This post is directed to bloggers who want to be successful and have plenty of traffic, so I KNOW that you are already replying to your comments. You are, aren’t you?

‘Dead’ blogs are easy to spot, they have spam comments, no replies to real comments, and haven’t posted for months. You need a couple of FREE WordPress plugins to avoid this fate:

1) Akismet Plugin …. This is a free Spam filter which checks all your comments for unwanted Spam. It keeps real comments in a separate folder ready for your approval, once you have approved the address, future comments can go straight to your blog.

Lists are great. You have to think of your favourite things, and then get them into some sort of order. The shorter the list, the harder it is, because you have to leave stuff out.  

Nick Hornby wrote a very funny novel called ‘High Fidelity’ about a bloke who was always making lists. He constantly rearranged his record collection, and thought about the top 10 guitarists or drummers, especially when he had girlfriend troubles.

Anyone who has a website should be using Google Analytics. It’s a free tool provided by Google that analyses your web traffic, gives you detailed reports on the sources of your traffic, what keywords were used to find you, and which pages on your website are most popular.

It also does a lot more, but you get the drift by now, and this is provided completely free of charge by Google. Information is power, so if you haven’t powered up your websites yet do it now! You can get Google Analytics here.

If you are an Internet Marketing Newbie, you will have to decide upon a HTML Editor at a pretty early stage of your career.  It will soon become apparent that to succeed in this business you will need to create websites – and plenty of them!

I cannot advise on any of the FREE HTML Editors available, as I have never used any of them, on the basis that you get what you pay for. I didn’t want to waste time learning a FREE software programme, which would undoubtedly have limitations, and need paid upgrades to work properly.

Sold another painting last night, which will keep me in beer money for a couple of weeks.   I am a very happy artist at the moment because this is the first painting I have sold that isn’t based on a comic character, film or musician (my favourite subjects).

It was a painting of some sheep and a shepherd originally created by the British artist Mackenzie Thorpe. He was a favourite of the old Conservative Party leader William Hague, who used one of Mackenzie Thorpe’s paintings for his family Xmas card. MacKenzie Thorpe originals are quite expensive, and it’s usually just prints that you see in local galleries. (Even the prints are about £300).

Alexa is a company owned by Amazon that analyses web traffic.  The more traffic you get, the lower your Alexa rating.

Unsurprisingly number 1) is Google, followed by 2) Facebook, 3) You Tube, 4) Yahoo and 5) Windows Live.

This blog’s rating is 527,326. I have installed a widget on my sidebar so that is on view. I want to increase the traffic to this blog, so hopefully my Alexa rating will come down.

If you want to know your own Alexa rating, you can install a FREE toolbar here. This not only displays your own traffic rating, it also shows the rating for each site you visit.

Titles are important, because many potential readers don’t get past this first line.  So It’s worth spending some time thinking of a title that would attract as many readers as possible.  Be careful if you try and use humour in your title though, it could turn away more people than it attracts. Humour is a very personal thing, and should be used sparingly.

I was reminded of this by a recommended read for my local book club; ‘Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks’ by Alan Coren. I just didn’t like the title, it sounded frivolous and boring. I’m not interested in chocolate OR cuckoo clocks.

Do you know what it takes to be a leading player in today’s overcrowded art market niche?

Do you even know what it takes to get in the game?

These are the questions that have perplexed internet marketer, Joelle Hughes for years and began her quest for the  answers.

Why would she care?  Because she is an artist herself and has struggled with the challenge of becoming successful selling  art in today’s saturated online market place.

Internet Marketing Newbies have a lot of choices to make when they first start. One basic decision is to either do all the technical computer work yourself, or to outsource it?

There is no right or wrong answer to this, it depends upon your own technical aptitude and your cash flow. I quite like learning new technical stuff, and I wanted to preserve my capital, so I concentrated on getting as much knowledge as I could.

11) “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”  Captain Strother Martin, ‘Cool Hand Luke’ 1967
12) “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!” Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, Robert Duvall ‘Apocalypse Now’ 1979
13) “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Jennifer Cavilleri Barrett, Ali MacGraw ‘Love Story’ 1970
14) “The stuff that dreams are made of.”  Sam Spade, Humphrey Bogart ‘The Maltese Falcon’ 1941 (Also Shakespeare)!
15) “E.T. phone home.” E.T. , Pat Welsh ‘E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1982
16) “They call me Mister Tibbs!” Virgil Tibbs, Sidney Poitier ‘In the Heat of the Night’ 1967
17) “Rosebud.” Charles Foster Kane, Orson Welles ‘Citizen Kane’ 1941
18) “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” Arthur “Cody” Jarrett, James Cagney ‘White Heat’ 1949
19) “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Howard Beale, Peter Finch ‘Network’ 1976
20) “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Rick Blaine, Humphrey Bogart ‘Casablanca’ 1942