People who run blogs, and people who enjoy earning money online usually love statistics. I know, personally, that I check my keywords, traffic and revenue streams a couple times a day. I make sure that I know exactly which keywords and threads people are interested in, so that I can work my future posts around them. On top of this, people are like sheep, they follow what others do. If there is a post which has many comments on it, the chances are, other people will show interest to this thread rather than another thread.

Displaying the number of times a thread has been read, is a useful way to control the traffic coming to your website. This can be tied hand in hand with advert placement, and so much more.

In order to display the number of reads each of your articles has had is fairly straight forward, here is my example:

• Download this plugin. Upload and activate it as per usual.
• The next step is to create a table in your database, using the following code:

create table mostAccessed
(
postnumber int not null,
cntaccess int not null,
primary key(postnumber),
unique id(postnumber)
);

• Open your single.php file and search for this code:
  • <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
• Directly under this code, add the following code:
  • <?php if ($id > 0) { add_count($id); } ?>
• Now search for this code:
  • <?php the_title(); ?>
• Directly underneath, add the following code:
  • <?php if (!( is_home() || is_page() )) { ?>
    <?php show_post_count($post->ID,
    $before=”This post has been viewed “,
    $after=” times since “); ?>
    <?php } ?>

That’s it! Follow these steps carefully. It is vital that you place the <?php if ($id > 0) { add_count($id); } ?> code in the single.php file and not in your index file. If you place the code in your index.php file, each time the page is loaded, each post will increase the read count, which is definitely not what we want. The second code snippet you deal with, can however be placed in your index.php file - this will show the reads per post in your home page for each article.

Good luck!

Aaron Wall recently sent out a newsletter, which included some useful bits and pieces. He has created a couple SEO tools, which he is allowing us all to use. These tools allow you to use a wide array of keyword research, competitive research, and link research tools conveniently from one location. The tools are very easy to embed into a website, making them extra useful.

These Google Gadgets are lightweight XML programs that allow you to place interactive data inside web pages. This technology is useful for researching compact data points like site age, related keywords, or the quantity of inbound links pointing at a page…all the types of data points that are included in SEO for Firefox and a few that are not. If you prefer to have this type of data accessible from a toolbar we also created numerous SEO buttons for the Google Toolbar.

The list of tools is as follows:

• Keyword Research & Competitive Analysis Tools Gadget
  • Allows you to use all the major free keyword research tools from one location.
  • Links off to additional paid keyword research tools.
  • Links to popular competitive analysis tools and lesser known useful competitive analysis tools.
• Link Analysis Google Gadget
  • Shows you the different ways to search for backlinks from the major search engine.
  • Allows you to see fresh citations from blogs via Google Blog Search and Technorati.
  • Shows reviews and citations from Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Wikipedia.
  • Links off to additional tools.

Take a look at the SEO tools here.

I recently wrote an article over at iMod, entitled “People don’t believe“, which is about earning money online, trying to share your knowledge with others, and them not taking your advice or not believing how possible it is.

“The fact that I made around R15,000 online last month was not because I’m a complete genius, and not because I’m a web guru, it’s because I took the time to read hundreds of articles online. I read articles written by the top bloggers in the world, and put together my own articles based on everything I learn from them. My articles on Web Entrepreneur are simple and too the point - reading an article is not a long winded process, and after reading three or four articles, you should have a good idea on how to take your web venture to another level.”

Go take a read if you are interested, it’s worth the read in my opinion.