Special guest post by Mike Paetzold

One of the best and easiest ways to get traffic to your blog is by taking advantage of the various free resources available on line.

Caveat: Your main or as I call it money blog needs to be on YOUR server and on a domain YOU own. You should be using a WordPress blog there.

Now that we have gotten rid of the caveat, lets look at some of the free tools that are available.

• Squidoo – my absolute favorite
• Hub Pages
• Blogger
• WordPress.com
• MSN Live

For the purposes of illustration we will pick a topic and use a bad word in my vocabulary ass/u/me that you have done the research and found to have profit potential about Bumble Bees. (Hey I am old and bald bare with me here.)

While Automated Blog Profits is not one of my favorite topics I get so many questions on it, I decided to answer it once and for all and do it based on my personal experience. But before I will even proceed I need to make a disclaimer:

What you will create as result of following ALL or SOME recommendations in this guide WILL NOT make you an authority blogger. It will earn you income (I have tested each part of the strategy) but how much will depend on your efforts as with any internet venture.

WordPress Web 2.0 SpotEr now uses power of SezWho 2.0 to build community. I have seen it implemented on Andy Beard’s blog for a while now and while I liked many aspects I wasn’t 100% convinced it was right tool for me. SezWho 2.0 release solved all the issues I had with service and now it is a proud part of my blog plugins.

As blogging becomes more and more popular and people are taking a dive into the process it becomes more and more important to be able to evaluate reputation of the person you might be engaged into conversation with on a particular blog. Credibility score across multiple platforms to build stronger communities is now possible…

In last and final part of Customizing WordPress Theme Guide I want to provide details on how to take advantage of your Sidebar even more, while using less of valuable real estate.

Taking advantage of Javascript Domtab technology we will create a tabbed sidebar section exposing your best and most popular content much like Darren at Problogger does but I will make it simple enough that even a brain dead can follow and implement.

WordPress Sidebar is the prime real estate for every blogger, no matter if you are trying to earn or simply gain more exposure and perhaps provide interactivity to your blog. While content is the king – sidebar is your virtual vault and making sure its space properly and most efficiently allocated one task we all go through.

In Second Part of Customizing Your WordPress Theme tutorial I wanted to dedicate enough time to talk about things that are fairly basic and don’t require much of technical knowledge and yet, hard to do unless you know how. I want to show How To EXTEND Your Sidebar Functionality and help you understand how it will work to your advantage…

WordPress Theme is responcible for the visual whoomp of your blog. It is a single, most important element that creates the Look and Feel of your blog and determines the visual message you send to your visitors. It is also one element of your WordPress blog that will either help you or drive your visitors away!

No matter how well crafted are your posts, how well research and presented your content – if the first impression is negative – your chances of retaining the visitor are slim. This article of WordPress Guide Series will concentrate on the task that according to the poll on this blog is The Most Painful Task: