2023-2024 has been a crazy year in terms of upending the blogosphere. It seems like almost everything absurd that could have happened, did.

From a Twitter takeover, to our favorite bloggers retiring with new bloggers fighting to take their spots, to several crypto currency coins being looted, to Mr. Beast going off-grid to Antarctica, it’s taken a lot of us by surprise.

But one thing remains constant as we burn the last candle light and brew the last coffees of 2022 – blogs are still needed!

From a last minute recipe as we stand over the stove to classic “best ___ to do near me” in the moment need, it’s been a blog to the rescue all 2022 and I don’t think that’s changing any time soon.

So for you it’s just a matter of being that blog which people need.

So in this post, I’d like to highlight a few blogs that have made our year special, while breaking down some blog monetization strategies they use. I hope at least a few of you will stop by – mention how you were able to make money blogging too this year in the comments!

Best Blogs of 2023 from Our Standpoint

I’d like to present the best blogs of 2022. Well, that’s an outlandish claim by Greg, surely in need of fact-checking.

Surely these blogs have been the most useful this year and only include a few of our friends’ blogs

At the very least, they have been consistent. Consistency has been one of the single hardest qualities to maintain this past year.

For each of us there are special blogs we idolize becoming and simply use a lot. There are also blogs we use then forget because we forget to look up at the logo or drop off our 2c of thanks.

So, here are 10 blogs I’d deem especially helpful and nice over the past year of 2022 broken down by category:

1. BonAppetit – Easy to follow recipes that always seem to include down to earth ingredients you’ve got in your fridge.
2. OurCavapoo – Our favorite blog for Cavapoo Puppy and Cavapoo Adult dog advice, especially helpful our 2 pups. Highlighted below for it’s subtle use of inline blog content ads.
3. CookieandKate – More recipes, for cookies which Greg doesn’t make but finds after writing blogs.
4. ExtremeHouseFlipping – If we were to create the best home improvement YouTube channel, we’d surely model it after these two fellas. By the way, thanks for helping us replace the Kohler toilet flush valve.
5. WPBeginner – The most timeless WordPress blog on the planet, offering new advice and tutorials daily. One difficult task for new WordPress.org users is finding the right plugin for a job, well on WPBeginner you need only read 10 seconds into a post to find a plugin that will get the job done and last on your blog.
6. AndreiJikh – Andrei Jikh revolutionized the fintech community on YouTube with easy to digest financial app tutorials and explanations of how to get rich with dividend investing. His “come for the ___ and stay for the ___” catchy slogans are something I’ll always look forward to in new finance tutorials.
7. Hedgeye – There’s just absolutely no way trend seeking stock traders could have survived 2022 with positive returns without Hedgeye Risk Management as their guides. This website, YouTube channel, forum, newsletter, and online community is blogging turned into an entire family complete with it’s own slogans and slew of heros and villians in the investing community to praise and learn from each morning.

I know that’s only 7 blogs, but I wanted to keep it short for now so you can actually go visit them and see the wonderous strategies these profitable blogs are using. That said, just shoot me an email or tweet if you have a new blog you’ve noticed absolutely slaying it that deserves posting on our list here

Google Adsense

Google Adsense is the pinnacle of ways blog have made money ever since the Shoe Money 100k+ revenue photo and continues to be the golden standard ad network.

It takes me back to Blogger blogspot days when you could check you revenue right through your Blogger dashboard, so of course Greg would hit up Best Buy to click on an add or two on his walk home from work in New York.

Despite what you may have heard about how to get accepted into Google Adsense in 2022, it’s not nearly as hard as people think. You just need to make sure you have:

1. A real WordPress.org self hosted website live
2. A few posts that follow the same niche trend or topic
3. Nothing sketchy, illegal or plagiarized on your website.
4. An SSL will surely help, so grab the best free WP ssl plugin

Go over to ourcavapoo.com and turn your ad blocker off (we use the one called AdBlock by Google Chrome) and you’ll reveal how any blog lays out their ads to visitors who don’t mind seeing them. We love how OurCavapoo does NOT use ads above the fold but instead lets the ads and monetization options come to you as you enjoy the blog post content – a great way to get people reading further without turning them away right away.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has its booms and busts, and sadly we are at a lower end in the cycle currently. This is due to discretionary money being down across nearly all parts of the world, the U.S. included. When eggs and chicken cost 3x as much people buy less WP themes and hosting

But that means it’s a darn good time to start rebuilding your affiliate marketing WordPress empire!

Start by simply creating a blog with WordPress while making sure you make it with high quality page building tools like Elementor so you can easily switch from blog post layouts to landing pages.

Then partner up with your WordPress themes, buy their theme of course, and start dropping in those links in your reviews.

One affiliate program for WordPress themes that consistently pays us reasonably well is Elegant Themes, the makers of Divi. Divi is epic for small business websites like restaurants and salons, studios and workspaces, even larger businesses. If you develop websites for a friend you can simply have them buy Divi thru your link to grab a commission, then build the site for them. The end user needs to buy the license, anyways. Then you can also rep the theme on your social media channels. You can mention smaller themes too but we find those with existing traction good to insert yourself in the mix with.

Guest Posts / Sponsored Posts

A tried and true way to earn consistent blog revenue is to guest post regularly for major blogs in your niche.

Our favorite blog for puppy advice for example pays per word, giving you up to $150 per post!

We’ve also had success writing for hostingadvice.com, because that’s my specialty over here.

Whatever it is you’re passionate about, just start of 2023 with a simple Google Search for “write paid guest blog posts about gardening” and see what you find!

Remember, it’s not only important to start small, you have to start small. Everyone else did that’s make it big now!

And once you feel the paper on that first real paycheck you get from blogging, it all changes from there on out

Start a Blogging Network

Once you create a blog and establish yourself, you can then setup a network for smaller blogs.

This can be for profit or for free at first.

If you create a blog network for free it’s at the very least a great way to share links amongst yourselves.

You can also publish blog posts to your group, and have an agreement where members are encouraged to go ahead and comment right away on new blog posts so they get that good, organic-feeling traction in return.

This sort of a blog network can be done through Facebook Groups too, but I prefer to have an actual WordPress website login for it so people land on your blog and can browse around your other blog posts.

Sell Your Junk on WordPress with WooCommerce for Free

Any WordPress blog can easily install WooCommerce to host your own products and sell them at whatever price you’d like.

You’d be amazed how many people in your neighborhood or apartment building want your cheap stuff, or just want to get rid of things and will pay a small fee to list them!

With all the known scams on website like Craigslist and the NextDoor app, people are always looking for a more personable way to transact when it comes to their personal belongings.

Post Private Ads

Private ads are super easy in WordPress because you just need to create an image, upload it, and link it back to the brand you’re working with.

Posting an ad to a cool brand on your blog also makes YOU look more credible for having established such a partnership at a young age.

You can even get the ball rolling and create an ad first, then get the brand on board after.

Make a Blog for Your Friend or Family!

The final step you’ll enjoy as your journey to make money blogging continues is setting up the blogs of family members and friend who admire what you’re doing on your own blog.

It’s the most rewarding thing sharing your real hard-earned skills in blogging with family members, showing them blogging for a living is truly possible.

This one is pretty self-explanatory, and given that Greg bet’s you’re probably sick of reading and would rather get there and learn how to make money blogging on your own, I’ll leave it at that!

Do you have a new blog where you are trying to build a blog income? Is blogging a long-term side hustle of yours that’s just now taking off? We’d love to hear your stories in the comments and feature you on the blog!!

The post Make Money Blogging: The Only Strategies You Need From The Blogs We Love appeared first on Dear Blogger.

Last week I dug up a 4 year old YouTube comment asking me if the commenter should change WordPress themes.

Not liking the one I had recommended in-video, they had similar needs to mine but not quite exact.

So this blogger was looking at changing the theme on a new blog.

In this video I’ll explain how I coached one young blogger on when to change a blog theme – and of course what criteria to look for in a new theme if you must pick another WordPress theme – and when on the other hand to just commit to the current theme and make it work.

If you’re going through the rather painful decision of whether or not to change WordPress themes, let us know in the comments and include your current and future theme choices!

When should you change WordPress themes?

In general as a rule of thumb, once your blog is up and running you don’t want to change your theme because people are used to how your posts look and know where to find your content.

Imagine if your favorite show on TV like Seinfeld all of a sudden changed the set or time it aired or theme song? You probably wouldn’t enjoy it.

You probably also have a good relationship going with your theme developer for support and even affiliate needs.

That said, you could definitely change your theme:

1. During exciting pre launch stages aka before you even write your first post
2. Once you have a few posts up but before launching your blog to the world
3. Later on in your career, ONLY after giving a detailed heads up that your blog is getting an upgrade

Basically, you DO NOT want to just up and change your theme say 1-3 months in when you have already built up a reader base.

Changing your theme abruptly can really annoy people and break trust.

Even if you blog looks super simple or bland, keep in mind your readers might like that! They come for your words afterall.

When you should change themes scenario PLUS what themes we prefer here

So if are in once of those 3 situations above and do want to change your WP theme, let me explain to you how I coached my fellow blogger.

As I coached my fellow blogger, I made sure to highlight for them that you really need to read reviews on WordPress themes. We have a few themes below which speak for themselves for being amazing, but it can be tempting to choose a random WP theme that looks cool at first glance and that can bite you.

What themes has DearBlogger gone through?

If you found DearBlogger.org through or YouTube channel or vice versa, you may wonder what themes we use here or recommend for our family of blogs.

This blog is wears and is powered by the Daily Theme created by Theme-Junkie. Overall I’ve been VERY satisfied with Daily because it comes well organized out of the box for news and magazine blogs, it’s easy to remove things, and they have fast support. I am a bit grumpy they got rid of the affiliate program, but oh well.

Other themes we create with on a daily basis and recommend for readers/viewers are:

• The World – used by our sister blog honestcollege.com
• Sydney – best WordPress theme for travel blogs
• Flatsome – best WordPress theme for eCommerce websites
• Laurel – best WordPress theme for fashion blogs
• Catch – best WordPress theme for a fast, mobile friendly blog
• Divi – best for business websites

We use the above 5 themes to create demo sites on YouTube, but these demos have become fairly real as thousands of you guys setup real WordPress websites with them!

How much money should you spend on your theme?

The budget for a new blog’s theme can really vary and the most important thing is understanding what’s a good value to YOU.

For example I actually created honestcollege.com on a free Blogger template, that was some major value!

Then we purchased Daily from Theme-Junkie for about $39 a year down the road.

I have seen projects where a blogger wants to create a whole look that another, richer blogger is using. It’s possible to really overspend on theme (this blogger bought a StudioPress theme for wayy too much) then you realize that other blogger used a professional developer too! So you really need to look at the theme, the cost, and whether you yourself can make something that looks good rather quickly. For all of the themes we recommend here, you can.

The only case where I would say it’s OK to up-spend for one of the best WP themes would be buying Divi theme from Elegant themes, mainly because with Divi Starter Templates you can make a blog or website for clients super easily and charge thousands of dollars. Divi also charges annually but you can just pay once and forgo updates.

Keeping this brief

In conclusion, the best bet for a new blogger with 100-1000 readers is to KEEP YOUR THEME and figure out whatever issue you have designing it. You can always ask here!

If on the other hand you’re in that exciting stage of just starting a new concept for a blog or website, feel free to play around with a few themes to get it right. Do the best friend test, ask here, just make sure it feels great.

Are you struggling and wondering “should I change my WordPress theme right now?” Let us know in the comments, and hope this article was able to help you!

The post When Should I Change My WordPress Blog Theme? appeared first on Dear Blogger.

Are you a small business with some storefront or homespace who wants to setup a website to accept online appointment bookings? Well SquareSpace has always had an easy website builder, and now you can add Acuity Scheduling onto your webpages so visitors can choose appointment types, classes, times, and of course pay you through your website.

In this article we’ll go over the basic steps to build your own appointment booking website with SquareSpace. Heads up it will take a good few hours of your evening, so brew the coffee and grab a snack as you get comfy. The basic steps are:

1. Visit SquareSpace.com (our discount link) and choose a template
2. Install the template onto a subdomain which is free at SquareSpace
3. This will activate your free 14-day trial automatically
4. Start replacing the images and text as you like!
5. Join a scheduling plan trial
6. Add classes and appointments
7. Launch your new website

While the steps are very straightforward, if you don’t feel like reading through or can’t right now you can always watch along on YouTube to make your appointment booking website.

Let’s get going!

Visit SquareSpace.com

SquareSpace has been in business for ever a prides themselves in allowing new users to choose a template AND enjoy almost all the building fun before having to purchase anything.

So when you visit SquareSpace and click GET STARTED you’ll instantly pick from template types (Portfolio, Scheduling, etc) and template topics (Fashion, Home & Decor, etc)

For this tutorial we’ll use Colima.

Colima is incredibly elegant and has the basic pages we need to get the job done.

Give it a few minutes to browse topics and poll your family members on the best one if you need to.

To be honest, if you just visit SquareSpace and choose a template, you’ll be further along than most new website builders!

Install the Template onto a Subdomain

Once you click Start with Colima (or replace with your template name) then it will welcome you to your new website and you can click Continue.

You’ll notice you don’t have a real domain name yet.

That’s because Squarespace provides us with a subdomain for free to make building your website on a free trial possible.

Your subdomain looks like parakeet-blue-5545.squarespace.com for example and this is where you can pretty much always edit your site from!

The subdomains really make editing your site easy and logging into your site a breeze, which is always a struggle to remember how to do when we just get started.

Activate Your Free Trial Immediately

So armed with your new subdomain, you’ll will be starting a free 14 trial as the bar at the bottom of the screen reminds you.

It’s like a Spring Break with no worries at the beach

Just click down on the black button to Subscribe at any point and you can purchase your website (which we recommend doing well before the 14 days are up).

That’s about all you gotta know about this step.

Except, some important info regarding refunds:

• Squarespace refunds real plans you buy for 14 days from the purchase date
• Squarespace refunds domain names for up to 5 days

So it’s a very risk free environment, and we know because we currently run 2 Squarespace plans managed under the same roof and have also successfully processed 1 refund.

Start Replacing Images and Text

The beauty of Squarespace is truly round in the drag and drop builder.

Go ahead and plunder around.

You can add new sections in a vertical brick laying style and within sections you’ll add modules like Text, Video, Image, Testimonials, Quotes, etc etc.

To truly learn and master the Squarespace built in website builder, I’d recommend watching our video below where you can jump and ahead to where we cover any part you see on the demo website.

Join a Scheduling Plan Trial

Once you have a decent site built, it’s time to join a scheduling plan so you can add the scheduling functionality (just a fancy word for another module) to any webpage you like, such as your “Our Classes” page.

The scheduling plans must be adding as free trial on top of your free website trial.

It all then lives on your original sub domain.

Once 14 days are up, you’ll need to purchase your website as well as your scheduling plan, so we definitely recommend trying a coupon code like ours “GREGNARYAN10” to save a bit on your order.

It will cost you all together about $30-40 per month to run your website if you go the monthl route for payment. Or if you go annually, you’ll be able to get it down to $20-30/mo.

SquareSpace is a budget way to run your website, compared to hiring a web developer who could charge you $2500-5000 just to build the thing let alone run it.

That said, that doesn’t mean a Squarespace website is cheap.

Really consider where your business is at, asking yourself if you can afford to run a website and if you will be able to generate business with it. If you’re not ready to make a website yet, this article will always be here in a year!

Launch Your Awesome SquareSpace Website

Once you are ready to launch, you are ready to take on the world, and we’re here to help!

We recommend watching the portions of our Squarespace YouTube tutorial where we cover over prices plans and what each one comes with to know you’ve done your homework and are choosing the right plan.

That all done, you’re all set!

Keep on logging in each day and add to your website often to keep it fresh for your loyal visitors.

You’re going to love SquareSpace. Whatever you want to create, I want to help!

Cheers, Greg

The post How To Make an Appointment Booking Website in Squarespace appeared first on Dear Blogger.

Have you ever wanted to create a custom blog post layout so your blog posts could look just like how your favorite blogger styles their blogs?

Arranging every part of our posts can be a major source of stress for new bloggers because if we are writing our best content we want to know that it’s organized in a tried and true yet highly attractive way!

Now you can do all of this with the Divi WordPress theme builder.

And the proof of this easy method to create custom blog post layouts is write on gregnarayan.com where we’re building a blog just like Tim Ferris.

Come join our video tutorial below to learn how to create a custom blog post layout on your blog.

Video Tutorial to Make a Custom Blog Post Layout

If you can’t wait the video right now, no worries! Many of our readers prefer the written steps to build custom blog post layouts – so here are the steps below!

The Steps to Setup a Custom Blog Post Layout

First off, you’ll need to purchase and download the latest version of Divi Theme.

Checkout our Divi discounts page to see if you can get 10-20% off the price of Divi at your time of purchase.

Make sure you upload and active Divi as well.

1. Now, just hover on Divi and click theme builder.
2. You’ll want to click Add New Template
3. Next, add a custom body
4. Now click on the green plus icon to create a new section
5. Start your new section with a background color, gradient or image which will become your blog post header area
6. Use padding to space the the header more up and down
7. Now, add a text module and setup your dynamic content by clicking on the three pancakes with the plus icon
8. You can style your title in the Design tab just like you would any blog header
9. Now, give yourself some dynamic blog content through the Blog Content module
10. You can move the blog content up or down using margin padding
11. Next, add an image above the blog post area and use dynamic content again to setup your blog post featured images which will be pulled in based on what featured image you insert in your blog post editor inside the WordPress dashboard.
12. Ok, blog posts are good now! Let’s move to the sidebar
13. Add a blurb to setup your author photo and bio
14. Make sure to insert some social icons and setup links to all your social sites where you’d like to direct or boast your fans
15. You can style the sidebars with as many custom images or banners as your heart desires
16. Next, head below your blog posts and add a previous/next blog post link
17. You can also add a comments section and style that with backgrounds, fonts, etc

That’s it! You now know the basics to create a custom blog post layout in Divi theme! Congratulations!

What Sort of Custom Blog Post Layout Are You Working On?

Once you’ve successfully setup your custom blog post layout or template, please share the link to a blog post of yours in the comments below and tell us a bit about your custom blog post layout! Thanks for joining in another DearBlogger tutorial!

The post How To Create a Custom Blog Post Layout in Divi WordPress Theme appeared first on Dear Blogger.

Now that the pandemic has come to an end (because apparently a small group of people can decide these things these days) I’d like to reflect on the question of how has the pandemic affected blogging?

All of us being at home with easy living, easy money coming in from the government, and very little practice with social skills or any motivation to go out has left a massive impact on us bloggers.

For me the solution to eternal boredom has been a mixture of journaling, writing, golf and going to the gym and of course as it goes in life, “what you water grows” … right?

Over the past two years I’ve seen new bloggers emerge successful and others fall off, with the usual insanity of new TikTok and instagram stars too.

So in this post I’ll summarize how the pandemic has affected blogging from all angles I’ve observed, with the hopes at least a few folks will see shifts in blogging and be able to use it after you create a blog.

If you’ve seen shifts in blogging or the online world too, let us know in the comments!

Table of Contents

Because the questions the post attempts to address of “how has the pandemic aka covid19 affect bloggers and the blogosphere” is such a massive question to ask with so many potential answers, I’ve broken down the post into these 4 categories.

• Affiliate Marketing
• Remote Work
• Live Chat Support
• Major Publications
• Bloggers In and Bloggers Out

As usual, it’s highly likely Greg left out a huge area you’re interested in (I’ve grown forgetful and regularly experience blogging and blog comment overload lately) so if you think there’s a 6th category of blogging change then please let me know down below.

I’ve gone ahead and lead with affiliate marketing as I’m betting that creating new income streams and saving your hard earned money is the most important topic to most of the readers here.

Affiliate Marketing

The pandemic has had a HUGE impact on affiliate marketing, but it’s come in at least a few phases.

For starters, at the beginning of the pandemic, everyone started a blog.

I mean typical days in blogging involved over 100,000 new blogs starting on wordpress.com, wordpress.org and the other best places to blog, but the pandemic made this number ratchet up at least 3 fold.

As a result, affiliate marketing related to blogging products also rocketed up because people needed new hosts, themes, plugins etc.

So if you had a blog that used affiliate marketing as a way to make money blogging, you were in good shape for the first part of pandemic blogging.

However, this trend didn’t exactly last.

After 2020 waned, people grew tired and exhausted of staying at home blogging and the number of new blogs being generated fell off substantially.

Forbes reported that as people’s fears of the pandemic grew and grew, ad revenue suffered from the top of businesses down.

A clear example is how AirBnb traffic declined, so they spent less on ads, so bloggers promoting travel services eventually saw their ads paying off less.

The pre-pandemic world involved us all spending lots of a wide variety of goods and services, but the pandemic world really shrunk what we spent money on and thus shrunk ad and affiliate efforts put out by major brands, with some products vanishing all together.

In fact, as ad rev and affiliate rev seemed less attainable for bloggers, I had never seen so many new blogs go unmanned so quickly.

The new shift grew to more people just wanted to get out which lead to amplified presences on TikTok.

It really was sad to see people lose initiative in blogging, but I guess that’s to be expected when we really have so few outlets for distractions and generally don’t have very much interesting stuff to write about (because many of our lives got pretty boring during the pandemic).

The silver lining however was that blogs in niches that realllly benefited from the pandemic, niches like home improvement, real estate, personal finance, cars, and coupons really did dominate. So if you started a blog about these topics, you’re probably sitting pretty right now.

Remote Work

Well it’s no secret remote work has become all the rave in the past 2-3 years.

DearTraveler has gotten leads with several big firms in remote work doing social media management, and all of her friends in industries from banking to military work have seen their work go either hybrid or totally remote.

That of course means that getting a remote job is more competitive.

It also means that if you’re willing to go above and beyond and venture out into the real world, you can really stand out when others would rather stay at home.

Essentially, the relatively small world of remote work has boomed into becoming the dominant way of doing things.

The numbers are staggering too: PewResearch found that while before the pandemic 75% of American had never worked from home, after the covid19 outbreak set in, an average of one-in-3 workers worked only from home!

It’s so prevalent that even my therapist tried to push me to Zoom learning, which I always refuse!

Live Chat Support

I don’t know about you, but I have noticed a huge fall off in live chat support’s ability (or even desire) to help me post-pandemic.

It is truly awful trying to get Apple to help you reset or figure out anything.

In fact, the VHT blog discovered that one of the largest differences in pandemic era support chats was the need for escalation of the incident, lol!

And good luck talking to your bank about a late fee — its just brutal.

The one exception seems to be that HostGator still helps me fix anything or eveything in my cPanel, with WordPress plugins, or with email issues.

But that could simply be because I’m on their VIP list so who knows where to find good support really!

My personal belief is that companies – especially the fortune 500, have outsourced their tech support.

As a result (and there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing) the support folks don’t really understand issues as they may not have created the products or have all the recent updates.

One nice caveat is that us bloggers could take customer support into our own hard – afterall writing high quality tutorials that stand the test of time IS customer support at its finest!

So basically big firms have saved money sending their support elsewhere, while we get to waste time explaining things that previously wouldn’t have needed to take as long as they do now. Massive ugh.

Major Publications

Well it’s no surprise that major publications had their way with the pandemic.

Never let a good crisis go to waste is how the saying goes, right?

So as bloggers, if we were able to latch onto a major publication or get gigs higher up, there certainly was work.

Of course, without a personal connection it’s literally impossible to get those ins anymore.

But, I’d be super curious if any of you bloggers have had a success writing elsewhere or landed bigger gigs?

Or, maybe it’s just best for us to contribute to free resources like Yelp, Quora or Wikipedia, which found that journalists spent the most time combatting misinformation and providing entertainment than any other form of writing during the pandemic.

For me, even HuffPost won’t respond to the emails anymore as they’re pretty much satisfied talking one-sided politics and linking back to only themselves and their umbrella of blogs.

Bloggers in and Bloggers Out

Lastly, I’d like to give a shout out (or a shout goodbye, lol) to bloggers I noticed during the pandemic.

It was really awesome to read BySophiaLee every week, as she covered blogging tactics to grow your blog and some really simple yet unknown apartment hacks on Instagram. The entertainment she provided during the pandemic did not go unnoticed and the inspiration was tangible!

It was sad not hearing much from Derek Halpern as his social triggers blog really could have capitalized on the social effects of the pandemic, but his latest posts really don’t go past 2019.

It was cool watching Graham Stephan’s coffee hour on YouTube, because I love learning about real estate and personal finance more than ever now. He always keeps it fresh and interesting and I wonder if he knew blogging is the original means of passive income, before real estate .

Kinda sad not hearing from MarieTV and Marie Forleo during the pandemic, but she probably was creating bigger and better things off her blog.

Lastly, WPBeginner was a total win, with new posts every single week day even through all we went through together as bloggers. Just amazing work by their team.

So, which new bloggers did we miss? Your blog? LMK down below!

Hear From You

Well, that was a lot of reflection, and it feels good to be back writing for you guys.

Like I mentioned above, journaling was one activity that really helped me stay sane and mindful during all the pandemic blogging because it slows time down and helps you feel accountable for what you accomplish today and tomorrow.

From your perspective, how did blogging get changed by the pandemic? What good and bad occurred for you? Let us know in the comments, can’t wait to chat!

The post How Has The Pandemic Affected Blogging? appeared first on Dear Blogger.

Dear Bloggers,

Last week I was working on a side job that would normally be quite fun for my college friend’s Dad’s website, a financial consulting website, when a really tough snag occurred.

His site was hosted at GoDaddy (I say was because we had to migrate it eventually to SiteGround) and WordPress for some reason had encountered a glitch in some automatic update resulting in some theme core fatal errors coming up when you’d visit his site.

I spoke to GoDaddy chat, who usually would take care of the site updates from the back end, but instead GoDaddy now insisted I paid for their premium care to get things fixed.

Now I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t believe in paying my web host whom I already pay to do something that in the past they had done for free! What a scam!

After 3 hours of pushing GoDaddy’s support to really just fix my site instead, they actually made it worse! They had changed several file names in the cPanel File Manager and now I had no idea where to begin to get my friend’s Dad’s site back up.

It was time to pivot to a better solution.

Step 1: Migrating to SiteGround

Knowing SiteGround’s like chat operates like a charm — they are so patient and go out of their way to fix and explain things — I figured it was a good time to migrate this client website from GoDaddy to SiteGround.

After all my client was sick of paying GoDaddy more and more for unnecessary add-ons.

After we completed the migration successfully, I asked SiteGround for helping fixing the many fatal errors the site now had

Bad news.

SiteGround said that the errors were so complex they really didn’t know where to begin. Plus, since GoDaddy had caused the errors, SiteGround wasn’t on the hook to help fix someone else’s problem.

Still wanting to be of use, the kind chat agent at SiteGround referred me to a support page at SiteGround where I discovered FixMySite.com

Step 2: Adding Fix My Site Services

I chose FixMySite from the SiteGround support page because they just looked to be the best combination of fast turnaround AND they’d refund me if it didn’t work.

The last thing you want is to be out several hundred dollars for a project that didn’t work out.
Good thing it all worked out.

To get my FixMySite WordPress repair going I simply had to:

• Create an account
• Add them as collaborators to SiteGround (they also work for any other host, just send them a login)
• Describe my issue in as much details as I could
• Buy 2 credits worth of support
• Wait for the beautiful email saying that the website was back online!

The coolest thing about FixMySite is their support staff actually wrote me a personalized email containing the reasons my site was so messed up, best practices to avoid the issue in the future, and even an explanation of what they fixed.

It was an awesome experience at FixMySite, and definitely easy to write this blog post heaping praise over their way. They are such nice, real people and fixed an issue of huge difficulty in a matter of a couple days. In my opinion they stand out as the best service to fix WordPress errors in 2021 and as such I’d give them 2 huge thumbs up and a 5-star rating.

Do You Have Experience with WordPress Maintenance Services?

Has your site gone down or had glitches so bad you can’t figure them out? How did you fix the issue? Let everyone know by posting a comment! Cheers, G

The post The Best Website Repair Service to Fix WordPress Errors? We Just Found It! appeared first on Dear Blogger.

This past week a viewer wrote in asking “How do I add an online class booking section to a website?”

This reader already learned how to create a wordpress website for their client, and now the client had them stumped on adding a booking feature.

So I figured it was time to create a video on my favorite free way to allow clients to book appointments of any kind through your WordPress sites. Just like you guys, I’ve booked all sorts of appointments online from spin classes to hours of filming at YouTube creator studios, and this website feature will help you do all of that!

If you enjoy it or have experience with WordPress booking plugins, please drop off a comment!

Let’s check it out!

How To Add an Online Booking Appointment Class Calendar Tool to WordPress

If you can’t watch the video above, the steps to setup a class booking section to WordPress (for free) are very straight forward:

1. Install and Activate the Appointment Hour Booking Plugin. (Do this through your WordPress Dashboard > Plugins library)
2. Create a calendar with any name you would like
3. Edit the calendar settings
4. Add multiple services if you would like
5. Publish the Calendar!
6. Here’s an example of how your online booking feature might look
7. Optional: tweak the overall design with custom CSS

Thanks so much for joining us in this free WordPress tutorial! Remember, if you have WordPress questions get them answered each day on our YouTube channel. One reader we feature in a video each month gets a free mug!

The post How To Add an Online Class Booking Appointment Section to WordPress appeared first on Dear Blogger.

If you are just starting a blog, chances are you don’t want to pay too much to get up and running. That’s how I felt back in 2010 when I made a tiny college advice blog. What if someone would magically cover the costs for your first year?

Well, DearBlogger is offering to pay for all your web hosting for 1 WHOLE YEAR for 3 lucky winners each month.

How Do I Enter?

To enter this giveaway contest and receive free hosting for an entire year, you must do the following:

• Thumbs up (Like) the How To Make a WordPress Blog 2021 video
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel, here’s the Subscribe Link
• Answer this question in the video comments to get our YouTube community excited to make blog: “If you could make any blog in the world come to life, or basically own any blog (such as a cool blog you already read) which/what type of blog would it be?!”

Note: Even though this contest is starting in April 2021, your hosting package doesn’t need to have started in April, you could have purchased hosting in January, February, or even last year it does not matter.

That’s it — pretty easy if you ask us!

How Will Winners Be Selected?

Each month, we will run our YouTube creators app to gather everyone who has completed these 3 steps on the video. Then we will simply (at random) draw 3 lucky winners, who will receive free hosting for the year.

• Winners will be drawn randomly
• If you enter in one month and don’t win, you can still win in the next month with your previous entry completed
• We will contact you via YouTube to let you know you won!
• In order to claim the free hosting, simply send us your web hosting order receipt (which doesn’t have to be from HostGator, even though this is the web host we feature in the How To Make a Blog 2021 video)
• Prizes will be sent out typically within 2 business days over PayPal, Amazon, or Venmo (whichever you prefer).

It’s going to be a chill Spring and hot Summer of web hosting and blogging… will you get involved in the blogosphere and claim free hosting for 1 whole year?!

Please let me know any questions and good luck starting and running your blogs!

Cheers,

Greg Narayan – Founder and Blogger

The post How To Make a WordPress Blog 2021 [Web Hosting Giveaway Running All Summer!] appeared first on Dear Blogger.

There is an aspect of this surreal time that is triggering a voice I have never heard. Normally, I am more of an introvert, often reticent to say anything that might offend someone. But lately, words are coming out of my mouth, that in better times, would not have been said, or, if said, would have caused me to rapidly retreat in a stumbling attempt to avoid embarrassment.

That reticent, maybe even timid me, seems to have been jettisoned and what is replacing it is, well, different…really different.

It may be the influence of my Dad, from the New York, and/or the fact that although I was born in LA, I was conceived in New York City…in the heart of Little Italy. But wherever the origin of this aberrant voice, something new is taking hold. And I seem to have no control over it.

I’ll give you an example. Yesterday, in the sparkling morning light, I was walking down the middle of an empty Main street – ironically, the safest place to walk – away from others who use the sidewalk and runners and bicyclists racing alongside the curb. I was talking to my friends on a call about a rather intense situation with someone we all knew. I was so involved in the call, like drunk driver, I had weaved into the bicycle lane. Suddenly, I am surprised by a group of intent bicyclists who surround me before racing off. One of them yells, his gloved hand pointing his index finger at me, “the bike lane.” I am shaken loose from my conversation by the whoosh, the explosion of masculinity racing around and by me in an otherwise sweet, quiet moment. The tone of his yell was urgent, castigating and with the subtext, “ you dumb a***”.

I responded with the speed of a razor sharp arrow shot from a bow. I excused myself from the conversation, tilted the phone away from my mouth and without a second thought, shouted back, “6 feet,” indicating that he did not respect my personal space when there were no cars in the road. Bellowing as loudly as I could I followed up with, “As****ole,”. And then quite naturally went back to our conversation, all without missing a beat.

That’s new for me.

It was glorious….The lioness roaring into the sunlight. It’s about time.

The post “I’m walkin here!” – a Guest Blog appeared first on Dear Blogger.

Do you want to create link redirects in WordPress so you can redirect a visitor from a link like yoursite.com/company to a link that becomes companysite.com/yoursitename or any other 3rd party site?

This article will show you how to create link redirects in WordPress with plenty of free affiliate link redirect solutions.

Creating (and managing) link redirects in WordPress is a key part of making money blogging, because link redirects look more pleasing to visitors who click and potentially earn you commissions or ad revenue. In this article we’ll look at two simple and free methods to create link redirects on your WordPress blog.

Why Are Link Redirects Important?

Firstly, Google doesn’t like seeing links that look long and crazy in your blog posts. It could mean your article was hacked and could hurt SEO. Links like yoursite.com/company look like normal, inbound links you’d want to have.

Secondly, if you run a YouTube or Instagram channel connected to your blog, you’ll want to post nice-looking links there too.

Sure, you could just pop an affiliate link into Bitly and shorten it, then give people the shortened link, but there’s good arguments to show more clicks and a better trust when someone sees yoursite.com/company or even yourname.com/company.

That said, here’s how to create easy link redirects.

Quick Page / Post Redirect Plugin

The first free way to create link redirects is what I use on Christa aka DearTraveler’s blog.

This plugin is an older one but just still works so well, they put it up on plugin archive here.

Head over there, click on the blue Download Latest button, then upload the plugin as you would any plugin in your Plugins library.

Once you activate the plugin, click on Quick Redirects under Quick Redirects and you will get this display:

All you have to do is enter the link from yoursite.com/company in Request URL, then enter any link destination you want, and click Add New Redirects.

Hint: It’s a good idea to create a redirect for the www and non www versions of each link

Then you’ll see your existing redirects down below. You can modify then by clicking the pencil and save by clicking the disk.

You can also create redirects from /go/company or get creative with the Request URLs to meet any structure you choose.

Create Links in .htaccess File

The second method is what we use for many different link redirects here at DearBlogger, which is to write links into your .htaccess file in your File Manager.

This advantage of this process is it can allow for a slightly faster link redirect in terms of the browser speed, but beware, if your .htaccess file gets modified by your hosting admins or just goes down, the redirects will also be temporarily down and you may get a few emails from confused readers.

To access your .htaccess file, first login to your hosting portal (We’ll use Bluehost as an example here).

Bluehost makes creating and managing a WordPress blog or website very easy and because they offer cPanel with all their hosting packages, you will get a link to your file manager right from your my.bluehost.com dashboard.

If you still need to setup Bluehost, check out this video.

Once inside your Bluehost dashboard, click on Advanced on the left, then click on File Manager.

Once inside your File Manager, you’ll also need to click on Settings in File Manager and then Show Hidden Files to see .htaccess.

Then click on public_html, and your .htaccess file will be sitting there in the main folder for your site right next to files like wp-content.

Once you’ve highlighted .htaccess, click Edit.

You’ll be taken within the file, and can write in a new link of code (just put it at the very top of the file and hit enter a few times if you need to make space) such as:

Redirect 302 /bluehost https://www.bluehost.com/track/dearblogger

Just writing this simple redirect will make sure anyone who visits yoursite.com/bluehost will end up at the resulting link you write in.

Make sure to hit Save. Make sure to test our your new links!

You’re all done with our second way to create redirects in WordPress!

Again, the advantages when you create an affiliate link in your htaccess file are that the browser page will load faster, and also you don’t have to worry about a plugin glitch that could harm your links. We generally always think less plugins is an effective strategy, if you can pull it off.

Having Any Link Redirect Issues in Your WordPress Blog?

So what do you think, will you use these easy methods to create affiliate links in WordPress?

Does anything above not make sense? Let us know your questions in the comments!

The post Create Link Redirects in WordPress: 2 Easy Methods for Beginners appeared first on Dear Blogger.

Need a good host for your new WordPress blog or website?

There’s a lot of fluff on the Internet when it comes to hosting reviews.

Listen, we know hosting feels weird at first, and you just want to blog, make money blogging, get traffic aka have fun!

So let us do your homework for you, and checkout this WordPress hosting review guide to figure out the best host for your next project.

WordPress Hosting Review Comparison Chart

In blueprinting this review, we chose 17 data points which (though often overlooked) we believe are the most important to new WordPress.org sites. Some hosts have em, some don’t!

But having helped setup over 10,000 new blogs and websites over 7 years, I’d say we know WordPress hosting.

This is what we found!

	SiteGround	Bluehost	HostGator
1) Discounted Monthly Price	$3.95	$2.65	$2.64
2) Good for Beginners?	Yes	Yes	Yes
3) 1-Click WordPress Install?	Yes	Yes	Yes
4) Money Back Guarantee?	Yes	Yes	Yes
5) Free SSL?	Yes	Yes	Yes
6) Free Themes Included?	Yes	No	No
7) Has Built in WordPress Installer?	Yes	No	No
8) Support in Under 2 Minutes?	Yes	No	No
9) WordPress.org Recommended?	Yes	Yes	No
10) Pagespeed < 2s?	Yes	No	No
11) Affiliate Program?	Yes	Yes	Yes
12) Global Servers?	Yes	Yes	Yes
13) Caching Plugin Built In?	Yes	No	No
14) Core Updates?	Yes	Yes	Yes
15) Minimizes Eco Footprint?	Yes	Yes	Yes
16) Has a Mascot?	No	No	Yes
17) Has a Company Blog?	No	No	Yes
Discounted Links For Your Convenience	Get SiteGround	Get Bluehost	Get HostGator

If the WordPress hosting review table above didn’t provide enough information for you to pick your web host, then keep reading.

Discounted Monthly Price

SiteGround’s price is the highest but you get what you pay for. They are noticeably faster for both audience and site manager. Bluehost offers a discount to $2.65/mo which you can learn how to get here. HostGator is unique in offering discount coupons, try BigBonus.

Good For Beginners

None of us want to have to code HTML, CSS, Javascript or anything to get WordPress.org up and running, and with these three hosts you won’t have to. You don’t need to have any previous techie experience to install WordPress with SiteGround, Bluehost or HostGator. They are all extremely beginner friendly web hosts. It is about as hard as using Microsoft Word.

1-Click WordPress Install

Speaking of being beginner friendly, each of these three web hosts offers a way to create a wordpress blog aka install WordPress onto your domain name with a click of a button. The advantage of SiteGround is they actually built this tool themselves, called Site Tools, so you don’t have to leave SiteGround to do this step. The other two hosts use the older developer friendly tool called cPanel, which is also fairly easy.

Money Back Guarantee

You will have at least 30 days to cancel for a full refund at each host.

Free SSL

An SSL certificate refers to the padlock icon next to your domain name and is now a Google criteria for ranking in Search. It is also essential if you create an online store for eCommerce. Just like with the WordPress install, at SiteGround this tool is built in so you just have to click “on”. At HostGator and Bluehost you will get a free SSL but have to use a WordPress plugin to turn it on.

Free Themes Included

A true kicker. With SiteGround you will get several free templates built off the popular OceanWP and Astra themes to choose from. With Bluehost and HostGator they will simply point you to existing free WordPress themes. So SiteGround really goes above and beyond here, giving you an unseen and unique look right out of the gates if you want.

Has Built in WordPress Installer

As we explained above, SiteGround has their own WordPress installer while Bluehost and HostGator use cPanel.

Support in Under 2 Minutes

How long does it take from when you ask the Live Chat to help out until when they answer? We figured 2 minutes is about the time you’d expect to wait if you pay for this type of service, however it can take up to 5 minutes at Bluehost and 10 minutes at HostGator during peak times.

WordPress.org Recommended

Does the WordPress.org site recommend these web hosts. They do for SiteGround and Bluehost. This is based on years of collaboration and perhaps the smallest amount of unconfirmed favoritism

Pagespeed < 2s

We went ahead and created demo WordPress websites at each of the three hosts, then tested each website on pingdom.com to determine the page load speed. Only SiteGround achieved a page load speed under 2 seconds, a critical factor in ranking your webpages and blog posts in Google.

Affiliate Program

SiteGround offers you an affiliate (referral) program where you earn $50 for the first 50 customers you send, 75 for then on, and $100 once you hit 11 customers/mo. Bluehost offers you a flat rate of $65/customer. HostGator offers you the highest rates at 50/75/100/125 with the 125 clocking in at 21+ customers. So really each web host presents a great way to make a living recommending the web hosting you use and love!

Global Servers

Each of these web hosts has server locations around the globe, so if you’d like you can move your WordPress install to a different server so it’s closer to your local audience.

Cache Plugin Built In

A cache plugin acts to serve your site up quicker to the web browsers your audience is using. Only SiteGround offers this feature.

Core Updates

You get all the latest versions of WordPress automatically notifying you with each web host when an update is released. Updates are free.

Minimizes Eco Footprint

Each web host above has its own initiatives to minimize the carbon footprint made my hosting millions of domain names. Luckily this is a totally online ecosystem, so much of it really boils down to how the corporation conducts it’s day to day and how each one gives back.

Has a Mascot?

Only HostGator has a mascot, which is Snappy the alligator.

Has a Company Blog

HostGator maintains a blog called Gator Crossing, while Bluehost has a particularly impressive blog you can find here. SiteGround’s blog is still in the works but to be released soon and sure to impress.

And The Best WordPress Hosting Winner Is….

Based on our highly competitive metrics and criteria outined above, the final tallies are:

1st place pick — SiteGround: 15/17

2nd place pick — HostGator: 11/117

3rd place pick — Bluehost: 9/17

SiteGround brings in the “W” meeting nearly every criteria, with HostGator coming in a somewhat distant second and Bluehost at the rear. It’s hard to beat the speed of SiteGround, and it sure helps that they cover their other bases too. Don’t be too surprised or startled, Bluehost and HostGator are great choices for a new blog as well, and we are a happy customer at each of the above three web hosts.

More details to come as we find them, I hope that helps you pick the best WordPress hosting at a glance!

The post SiteGround vs Bluehost vs HostGator: Best WordPress Hosting Review Comparison (2023) appeared first on Dear Blogger.

We are all hiding from something we cannot see. Maybe we have been hiding from things we cannot see for most of our lives. There is the fear that we can’t show. The anger we try to tuck away before it overwhelms us. The breaths we take just to let our bodies know we’ve got this, we are in control, please body, relax…from what? We are not always sure. Some vague feeling of doom flailing its arms at us, screaming, “Lookout!” ?

This hiding is different. The hiding now contains all our secrets, amplified to a point where even our iron clad personal defenses must bend. In the isolation, the magnification of our internal eruptions need a place to vent. No blocking maneuvers will work…at least, not for long. It seems we need each other more than ever. This time we are all hiding together, isolated but not alone.

There is a weird disposition of being as whole as we can be without the outside world to bump up against as we still try to engage parts of that world virtually. How do we work without the camaraderie of our friends at work? How do we deal with feelings about our partner that were kept at bay but now…? In this mode, everything gets zoomed down to a very tight focus while the swirl of “reality’ gets louder and louder around us. As the lens pulls us in to look carefully, to genuinely see, the questions we ask ourselves begin to change. Against the backdrop of this extraordinary reconfiguration, there is the quiet, the silence of humanity allowing the the sounds of nature to amplify, to billow and holding us for a new, tender moment. All of these experiences push for a new framing, a different point of view that requires relentless adjustment eventually leading to small
leaps into exploring different parts of ourselves. We ask, “what do I need to do to stay safe right now?” Safe, not just in the outside world, but in ourselves.

And in this world turned upside down, we still need to hide and to open at the same time. While we hide from what what we cannot see, we also are seeing what we can. We are beginning to reach for the parts of us that have stayed hidden, the fears, the longings, the sadness, all of it. We have the focus now, the time, maybe even the compulsive need now, to see, to express and to open. Like the nature’s beacon, the magnanimous whale, that shoots through the safety of the sea to burst into the beckoning sunlight, we have a need now to show ourselves to ourselves, the vulnerability of stepping out of our deeply held hiding places and trust that the light will be there when we too reach for the sun.

The post “Hiding” – a Guest Blog appeared first on Dear Blogger.