and Google Analytics considers them visitors, which greatly misreports the visitor data. But you can tackle it if you know how to use Google Analytics properly. Since Google Analytics is free to use and offers a ton of data, you highly recommend that you use it for your blog. So you can keep it this way, use Google Analytics as your primary source for visitor data, and use the equipment. Then, I start to take a quick look into how your website is doing in terms of visitor count.GeniusLink is Pure Genius and a Must Have tool to Enhance Amazon Affiliate Earnings.
Anyone who owns a blog, a YouTube channel, or a Social Media Handle, that has an audience across all over the globe will know how tricky it is to earn money from Amazon Associate Program.
Don’t worry I am in the same boat, I have several blogs and I use Amazon associate program as one of the methods to monetize the blog. One of the reasons it never became my primary method to monetize is because of the geo limitations.
I even tested it out and came to Know It redirect the user to their local Amazon shop based on their location, but it didn’t really excite me because I assumed you had to manually put in the affiliate link of a product from different Amazon shops, and rest will be taken care of by GeniusLink.
It was still a cool service but, I assumed that putting direct links to the Amazon affiliate shops into my blog makes more sense in the long run since the GeniusLink is a paid program, and if I ever stop the paid program, I will have to go back and read those links, which will be a little tough.
But a couple of months ago I finally decided to try GeniusLink, and to my surprise, there is hardly any manual work involved in fact it has much more features to offer than to simply redirect users to their local Amazon shops to enhance your earnings.
My amazon.com affiliate earning is not great, but seeing the improvement in the revenue by simply replacing the links and not doing anything extra has motivated me enough.
And this is not a usual bump in revenue in the month of March. My affiliate income is usually between $15 to $30 or sometimes it goes to $40. Here is a screenshot of revenue from January 2021.
I have seen the same bump for amazon.in affiliate as well, where I am made around Rs 1266 in January, Rs 1601 in February, it was Rs 3123 in March.
Genius link is not only used by bloggers but YouTubers as well because YouTube is becoming a preferred destination for anyone who is looking to buy a product, since they are able to see a product looks and works, and they are more likely to get convinced to buy a product. The only limitation would be geographical, and GeniusLink takes care of that problem.
Thank you for reading this article, if you have stumbled upon this why are doing a Google search looking for reviews for GeniusLink. Most likely you are a Blogger, or a YouTuber, or an Influencer, who is looking to grow their online business. I have been blogging myself since 2007 and have been sharing a lot of things that I have learned during the process. Asiogroup.Net contains many helpful articles which you can read. I highly recommend you bookmark this blog, and sign up for the newsletter.
The struggle of using Amazon Associate Program
Unlike Google AdSense, or any other ads service, that fills up space with an ad that it up that is appropriate for the specific location where the page is being served, Amazon affiliate is static. If you put an affiliate link into your blog post talking about a product, it could either be from amazon.com, or amazon.co.uk, or amazon.com.au, or amazon.in or any other local Amazon shop, once you put the link it will be the same for anyone visiting that particular page from anywhere in the world. So if you use amazon.com, and you have 20% traffic from the US, you will be losing potentially 80% of the revenue, because it will be relevant for other people if they cannot order, or prefer their local Amazon shop.My workaround of using the Amazon affiliate program
I have been using Amazon associates for the last 10 years, where I only signed up for the amazon.com associate program, and I used to put links from amazon.com even though the traffic from us on my website was something around 20%. Later I figured out that the majority of the visitors are coming from India that is around 40%, I signed up for Amazon.in the associate program when they launched it somewhere around 2014, and then I used to put two lines of the same product one from amazon.com and one from amazon.in and gave to the user’s choice. While it did improve my affiliate earnings I didn’t find it the best way to optimize my affiliate earnings from Amazon associate program.My introduction to Genius Link
Although I have been seeing a lot of YouTubers and bloggers using a link shortener that looks something like this – geni.us/links#!
I even tested it out and came to Know It redirect the user to their local Amazon shop based on their location, but it didn’t really excite me because I assumed you had to manually put in the affiliate link of a product from different Amazon shops, and rest will be taken care of by GeniusLink.
It was still a cool service but, I assumed that putting direct links to the Amazon affiliate shops into my blog makes more sense in the long run since the GeniusLink is a paid program, and if I ever stop the paid program, I will have to go back and read those links, which will be a little tough.
But a couple of months ago I finally decided to try GeniusLink, and to my surprise, there is hardly any manual work involved in fact it has much more features to offer than to simply redirect users to their local Amazon shops to enhance your earnings.
Features of GeniusLink I love
The number one feature that I fell in love with is, it automatically searches for the affiliate link of a particular product from various Amazon shops, so you don’t have to do it manually. All you have to do is give it your affiliate tag, which is unique to every Amazon shop. This means you have to sign up with as many Amazon associate programs for the local Amazon shops and type in your Affiliate tag into the dashboard of GeniusLnk. Now, you will have only to pick the direct link of a particular product (not even the affiliate link) and paste it into the dashboard of GeniusLink. It will automatically add the affiliate code for all the Amazon sites. The second feature I love the most about GeniusLink is its ability to notify you whenever a product in one of the stores is out of stock, this is actually pretty helpful because if you keep sending your visitors to the product that is out of stock, you are visiting the opportunity. By using GeniusLink, you get notified and have the option to change it to the link of a product, that is in stock, which also increases your chances of making an affiliate commission. Apart from these two features I also love that every link gives you information about how many times it has been clicked which is helpful in knowing which products are working well so that you can create your content plan accordingly and promote that particular product. There are other features also offered by genius link but I am not using it since a flat morning is still my Secondary way of making money from my blogs. What are the features a genius link promotes is its choice pages, which is simply e a landing page given by GeniusLink itself where your visitor has an option to choose the shop from where they want to buy. So when a user clicks on a product link they land on a page where they have the option to either buy the product from Amazon or any other local online site where the product is available. For example in India if a product is available on Amazon and Flipkart as well you can give uses the choice to buy from either of the websites. The best thing is you have the ability to manually put the affiliate link for Flipkart. The same goes for or E-Commerce stores from different countries.Comparing Affiliate earnings before and after using the genius link
I have been using GeniusLink for the last 2 months (since March 2021) although not actively, because of this global pandemic. I have definitely seen improvement in my affiliate earnings. I have signed up for three other athletes’ stores as well such as amazon.co.uk, amazon.com.au, amazon.ae, since these are the three top countries my websites visitor are from apart from India and the US which, affiliate programs for Amazon I was already using.February 2021 Amazon.com Screenshot
March 2021 Amazon.com Screenshot
My amazon.com affiliate earning is not great, but seeing the improvement in the revenue by simply replacing the links and not doing anything extra has motivated me enough.
And this is not a usual bump in revenue in the month of March. My affiliate income is usually between $15 to $30 or sometimes it goes to $40. Here is a screenshot of revenue from January 2021.
I have seen the same bump for amazon.in affiliate as well, where I am made around Rs 1266 in January, Rs 1601 in February, it was Rs 3123 in March.
Genius link is not only used by bloggers but YouTubers as well because YouTube is becoming a preferred destination for anyone who is looking to buy a product, since they are able to see a product looks and works, and they are more likely to get convinced to buy a product. The only limitation would be geographical, and GeniusLink takes care of that problem.
Thank you for reading this article, if you have stumbled upon this why are doing a Google search looking for reviews for GeniusLink. Most likely you are a Blogger, or a YouTuber, or an Influencer, who is looking to grow their online business. I have been blogging myself since 2007 and have been sharing a lot of things that I have learned during the process. Asiogroup.Net contains many helpful articles which you can read. I highly recommend you bookmark this blog, and sign up for the newsletter.
Why You Should Be Cloaking Affiliate Links or Use Link Shortners on Your Blog
If you are a blogger, especially if you are a WordPress blogger, and if you monetize your blog using affiliate products, it’s a pretty useful tip for you that is going to save you a lot of time in the long run.
Whether you are using Amazon affiliate, Clickbank, or any third-party affiliate, this is going to be pretty helpful for you.
Recently, ExpressVPN, a product that I promote on my tech blog, has made changes to their affiliate link structure and asked affiliates to change the link. It would have been a nightmare if I had to go through hundreds of articles where if I have mentioned ExpressVPN.
There can be many other scenarios where you would want to go back and edit the link. And this is why a link shortener can be useful.
Not all the link shorteners can be used for the use cases I mentioned above. Only the services that let you edit the links would be useful. And if you are using a WordPress blog, it is a bit easier for you since there are a lot of plugins that let you do it in-house.
One of my favorite WordPress plugin for shortening the links is PrettyLink. It uses your blog URL and allows you to short in the affiliate link by adding one or two words to your blog URL just like an article URL.
For example, on this blog, I promote a particular hosting that I used for several of my blogs, and I can simply use this URL to recommend to people that particular hosting.
This particular link is handled by PrettyLink, there is a section in my WordPress dashboard for PrettyLink, where I can add links and it allows me to update the target URL.
So, the next time if I have to make any changes to the target URL, I can do it without having to worry about where and how many times I have used the short link.
Suppose, if I have used it in more than 20 articles, I can make changes to the link in all those twenty articles by simply updating the target URL in the pretty link section. Cool, isn’t it?
When I make a search for the Link Shortner in the WordPress plugin repository, it gives me 15 results. Out of which 4 have got a rating of 5 stars including PrettyLink.
Two plugins have got a 4-star rating, and 1 plugin has got a three-star rating. Other plugins don’t have any ratings at all. But still, you have got a lot of options to choose from.
I have already made the comparison and decided to go with PrettyLink, which I am using for the last few years. I am using the free version however there is a provision as well which offers more features which you can this URL to recommend to people.
If you are a blogger, beginner moderate, or advanced, you should subscribe to this blog. I have been blogging since 2007 and have been sharing all my learnings and experiences on this blog which other bloggers can find useful.
Let’s start with why it is important to use a link shortener.
For example, you are affiliated with a product that you heavily promote on your blog and you keep mentioning it in your articles. Over a period of time, it will be impossible for you to keep a track of all the articles where you have inserted links, at least not possible to memorize them. Even if you have kept a record, something like a spreadsheet where you have the links to all the articles where you have mentioned the product, you will have to go to each article manually to find the link. There can be many reasons why you would want to go back to the articles and edit the links one of the reason would be maybe the product is not converting well and there is a new version of the product by the same company or a better product you want to promote. The good thing would be to still utilize all the traffic your older articles get, and by doing it manually is going to take a lot of effort. It is also it is not a creative job to keep a record of all the articles where you have inserted your affiliate links. It’s more like an admin job, and it sucks. The second scenario could be something like the company has decided to change their URL structure and now is asking you to change your affiliate link whenever you have used it.
Recently, ExpressVPN, a product that I promote on my tech blog, has made changes to their affiliate link structure and asked affiliates to change the link. It would have been a nightmare if I had to go through hundreds of articles where if I have mentioned ExpressVPN.
There can be many other scenarios where you would want to go back and edit the link. And this is why a link shortener can be useful.
Not all the link shorteners can be used for the use cases I mentioned above. Only the services that let you edit the links would be useful. And if you are using a WordPress blog, it is a bit easier for you since there are a lot of plugins that let you do it in-house.
One of my favorite WordPress plugin for shortening the links is PrettyLink. It uses your blog URL and allows you to short in the affiliate link by adding one or two words to your blog URL just like an article URL.
For example, on this blog, I promote a particular hosting that I used for several of my blogs, and I can simply use this URL to recommend to people that particular hosting.
This particular link is handled by PrettyLink, there is a section in my WordPress dashboard for PrettyLink, where I can add links and it allows me to update the target URL.
So, the next time if I have to make any changes to the target URL, I can do it without having to worry about where and how many times I have used the short link.
Suppose, if I have used it in more than 20 articles, I can make changes to the link in all those twenty articles by simply updating the target URL in the pretty link section. Cool, isn’t it?
When I make a search for the Link Shortner in the WordPress plugin repository, it gives me 15 results. Out of which 4 have got a rating of 5 stars including PrettyLink.
Two plugins have got a 4-star rating, and 1 plugin has got a three-star rating. Other plugins don’t have any ratings at all. But still, you have got a lot of options to choose from.
I have already made the comparison and decided to go with PrettyLink, which I am using for the last few years. I am using the free version however there is a provision as well which offers more features which you can this URL to recommend to people.
If you are a blogger, beginner moderate, or advanced, you should subscribe to this blog. I have been blogging since 2007 and have been sharing all my learnings and experiences on this blog which other bloggers can find useful. 4 Questions You’ll Face With A Growing Blog
When you set out to write a blog, one of the most exciting things that can happen is for you to start growing an audience.
Naturally, part of the appeal of a project like this is simply to share your thoughts, and set up a place online where you can have full control over what you write and why.
But if your blog starts to grow — gaining readers and keeping them around as regulars — you have the opportunity to turn your project into something bigger, and ultimately develop a business.
If and when this happens, some of it will happen in the normal course of events. You’ll gain visitors, you’ll keep doing what you do best, and you’ll find yourself blogging to a steady and reliable readership. If you’re really aiming to grow though, there are some questions you’ll need to ask yourself during the process.
1. How will you monetize?
Growing a readership isn’t enough on its own to turn your blog into a business. Naturally, you’ll also have to find a way (or possibly multiple ways) to monetize the attention your writing is generating. We’ve asked ‘What is More Rewarding for a Blog?’ when it comes to monetization before, with some of the main options being advertisement and affiliate marketing. Beyond these, you can also build in a subscription service, put up a donation button (asking readers to contribute whatever they feel comfortable with), or even sell merchandise, if it seems appropriate for your subject and audience. But you’ll need to do some thought about which of these options best suits your project. Most profitable blogs will engage in at least one of advertising or affiliate marketing, to begin with, and consider premium subscriptions or newsletters further down the line.2. Should you stick to a niche or spread out?
As you may well know, most successful blogs start out on particular niches. The idea, generally, is to establish authority on a given subject, build up a readership, and then look into additional topics if you’d like to. And citing experts in the field, Lifehack’s discussion on the niche question comes to the same conclusion: It’s wise to begin with a niche, but expansion can be an option once you’re established. In the best of cases, it can help with growth as well — though thoroughly dominating a niche is always a good option too!3. Do you need to form a business?
Most bloggers operate as freelancers, working on their own time and categorizing any earnings essentially as a side income. If you start to grow your blog and profit reliably from it though, it may be time to give some thought to turning it into a legitimate business entity, or “real job” per se. This can seem like a big step to take, but there are actually some simple options that can make sense. Per a ZenBusiness write-up on business structures, some of those options include forming an S Corporation, establishing a sole proprietorship, or forming an LLC (this last option being the write-up’s main focus). These structures work differently, but each one can help you into a more appropriate tax situation for a business and prepare you for any growth or expansion that may occur.4. Should you hire contributors?
The decision of whether to hire contributors will depend on how well the blog is doing, and how you project to grow it. Some successful blog owners will hire employees to manage site maintenance or financial matters. Some will start to run their sites like businesses and hire writers to manage day-to-day blogging. Forbes recommends guest bloggers who can help you to write more content without sacrificing or altering the tone of the blog. All of these are reasonable options, and it’s also fine to go it alone! But if your blog is growing, this is certainly one more question to consider at some point. The good news is that if you’re asking these questions, your blog is probably in pretty good shape! Addressing these matters, though, can help you take it to the next level.WordPress 5.5 – What Changes this new Version brings to WordPress?
Asiogroup.net is a blog about starting an online business, and WordPress is a magical application that lets anyone create their websites easily.
It is currently power in more than 33% of the websites on the internet as of April 2019.
I created my first website using WordPress in 2007. I have seen how it has evolved in the last decade and a half.
Apart from these significant improvements in the newer version of WordPress, they are some smaller improvements as well that are majorly in the block editor of WordPress.
Some new blocks have been added, and have been organized in a new block directory. New options for or making edits to images has also been brought in the new version.
What’s new in WordPress 5.5?
WordPress version 5.5 is a big update that focuses on three major areas, which is, Speed, Search, and Security.Speed
To make WordPress sites fast, WordPress has natively included lazy load. It is a feature which will load images on a post only when the user scrolls down the page and reaches the area of the image. Since not every image is loaded at once, the web page fields it’s loading faster. Apart from that, it will also prevent the entire website from being loaded on mobile browsers and only load the required elements.Search Engine Friendly
Search department WordPress 5.5 now includes an XML sitemap natively, which means no third-party plugin would be required to generate it. This is pretty useful for newbie bloggers who do not know the benefit of having a sitemap on a website. For those who don’t know, it helps search engines find web pages on your website and include them in their database.Security
In the security department, WordPress now enables auto-updates of plugins and themes. It means the plugins and themes you have installed on your WordPress blog will be updated automatically as soon as there is a new update. Wood years, we have emphasized how important it is to keep your plugins and themes updated, like older versions of plugins and themes can give loopholes to hackers to attack your site, an object with Malware, or maybe even take control of it. Although you can still turn off automatic updates, click on the screen options on the top right-hand side and uncheck auto-updates, then click on apply.
Apart from these significant improvements in the newer version of WordPress, they are some smaller improvements as well that are majorly in the block editor of WordPress.
Some new blocks have been added, and have been organized in a new block directory. New options for or making edits to images has also been brought in the new version.
Should I update to WordPress 5.5 right way?
Updating to the newer version may be the right step, but we have always cautioned our readers to wait for a few days if not for weeks before updating them to the newer version of WordPress whenever it is surfaced. It is because a lot of Plugins and Theme developers are not up to date with their development, and there is a possibility that one of your favorite themes may not work correctly, or may not work at all. It is probably one of the reasons we always recommend you to use premium products b8 themes are plugins because the developer is obligated to keep up to date and compatible with the latest version of WordPress. Check out the Deals section of Asiogroup (Asiogroup.net/Deals) to find the recommended WordPress products for your blog.Access Root Directory of WordPress Without cPanel or FTP Client
If you are a WordPress user, this might come really handy if you want to access the root folder on your server or other files of WordPress.
Any hosting service you opt gives you access to your server using FTP login and password and for most of the people who are using a VPS or Shared hosting, they have a useful user interface to access the server and it’s mostly cPanel.
So there are two methods you can access the files and folders on your server, one is by going to the cPanel and the other one is by logging into the server using FTP client.
Once it is installed, you will be able to access the root folder of your domain, where you have installed your WordPress. This can be useful in many situations, such as, if you have to verify your website by uploading a file in the root folder, you can easily do it right from inside the WordPress dashboard.
There are also times when you might have to edit the .htaccess file on your site, this too can be done from the WP File Manager.
Similarly, if you have to create another folder for custom images or icons, or anything in the wp-content folder, the WP File Manager can come in really handy.
Most of the time you will already be logged into your WordPress dashboard, so you do not have to fire up an FTP Client or a browser window, and spend a few minutes of your life to do something that can be done without going all through this.
WP File Manager plugin is free to use but it also comes with a Pro version, which gives you more features such as the ability to change the permissions of the files and folders, and user management roles in case you want to give access to this area to other users who are not the admin.
But for most of the people, the free version will work great.
Watch the video tutorial
Both the methods require you to do some extra steps in order to log in to your server and access the files and folders. This is where the WP File Manager plugin comes in handy, you can install it directly from the plugins area of your WordPress dashboard.
Once it is installed, you will be able to access the root folder of your domain, where you have installed your WordPress. This can be useful in many situations, such as, if you have to verify your website by uploading a file in the root folder, you can easily do it right from inside the WordPress dashboard.
There are also times when you might have to edit the .htaccess file on your site, this too can be done from the WP File Manager.
Similarly, if you have to create another folder for custom images or icons, or anything in the wp-content folder, the WP File Manager can come in really handy.
Most of the time you will already be logged into your WordPress dashboard, so you do not have to fire up an FTP Client or a browser window, and spend a few minutes of your life to do something that can be done without going all through this.
WP File Manager plugin is free to use but it also comes with a Pro version, which gives you more features such as the ability to change the permissions of the files and folders, and user management roles in case you want to give access to this area to other users who are not the admin.
But for most of the people, the free version will work great.
Pro Tip:
One of my websites was recently attacked and some kind of Malware was injected into the Index.php and wp-congif.php files on my WordPress.I was quickly able to access these files from within the WordPress dashboard and remove malware from it. You can find the detailed article about it on the blog, now you can install WP File Manager plugin on your WordPress.
WP Files Manager