How would you like to be able to download hundreds of free ebooks, software and other useful tools? To top that off, how would you like to build your list to glorious new heights all at the same time?

If you have never participated in a giveaway, let me tell you this is one of the best ways to increase your subscriber base. And some of the products you get to download are fabulous - some even come with PLR and MRR rights so you can do whatever you want with them.

The only catch here is that in order to build your list you have to offer some kind of a gift to entice them to join. Once they have subscribed to your list, they will receive your free gift. True some people may just join for the gift and unsub asap. But by experience I would say most of them stay. After that it is up to the quality of your content to keep them on the list.

So here are 3 of the JV Giveaways I am currently participating in. Go add your gifts here asap and start building your list. Some of these sites are going to be getting massive traffic soon so you don’t want to miss out on that.

If you don’t want to offer a gift, you can still download the free gifts.

1. Giveaway Manager
   Add your gift | Download free gifts
2. 117 Work At Home Gifts
   Add your gift | Download free gifts
3. Big Thanksgiving Giveaway
   Add your gift | Download free gifts
4. The Ultimate Giveaway 3
   Add your gift

I’m sure you are wondering why these links look suspiciously like affiliate links. These are basically tracking links so the giveaway site owners can make sure that everyone is participating to make the event a success. More traffic means more gifts and more subscribers for everyone. So we all have to play a part.

In other words you even have to work at giving things away for free

Since I design custom blogs for my clients, I have to keep a lookout for plugins that can achieve any effect under the sun. Following is a list of some of the most used plugins:

1. Akismet: This plug-in helps you in stopping comment spam. It also keeps note of comments you mark as spam for future blocking. This is a part of your Wordpress download. You need to install and set it up, though.
2. Search Everything: This plug-in adds search functionality to include pages, tags, attachments, drafts, comments, excerpts and custom fields. It also lets you exclude categories and posts from search.
3. WP-Contact-Form: Give your visitors the option of contacting you via a simple form. The modified version of this plugin comes with a very useful Spam Protection option. See an example
4. Add This: Social Bookmarks allow your visitors to easily submit your posts to social bookmarking sites. Many plugins are available for this purpose including Social Bookmarks, Gregarious and Sociable. I just recently found Add This and although it adds a link to their site, it is less intrusive and less cluttered than the others. You can see the result at the end of this post.
5. All in One SEO Pack: The name says it all You won’t need another meta title, description or keyword plugin. This finally has it all.
6. Video Plugin: Easily add videos from YouTube and many other websites.
7. Google Sitemap Generator: Generate an xml sitemap for Google. This will help with Google spidering your website.
8. Database Backup: Weekly backup at your server or back up emailed to you.
9. Search Meter: Looking at search logs to find out who’s searching for what can be a valuable tool for figuring out what’s right and what’s wrong with your blog.
10. Permalink Redirect: This plugin ensures that pages and entries are always accessed via the permalink. Otherwise, a 301 redirect will be issued. In other words saves you from the duplicate content penalty in Google.
11. Fuzzy Recent Posts: Displays recent posts
12. Recent Comments: Displays recent comments and/or trackbacks
13. Google Analyticator: No need to dig in the code to add Google Analytics to your blog with this plugin. It does the work for you.
14. Subscribe to Comments: Lets your visitors subscribe to comments for whichever post they want. Try subscribing to the comments for this post to see how it works.
15. Related Posts: Using the Wordpress tags option in Wordpress 2.3.1, this plugin gives a list of related articles/posts next to the currently viewed one.

You can see a lot of these plugins being used at this website alone. I plan on adding more useful plugins as I come accross them so don’t forget to sign up for the RSS feed. There is also an email option once you click the link.

You can also browse thru the Wordpress Plugins Directory. There are loads of great plugins listed there with ratings and other useful info to help you pick the right ones.

…for hopefully a very long time

After having designed multiple blogs for my clients (I’m a website designer - read my bio), I decided to finally start blogging myself. This blog is going to include everything related to selling on the net - this includes, web design, blogging, email marketing, internet marketing … well you get the drift. This is going to become the hub for a lot of resources, tips and techniqus. So check back often. You never know what you may find.