James McAllister Online

Category: Blogging

  • Why Spam Can Sometimes Be A Good Thing

    From time to time, I hear people say that dealing with spam is one of the worst things about being a blogger. While that may be true for some people, spam can actually be a very good thing as well. Would you believe me if I told you that I actually love seeing thousands of spam comments each day for all of my websites? It’s true. Spam can actually be a good thing, and here’s why.

    First, we have to understand how spam works, and how it’s getting into your comment moderation queue. Most spam is done automatically – that is, there isn’t actually a human visitor on your website that is writing it out by hand. Rather, these spammers tend to use automated software which sends out the same comments to thousands of blogs almost instantly.

    This software works by querying Google with certain keywords, then compiling a list of all the websites that come up for that keyword where comments can be left. So what does this mean?

    It means your website is ranking on Google. And that is a GREAT thing. If your website is ranking well enough to be found on Google for keywords so competitive that spammers are targeting them with their software, you’re doing something right, and that’s something to be proud of. The more spam comments you’re getting on your blog, chances are, the more competitive keywords your ranking for.

    …And it REALLY says something about the quality of your website if manual human spammers are coming to your website to spam. That takes time and effort!

    So next time you look at your WordPress dashboard and see 2000 spam comments, rejoice (though maybe after installing an anti-spam plugin, haha!) After all, think back to the days when you were getting no comments at all, spam or not. I bet the spam doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?

  • Is This Blogging Mistake Costing You Thousands Of Visitors?

    It’s a scary thought – you could be losing thousands of potential visitors this very moment. You could be making one mistake that is costing you tons of money in potential revenue. The worst thing? You may not even know you’re making it, because you’re not always in control of it. (more…)

  • Should You Really Start A “How To Make Money Online” Blog?

    If there is one blogging niche that has expanded vastly over the course of the past year, it’s making money online. Everyone is doing it – even those who are just starting  their first blog. But is this actually a good idea?

    The answer can be yes, and the answer could be no. It all depends on how you go about it. (more…)

  • How To Get Your Website Onto The Search Engines

    Although it’s completely possible to have a successful website without being indexed and ranked on the major search engines, it sure helps a heck of a lot. After all, how cool would it be to get free, effortless, targeted traffic to your website? It’s pretty great, in fact, niche websites thrive on it. So what are you waiting for anyway?  (more…)

  • How To Choose The Right Topic For Your Website

    Wouldn’t it suck for you to put hundreds of hours into a website, in hopes of getting thousands of visitors and paychecks from Google every month? With the wrong website topic, that’s easily possible.

    Many people fail at making money online because they make a mistake when choosing their website topic. This often happens when the person copies someone else’s idea based on that person’s success, or they choose a topic they know little to nothing about, (or if they do know a lot, they aren’t passionate enough about it) because they think it will make them a lot of money. Do not make this mistake!

    Nobody will want to read the same old stuff, paraphrased from another site. I’m not saying it isn’t ok to write about the same things as other websites do. If it wasn’t, most of the news websites would have no traffic. If you want to take this approach, it is vital  to add your own voice or opinion on the subject. If you don’t, your visitors will leave.

    And don’t even think about copying someone else’s article word for word. Not only is that illegal, but it won’t get you ranked on search engines, because search engines ignore duplicate content.

    Being passionate about your website topic is even more important. It took me quite a while before I started achieving success online. If I were not passionate about my website topic, I would’ve gotten bored of writing about it, and I would’ve given up. Instead, because I loved writing about my website topic so much, I kept going on with it, and eventually got a lot of traffic to my website. Writing should not seem like a job to you, and it should not be boring. A good topic to write about is one that you enjoy writing. The best topic to write about is the one you think you could write the most about. If you want to maximize the amount of money you can make online, you will want to update your websites often, and that is why it is important that you have a lot to write about.

    With that all being said, even if you found a topic you love, and you know a lot about, there are still some things you should watch out for.

    1. Don’t Go For An Oversaturated Niche

    I’ve seen people try and create the next Facebook. I’ve seen people try and create a website about blogging when they know even about it. Heck, I’ve seen a company try to become the next Google, and even after millions of dollars of advertising for it, Bing still is rarely used by the majority of users. The same idea applies to your niche. If you go for an extremely competitive niche such as making money online, not only are you competing with other people who have been doing this for a very long time, but you’re also not going to get ranked very well in Google.

    2. If You Decide To Anyway, Spin It

    So let’s say you don’t take my advice with number one. You want to create another website in an already oversaturated niche. Okay, that’s fine. But if you want it to have any chance at success, you must find some way to spin it. As I mentioned earlier, nobody wants to read the same content paraphrased from another site. Make it unique. Add flair, add voice. Add something to make it stand out in the crowd.

    I’ll admit, when I created Help Start My Site, the niche for making websites was already oversaturated. But I was able to succeed with it. Why? I give off my own unique spin. I’m in high school, and I’m making more money than both my parents. Everything on here was written by someone who never had to quit their 9 to 5, simply because they never started one in the first place. How many other websites of this niche can say that? Not many, that’s for sure.

    3. Choose A Profitable Topic

    If your goal is to make money from your website, you’ll want to make sure there are methods to do so. Before selecting a website’s topic and putting hours into it, make sure there are actually ways to make money from a website of that niche. Check out the cost per click for your website’s keyword through Google’s keyword tool, and check to see what affiliate products you’d be able to sell on your website.  Even if you pull in thousands of visitors a day, if you can’t monetize your pages it won’t mean much to you financially.

    As you can see, choosing a website’s topic is extremely important and definitely something you should consider before going ahead with your website. Planning is key to success, after all.

  • Avoid These 5 Common Mistakes When Buying Your Domain Name!

    Note: The domain name for this website has been changed since this article has been published, from “HelpStartMySite.com” to “JamesMcAllisterOnline.com”. I left the original name in to help demonstrate the main points of this article.

    These days, one of the most challenging parts of getting your website up on the internet is simply choosing a domain name. Because the internet is growing at such a rapid rate, more and more domain names are being taken and finding a decent unregistered one.  Believe it or not, it took 3 people, over 200 different ideas and 5 hours to decide on the name of some of my websites. Quite the challenge, right? And guess what, some of those I ended up scrapping due to some silly mistakes, and buying a new domain. Despite the time and money wasted, I learned a heck of a lot through these mistakes, and now I’m going to teach you what I did wrong so you don’t make the same mistakes.

    1. Choosing A Name That’s Unrelated To Your Niche

    When you hear the domain name HelpStartMySite.com, you instantly know what it’s about, that is, helping you start your own website. What if I had named it mysiteaboutcoolstuff.com? That could be about anything, right? It’s important that people instantly know what your website is about when looking at the link. It will also provide SEO benefit, because part of your websites keywords will be in the URL.

    2. Choosing A Name That Is Hard To Remember

    HelpStartMySite. Four small, easy words telling you exactly what this website is about, and what it does. It’s easy to remember. What if I had named it helpgetstartedwithmyonlinewebsite.com? Keeping the name of your domain short makes it easy to remember, and also reduces the chance of someone mistyping a letter when typing it in the address bar.  However, a website can have a domain name that’s too short as well. What if I had named this website HSMS.com? HSMS is a chain of unrelated letters that could mean anything. However, when I extend it to it’s longer form, http://helpstartmysite.com, it’s easy to see what the website is about, and it’s easier to remember.

    3. Using Numbers Or Hyphens

    I try to avoid numbers at all costs when buying domain names online. Why? Simply because, if you were to tell the name of your website in person, the person will have no idea if they are meant to be spelling out the name of the domain, or if they are meant to be using a number. And what if a competitor has almost the same name, with a number in it? The person could end up going to your competitor’s website without knowing that it’s not actually yours. You don’t want that!

    The same thing applies to hyphens. They’re hard to remember. Don’t use them. 🙂 After all, how annoying would it be, when giving out your website’s url, to say “Help (hyphen) start (hyphen) my (hyphen) site.com? Yeah, no. Let’s not do that.

    4. Not Getting A .Com Domain

    Okay, it’s not the end of the world if you went with a .Net or a .Org. But if you’re running a commercial website, or you’re trying to make money off your blog, .com is the way to go, always. Not only is it the world’s most popular domain extension, but it’s also the easiest to remember. When people here a website name, they generally think it’s associated with .com due to it’s popularity.

    There are exceptions to this. If you are creating a website for a local business, you may benefit from a local domain name extension such as .co.uk or .au. However, if you’re trying to appeal to audiences all around the globe, make sure you stick with .com. Sure, it’s a bit more expensive than something like .info, but if you’re serious about your website, make the investment.

    5. Getting No Domain At All

    The absolute biggest mistake you can have is not purchasing a domain name at all. Really, nobody is going to take you or your business seriously if after your website’s name they see a ‘.webs.com’ or a ‘.blogspot.com’. Now it’s not to say that these platforms are useless, in fact, I think they are a great resource to use if you want to learn about blogging. However, if you are serious about making and monetizing a blog or a website, make the investment and buy a domain and web hosting. Not only will it be more respectable, but it’s easier to remember, gives you more control, and helps with SEO as well.

    What mistakes have you made when purchasing a domain name? What did you wish you knew before doing so? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you!

    – James McAllister

  • What Is The Hello Dolly Plugin, And Can You Delete It From WordPress?

    Hello Dolly – simultaneously one of the most popular, yet the most useless plugins among website owners.

    Hello Dolly is a plugin that comes bundled with WordPress – it is already there when you install it.

    Whether you’ve just set up your website or you found this plugin lurking among others you’ve already installed, you may be wondering – what is the Hello Dolly plugin, and can you safely delete the Hello Dolly plugin from WordPress?

    Let’s look into this plugin more deeply.

    What Is The Hello Dolly WordPress Plugin?

    Hello Dolly serves one purpose – it displays random lyrics from the song ‘Hello Dolly’ (performed by Louie Armstrong) within your WordPress dashboard.

    That’s it.

    The WordPress description states, “This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong: Hello, Dolly.”

    This sounds nice, but the plugin is functionally useless.

    In other words, you don’t really lose anything by removing the plugin from your website.

    If anything, I suspect that WordPress included this plugin simply for the state of showcasing what plugins are and now they work. This is similar to the default comment and page that also comes bundled with WordPress, which should also be deleted.

    According to information from WordPress.org, Hello Dolly has been deliberately downloaded over 800,000 times as of September 2021, the original publish date of this article.

    Developers may use Hello Dolly as a safe way to test whether plugins are installing correctly on their server, since the plugin does not do much and shouldn’t ever conflict with any other plugins on your website.

    There are also people that claim that Hello Dolly can provide insight for developers who are interested in developing plugins for WordPress, as the code behind the plugin is rather simple.

    As bloggers and website owners, there is no longer any reason to keep it around unless you want to. Even if you are a developer, there are better places to begin your journey of creating plugins for WordPress.

    Can You Delete The Hello Dolly Plugin?

    There is no harm in deleting the Hello Dolly plugin if you decide that you no longer want it. In fact, I consider this to be a routine step of setting up new WordPress websites.

    There are a few practical reasons for deleting it, which I’ll outline below.

    1. Potential Exploits

    Although there have been no known exploits of Hello Dolly itself, it is good practice to deactivate and remove plugins that are no longer in use.

    Other than slowing down your website, plugins are one of the greatest attack vectors for hackers to exploit.

    There have been cases of hackers disguising malicious files as part of Hello Dolly when in fact, they were not part of the plugin at all.

    Seeing as you should never install plugins without a specific purpose in mind, this should be reason enough to delete Hello Dolly.

    2. It Declutters Your Plugin Page

    As your website grows, it’s not uncommon for your plugin page to become quite cluttered.

    Although Hello Dolly does not take up any of the sidebar real estate inside your WordPress dashboard, it still takes up a slot on your plugin page.

    This is a minor inconvenience at best, but still.

    3. Additional Security Concerns

    As a general rule of thumb, your website often benefits from avoiding ‘defaults’ within your content management system. In this case, WordPress.

    This is because when hackers find an exploit, their goal is to hit as many websites with it as possible. To maximize their chances, their scripts look for the ‘easy’ websites.

    For example, you should never leave your WordPress login name as ‘Admin’ or ‘Administrator’, as these will often be targeted first.

    Anyhow, there have been incidences of hackers hiding malicious code inside of the Hello Dolly plugin folder. Since it’ll have been there since the beginning of your website, you likely wouldn’t notice anything new being added there.

    Conclusion

    Hello Dolly is a functionally useless plugin, and it really makes no difference whether or not you keep it on your website.

    Due to potential security concerns, it would be best to delete the plugin if it makes no difference to you.

    While the likelihood of anything bad happening because of Hello Dolly is extremely low, the risk is not zero.

    Therefore, feel free to delete Hello Dolly. It is completely safe to do so, and certainly won’t break anything.

    – James McAllister