I’m watching Denise Wakeman’s (of The Blog Squad) free Business Blog Mastery mini-course and I just had to share this free resource with all of you. Denise is fantastic at helping small businesses make the most of their blog. In the first video, she reminds us that people are on the Internet for two main reasons: to either provide solutions or to be entertained — and that if you can do both of these things you’ve hit a home run. I couldn’t agree more. In addition to building your community, a blog is also a fantastic way to generate additional traffic to your site. If you’re thinking of getting started with a blog, or if you have a blog and you’re just not sure what to do with it, sign up for Denise’s free video series and get your blog working for your business!

Also, check out her recent post (which may not be too recent, depending on when you’re reading this), 7 Ways to Use Amazon.com to Boost Your Online Visibility. The post has some fantastic ideas on utilizing Amazon.com that you may not have thought of before.

And of course, if you need a blog I hope you’ll check out my sister company, Small Biz Web Whiz. SBWW specializes in WordPress site and blog designs.

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

Yup, that’s right! I’m giving away one free website design every month! AND, it’s easy to enter! All you need to do is sign up for my newsletter by entering your email in the form over there to the right, or like the A Virtual Edge facebook page.

Now for the fine details. Winners are picked on the 15th of every month (please see 2010/2011 schedule below). Each winner will receive the Gettin’ Started WordPress design package for FREE! You can learn more about the package on our WordPress packages page, but it includes logo creation, customized WordPress website (including premium theme), a year of hosting ($35/year after that), and integration of your newsletter signup, social media buttons, google analytics, etc.

A random winner is selected from facebook or my newsletter list, depending on the month. It’s not just easy to enter, but occassionally I also provide subscriber-only specials, too!

Contest Schedule

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

I am a BIG fan of the WordPress platform for building websites. It’s not that I don’t know how to code HTML, but there are just so many factors about WordPress that make it a superior choice over your typical HTML site. So, what’s so special about it? Why are so many people raving about it?

Why You Should Use WordPress:

1. Once you have your site customized, you don’t need to know code to update and maintain it. Yes, you will need to learn the WordPress platform, but it’s very intuitive and user friendly. If you have experience using Word, then you can quickly learn how to maintain your own website if it’s built on the WordPress platform. What most HTML website designers and developers don’t highlight is the fact that if you don’t know how to code HTML, you’re stuck contacting them every single time you have the smallest change to make on your website. You’re charged for this, and many times are subject to an hours minimum charge – even if the change only takes 5 minutes.
2. WordPress is an afforable way to get a professional online presence for your small business, and development time is quick! I know that small businesses, especially those just starting out, face a lot of challenges. You know you need a website, done at a price that won’t kill your budget, and you wanted to have it done yesterday. You can get all that with premium WordPress themes. The base of all my designs start with a premium WordPress theme, which is then highly customized to your specific business or needs. This not only saves me time since the majority of the code is already there, but this time savings is also what keeps the development cost to you affordable!
3. WordPress is SEO friendly. By using WordPress, you’re already helping your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts by using a system that was specifically built to be SEO friendly. It’s easy to name your URLs, change your page titles, use headings, add tags to images, and all sorts of other things that make the search engines happy.
4. Plugins offer nearly unlimited functionality to your website. Through the use of plugins, and there are thousands upon thousands of free plugins, new functions can easily be integrated into your website. There are plugins to integrate your various social media accounts, SEO plugins that offer even more SEO capabilities, membership site plugins, forum plugins, plugins to add polls, plugins to promote sharing of your content on various outlets… I could go on and on, but this is definitely one aspect of WordPress that just rocks.
5. It’s simple to integrate a blog into your website AND have it match the look of your site. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve landing on someone’s page, clicked “blog”, and was forwarded to a horrible looking WordPress.org or Blogger blog that didn’t match the look or feel of their site at all. Not to mention, blogs are EXCELLENT ways to be found for all types of key phrases… and people are doing it all backwards. For a small business, you don’t want to send your traffic to your blog page if it’s not actually on your website. The idea of a blog for small business owners is to give your visitors the ability to get to know you AND bring traffic to your site from your blog. This is another reason why I highly recommend WordPress. You might not be ready to blog now, but when you are, it’s easy to integrate it seamlessly.

There are so many other reasons why WordPress rocks, but those are the biggest and best ones!

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

Need a quick, easy way to integrate your twitter feed? Install PB-Tweet and your most recent tweet will be highlighted at the top of your website. Any basic WordPress user can get this plug-in up and running on their website/blog in less than three minutes.

After you download it, which can be done through your WordPress installation, or it can be downloaded at PluginBuddy. Because it’s easy, I always download all my plug-ins through my WordPress installation.

After downloading the plug-in, the only setting – Yes, only one setting to make this work – is entering your twitter username.

Hit Save Settings … and you’re done! Go to your website and check out how it looks.

WARNING: Don’t do what I did and not have any recent tweets. If you’re going to integrate social media on your site, make sure to use it Nothing looks worse than having a blank twitter feed at the top of your website. See:

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

Welcome to my second installment of the WordPress Plug-In of the Week!

This week I’m going to review iCopyright, a plug-in for content publishers so that content can be tracked and monitized when republished.

I pulled the following information about the plugin directly from the iCopyright developer’s website:

Some of the many benefits to publishers of adding the iCopyright Tag include:

• Offers permissions and licenses at the user’s point of contact with the content
• Offers permissions and licenses when users get the content through aggregators, republishers, and other users (self-perpetuating copyright licensing system)
• Enables the publisher to efficiently syndicate their content to thousands of downstream blogs and publisher websites, on a revenue-sharing basis
• Provides advertising-supported free uses for limited printing, emailing and posting by users
• Sells and delivers reprints, email forwarding, posting and republication rights
• Educates users about copyright; about “Fair Use” and when a license is absolutely required
• Ensures that the publisher’s branding, copyright notice and links to the publisher’s website stays with the content when users share it or re-purpose it
• Finds unauthorized uses of the content and compels infringers to buy a license or cease using it
• Markets the publisher’s content to new readers via iCopyright’s Clip&Copy service
• Provides corporate users with a one-click permissions and licensing system through which employees can bill the company to copy or repurpose the publisher’s content
• Integrates with the publisher’s reprint vendor and other partners to provide leads and more opportunities for revenue

The plug-in does require a sign-up, which I found is easiest done through your WordPress installation when installing the plug-in. I don’t see the plug-in for download on the developer’s site, so if you decide to install it, it’s easier just to go through your ‘add plugins’ menu item in WordPress.

Once you’ve downloaded, installed, signed up, and activated the plug-in, it will look like this (though you have some options in the plug-in settings of the display):

Top of Content:

Bottom of Content:

Have a plug-in you use and would like to recommend? Feel free to leave a comment and I’ll check it out and review it! If you use or try iCopyright please share your thoughts with us!

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

This new WordPress plug-in is pretty useful, especially for those of us with do-follow blogs. It’s called InComment and you can learn a bit more about it at http://www.gospelrhys.co.uk/plugins/wordpress-plugins/incomment-wordpress-plugin. What this plug-in does is let you know where the people who comment on your blog came from. For me, I installed InComment for the exact purpose the developer has listed on his website – so that anyone who comments on my blog isn’t finding me from some listing of do-follow blogs. It can also be useful though from a marketing perspective, so you can see where your most engaged visitors are coming from.

Have a plug-in you would like to nominate for AVE’s Plug-In of The Week? Feel free to add your recommendation below or contact me with it and maybe you’ll see it featured here!

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about a new program I got, called Artisteer. I can make some really cool looking WordPress themes and the best part – it’s easy! This first one I made, which I called Schmexy Corporate Stripe (I heart stripes!), was created specifically with Virtual Assistants in mind. I’m really diggin’ the balance of corporate and sexy, with the black, grey, and mauve color scheme. Click here to see my first free WordPress theme, Schmexy Corporate Stripe, in action.

I do ask if you download and use the theme, please keep my happy little link in the footer.

Click here to download the .zip file for Schmexy Corporate Stripe.

If you use the theme please be sure to leave a comment and link to your site! I welcome any comments and suggestions too, of course Also, if you have any ideas for WordPress themes you’d like to see, reach out and contact me or leave a comment and I’ll put your idea on the list.

If you need hosting, I’ve always been really happy with Hostmonster.com, and that’s who I use to host my sites as well. I’ve had issues with other hosting companies, but never with these guys.