A blog is essentially your own business.  Think about it, you provide value (content) for your customers (readers) and in turn you are compensated (income, gratification, etc.).    Along the way you are providing a lifelong asset (your site) that you can either work to grow or sell one day.  You are the boss, you have complete control of what direction you want to steer in or you can let it die with all of the other blogs out there.  In order to achieve success you have to market, interact with your customers, provide real value, monetize and consistently move forward.  Your blog is a virtual business controlled by you, the CEO.

Working for yourself can be one of the most rewarding and most desirable things you could ever do.  After you have grown your blog into full time revenue stream, you can benefit from the wonders of owning a virtual business.   You can work from anywhere, no deadlines, success lies in you, you don’t have to answer to anyone, and you have freedom to do what you want.  It’s a no brainer that many people would love to own a success blog compared to working for “the man” in a 3 wall cubicle.

How hard is it to grow the business?  Well, here’s the kicker…it won’t happen overnight or even weeks and it’s not easy!  You need to ignore the “gurus” who tell you that all you need to do is create a blog, slap some Google Adsense above the fold, spam forums, and watch the money roll in.  It’s not like that, not even close.  If you think it’s going to be easy, you need to switch your mindset.  Building a business is hard but rewarding work.  You might need to work 16 hour days to even get it off the ground and build a solid readership.  You need to grind it out each and every minute and leave nothing to chance.

I’ll leave you with some takeaways for improving your blog as a business;

• Connect: Connect with your audience, especially in the beginning.  Your customers won’t find you unless you find them.  Go on social networks and connect with people in your niche.  Answer questions on forums (include a signature  to your site on your profile).  Offer a service to them.
• Provide quality over quantity: You need to really believe your content is a product for your customer.  Nobody wants a cheap product so offer them quality, in depth articles they have never seen before.
• Set goals: I highly suggest you make day to day goals (to-do’s), monthly and yearly goals.  Day to day goals of what you are going to accomplish that day is very important to keep productive.  Monthly goals are a great way to track the daily goals.  Yearly goals are a good estimate of how your blog is doing as a business.
• Treat it like your baby: Be proud of your blog.  When company owners are out at an event or dinner, they rave about how their business works and such.  You need to brag about your blog to your friends, co-workers and anyone you come in contact with; you never know who will spread the word.
• Always build up the asset: Everyday you should be moving forward with new content, pages and features for your blog.  Every time you do, you are increasing the value of your website.
• Don’t afraid to make money: A business exists to make money so don’t be afraid to put up ads on your site.  Don’t spam your site with ads, instead strategically place relevant ads that could bring your customers more value.

As I posted last week , this site was hacked and it wasn’t pleasant in the least bit.  To be honest, I only took a few measures to secure my WordPress blog.  More and more people are getting hacked into regardless of how much security they do to ensure that it won’t happen.  Luckily I was able to retrieve my database files and install a fresh version of WordPress.  Some people aren’t so lucky, I’ve seen sites completely wiped out only to be left with “Hello World.”  I encourage you to take all 10 steps into account when you’re trying to secure your WordPress site.

Choose a strong password

This is easy enough, you need a good password so an intruder can’t “guess” it and immediately go into your Dashboard.  I suggest picking something that doesn’t relate to anything about you or a password you previous use elsewhere.  Also, use a mix of capital and lowercase letters and numbers. Be sure to create a new password every once in a while.

To do this, click on “Your Profile” in the “User” menu or the username on the top right of your dashboard.  From here you can easily create a new password.

Change the Username

This is another easy way to protect your blog.  By default WordPress defines you as “admin.”  For those of you who haven’t changed the username, I know it.  Isn’t is scary that I’m half way to hacking your site?  To avoid this create a unique username to log into.  After you created your new user name, log out and in again using your new username.  Then go to “Users” and delete the Admin.

Limit Login Attempts

With the plugin called Login Lockdown you can protect yourself against brute force password discovery.  This plugin records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt.  After a certain amount of unsuccessful login attempts during a specified time period, the plugin will disable to login function of your WordPress site.

Upgrade to the latest version

When a new version of WordPress  hits the blogging market, you should upgrade ASAP!  The new version will most likely fix old security loopholes.  Besides security, upgrading to the latest version will boast new features that doesn’t exist in the previous version.  As of July 2010, you should be running WP 3.o.

This rule goes for plugins also.  You should upgrade any and all plugins that become available.  WP will display, in the Dashboard, when a new plugin has an upgrade available.

Hide Your Plugins

By creating a blank document called “index.html” and placing it within your plugin folder, you will hide the plugins you have installed on your blog.   Your plugins folder is found in the wp-content folder.  To see if your blog is exposed type the following in the address bar: “http://yoursite.com/wp-content/plugins” (obviously replace yoursite.com with your domain name).

Protect wp-config.php

The wp-config.php file is the most important file in your directory because it has your database login details.  Insert the following code into your .htaccess file  so there is no public access to this file

# protect wp-config.php
<files wp-config.php>
Order deny,allow
deny from all
</files>

For more .htaccess hacks visit this site.

WP-Security Scan

This plugin scans your entire site for vulnerabilities and issues, then takes corrective measures.  WP-security scan checks passwords, file permissions, database security, versions, and more.  It’s an essential plugin to keep your blog secure to the max.

Remove WordPress Version

In your header file, WordPress shows what version you are using.  Like I mentioned above, a hacker could corrupt an older version of WordPress more easily.  Don’t let him or her find out if you are using 3.0 or 2.8, just eliminate it.  To do this, find the following code in the header.php file and delete it

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(‘version’); ?>” />

Backup, Backup, Backup

One final word of advice…backup your WordPress database often and regularly.

[ad#ad-1]For those of you who visited this site in the latter part of June and the beginning of July, you probably noticed that I had been hacked!  This was not fun at all, it sucked actually.  The intrusion happened not through WordPress but through my host’s database.  I was hosted on Dreamhost but have recently switched to Host Gator.  I’ve heard many great things from reputable individuals about Host Gator, so I gave them a shot.  As for Dreamhost, they pose some serious risks as far as their security.  I’m not sure exactly how my site was hacked but I do know it would’ve been avoided if their security was stricter.

What’s next, I got hacked.  It’s frustrating.  Time to move on.  Over the last week or so I’ve been transferring my backup WP database over to the new host.  It’s very important that you back up your stuff, I’m lucky to be able to retrieve my posts, images, links, etc.  As you can see, I’m 95% complete with the transfer process.

It may be a blessing in disguise as I have new plans on improving this site for my readers.  In the short future, I will be offering a free blog setup service along with a couple other customization packages and e-book.  I’m very excited to offering more value to you guys.  Stay tuned for the new updates!

Some Lessons I learned from the Theme Today hack.

1. Backup – have a set day in the week where you backup your database.
2. Tackle the problem ASAP – I have to be honest, I dragged my feet when this site got hacked.  I had a company try to fix it but they never did, so I became proactive and did it myself.
3. Make your WP site secure – In order to prevent the problem of your site being hacked into, you need to have a strong password and secure your site from the evil people known as hackers.  I will write about taking measures in order to secure your site next week.
4. Upgrade to the latest WP version – After I got violated, I did my research and found that many people were hacked into because of the security flaws of older versions of WordPress.  In order to be one of these victims, I highly suggest you upgrade WP immediately after release.  That means if you’re reading this, you should be running version 3.0.

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Once in a while I come across a site that becomes my daily pet peeve.  There are certain things that you should do and shouldn’t do.  I bet I’m guilty of some things that may piss you off but this post is personal to me.  Obviously everyone’s different but these 5 crucial site trends really push my buttons.  I don’t like it and you might have people like me that feel the same way.

1.  You spam me -I signed up for your mailing list and I get nothing but products thrown in my face.  I want real information, which is why I wanted to be included in your posse.

2.  You leave me -  I love reading your posts but when you fade away and not write for 30 days I question why am I still reading it.

3.  I’m often dodging text links to read your posts – I don’t want to be playing a game of dodge ball on your site.    I want to flow through your content!

4.  I’m greeted by a box! Personally speaking, I hate when I visit a blog and a subscribe box pops up.  I know it’s an effective way of capturing email addresses but I’m not diggin’ it.

5. You stole my ish! There’s nothing worse than visiting on of your favorite blogs and realize they stole your content.  I don’t mind if one of my posts inspired you but when it’s word for word then we have a problem.

Note:  I wrote this post before this site was hacked, so that is my excuse for being a culprit of #2.

1. Add Images - Yes, content is king but appearance is second.  Spice up your posts with some images to break up the content.

2. Create “About Me” page – let people know the real you.  Tell us some unique things about you.

3.  Fix broken links - Go to this site and verify any broken links to fix; do it yourself or hire someone.

4. Sell it – Sell your blog to someone who wants it, that’s a great way to better your blog.

5. Add Social Profiles - If you don’t have Twitter or Facebook then its time you should; do it for the blog.  When you do, use some social media plugins to connect with your readers.

6. Switch to a Premium theme - If your using a free WordPress theme, maybe it’s time to upgrade to a premium theme.

7. Give Something Away For Free – People love free stuff, why not give them something of value for free!  Maybe an ebook??

8. Guest Post – guest post on another, more popular blog in your niche.  This is a great way to build traffic and network.

9. Q & A – depending on your traffic, having a question and answer session is a nice way of engaging with your visitors.

10. Check Spelling - We are all human, everyone makes mistakes.  Nice little cliche, try your best to spell everything right; nothing worse than multiple typos on a post or page.

11. Ease up on the ads – I don’t want something popping up every time I hover over a word.  Don’t let your content drowned in ads.

12.  Create a “recommend” page  – Why not have a page for your recommended products that you use.  I have one where I swear by anything I recommend.

13. Stop checking stats - instead write awesome content.  This rule applies to new blogs especially, it’s very discouraging to only see 4 visits.  Content and interaction will bring in plenty of traffic.

14. Get your own domain – If you are on wordpress.com or blogger.com, it’s time to get your own domain to look more professional and be brandable.

15. Post Consistently – Nothing is worse than visiting a site and viewing their last post and it’s from 3 months ago!  Whether you post daily or weekly, just be consistent.

16. Comment on other blogs - Interaction is key.  Go around to other blogs and comment on their post.  Make sure you link back to your site.

17. Don’t comment on other blogs - if you quickly write “nice artcle.”  Be more in depth so it doesn’t look like spam.

18. Have a voice – don’t sound like a robot in your writing.  Just be you.

19.  Use timestamp – When you feel inspired and you can bang out several articles then you should.  Schedule them to publish on your regular schedule.

20. Don’t quit over money - Don’t quit or get discouraged if you blog isn’t generating the money you hoped for.  It takes time to become successful.

21. Be patient – Along the lines of the above, take one day at a time.  Most successful blogs don”t become a success in a day, week or 3 months; it takes many months/years to be a success.

22. Make a top list - This is popular in the design community, a top list showcases the best of the best in a particular topic.  It’s an easy read and entertaining.

23. Change your sidebar - If you think your sidebar is boring, add some widgets like popular posts.

24. Run a contest - Give something away for commenting, subscribing or retweeting.

25. Ask – ask your readers, friends, family what they would like to see change on your site.

26. Step Away – from the computer and grab a coffee or go for a walk.  Its not healthy, mentally or physically, to be sitting in front of a couple for hours.

27. Learn Something New – and write a blog post about it.

28. Stop reading other blogs - instead build online relationships and focus on your site.

29. Add a Sitemap - A great way for search engines to recognize your pages.  If you are using WordPress there are many plugins that will organize this for you.

30.  Redesign logo - a logo should say something about your  site. Do it yourself or pay someone if you don’t have web graphic experience.

31. Be done for the day - Sometimes the best thing to do is stop tweaking and step away from your site.

32. Submit to directories - This is a good way for search engines like Google and Yahoo to recognize your site.

33. Fix permalinks – visit this post to do so.

34. Create mailing list - I don’t have one ( I should), but most pro-bloggers swear by having a mailing list you increase readership and revenue.

35.  Fix your workspace – In order to be more productive clean up your workspace.

36.  Create a favicon - You know the little icon up top?  Yeah, you should have one to look more professional.

37. Eat Healthy – In order to be on top of your game today you need to eat right! Don’t eat foods that will leave you sluggish.  Instead of a McDonalds 1/3lb burger, grab a piece of fruit.

38. Spend Money - buy an ad spot to increase traffic.

39. Link to others - link out to some articles that you find interesting

40. Backup – it’s important to have a scheduled backup for you files.

41. Interview Someone – Another great way to reach out to someone is to interview them with some quality questions.  Shoot an email over to a person in your niche, most would be glad to answer a few questions.

42. Check in on your competition – You should know who your competing with and every once in a while you should keep tabs on what they are doing.

43. Turn the TV off - You can get alot done when you don’t have any distractions.  Instead of watching Seinfeld, make a quality post for you blog.

44. Retweet – this is similar to an outgoing link only you are using your Twitter profile to shout out an article

45. Visit with someone – have some real interaction with a friend or client, bounce some ideas off of eachother.  This will give you more to write about when you sit down to write a post.

46.  Take a shower – its weird but I do my best thinking in the shower so this is a personal suggest for you.

47. Expand - expand your blog with a possible sister site.  For example, the Envato network has PSDTuts, Nettuts and so on.

48.  Share personal happenings – maybe you are a recent Dad, share it with us!

49.  Write the old fashioned way – grab a pen and paper and write a post (journal entry).  Sometimes its nice to write without hitting keys!

50. Do you!  – It’s your blog, you don’t have to listen to anyone!  You can ignore these tips if  you want.  The most important thing is to be yourself.

When you create a blog, you need to create something of value.  The best way to do this is by getting inside the reader’s head.  The question at hand is, “what’s in it for me?”  Why should they visit your blog?  What purpose does your blog give to the rest of the world.  I like to think that this blog gives inspiration, techniques and skills in the blogging world.   I often point someone in the right direction if they are looking for a new theme or tutorial on web design.   I personally choose each topic I write about to better the blogging and design community.

If someone visits your blog do they benefit from it?  If not, it’s time to re-evaluate what your niche is and topics that precede it.  If I visit your Asian recipe blog, I don’t want to read about your trip to Disney Land in Japan.  I’m strictly looking for recipes.  It doesn’t benefit me that you went on a cool roller coaster 5 times.  Maybe this is a lame example, but I hope you get the point.

People are always looking to benefit in some way, especially on the internet.  If your blog doesn’t benefit them, they will simply do a Google search until another site does.  Give them something good, provide the visitor with great info so they don’t have to hit the back button.

In order to improve your value, keep a sticky note on your monitor asking “What’s in it for me?”… and answer it in your next post.

If you’re interested in getting into WordPress theme development and want to create your own themes then you need to visit these sites for their instructions.

CSS-Tricks - A video tutorial on how to convert an already designed HTML and CSS into WordPress

Net Tuts - A how-to guide on creating a WordPress theme from scratch.

Spoon Graphics -Shows you how he took his existing design concept and created a WP theme with it.

Web Designer Wall -A basic tutorial on how to convert a static HTML to a WordPress theme

Line 25 – A walkthrough for intermediate web designers and developers on how to create a WP theme.

Theme Shaper – Create a powerful, up-to-date WordPress theme in 11 individual lessons.

WP Designer -a thorough and easy to understand tutorial on creating a WordPress theme

Theme Tation – a 3 part series on how to create a WP template from scratch

Developer Tutorials -Create a theme from nothing using Photoshop CS3, WordPress, MAMP, Color Schemer Studio, Firefox and Netrenderer.

Eruanna -A very detailed tutorial on how to create a complete WordPress theme from scratch

Blogging is simply writing and expressing yourself about a particular topic. Whether your writing about cars or Lego’s, it’s critical that you switch up the styling of your posts. You don’t want to fall victim to reader boredom. Personally speaking, below are the top type of posts I’ve used and seen succeed in the world of blogging.

1. Tutorials / Instructional / How-to guides

This type of post is very popular because you are telling someone how to do something. Millions of people are looking in Google to get instructions on how to solve their problem or issue. If you are an expert in your field or have done the necessary research to instruct someone in detail, you will receive great organic traffic.

2. Informational

Informational posts are very straightforward and to the point. You give a detailed and concise description on a particular subject. There are no opinions, just straight up facts. For example, if I had a car blog, an info post would be describing the new Nissan Murano and all the features, MSRP, where I can buy it and so on.

3. Lists

Lists are one of my favorite types of posts. Lists can be written in paragraphs or visually expressed. Examples of lists are “top ten…”, “50 Brilliant WP Themes”, “20 ways to make money from a blog”, etc. They can be simple like “5 free online editors” or they can be more in depth, “101 ways to market your blog.”

4. Reviews

Alot of people, before they try a product or service, tend to look up reviews. This is where you can come in. Reviewing a product or service provides value to the reader because you can give your opinion on the product. You can have a big influence on the consumer. The best way to review a product or service is to personally use it yourself and after give your honest opinion on it.

5. Inspirational

Inspirational posts motivate. These are popular because everyone likes to hear or read about success stories. For example, on this blog, an inspirational post would be documenting a WP designer who went from no knowledge of coding to making $250,000 in one year (just made it up, but inspirational right?).

6. Interviews

Interviewing a person who’s an expert or well-known in your niche is a great way to add variety to your blog. By simply sending off any email asking questions or creating a podcast, you can get an insightful look in to a subject. Make sure your questions are in depth and not stupid. An example of a great interview is this one from Income Diary.

7. Case Studies

Case studies are profiling a person or site. You write factual information on a particular person or a website and add your personal opinion on the side. A breakdown of a case study post (WP theme designer) could be – 1. Background info on the person 2. How they got started 3. Their designs 4. Their failed designs 5. How they impact the design industry.

8. Personal

I think it’s a good idea to write a personal post every now and then. Possibly write about any going-on’s in your current life. Maybe your a new Father? Or maybe, you took a job at Apple? Maybe you quit your job to be a full-time Freelancer? Whatever you write about make it personal so that readers know your human.

9. Reports

This is popular among Make-Money-Blogs. I remember reading John Chow’s blog for his monthly income reports. Every month he would publish his blog’s earnings; it was inspirational to see him going from $300 to $35,000 per month. Reports are a good way to keep loyal readers sticking around.

10. Rant/Complain

Controversy sells. Just go ape-sh*t about something that is bothering you; it’s good therapy.

Google Analytics (GA) is a free web analytics tool that generates detailed statistics about visitors of a website.  This powerful tool allows you to assess your visitors and increase conversion rates, target regions, track keywords, maximize revenue and more!  Every blog and website should have some type of analytics tool to improve your visitors experience and GA is one of the best.  Google Analytics is very easy to install, all you have to do is add a generated code into your site’s HTML.   After you install and verify that GA is running on your site, the next step is to understand what it’s all about.  I’m here to give you a better understanding of the ins and outs of Google’s analytics tool.

After you log into your account you will be brought to the dashboard where it gives you an overall picture of your sites traffic.

Here is a closer look into the dashboard so we can pick apart some of the key areas we NEED to know about.

SITE USAGE;

Visits: This is self-explanatory, it’s the total visitors who came to themetoday during the month of March.  By default Google show you the last 30 days.  Obviously, the more visitors the better, you want to see that graph consistently going up.  Don’t look too into a 30 day period because of holidays and other happenings. Although, a high visitor count is important, the more crucial thing is quality visitors.

Pageviews: is the number of pages these visitors viewed.  .  The more you can keep a visitor clicking within your site the more your likely to earn more.  Alot of advertisers pay based on pageviews of a site.

Pages/Visit: is the average pages visited by each visitor. If this number is 1 then your site needs some improvements to its landing page (initial page a visitor clicks on).

Bounce Rate: A percentage that represents visitors who only visited one page then “bounced” out of your site.  This is a very deceptive number because it may mean that your site was loading slow and a visitor left.  Or it may be due to someone coming from Google but it wasn’t the site they were looking for.

Avg Time on Site: average time a visitors stays on your site for.  This can also be a deceptive number because people often leave a web page on their computer without paying any attention to it.

New Visits: A percentage which represents new (unique) visitors.  You can look at this two ways.  First, having new visitors is great because they visit your site for the first time and can come in way of search engines, social media or any other marketing you do.  Second, a high percentage of new visitors is not so great because that means your returning visitors are lower.

The site usage gives a pretty clear, overall picture of your sites traffic and visitors habits.   But there is much more to Google Analytics than the above mentioned. Let’s continue to dissect the guts of Google Analytics.  Below is the lower portion of GA’s Dashboard:

(To go further into depth in any of these categories, click “view report”)

Visitor Overview: gives you a 30 day snapshot of the Absolute Unique Visitors (1st timers) you  are receiving to your site.

Map Overlay: Shows what countries traffic is coming from.  As you can see from my graph above, most of the my visitors come from the United States.  The darkest shade of green represents higher traffic from that particular country.  To get a more in depth look you can click on an area and it will show you a closer view of a region.

Traffic Sources Overview: This pie chart shows where you traffic is coming from.  As you can see I get 47% of my traffic from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.    “Referring Sites” is where your site is being visited from another site via link or ads.  “Direct Traffic” is the traffic you get from people typing your URL in the web address directly or other sources mentioned here.

Content Overview: shows the most popular pages being clicked on or visited.  Because I know the most popular pages being clicked, I created a handful of banners on my sidebar to direct visitors to that page.  Another way this graph is beneficial is because you can monetize the more popular pages further.

Phew!  Now that we went over the Dashboard, let us take a look at the other elements that make Google Analytics near perfect.

As you can see on the top left section of your account Google has a breakdown of each category.  To get a more precise picture of your visitors you will need to delve into each of them one by one.

Intelligence: This beta product from Google alerts you when there is a significant shift in your traffic data.  This includes spikes in traffic, shifts in pageviews, higher bounce rates than usual; pretty much anything that seems out of the ordinary.  You can further break the timeline down into daily, weekly and monthly alerts.

Visitors: You get a better picture of who visits your site and their habits.

- Benchmarking: Here you can compare site trends with similar websites to yours.   By doing this you set a benchmark of where your competitors are and maybe where you should be.

- Map Overlay: I mentioned this before, “Map Overlay” is what parts of the world your traffic is coming from.   GA gives you a detailed report of your users activities for that particular region.

- New vs. Returning: This is where you can view a graph and compare the new visitors to visitors who already visited your site.  Because the web is so large, you will most likely have alot more new visitors compared to those returning.  Like any other business, returning visitors shows loyalty and something they want again that you provide them.

- Languages: This shows you the language of your audience.  Most of my traffic is “en-us,” which stands for U.S. English.  There are plugins that allow you to have multiple languages work within your site.

- Visitor Trending: shows trends in traffic in regards to visits, unique visitors, pageviews, avg. pageviews, time on site and bounce rate.

- Visitor Loyalty: shows how loyal your audience is.  Within this subcategory, you can view the times you audience comes back, length of visit (in seconds), and depth of visit (how many pages visitors are viewing).  This is all great data because it shows you how your audience either stays or leaves.  If they leave, it might be possible that you have too many external links going to other sites.  Try undoing the hyperlink and see if you have a higher loyalty to your site.

Browser Capabilities: This area of GA shows what people are using to visit your site.  This includes, browsers, operating systems, screen colors (in bits), screen resolutions, flash versions and if Java is enabled.   With this info, I try to make sure my site works with what my visitors are using.  For example, I make sure my site works with Windows, Safari and Linux, because that’s where my audience is coming from.

Network Providers: what service providers your visitors are using.  In addition, GA shows you the connection speed.  Most of my visitors that come to ThemeToday use DSL.

Mobile: Shows traffic data from mobile users.  The data in this report includes what devices they use, the carriers and operating system.

Traffic Sources: Snapshot of where your traffic is coming from, search engines, direct, referral?  This section shows you what you need to know.

Direct Traffic – shows the data for people who directly type in your URL (http://themetoday.com) to view your webpage.   Most people think its stops here, but it doesn’t; direct traffic also includes bookmarks and many other sources.

Referring Sites- sites who bring you traffic are put in this category.  Some people see a huge spike in traffic from referrals if they are mentioned on Digg or they are retweeted alot on an article.  In addition, if someone types in a word in google images, this traffic is shown here.  I have alot of graphics and photos in my blog posts so I get alot of pass by traffic from Google Images.  I consider this cheap traffic because more  than likely they will not read what I have written.

Search Engines-  What search engines people are using to visit your site.  Google brings me the majority of my traffic so I make sure my pages are properly indexed for this search engine.

All Traffic Sources - shows the data in one screen of the big three: referral traffic, direct traffic and search engine traffic.

Adwords - If you have campaigns for Adwords then you can see and adjust your promotions here.  You can view how well your campaigns are bringing in traffic and if they tend to stay on your site for a while…all important factors.

Keywords - gives you a list of the top keywords people type in search engines to find your site.  This is important because you want to rank high for certain keywords.  When a visitor types in a keyword relating to your site its your gain because you get free traffic and you want what they are looking for.

Content: this section shows you what pages and blog posts your audience prefers or does not prefer.

Top Content – This shows what pages are viewed the most on your webpage.  You can view data (time on page, bounce rate, % exit) for each page/post on your site.

Content by Title – Shows the same data as above only by the name of your page or post instead of the URL.

Content Drill Down – allows you to drill into your sites directory structure.  This is similar to the “Top Content” report but uses the folder structure.  For example, in this post the URL reads http://themetoday.com/2010/wordpress-theme/30-of-the-best-wp-premium-themes-on-themeforest/. The Content Drill Down breaks it down into “/2010/”, “/wordpress-theme/”,  “30-of-the-best-wp-premium-themes-on-themeforest/.”  As you can see my content is drilled down in individual pieces.

Top Landing Pages - this is the page your visitors are first introduced to.  For example, if someone types in “Photoshop tutorials” and are brought to my site, that page that comes up is considered a landing page.  They initially land on that page, hence the name “landing page.”

Top Exit Pages – the pages your visitor leaves from.  This could be your most popular page because they visit it and immediately leave from that page.

Site Overlay - this is one of the coolest features on GA.  When you click this your site is brought up with %’s all over it.  These percentages represent clicks from visitors.  You can get ALOT of information based on this overlay.  For example, I noticed one of my widgets got zero clicks so I replaced it with another feature which proved to be successful.

Do you ever feel like your desk is too cluttered?  Do you feel like your mind is racing because you see too many things that need to get done?  Are you getting distracted and jumping around to different tasks without any of them getting accomplished?  Are you frustrated that you didn’t get anything done today?  Well, maybe its time you work on your environment.  If you do your work from a home office then you should take a day to get it straight.   I’m a strong believer in the environment you work in has a  great impact on how well you work.  Here are my tips to keep in mind when you organize the home office of your dreams.

Use essentials - monitor, keyboard, mouse, pen and paper

If you want to create a simple, minimilistic desk you need to know what to keep and what to store.  The only things you should keep on your desk is a monitor, keyboard, mouse, pen and paper.  The monitor, keyboard and mouse are self-explanatory.  You should keep a pad of paper and a pen at all times because you’ll need to jot down ideas, sketch out a design, brainstorm, etc.  Other items that may come across your desk should be stored elsewhere.

Everything should have a home

If you do have papers that you need to work with, you should keep one tray and the rest that you don’t need should be filed.  Keep it simple because one paper on a desk can lead to 10 that can lead to 25.  Other items that may need a home (and not on your desk) are blank cd’s and dvd’s, iPod, calendar, etc.

Clean your desktop

Its useless to have a clean desk with no clutter while your computer’s desktop is filled with icons.  It’s very time consuming to look through icons upon icons to find what your looking for.  File those unneccessary icons into a folder that’s labeled properly.

Declutter the Walls

Alot of people have there walls covered with posters, cork boards, white boards and whatever that can be hung up.  Take it down!  I suggest leaving the white board for ideas and a couple motivating posters.

Get some ideas…

Here are some awesome minimal workspaces for you to enjoy.

jasondevilla - Flickr

kat - Flickr

klaranilsson - Flickr

mkosut - Flickr

Nick Humphries - Flickr

Nils Geylen - Flickr

Panther Sweat - Flickr

psleda - Flickr

slrw82 - Flickr

The Culprit - Flickr

titoapp - Flickr

Thumbnail image was used from Leo Babauta’s guest post on Unclutterer.