Indeed, many bloggers want to make money doing what they love: blogging. But sadly, it isn't as easy as people often think, and 95% of bloggers make less than $100 a month. Why? Because even if their posts are good, they don't know the technics to efficiently promote their blogs and posts, the don't know how to create what is called a "blog empire" and basically, they don't know how to bring traffic to their blog and convert this traffic into money.

Blogging and make cash

If you look over the web, you'll find a plenty of ebooks pretending telling you how to make money online with your blog. If you're an ebook reader, you probably know that a lot of theses ebooks sucks and are something like 20 pages, which isn't enought to deliver you the technics to really make money online.

Happilly, some ebooks aren't useless and contains really good tips. This is the case of the Blog And Make cash ebook. With its 88 pages, you're not fooled: You're paying $20 for something, not for 3 pages and a few screenshots.
Let's see what you can find in the Blog And Make Cash ebook: First, the book talks to beginners who haven't created a blog yet, delivering the basics of blogging in a precise and concise way: How to start a blog, which platform choosing, etc. The Blog And Make Cash ebook also contains everything you need to find the right niche for your blog. This is, in my opinion, a point where many bloggers fails. Having a niche and a concept can be very good for you. If you're still in doubt with what I just said, think about my other blog WpRecipes. It have a niche, a concept and it now have 1700+ rss suscribers, 3 months after I launched it!

Then, let's go into what we want to: Creating traffic and converting this traffic to money. That's simple as that.

What's inside?

Here's a brief description of what you're about to discover in the Blog And Make Cash ebook:

• How to easily create a blog, even if don't have any technical skills
• How to find the profitable affiliate marketing opportunities so you'll not loose your time
• How to optimize your blog for search engines and quickly drive a massive traffic to your blog
• How to manage multiple blogs so you can create a real Blog Empire...and multiply your money making sources!
• How to monetize your blog with many money making opportunities
• How to expand your blogs and your keep your profits growing
• How to write timely and pertinent blog entries that keep them coming back.
• How to consistently expand your readership and your profits.
• How to establish and build a good reputation, visitor loyalty, and a name they won't forget.
• Simple techniques for making real money with your blog.
• How to get your readers to provide content.
• How the elite few rise above the other 20 million bloggers and turn a real profit!
• And a lot more!

Buy now: Only $19.99

Yes, $19.99 for a 88 pages ebook. This ebook is one of my all time favorites, which helped me to earn money with my blogs as well as finding the concept of my very successful other blog WpRecipes, which have 1700+ rss readers in less than two months.
Click here to get it now and start making cash by doing what you like: Blogging!

Get 20% off on the MyHomePro Premium WordPress Theme by using this exclusive code: wpcats20.

Perfection

Busy Bee

Wp Showcase

Industry

Open Air

Newspaper

Fresh News

BSocial

Revolution Office

Flexx

MyHomePro

And you, what is your favorite premium theme from 2008?

Get 20% off on the MyHomePro Premium WordPress Theme by using this exclusive code: wpcats20.

So, with ease of use in mind, I'm proud to present CSS image caption! I actually took the code from Chris Coyier's featured content slider, and just stripped it down so you're left with the image and a caption.

Click here to see the actual working example, and not just a picture!

Its not ideal as you'll have to create a new div if you have two images that are different sizes, but if you keep your images all the same size then this is the one for you!

The CSS. The transparent black background is just an image thats repeated. The height will change the height of the box, but you'll have to fiddle with some of the other parameters in order to get the box finishing at the bottom of the image. I wouldn't advise it unless you know what you're doing.

#transparentbox{
    background: url(images/transpBlack.png);
    padding: 10px;
    height: 30px;
    margin-top:-50px;
    position: relative;
    z-index: 9999;
    color: white;
    width:500px;
}

The HTML. Quite simple - you've just got to add in an extra div after your image, and put the caption in that div.

<img src="images/yourimage.jpg" alt="My image" />
<div id="transparentbox">
    Wow! This actually works!<br />
    <a href="http://nometet.com">by Alex Denning</a>
</div>

The integration. Quite simple to integrate, so I'll gloss over this. Copy and paste the CSS into your theme's stylesheet, and upload the transparent black image (we're using an image as it works with more browsers than the CSS/HTML option). Then when you're putting images into posts, add in the extra div and bingo! Make sure you've set the width correctly otherwise it'll spill over the sides.

Disclaimer: This code has been tested under Linux and Firefox and is provided 'as is'.

See it in action here

Download it here

This was written by Alex Denning, Wordpress power user, web design freelancer and editor of Nometet.com. He is on Twitter, so why not follow him?

Get 20% off on the MyHomePro Premium WordPress Theme by using this exclusive code: wpcats20.

Here we go, here are the 3 winners!

Richard Cloutier

Rainbow

Jeremy Herve

If you are one of the 3 winners, send me an email with the email adress where you'd like to receive your price!

Didn't won? I still have a Christmas present for you!

If you didn't won the theme, I still have some goods news for you: John Kolbert agreed to let me give you a 20% discount on his awesome MyHomePro theme.
To get the theme with 20% discount, proceed as the following:

• Click here to go to John's website, and buy the theme
• At checkout, insert the following coupon, which will give you 20% discount: wpcats20
• You're done! Enjoy your new theme

And another good news, I have plans to organize more contests to make you win premium themes, ebooks and more, so stay tuned!

Merry Christmas to all of you, and thanks a lot for your interrest in Cats Who Code.

Get 20% off on the MyHomePro Premium WordPress Theme by using this exclusive code: wpcats20.

You probably don't know it, but being a guest-blogger is probably the best thing to happen to me as a blogger. Back in May 2008, when this blog and WpRecipes.com doesn't even exists, I thought it should be a good idea to translate some posts from Lyxia.org, my blog in French for WpHacks, which was (and still is!) one of my favorite blogs.

As my articles on Wphacks were welcomed by the readers, I decided to start Cats Who Code and use what I have learnt from an experiented blogger to bring readers to my own blog. In the meantime, I continued to guest-blog on WpHacks and WordPress addicts which read that blogs started to recognized me as an experimented WordPress developer. I translated OpenBook, a free "Magazine" theme that I created some months ago, and published it on WpHacks. It was downloaded a lot of times, providing many backlinks to Cats Who Code, ensuring it a good Technorati rank.

Two months ago, I decided to launch WpRecipes, a 100% WordPress related blog. Once again, being a guest author on Wphacks helped me to promote it to the WordPress community.

Five tips to start guest-blogging

1: Find the right blog
A big mistake made by blogging begginers is to try to submit posts to a very well-known blog. For exemple, I have received some guest articles which aren't bad, but in my opinion not good enought for Cats Who Code right now. Though, theses articles should fit perfectly on another blog.
Another exemple: Some months ago I contacted Smashing Magazine to ask if I can be a guest author on their blog. No answer. I re-contacted them one month ago, and this time received a positive answer. Why? Simply because my authority growed and they know that I'm experienced enought to write on their blog.

2: Always provide exemples
Another big mistake: Sending an email which looks like "Hey bro, can I be an author on your blog?". Honestly, will you say that at a job interview? You have to convince the blogger that you can bring something good to his blog, so always provide links to your best articles, or to guest posts you already wrote.

3: Providing high-quality articles
Sometimes, I have the impression that some people submit guest articles when they think that theses posts aren't good enought for their own blogs. Most bloggers will not publish it on their blogs, but if some does, it will rather decrease your credibility instead of increasing it.

4: Listen to the blog owner
Some guest-bloggers feel a bit upset if the blog owner you're writing for wants to edit your posts, or ask you to replace some parts. I understand that sometimes it can be frustrating, but always keep in mind that the blog owner have more experience than you. If he asked a modification in your work, it isn't because he thought you did a bad job, but because he thinks that his audience will prefer it that way.

5: Answer comments, provide support
As a guest author on WpHacks, I managed to become "popular" among other guest bloggers there because I always took the time to answer WpHacks readers, and provide theme support when they needed it. Basically, I care for WpHacks readers like I care for my own readers. That way, you'll gain respect from the readers.

Guest blogging exemple: My latest post on Smashing Magazine:

Get 20% off on the MyHomePro Premium WordPress Theme by using this exclusive code: wpcats20.

This method is the first I learnt, one year ago or so. In order to achieve it, you first have to rename your .css file to .css.php.
Make sure to import it in your html file by using their new name:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="/style.css.php"/>

Once you successfully rename your css files, edit it and add the following code at the beginning of the file:

<?php if(extension_loaded('zlib')){ob_start('ob_gzhandler');} header("Content-type: text/css"); ?>

Then, add the next line to the very bottom and save the file.

<?php if(extension_loaded('zlib')){ob_end_flush();}?>

That's all. While this method is useful and efficient.

→ Source

The Perishable Press method

Basically, The Perishable Press method works as Paul Stamatiou's method, by renaming your .css files to .css.php (or .php alone) and adding this short code snippet on the beggining of your CSS file:

<?php
   ob_start ("ob_gzhandler");
   header ("content-type: text/css; charset: UTF-8");
   header ("cache-control: must-revalidate");
   $offset = 60 * 60;
   $expire = "expires: " . gmdate ("D, d M Y H:i:s", time() + $offset) . " GMT";
   header ($expire);
?>

I prfer this method this method to the one described by Paul Stamatiou because you don't have to edit both the beginning and the end of the css file.
→ Source

The Reinhold Weber method

I just stumbled upon this code snippet by German developer Reinhold Weber some minutes ago. The least I can say is that I like it.

<?php
  header('Content-type: text/css');
  ob_start("compress");
  function compress($buffer) {
    /* remove comments */
    $buffer = preg_replace('!/\*[^*]*\*+([^/][^*]*\*+)*/!', '', $buffer);
    /* remove tabs, spaces, newlines, etc. */
    $buffer = str_replace(array("\r\n", "\r", "\n", "\t", '  ', '    ', '    '), '', $buffer);
    return $buffer;
  }

  /* your css files */
  include('master.css');
  include('typography.css');
  include('grid.css');
  include('print.css');
  include('handheld.css');

  ob_end_flush();
?>

Why I like it? Because it is the only one of the 3 methods above which doesn't require you to rename the CSS files to .php. Very nice to use on an existing site. The regular expression to strip out css comments is very nice too.
→ Source

You probably guessed it, my favorite method of the 3 above is the last one. And you? Did you already tried any of theses methods? Which one is your favorite? Tell us in the comments.

Get 20% off on the MyHomePro Premium WordPress Theme by using this exclusive code: wpcats20.

First thing we're going to need is an image. I've got one of the Xbox Live Community Game, Easy Golf. You can use whatever image you like, although for adding text a couple of hundred pixels wide is the least you should go for. Obviously make sure its relevant!

Next, we need to open up the image in our favourite image editor. If you've got Photoshop 4 or above, use that, although I'll be showing you how to do this in the excellent free image editor, GIMP. You can download it here, and Linux users should already have it installed as part of their distro.

Once you've loaded up your image, we need to add a new layer. We can do this by going Layer - New Layer. A dialogue box will appear, and we want a black layer. This will probably be your foreground layer in GIMP.

Next, we need to make the transparent strip for our text. Call up the layers box by pressing CTRL + L, select your new black layer, and make the opacity (or transparency) about 60%. But, we don't want the whole image to be black, so next, using the select tool, select the whole image, leaving only a small black bar at the bottom where you are going to put your text. Press delete and you'll be left with your bar for your text.

Finally, all we have to do is add our text, using the text tool. Type in the text you want, and change the colour of the text to white (click on the colour bar, select white). Move your text into position using the move tool, and save your image as a JPEG. If you find your text is below the black bar, open up the layers box again, and move the text so that it is the top layer.

And thats that! All done. I've made a template version that you can use, in Photoshop and GIMP formats. Its 900x400, so no matter how big your image is, if you're putting it on a webpage, then it should fit!

Download the template versions here

You can take this even further, and in conjunction with some jquery, you can create a very cool featured content gallery (see Nometet.com for a working example), but thats a post for another day!

As always, feedback would be much appreciated and please do take a minute to visit my sites here and here. I'm now on Twitter as well! Follow me here.

Get 20% off on the MyHomePro Premium WordPress Theme by using this exclusive code: wpcats20.

My friend and talentuous designer John Kolbert just created MyHomePro, a new Premium WordPress theme. To celebrate MyHomePro launch as well as Cats Who Code first 6 months of existence, John and me decided to run a contest and give away 3 copies of MyHomePro for free. But before I get into the contest details, let's take a look at the MyHomePro theme.
Here's some of the possibilities of MyHomePro:

• Compatible from WordPress 2.5 to WordPress 2.7
• Share your online life! Custom admin interface to show your Diggs, Flickr photos, Tweets, and many many more!
• Styled comments created for threaded and paged comments in WordPress 2.7! Automatically adjusts to the legacy comments for earlier versions!
• Widget Ready Widget-ready sidebar and a custom coded footer for displaying your online activity. Simply beautiful!
• Fluid or Fixed Width Templates Purchase the fluid or fixed width templates to meet your own needs.
• Beautiful Code! W3C valid code designed using a minimalist approach. Tabless CSS makes customizations a breeze!
• Standard Blog or Custom Homepage: MyHome Pro comes pre-built with a custom homepage that you can use to show off your profile picture, biographical information, recent posts and advertisements. Want a standard blog home page showing just your recent posts and a sidebar? No problem. It's all included!
• Very easy to customize: Due to its clean code, MyHomePro it's very easy to change color, layout, fonts, etc.

Screenshots

Win 3 copies of the MyHomePro Theme

To register for our contest and try to win one of our 3 free copies of the MyHomePro theme, simply write an article about Cats Who Code or WpRecipes (Or both, that's even better ). You can review the blog, talk about this contest or about any post I've published. To be valid, your article must have a link back to Cats Who Code or WpRecipes. Once done, post a comment on this article to make sure I know about your participation.

Winners will be randomly choosen and announced on December 24, just before Christmas so winners will have one more present

Can't wait? Then buy the MyHomePro with a 20% discount!

If you can't wait until christmas to get your hands on MyHomePro, I got some great news for you: I got an exclusive coupon code to get 20% on the theme.
To get it, simply suscribe to rss feeds from Cats Who Code or WpRecipes, and you'll have the code!

Hope you'll enjoy this contest! Good luck to everyone.

Get 20% off on the MyHomePro Premium WordPress Theme by using this exclusive code: wpcats20.

Graublau

Green Pillow

MKSans TallX

Mayberry Pro

Nevis

AUdimat Mono

Myriad Pro

Segoe UI

Get 20% off on the MyHomePro Premium WordPress Theme by using this exclusive code: wpcats20.

Part 1:

image credit

This post focuses on emphasizing an interesting picture to make the visitor interested in two things:

1. The large picture that fills their page when they load the URL and;
2. What content is around the picture.

When you loaded the post from the main page, I bet you instantly looked at the amazing HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo, the colours and the caption below, making you want to scan the article for bolded terms and try to make sense of it all. Most of the time, the average visitor will do the same, meaning that you've captured their attention long enough to make them read the article.

This strategy works best with an unique photo (caption is optional - try Flickr) and placing it above the fold (where the user has to scroll to see).

Part 2:

Now comes the part where the visitor has scanned the article, read about what they are interested in, and are finished with the content. At this time, you need to capture their attention that will make them:

1. Join your community by leaving a comment
2. Become a subscriber to your RSS feed
3. Join your email newsletter mailing list

or else they are just useless traffic that will leave.. to find something else that captures their attention.

I find the best way to do this is to do the following at the end of your post:

• Ask a question and bold it at the end of your article.
• Place a banner such as this one saying to subscribe to your RSS feed:

• Offer a free Ebook or item for subscribing to your newsletter.
• Place a call to action (can be for anything you want your reader to do) and highlight it with a different coloured box (light-blue is relaxing). Include a headline like: "Do you like this post? Do X for more" or "If you've enjoyed this article, find more at X" - It is completely up to you.

What strategies do you use for Social Media Visitors? From your experience, do some work better than others?

Get 20% off on the MyHomePro Premium WordPress Theme by using this exclusive code: wpcats20.