Don’t waste your time trying out each Wordpress plugin to find out which one you want. Here are the top 10 Wordpress plugins that you want your blog to have, hands down.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

W3 Total Cache

For top-notch website performance, you need the W3 Total Cache Wordpress plugin. Both your blog visitors and search engines care about how fast your website is. If your pages take forever to load, you’ll lose readers and search engine traffic. In fact Google just announced this week that they are not officially taking site response time into consideration for rankings. Of course they are: speed means quality of experience for their users.

W3 Total Cache can reduce your page load time by as much as 50% or even more – something you definitely want to do. AND it will help you keep your site running and available instead of crashing if you get a major rush of traffic all at once, such as getting a popular story on Digg or a “StumbleUpon attack”.  Other major caching plugins like WP Cache and WP Super Cache are OK, but in our opinion they are not as versatile or as powerful as W3 Total Cache (and we’ve used/tested them all).

Google XML Sitemaps

You want search engines to know when you post new content so you get more traffic. Google XML Sitemaps automatically generates an updated sitemap and submits it to top search engines without you lifting a finger. Don’t rely on search engines to crawl your site and find new posts – use this plugin to automatically tell them the instant you post – before someone else copies your post and pretends they wrote it – which happens. And “original content” (i.e. where Google “finds” a post first) gets much more credit than duplicate content (i.e. other places Google finds that post).

GravityForms or cForms

Your readers need an easy way to contact you, whether it’s to ask you a question or to advertise on your site. Contact form plugins like GravityForms or cForms allow you to easily create a great-looking contact form for your website. Instead of putting your email address out there for everyone (including spam bots) to email you thousands of times, use GravityForms or cForms to allow your readers users to contact you easily without cluttering your inbox with lots of spam.

Disqus Comments

Another interactive tool for your blog readers is the all-important comment box. Disqus Comments is an excellent Wordpress plugin that allows visitors to comment on your articles with a great looking social interface and great spam control. Use an advanced plugin like Disqus Comments instead of Wordpress’s integrated comment tool. It looks much, much better and gives you more control over comments. It’s also a hosted comment plugin that automatically syncs the comments with your Wordpress database, and provides great social interaction with your readers.

Two other very popular comment oriented Wordpress plugins are JS-Kit Echo and IntenseDebate. We’ve tried them both and feel Disqus is currently the better choice. The backend comment management of JS-Kit Echo leaves a lot to be desired, and we feel the Disqus comment layout just looks better than the IntenseDebate option. Frankly, this is a matter of preference, they’re all good options!

Akismet

This plugin automatically comes with Wordpress and does a great job catching comment and trackback spam. If you’re using a hosted comment service like Disqus, Akismet won’t apply to you. Actually you can still use the Akismet service through Disqus, just won’t need to enable the plugin.

FeedBurner Feedsmith

Redirect your RSS feed to FeedBurner and have your RSS subscribers poll Feedburner instead of your site. This Wordpress plugin makes your feed much more usable, since it provides far more optimized RSS feed than Wordpress alone does. It will also offload the feed reader traffic to Google (who now owns FeedBurner) so it’s much,  much faster than your web server, improving your blog’s performance even more. This will sound a little technical to a new blogger, but do it anyway, it’ll work better that way.

YARPP

This Wordpress plugin is an excellent tool to use if you want readers who are interested in your topics to stay on your website longer. YARPP automatically displays the most closely related articles from your blog to your readers at the end of the article, allowing them to easily browse through the content they’re interested in on your site instead of allowing to look for what they want elsewhere.

After The Deadline

This easy to use spell and grammar checker for Wordpress is available for free and is essential to use even if you feel like you’re spelling and grammar error-free. It doesn’t cost anything and will ensure each post is error free and looks as good as it is.

Sexy Bookmarks

A bookmarking tool is essential for your blog and Sexy Bookmarks is an excellent tool to use with great eye candy. It adds a nice visual appeal to your blog, while encouraging readers to share the article they’re reading with their friends on Twitter, Facebook and more. This means more linkbacks to your blog and more readers for you!

Viper’s Video Quicktags

To embed your YouTube video on your blog, you’ll need Viper’s Video Quicktags. Newer versions of Wordpress (2.9 and above) allow you to embed videos without special plugins, but Viper’s Video Quicktags allows you much better control over how the videos look in your posts. You can set the format for all of your videos in one place instead of coding it in each post – and having to edit ALL your posts to make a change.

After building very successful Wordpress blog and online magazine AskDanAndJennifer.com over the last four years, these Wordpress plugins are our personal favorites – and for the most part, the only ones we actually use.

Do you have favorite “must have” Wordpress plugins that aren’t in this list? Let us know! Leave a comment.

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Camcorder

One of the obvious things you need to start a succesful blog or website with a video show is a camcorder, or possibly more than one if you have them. You don’t have to have an expensive camcorder – you can even use your webcam if you don’t have a more traditional camcorder. Regardless of whatever camcorder you have, make sure you have a stable place to set the camera up for filming. If you’re using a traditional camcorder, you’ll definitely need a tripod. Don’t have someone hold your camera for you – they’ll never be able to keep it steady enough to keep your viewers from getting motion sickness.

Good Lighting

Your living room overhead or a lamp just won’t work if you want good, even lighting for your online video show. Lamps and overheads create shadows, which look unprofessional in a video. Visit a camera store or browse online for some discount lighting fixtures or lighting kits. You don’t need super expensive lightboxes or anything like that. A simple bulb with a broad umbrella will do just fine.

Lapel Microphone

Strong, even sound is as important as good lighting. For a professional looking and sounding online video show, you want to minimize echos and static. Some computers and laptops have built in microphones that may work, but your best bet is a lapel microphone, especially if you’re shooting your video on a set in front of a camera instead of with a webcam. Lapel microphones are very inexpensive, but they’re worth their weight in gold.

Video Editing Platform

Good video editing software is essential for a professional looking video show. There will be lots of things you want to edit out, without spending hours re-recording a video to be perfect because you don’t have editing software. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to have a Mac to have a great video editing platform. Adobe has some great options for Windows video editing, including Adobe Premiere Elements which is available for less than $100. However, their best program so far is Adobe Premiere Pro, which comes in at just over $700 – if that fits your budget.

Use Video Sharing Sites

Video sharing websites, like YouTube, are free and your most valuable tool for getting people to see your video show and start making money online. Create accounts with several of the most popular video sharing websites and start uploading your video show online regularly so people can start watching what you’ve created. Tubemogul is an excellent option if you want to upload one video to multiple video sharing websites without the hassle of uploading large files over and over to different sites. Tubemogul allows you to upload the video once and it will distribute your video to various video sharing websites for you.

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Staying Relevant In Your Niche

Using social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook is one of the easiest ways you can stay connected to your blog readers and relevant in your niche. Regular Tweets and Facebook posts keep people reading and keep people “in the know” about your favorite topics. Also, one of the best forms of advertisement is through word of mouth. Fans of your Facebook page will inadvertently direct their friends to your page via their Wall and so on and so on. Your Twitter followers might Tweet about a topic you’ve already Tweeted about and tell their friends about it and so on. Using social media outlets is a must if you really want to be a successful blogger and build your own brand.

The Benefits Of Scheduling Your Tweets

The benefits of scheduling your Tweets is that you don’t always have to be at your computer when you want something Tweeted. While there are applications that can allow you to Tweet from your cell phone, sometimes you just want to take some time off without completely withdrawing yourself from staying on top of things and staying relevant. That’s where scheduling your Tweets (and your blog posts) comes in handy.

Tweeting Responsibly

There is definitely a fine line between using Twitter and Facebook scheduling tools and abusing them. While you can schedule many of your Tweets, it quickly becomes obvious that all you’re doing is scheduling your Tweets and you’re not really relevant in your niche anyways. Your Twitter followers and Facebook fans will ask you questions, and it’s important that you answer them. Although you do schedule some of your Tweets, you should add to it by answering questions and having real conversations with people. This is the best way to build your brand and let people know that you’re available and interested in what your blog is about. Social media outlets give you the opportunity to actually be in the action instead of simply being behind the scenes. Use your Twitter and your Facebook pages to talk about your favorite topics, ask your fans and followers questions of your own and get them involved and interested in your blog topics. Not only will this generate tons of traffic for your blog, it will also generate real interest, and that’s something that can’t be bought. Be responsible with your Twitter and Facebook. Take the time to talk to your fans and followers, and schedule your Tweets and posts when you have to.

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Content Is Key

You may have the best SEO keywords on your website or blog, but without quality content, the search engines are going to start overlooking you. You may get an influx of site traffic for awhile, but it will quickly cease as the search engines realize that people aren’t staying on your website very long. If you’re not offering people anything of value on your website, you won’t be getting traffic for long, if you ever got it at all. The key to a successful blog or website is to produce quality content that people want to read on a regular basis. Search engines will pick up on regular publishing and start taking a better look at your website or blog. If there’s good stuff on there that people are interested in and searching for, the search engines will start sending them to you. It’s as simple as that.

Search Engine De-Crappers

Search engines, especially Google, spend millions of dollars every year on technology that allows them to filter through websites that publish what is known as Internet “crap.” Search engines don’t want to send traffic to websites that don’t offer people anything of value. You can only fool search engines with SEO tricks and keywords for so long, if at all these days. Search engines are continuously working on ways to weed out the bad and useless content, regardless of how many fancy keywords and SEO there is. If you don’t produce quality content on a regular basis, search engines are going to figure it out and fast. Without quality content, you’re not going to get the traffic you need for a successful blog or website.

Regular Publishing

To take this #1 tip on blog and website success a little further, you must continue publishing good content that people want to read on a regular basis. You may have a great article up on your site or blog, but if you’ve only published one or two articles, the search engines aren’t going to know to look in your direction. Search engines want to send people to websites and blogs that regularly publish good content, not a website or blog that published one or two good articles. Search engines such as Google love websites that stay relevant and stay in the game by continuously posting content.

Yeah, the whole “make money with eBay” thing was and still is a great opportunity for some, but it’s become more of a fad. Starting a blog is a solid way to make long term income – just for doing some writing on stuff you actually like and care about. Imagine that!

Between Google AdSense, affiliate marketing, sponsored reviews, and the dozens of other site monetization options, you can make a lot of steady, passive income with a blog.

That means you’re making money while you sleep. Seriously, how would you like to make money 24/7, not just when you’re selling your time to an employer?

What’s even better, every blog post you make will be making you money for years to come. Search engines find and cache those posts, and over time each post is “worth more” to the search engines. That means they’ll be sending you’ll get more web site traffic with every passing month.

So what’s stopping you? We did it, and so can you. In just a few months, we went from making $200 per month to $2,000 per month from our blog.

And if you do this right, you too can walk away from that job and be free! Or just make a bunch of extra money.

Hang on tight and let’s do it together!

Here are 10 EASY steps we’ll take together to get your blog started, and make your blog Ultra Successful.

Decide to start today

TODAY. No, not tomorrow, not next week, and not next month. Tomorrow always feels “safe” because you’re not having to make a decision. The power of today is that you make that commitment to yourself. And that is the first step to success.

This step is the most critical one, and it’s where most people get stuck. Don’t dream about doing something. Just get up and do it.

“The best way to live the life of your dreams is to start living the life of your dreams Today, in every little way that you possibly can”. – Mike Dooley, www.Tut.com

Choose a niche for your blog – the niche that YOU will dominate

Choosing the right niche for your blog is perhaps the most important choice you can make BEFORE starting a blog. Choose the wrong niche, and it’s very unlikely you’ll ever succeed.

Some questions to help you choose the right niche

• The most important question you have to ask yourself is this: What are you passionate about?
  It’ll be very hard for you to write regularly and authoritatively and be a go-to industry expert on a topic you don’t really care about. Passion tends to make the difference between amazing success and quiet failure.
• Do you intend to make money with this blog? Would you like it to be your primary income source?
  This makes a big difference. If so, you’ll have to choose a nice that is not overly crowded. Regardless of the crowding, you’ll need to research your niche thoroughly and develop your own value proposition.

Research your niche and learn the landscape

Find the popular blogs and websites in your niche, study them closely, and visit them regularly.

Get to know the authors and regular contributors. Comment on these blogs regularly so they can get to know you too.

Find the right keywords to target with your blog

Once you choose your niche, it’s crucial to find just the right keywords to target. This is a delicate balance between finding keywords that get enough search traffic and keywords that don’t have too much competition.

Don’t wait until your blog starts getting popular to figure out which keywords to target, or you’ll waste a lot of time and effort and end up starting from scratch.

While you can do a lot of research the manual, old fashioned, and time consuming way, we recommend you get a proven keyword research tool to find your keywords quickly and accurately.

Get a web hosting account for your blog

Your blog host should be reliable, responsive if you have questions, and inexpensive. $7 per month is reasonable for a reliable host; less than that and the service tends to go down a lot.

Many people try to save those few dollars and instead start with a free blog platform like Blogger.com. But we strongly advise against it. It’s virtually impossible to get free search engine traffic to those free blogs, and support is completely nonexistent. If your blog disappears overnight (as we had happen once on Blogger.com), there’s nobody to call and ask for help. Your work is all lost. You’ll also have a hard time every moving away when your blog takes off. And you’ll lose all the search engine value that you’ve built up.

Take this seriously and go with a proper web host that actually has competent support people available to help you. Spending $7/month for a proper web host will also help you realize that you’re serious about your goal. Do it.

We highly recommend HostGator. The fact that their email support replies to most issues in literally minutes certainly doesn’t hurt. Find out why in our web hosting review of HostGator, and go set up your own account with them today.

HostGator is great because it JUST WORKS, they offer a lot of great features, and (unlike most other quality web hosts) you can just sign up for an inexpensive monthly plan, month by month.

Are there other good web hosts? Sure, but there are literally just two solid web hosts we use ourselves and actually recommend to our own friends and family. These are “the web hosts to choose from" that we recommend to our own friends and family when they ask…

• HostGator – Solid, reliable, and very inexpensive: as low as $5/month. And a unique feature that other low cost web hosts don’t have: you can sign up monthly, no commitments.
• ServInt – Great high end web host, starting at $49/month. Solid, reliable, and very knowledgeable support staff. This is the must-have web host if your website is getting over 100,000 page views/month.

We started with HostGator and stayed very happy customers with them until we passed 100,000 page views. After that it was time to move up from a $5/month hosting plan, so we upgraded to ServInt. If you’re looking to upgrade to a high end, mission critical web host, then ServInt is your best bet.

If you’re just starting out – or you’re looking to keep your costs as low as possible while working with a solid, reliable web host, do youself a favor and get started with HostGator.

In fact, HostGator is currently running a special promotion: less than $7/month – with no long term commitments, or $5/month for a longer term. You just can’t beat that for a solid, reliable web host when you’re stariting out.

Be sure to check out our web hosting review of HostGator, and give it a try yourself; we’re glad we did.

Install WordPress to run your blog

After you choose a reliable blog host , you’re ready to install your blog software. The most flexible choice available today is WordPress. It’s also free, and easy to setup and maintain.

Yes, this is a little more involved than setting up a free blog somewhere, but it’ll be well worth the effort when you get more web site traffic in a month then you would have gotten in a year on a Blogger.com blog.

Make a great first impression with a great theme for your blog

First impressions always matter. On the web, that’s even more important. A web visitor’s first impression about your site determines if he clicks away in the first 5 seconds, if he stays on to read what you have to say, and if he will ever come back again.

So it’s very important to put your best foot forward. Make your site interesting, distinctive, and engaging to your readers by using a great “theme”. WordPress themes are basically website designs that you can just download and enable for your WordPress blog.

Find the best theme for your blog, and when you have the resources, consider having a custom theme made for just your blog.

Configure WordPress and it’s plugins to get the most search engine traffic

What good is a blog if nobody is visiting? One of the great advantages of WordPress is the vast array of options to make your blog very yummy to the search engines. This is all about understanding what Google wants and giving it to them in the way they want it. Simple.

The most powerful SEO trick of all: “work with Google to give them what they want instead of trying to trick them”.

Make your blog welcoming and engaging to every reader

To make your visitors stick around and come back for more – day after day – use the power of WordPress and make your blog fun, engaging, and interactive.

Use polls to get readers involved and ask their opinion. Feature the latest posts and comments. Show off your most popular articles. Get readers truly involved by getting them to comment on your posts.

Write your first post

OK, at this point you’ve chosen THE best niche for you, you’ve become very familiar with that niche and it’s most popular sites, and you’re basically what could be considered an “authority” on your topic.

So now is the time for that all important first blog post

Off the top of your head, make a quick list of all the issues in your niche that people care about. What problems do they have, what questions do they have? What keeps them up at night?

Now pick ANY one of these and write a quick article on it. This “article” can be just a simple Top 10 list, with a supporting sentence of two for each bullet. That’s it!

Get feedback

Get this first article out there and see what people think. Email it to your family and friends, and ask them to help you make it better.

All the planning in the world is no substitute for Action. It’s time to go forth and do those good and powerful things.

Set up your RSS feed

Not long ago, RSS was the domain of the super-geeky. But today, millions of mainstream internet users are subscribing to RSS vibes every day.

Get your blog set up with full blown RSS support by setting up a free account with FeedBurner. They’ll pull a feed from your blog, make it pretty so everyone can actually read it, and they’ll even give you accurate stats on your readers. Yes, it is nice to know if anyone is actually subscribed to your feed.

WordPress also has a simple plugin that you can enable to support your shiny new FeedBurner RSS feed service.

Register your new blog with the top website and blog directories

Once you have a few posts on your blog, it’s time to start getting the word out. Search engines want to see links coming back to your site. Those links show that people other than just you consider your site to be important.

Well, at first you have no links. So you have to start somewhere. One of the best places to start is the endless list of web site directories and now blog directories which are just begging to give you a free link.

Here are a few to get you started: BlogCatalog, Blog Flux, and the Connected Internet Directory. DMOZ and the Yahoo Directory are also very important, but your submission to them is considered just a “suggestion”, and you may never hear back or get included.

Blog Catalog has turned into a social community of bloggers, which makes it significantly more valuable than a regular blog directory, largely because of the relationships you can forge there.

Promote! Social Media, Internet Press Releases, and more

If you don’t tell people about your new site, they’ll never know about it! Stop hoping someone will accidentally stumble upon your site. Take matters into your own hands and get the word out there!

It’s never been this easy to promote a brand new site, and to explosively grow your traffic and readership.

Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and more

Did you just publish a great article on your site? Let people know! Social media provides a great way to share your stories with others who WANT to know about it.

Share your great article on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon. But tread with caution. Don’t “spam” these sites with everything you write.

To be truly successful, it’s VERY important to follow the rules and participate in these communities.

There are even some great tools like Web2Submitter to automate the process and submit your stories to tens of social media sites! This means you save countless hours AND actually get your story out to dozens of sites instead of just one.

Check out this video to see how to automate this process with Web2Submitter.

Article Marketing – Establish yourself as an expert by publishing your articles

Time to get more visibility for your hard work. Article directories take your articles and provide them to the countless webmasters and eZine publishers that need what you have: good, useful, and informative content.

You’ve already spent the time and written your excellent articles for your blog. Now publish those articles on the top 10 article directories and get lots more readers coming to your website.