Keyword research is an extremely important part of Online marketing. In fact it is the first and a rather excruciating part of building anything on the internet.

It would have been so much easier if you could just jump on the internet and put up a website. Make some content and enjoy large amounts of traffic and money. Unfortunately that does not happen. Loads of traffic does not come gushing in without proper keyword research . Your posts will not reach the right audience or worse may not answer the right questions. Keyword research helps answer what they’re looking for.

Imagine having a list of potential buyers , their needs , their pains, where they hang out, where they go shopping for your products, what they’re looking for etc. . That would make your job a whole lot easier. Keyword Research is the internet’s equivalent of real world market research. Researching competitors , their backlinks and the probability of ranking on the first page of Google .

For a good guide to keyword research  check out copyblogger’s guide to keyword research . Click on the link below or the image to go there.

WordPress Child Themes – Your Gateway to theme development paradise

Child themes are a fairly new concept. I’ve been hearing about them for some time now. Never really bothered to check out before. But luckily for all of us, I have now. This is not complicated. This is somewhat easy to understand . So don’t fret about all the lingo.

Basically, you create themes that rely on other themes as templates. Now that it turn means you only have to change the child theme to make changes to your WordPress theme .

So why bother you ask ?

As it turns out what most wordpress theme designers do is build on top of existing themes they like. I’m guilty of that myself. Why write everything from the beginning when you might need only a few things changed. For example Serving Niches itself it built on themeorrhea by JTK. I loved the way his theme was built. It was simple and didn’t have too many files cluttering up the back end.

The basic layout for any theme doesn’t have to be different. Now previous to WordPress 2.7 I would have had to change the theme files using editor and add my embelishments. Everytime a new version of the theme was released , I would have had to copy paste all my changes to the new theme. Almost rewrite the whole thing. If you had seen the serving niches theme files , you wouldn’t recognize themeorrhea. There were way too many changes made. So imagine having to write all that again on top of the new theme. It would take time.

See now I don’t have to do that. Now with the concept of child themes , I could simply put all my changes in its own folder , so when I upload a new version of the original theme , I’ll only be rewriting the theme’s files not my changes.

So how do you make use of child themes ?

Child themes are put in the same folder as any other theme on your wordpress installation.

wp-content/themes

To build a child theme , you will first need a mother theme or a main theme to build a child theme on.

All you need to do is to make changes to the style.css file . You need it to tell wordpress that this theme is a child theme.

Neat huh ? Imagine all those hours you’d have to spend rewriting and testing and playing and rehashing and indenting and what not all that code if you were to update the mother theme.

The mother theme style.css. Below is the beginning of a typical style.css .

/*





Theme Name: Your Theme Name

Theme URI: http://your-theme-homepage.com

Description: Oh what a lovely description of your theme you'll put here!

Author: Your Name

Author URI: http://your-website.com

Template: If this is a child theme, you'll set the template theme's folder name here,   otherwise don't put this here

Version: A version number

.

Any general information, license statements, plugin requirements, or any other information you

may want to share.

.

*/

You do need to make a few changes to the child theme’s style.css . The one file it needs is style.css . You need to put the basic information below in it. Below is an example of how you’d want to fill out the child theme style.css file.

Theme Name: will the child theme’s name

Theme URL: url of your theme if you choose to upload it somewhere so that people can download or purchase it

Description: small description of the child theme

Author: your name or nick name

Author URL: if you have a website. Get a free one atleast mate if you don’t have one.

Template: This is the important option. This is where you mention the location of the mother theme. So say the mother theme is located in wp-content/themes/themeorrhea/ .

You’d write “themeorrhea” here. So it would be Template: themeorrhea .

Version: this is you first child theme ? Call it version 1.0 . you could call it 10.0 if you wanted. It doesn’t really matter.

An example of what a child theme’s style.css would look like.



/*

Theme Name: Sandwich

Theme URI: http://anupvasudevan.com/sandwich

Description: This is Sandwich, a child theme for themeoreaa.

Author: Anup

Author URI: <a href="http://thor/">http://</a>anupvasudevan.com

Template: themeoreaa

Version: 1.0

.

You need to have both Sandwich and Themeorrhea in your wp-content/themes/ folder for this

theme to work.

.

*/

This child theme will be like any other theme . You’ll be able to activate it like any other theme from the Appearance page in wordpress admin .

So what about the remaining files ?

Simply add them to the child theme folder. The child theme’s files get precedence by default over the mother theme’s files. In other words, should you add a header.php to the sandwich folder at wp-content/themes/sandwich , it will be chosen over themeorrhea’s header.php . Thereby replacing it. The rest of the files will be used as is. If you choose to use the mother theme’s files , do not make an empty file in the child theme folder.

That is all . There you’ve made it to the end.

You should be able to use child themes on WordPress installation now.

An example use of this would be during the holiday season. You want to change the look for maybe December 25th alone or even the week leading up to December 25th .

This way you don’t have to write the code all over . You just need to build a child theme. Maybe just change the background image to something with leaves and bells.

You are limited only by your imagination.

image credits : http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamperegrino/2913018697/ WordPress stickers & stationery
http://www.flickr.com/photos/myklroventine-events/3832855830/ WordPress screen

It’s not everyday you come across truly remarkable training, internet marketing or otherwise.

Thorough review helps when making a decision. So I signed up for the Immediate Edge. I was surprised by what I found inside.

NOTE: the link to the website is an affiliate link. This means that if you choose to purchase using this link , I will be paid a commission.So why should you trust me or my review of this site then ? — You should consider what I have to say because I signed up to be an affiliate after I went through the content and saw the sheer value it had to offer anyone visiting it. It is a treasure chest of usable information. Of course you don’t have to buy through my link or any other link if you don’t want to . But do read this post and decide for yourself.

If I had to summarize The Immediate Edge for you in a few words , I’d call it   ” a treasure chest of quality usable internet marketing content” . There is so much good info here that anyone can take and apply right away. But of course you don’t care what I think of it, you want to know what the content is. Let’s get to that then shall we.

What you get at the Immediate Edge for that price is access to 3 courses that sell on their own. You get access to the Blueprint Series, the Challenge Plus series and the Immediate Edge Training .

Edge Blueprints

The edge blueprints have been made with one intention in mind. To get to in a position to quit your day job in six months. Of course the usual thing about you implementing it all and the effort you put in will decide everything. These blueprints sound sane enough . I would like to kindly remind everyone that we’re talking about building a business here. This should come as a breath of fresh air for most people.

Currently there are 3 you can apply. You need not apply all at once. Just any one.

1). Sniper Traffic 2). Blog Farms & Content Clusters 3). Flippa

What you see on your left is a screenshot of the blog farm and content clusters mind map. The entire mind map isn’t there of course but you get the point.

Next comes

The Immediate Edge Training Series

This is a module based series. It discusses everything you need to know in order to build a business on the internet.

Finding a Niche ,Market Research ,SEO ,Social Marketing ,Testing and tracking

Finding a niche : using google insights – don’t be fooled by the free tool. Its how you use them that makes a world of a difference. Niche research mind maps , research using websites, magazines, top sites etc.

There is way too much information in there to discuss in detail or even mention in a single blog post. Niche finding is probably the most frustrating part of building websites and apps for profit. This narrows down and makes the process a lot less frustrating.

Challenge Plus

The challenge plus is the continuation of the challenge . There’s nearly 23 months worth of content .

Month 1 : has 6 modules on using Friend Feed. Audio lessons on Product Creation and numerous lectures on product creation. This is just month 1 .

But the challenge plus material is an add on to the challenge material. This is to say that it would be best if you worked on challenge material first before you dive into the challenge plus stuff.

All this isn’t everything.

There still remains the Newsletters Content.

Newsletters

There are around 21 Newsletters . All filled with immediately actionable content like

Newsletter 11

An entire blueprint for setting up a business in a weekend (or less), including a 24 hour action plan. Plus ways to improve your websites, sales letters and emails, and a couple of other sneaky things :)

The above mentioned newsletter is just one of the many found inside.

All this seems unbelievable . I know . Everything I’ve said is a 100% true. But you need to make up your mind about whether you should take them up on this offer.

Why ?

Because right now its only $1. This is for the trial period only.Check it out while you still can . Click on the image on the left to go there.

Note: the trial period is over . But it is still worth the money if you want my opinion. If you’re looking for something to build on challenge.co lessons, then this is the right place. Anyone could use it but it is best if you have some experience.

As always … Good Luck .

P.S. Little hint – you can still access it for $1 . Just try to exit the page and a pop up should appear. If you choose to stay on page, you will be taken to a page where you can choose the $1 trial period.

lynda.com could possibly be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Rarely does anything get me this excited. No hype people.

For one there are courses similar to the ones on this site I’ve bought for $197 . The $197 courses were rubbish compared to this. This site is a treasure chest of information. In fact its so good you’d probably increase your income by thousands should you apply it. Make no mistake . This is not a sales pitch.

Before you start thinking this as one of those sleazy internet marketing websites (okay okay sheesh lol ) , I would like to assure you it isn’t. The best part is that you could gain access to this treasure chest for $25.

A few of the Courses that you will be getting –

Social Media Marketing with Facebook and Twitter

Google Analytics Essential Training

SEO: Search Engine Optimization Getting Started

Search Engine Optimization (2006)

Flash CS4 Professional: Building Search Engine Friendly Sites

Blogging  : Self-Hosting a WordPress Site

Ecommerce : Product Photography for E-Commerce

and much much more

Imagine every popular web technology explained and you get an idea of what’s available on lynda.com

Click on the Image Below to go there.

<strong>Few others who use lynda.com</strong>

Sorry about the lack of posts from me. I’m currently working on a new theme for the blog

and also working on a freebie section. All this has forced me to cut down on posting to the blog.

But if you’re looking for great information for free , check out thirtydaychallenge.com

I won’t lie. You’re going to love it. I very highly recommend it to Beginners (and Experts). This is Internet

Marketing. I love it because it isn’t all that shady stuff you tend to find in the Search Engines.

Making money online or in the real world is not about cheating people . You can offer genuine value to people.

You don’t have to pretend to be something you’re not to do it either.