There is always a rush of concern when a new version of WordPress is released.  However, the latest release of WordPress 2.9.2 is not a big deal.

Version 2.9.2 simply closes a possible security problem for sites who may have subscribers registered and can add content but are not necessarily known to the site owner.  If this is not the case on your site then there's no need to waste your valuable time doing the upgrade.

If this does concern you then check out the horses mouth over at WordPress.

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Regrettably, the aspirations of the WordPress developers seems to have got beyond their capability to manage the development process again.  The number of known bugs contained in each new release of WordPress grows each time and with the growing popularity of the WordPress platform this affects more and more users on each occasion.

As a Semiologic user I have the benefit of some guidance on the subject and Denis has just posted some advice and some free fixes for the three most common issues .

As you will see from Denis' post, his advice is always to let the new version run intil at least after the first fix, i.e. 2.9.1 before upgrading your blog.  Of course, you should always make sure you take a full back up before upgrading and then see if everything runs OK.  Deactivate all your plugins before the upgrade and then activate them one at a time.  But be ready to go back and restore the whole site when something goes wrong.

It is often quicker (and therefore cheaper!) just to Restore from your back up, report the problem and wait for a fix before attempting the upgrade again than to spend time and money trying to fix something that the techies have not yet got a handle on.

Semiologic users already have a Version Checker plugin that also removes the WP 'nag' to upgrade from their dashboard until WP 2.9.1 is issued and the package of plugins is already aligned to all the changes planned for WordPress. One of the best reasons I can think of for buying a 'paid for' package with WordPress.  At the end of the day, you always get what you pay for.

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Time management and particularly the information overload that comes from your bulging email inbox is a problem that arises frequently for many people.

Just to emphasise the point I came across an interesting snippet of information recently that it takes you 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after you have been interrupted by an email (or, I suppose, any other interference).

So if you check your email every 5 minutes then that's about 1 hour per day that you think you are working but are not actually operating at your maximum capacity.  Even worse if you respond to that beep every time a tweet lands in your Tweetdeck.

So there is every chance that a scatterbrain approach to your work is going to take 8 hours or more per week out of your working time.  You think you are working Monday to Friday but in reality you don't get past Thursday tea time!

Solutions?  My own include the classic broad brush approach.

First, switch it off!  Set aside specific times to deal with your email maybe twice a day.  Leave it off the rest of the time to allow you to deal with your priorities – not those imposed on your by somebody else.

Second: use the unsubscribe link. If you are already having problems dealing with the volume of email then it makes sense to reduce the flow.  So unsubscribe from the least important sources of email, newsletters, reminders,special offers blah, blah..  If you don't have time to do anything about them then why bother spending the time to read them?

Third: use an email client to automate the process of filtering your inbox.  My preference is for Gmail because the effect of using filters to set up rules has a cumulative effect.  It may take a minute to set up a filter but if it takes that email (and every one that follows it from the same source) out of your inbox forever – or at least until you want to go looking for it – then that is a great investment.

Just my thoughts – but if you want the academic background then you can find out a whole lot more about the effects of email on how your manage your time at http://www.drthomasjackson.com/

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With in excess of 3 million pages on their website you would have thought they would have been satisfied with the dominance they have already achieved.  But like all good marketers they declare that they are making changes in order to meet the needs of their users and are about to start optimising their headlines.

You can read the the full post from Steve Herrmann, the BBC's Sports Editor to get the details but, in essence, they are breaking away from a 33 character headline imposed on them by the old Ceefax system and will start to write 2 headlines.  One will comply with the old system and fit neatly on their front page for visitor navigation while a fuller, longer headline will adorn the actual subject page.

With the ability to refer to full names and details in the page headline they are clearly moving into long tail keywords that can be very specific in search engines.  Equally, for those who have read my advice on search engine optimisation, the headline of the piece becomes the website page title where it is easily found by the search engines.

However, there is no reason to feel downhearted by this awakening of the BBC beast.  As small entrepreneurs, we are always able to move quicker and more effectively than the big gorillas of the web.

The Permalink created when you publish a post or page can also be edited after the event just the same as the BBC is proposing to do and with exactly the same effect.

The last part of the Permalink, often referred to as; 'the slug' can be edited to closely relate to a tight subject area of your keywords.  Meanwhile the post title can make use of the longtail keywords and keyword phrases just the same as the longer headlines now in prospect on the BBC site.

Edit the permalink slug

But wait, there's more!

Clever use of your SEO plugin will also enable you to rewrite the title, description and keywords of every post that you publish.  Now, I am no great enthusiast of this method as I believe you are rapidly losing your marketing direction in the technical forest when you go down this road.

But there appears to be evidence that a carefully written description that is concise and uses the same keywords that you are targeting in your title may well be picked up and used by Google as the 'snippet' of content published in the free listing below the title and above the URL.

Once made visible by Google in this way then if you have made it attractive and compelling for the human visitor then you may well get more organic search clicks as a result.

So as a niche marketer I'm not too concerned by the BBC finally switching on to the benefits of SEO.  I'm not after their market, thank heavens(!) and I've already got great tools in the form of WordPress and its plugins to give me all the advantage I need in my niche market.

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Last night's Meetup falls into the last category perhaps mostly due to the sponsors, Paramount,  being particularly generous with the prize draw (3 winners) and managing to keep the sponsored bar going until late (everyone's a winner!) but also to the wide range of blogging interests represented.

Nice presentation on '58 Ways To Improve Your Blog' that Marko Saric managed to canter through in a very short time.  Marko's got some good stuff on his site which is well worth a visit.

Gary Andrews is a football nut who is turning his favourite subject into a way of life by podcasting with his friends about their own take on every aspect of football.  Sounds like a great way of getting your views heard by a larger audience.

Another blogger aiming to whip up a storm was Zubyre Parvez though he has chosen a rather bigger mountain to move and wants to change the future of China using interesting music at www.FreedomForChina.co.uk.    That seems like one hell of a mountain to be climbing but when you've got a social conscience like Zubyre there is obviously not a lot that is going to put you off.

Insane cycle lane

On a less serious note, Rob Ainsley pokes fun at London's efforts to encourage cyclists in his blog at www.RealCycling.co.uk.  Seeing the real end result of planners half hearted attempts to squeeze cycling facilities into London's streets without really grasping the nettle of changing the priorities is similar to the sanity check that occurs when you drag yourself away from your keyboard and get out to meet real bloggers.

Lots of other interesting bloggers around but the usual lapses of neglected business cards and a morning after bad memory prevent them all featuring here.

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Well, isn't this just an object lesson in 'focus' – or the lack of it – and the power of obligations.

You might notice that it is some time since my last post.  So this project of building a money making blog is doomed to failure for the moment due to lack of frequency.

How did this come about when I set out with such good intentions?

The answer, as always, is another project that has taken priority over at www.SmartMarketingWarriors.com where I am working with a number of friends to build a membership site providing internet marketing training.

So I haven't got a simple problem of too many projects and not enough time that is easily solved by some self discipline and the prioritising of one over the others.  No, in this case there is the added burden of obligation to my friends.

It is a great motivator, obligation.  For another example you have only to look at the mastermind principle of accountability.

Making a declaration of your intentions and goals to your mastermind colleagues makes you accountable to them for your results.  It might only be the potential for embarassment when you fail to deliver on your intentions that drives you to reach your goals but it will drive you all the same.

Anyway, the point is that my public declaration of intent to turn this into a money making blog is on hold for the time being while I work away on www.SmartMarketingWarriors.com.  However, NicheMarketBlogger.com will continue to be home to my thoughts and tips on WordPress and blogging and I hope you find it useful.

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The long awaited WordPress 2.8 was released on 10th June and is causing the usual dilemmas for blog owners everywhere.

Do you upgrade now like a lemming following the crowd over the unseen cliff? – or wait for the dust to settle and at least have some chance of leaning over to try to pick out your landing spot before you jump?

For many bloggers the change will go completely unnoticed until they discover by chance in three or six months time that they are way behind the curve in terms of facilities available or their site ceases to function after it is hacked because they have not closed security loopholes with the latest upgrades.

There is an element of 'ignorance is bliss' in this approach. At least you can get on producing and publishing decent content to build your blog.  But there are also negatives.

You could be missing out on some decent improvements but, more importantly, the more popular that the WordPress blogging platform becomes the more attractive it becomes for hackers who frequently seem to have little motive other than creating misery for others.  And that is really not worth the risk.

However, upgrading immediately also has it's risks. Any upgrade, no matter how much testing it has been subject to, is the moment when the software is exposed to the great general public who will set about beating the holy c*** out of it as they bend, twist and shake it in ways that the developers never anticipated.

As I understand things there were some 800 or more reported bugs in WP 2.8 until recently that have been cleaned up before this latest release. While recognising the enormous efforts that must have gone into getting that sorted out, as a non technical blogger I really don't want to be spending my time living with the consequences if some of them didn't quite get properly fixed.

The other negative issue is that if you are using a whole batch of plugins from various sources then they all need upgrading as well in order to work with the new version.

Some plugin authors will be on top of the job and have upgraded versions of their plugins ready to go – while others will not. Nor are the programming skills that go into plugins of a uniform standard and you may find conflicts and glitches arising. The more plugins you are using the more potential for trouble exists.

But enough of the miseries. Let's talk about some good stuff.

Two major improvements are included in 2.8. Firstly, WordPress has gone back to being able to drag and drop widgets between different panels all of which are available all the time. This takes it back to an approach abandoned with the last version of 2.7.

Whoever made the decision to abandon the drag and drop approach in the last version I hope they have taken them out the back of the building and shot them. It was a severely retrograde step and getting back to this approach is a great improvement.

Likewise for the ability to use multiple versions of widgets and to be able to access a theme library to view available themes and download from WordPress.org directly into your site is a great improvement. Myself, I find the incredibly flexible Semiologic Reloaded theme is more than enough for my requirements and I never have to worry about what works or not – it all works.

So do you upgrade now or not?

The conservative approach!

My main reason for using WordPress is because I want to be able to get on with my marketing and not have to worry about building and maintaining websites.

So if I can reduce the risk of having to fix things that break then that matches my objectives. The simplest thing to do is simply wait a few weeks. This will give the enthusiastic lemmings the chance to find every possible way to break the software and the techies as WordPress the chance and time to fix it.

Similarly, the plugin authors will also have the time to get up to speed and make sure that the plugins you are using are properly upgraded.

At the end of the day it comes down to the same thing as most business decisions. It is not about what is technically better or preferable or has more bells and whistles, it is about managing the risks in your business.

Just hang on a few weeks. By then the dust will have settled and you have a much better chance of a painless upgrade – the way it should be.

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Niche market

It can be demoralising to be working away in a niche market and then find your inbox crammed with promotional emails for a new product launching into 'your' market niche. Even worse when there are two coming out at the same time!

After all, you spent all that time on your own market research. All those hours discovering your keywords and then the competition analysis to determine that this niche was one with little competition and high profit potential.

And now you've suddenly got more competition than you expected and what's more, they're ahead of you in the game because their product is launched while you are still developing your own or you just haven't been able to work your blog up the search engine rankings as yet.

So what are you going to do about it? Throw your hands in the air in horror and walk away? I think not.

Niche market potential really comes in two forms. The long lasting one where you are addressing a narrowly focused need of the market that you have found by your diligent market research. Or a new niche market that comes about by fashion or fancy, a trend that develops to reflect maybe some new technology that hits the market place.

Amazon best sellers

Either way, timing is important. In a long lasting niche for you to be the first in that market is a reflection of your diligent market research that has uncovered a potential niche market that others have missed.

Trendy markets are much easier to spot – but may not last long as the fashion wave moves on.  Alternatively, new technology can create a new niche market that is long lasting.

Either way,  they are easy to find with Amazon having a specific link on their home page – or go to www.pulse.ebay.com which Ebay describes as; 'a daily snapshot of current trends, hot picks, and cool stuff on eBay'.

But whether you are working in a long term or a trendy niche you have been putting in the hours to build up your blog with relevant content, methodically making posts and optimising your blog for search engine ranking in order to create your authority in the field – and now you have competition for the top spot. What to do?

Stephen Pierce always refers to the need to watch out for 'where you can win'. Pick your battles and don't go slugging away expending your energy where you cannot win. Yet this is exactly why you put all that time and energy into your market research to find a niche with low levels of competition so you did not have to slug it out and could be the big fish in a small pond. So was all that effort wasted?

No, it wasn't. It looks like your timing might be a bit off in that other marketers have located 'your' niche at least as soon as you did. But you already have lots of hours invested in your project so is there another way to look at this?

That brings us to another of Stephen's bywords, that the ground is constantly shifting and you simply have to adapt. This is the great strength available to independent entrepreneurs, that we can shift direction very quickly.

So the new battleground has an additional competitor within it. What opportunities does that open up to you in addition to whatever threats it might pose? How can you adapt to the shifting ground?

First off, a new arrival gives you something new to write about – just like a new baby in the family. This whole article has been prompted by the appearance in my inbox of an offer from Jeff Johnson for his Traffic Getting SEO Plugin – swiftly followed by another offer from Stephen Pierce for his $997 Blog Income Generation Workshop – for free if I sign up for Jeff Johnson's plugin!

At first I sat and wondered if I was doing the right thing with my time in NicheMarketBlogger. Then as I thought through what the opportunities were I made a few notes and realised I had the framework for new content. So here it is, some thoughts on how to deal with competition in your niche market – all optimised for SE ranking on that subject and adding to the body of content and hopefully useful information on this site.

The next opportunity is for additional income from affiliate sales. You should always try to write with one eye on the commercial potential and if you mention a subject in your blog for which there is a relevant product available then it makes sense to create a dedicated page with a review of that product.

Your new review page should be optimised solely for the product keywords and whenever the subject comes up again in your blog in the future you can link back to the same static page.

This builds up the links to the target review page thereby promoting it and makes it much easier for you to reference the product when writing in future.

The opportunity to rank well and get free traffic is particularly true for new products where you can get a page published early before there are lots of other competing sites and references. You will see me referring to Stephen Pierce's Blog Income Generation Workshop in future. At a price of $997 there is likely to be good affiliate revenue to be made.

Don't forget, it is quite possible for a single page of a website to rank #1 on Google, it doesn't have to be the main index page. So a review page on your blog stands just as good a chance as any other, especially if you use other promotion methods as well.

Having started to at least make reference to their product if not actively promote it then you are clearly going to be talking in some way to your new found friends. In fact, it's difficult to envisage a situation when they should be new-found at all.

After all, you have been participating in this niche market because it is your objective to become a leader within that community. So the probability is that you should have been aware of the new arrivals beforehand.

Aware or not beforehand, you are certainly aware now and new participants means new opportunities for conversation, for commenting, for interviews and webinars, all sorts of mutual content generation and for cross selling.

Notice how many opportunities are coming out of what started as a problem?

SWOT analysis via Wikipedia

Next up is to really dissect the competition. First time round you probably did this looking for ways to promote it. This time its different. It's clinical as you look for ways to better the competition with your own product. A full SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) is called for.

Where is the competing product as good as or even better than yours? What can you do to bring yours up to par or even better it? Does the competing product have weaknesses that you can exploit by making yours so much better in that area.

This is a time for serious consideration of how you will deal with your competitor in future. Are you really competitors or are you complementary? Have you developed a relationship where you can consider teaming up and fine-tuning the content of the two products so they are distinct but complementary and generate even more sales that way.

Competition in your niche market can appear to be unwelcome, especially if you have a great deal of research time ploughed in to your efforts. But the most comforting aspect is that it confirms to you that you are not alone in your opinion of the potential and profitability of the market.

Affiliate marketers frequently seek out markets that have relatively low competition but also have a reasonable level of existing advertisers. The reasoning is that the advertisers would not be continuing to spend money if there was no profit in the niche.

So your apparent competitors can quickly become compatriots as you work together to find way of complementing each other instead of competing in your niche market.

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Despite the variance in our objectives it was a good example of how our interests coincided. So I suppose there is always an overlap of interests wherever people come together.  It is in exploring those overlaps to discover areas of deeper common interest that the fascination of human interaction lies, that gives meaning to the word 'society'.

Alexa was there again still trying to work out how to transfer her blog from self written code to WordPress in order to start down the path of monetization without spending all her time coding.

Robin Grant's has some fascinating material on his corporate site about the impact and effectiveness of social media in 'Learn to speak human'.  It is intriguing to see the differences between the approach of the individual online marketer who uses social media as a mechanism to promote a product or service but with a small downside (i.e. their own costs) compared with the absolute necessity to maintain a market position of the large corporate entity that needs to get and stay connected to it's audience.

TiredofLondonTiredofLife.co.uk is a great example of how your domain name can never be too long provided it accurately reflects what you are about – though I suspect this one  may generate more traffic looking for the Samaritans than amusing things to do on a day off.

The author of this whimsy, Tom Jones, was one of those who prompted the opening thought of 'why do people blog'.  He tells me that it is his objective to post every day on his chosen subject but as yet has not yet found an answer to the grand question: 'Why?'.

James Brown at JeddBrown.com and Oscar at asgeir.co.uk both have intriguing sites that show off their technical skills.

The presentation for the evening was by Floyd Earl Smith who was promoting his book on climate change.  Slanted the talk towards how to use your blog as a means towards a book.  Well established non-fiction author who obviously likes the process – unfortunately didn't give us a domain to link to other than referring to a blog he started at http://getgooglevoice.com/.  Sorry about that, Floyd.

And a top-up from Jaz at Jazamatazz who gave us a rundown on Refugee Week which will take place from 15 – 21 June this year.  The Simple Acts Campaign is working to change the way people perceive refugees, and provides a list of 20 simple acts you can do to change your own and other people's perceptions.  Check out some of the events during Refugee Week.

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