Online marketing through blogging is almost an industry standard these days, and it is no wonder that WordPress is by far the most popular blogging platform used. Forget that WordPress, like many of the other blogging platforms is 100% free, and that you can have WordPress up and running in under 5 minutes. The real power of WordPress lies within the thousands of Plugins that allow even the most inexperienced blogger leverage the power of instant information publishing with content tools that tailor how their marketing messages are delivered to their readers.

This is my list of the top 30 must have plugins for WordPress.

All in One SEO Pack
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Optimizes your WordPress blog for search engines by Automatically optimizing your titles and META tags.

IntenseDebate
http://intensedebate.com/

Replaces default comment system with advanced commenting, threaded replies, karma points (not for individual comments), Gravatars, RSS, ability to reply to comments from email (great to reply from your Blackberry), all in one management from the website for users. It also comes with the optional Intense Debate Top Commentators sidebar widget to display your top commentators, great to encourage commenting (however, the Disqus one below is a lot more comprehensive).

Disqus Commenting System
http://disqus.com

Replaces your comment template with the more advanced Disqus comment system. Disqus is also the only system to support Facebook Connect out of the box. I’ve contacted IntenseDebate directly and they told me there is no current plan to support Facebook Connect. Disqus also features RSS, Gravatars, threaded comments, comment karma, and lets you easily see comments made by the same user on other sites. I prefer Disqus as it offers Facebook Connect support out-of-the-box that could help you tap into the Facebook community. Disqus also features top commentators, recent comments widgets. Also, with Disqus you can enable video comments with seesmic.

Digg Digg
http://www.mkyong.com/blog/digg-digg-wordpress-plugin/

Adds Digg, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz buttons with counters for your readers to easily vote for your posts from your page. I was able to contact the author who also told me Stumble Upon support is on its way as well.

Sociable
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/

Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites including Digg, Reddit, SU, Mixx, Propeller. You can also add e-mail and print buttons. It also supports TwitThis, but the plugin can be made easier by using TinyURL (or another URL shortening service) and automatically logging the user into Twitter with the URL and Title already shown.

Google Analytics
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/

Google Analytics provides highly advanced website tracking and management information free of charge. Use this plug-in to easily add the code so Google Analytics can immediately begin to track all of your pages

Lifestream
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lifestream/

Lifestream displays your social feeds and activity from many social sites. Includes support to display your Flickr photos, Facebook feed, Friendster feed, Youtube videos, Twitter updates, any other RSS feed, from your other blogs, etc.

DB Backup
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/

Easily backup/restore your posts and entire WordPress database. Download or send your back to your email.

WP Greet Box
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-greet-box/

Displays different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer URL. For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it. The plug-in also includes out of the box support for getting messages from users coming from Reddit, SU, Facebook, Google (shows searched keywords as well), Mixx, etc. You can also easily add your own custom greeting from people coming from any site you choose.

WP-SpamFree
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-spamfree/

An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin for WordPress that virtually eliminates comment spam, including trackback and pingback spam. I find the plug-in works surprisingly well by eliminating all automated spam. It does somewhat use a bit of bandwidth sometimes.

WP Super Cache
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts. Some people have complained about compatibility problems with other plugins, so exercise some caution here and follow the instructions carefully. However, the plugin is very good and can save you a significan amount of bandwidth.

Google XML Sitemaps
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

Generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

Category Posts Widget
http://jameslao.com/2008/04/18/category-posts-widget-13/

Displays any amount of posts you want from a specific category in your sidebar

Contact 7 Contact Form
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/

Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

Popularity Contest
http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

Shows your readers your most popular posts based on views, comments, pingbacks, among other criteria. You can also change the weight of each criteria to determine the most popular post.

WP Since Last Visit
http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

Indicates with a small “New” picture beside your post to users who have not yet seen your post from their last visit. Also works with comments.

Twitter Tools
http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

Allows you to pull your tweets into your blog (as posts and digests) and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.

WordPress Download Monitor
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/download-monitor/

Download Monitor is a plugin for uploading and managing downloads, tracking download hits, and displaying links.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
http://mitcho.com/code/yarpp/

Gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site

WP Page Numbers
http://www.jenst.se/2008/03/29/wp-page-numbers

Adds pagination to your WordPress navigation, good for search engines.

WP-PostRatings
http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/#wp-postratings

Allows your readers to vote on how they liked your article. You can also display your highest or lowest voted posts on your sidebar.

WP-PostViews
http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/#wp-postviews

Allows you to display the number of times your post has been viewed.

AdSense Manager
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adsense-manager/

Lets you add Google AdSense, Yahoo, AdBrite, among other ads, to your sidebar or anywhere else on your blog.

Smart YouTube
http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/smart-youtube

Allows you to easily insert Youtube videos in your post, comments and in your RSS feed

Video widget
http://www.nikohk.com/plugin-wordpress-video-widget/

Easily display videos from many different video sharing websites on your sidebar or blog, including from YouTube, DailyMotion, Google Video, Metacafe, Reever, MySpace, Blip.tv, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, among many others

FlickrRSS

http://eightface.com/wordpress/flickrrss/
Lets you easily display your Flickr photos on your blog, comes with a sidebar widget. Note: Lifestream plug-in also supports this so you may not need this plugin.

Facebook Connect Community
http://www.sociable.es/facebook-connect

Allows your users to sign in with their Facebook account. It also supports comments to be sent to the users news feed, which can draw you some good viral traffic. However, it does not work with IntenseDebate. I just contacted IntenseDebate and they told me they do not plan to offer Facebook Connect support, which is unfortunate because that would make life a lot more easier, especially for people who want all the advanced features of IntenseDebate but also want the ability for comments to be sent to the Facebook newsfeed.

DropCap First Character WordPress Plugin
http://www.rc.au.net/blog/2006/07/27/dropcap-first-character-wordpress-plugin/

What it does is it makes the first character of the post BIG in a magazine style.

Front Page Excluded Categories
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/front-page-excluded-categories/

As the title suggests, it blocks categories you don’t want from displaying on your home page

Subscribe-Remind

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-remind/
Invites your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed below each post

Exec-PHP
http://bluesome.net/post/2005/08/18/50

Executes PHP code in posts, pages, or your sidebar.

There are literally thousands more plugins that offer flexibility and additional features to further customize your WordPress layout. If you have a popular plugin not listed here at it to the comments – Thx

The job posting web sites – at this time of alarming unemployment – appear to be full of very well paid positions for SEO middle management, and also a large amount of ads for SEO training courses. The reason for this is that actually, there are very few people who are truly skilled in SEO – and for that reason, those that are tend to decide to work for themselves without reference to of the large quantity of money they could earn working for an SEO firm.

The cause of this is that really, there are very few people who are truly skilled in SEO – and for that reason, those that are tend to select to work for themselves disregarding the large amount of money they could earn working for an SEO firm.

The main reason that few people have real SEO abilities is that there are only a few SEO training course courses available.

Now there is not a lot of lots of competition from SEO consultants who basically do the work, and I believe most specialists would agree that they’d like it that way – it’s hard promoting a clients web site when you are up against another pro, so really for us, the less true SEO professionals out there, the better!

So most SEO experts are self taught. I have been teaching myself SEO for approximately ten years, and I fear to think how much I have spent over these years on eBooks, courses and programs, but I’m sure whatever the amount, I would have saved some money by taking a course if there had been one available.

Are SEO training course courses absolutely necessary? No – they are not, however finding a professional SEO expert to coach you, will help you to take a massive jump towards becoming an SEO consultant, drastically reducing the learning curve that most SEO executives have to go through.

What kind of SEO training course should I look for? Look for a coaching course which is run by precise current SEO professionals, people who’re doing this for who’re doing this as a living.

There are some good reasons that a course would be offered for a smaller cost, for instance a course that was teaching a number of people at one point, would enable a lower cost – but in my opinion SEO taught in a class is never going to be as valuable as one to one training with a professional SEO.

A good SEO training course should include after training support. I continue to support people for a year since the course, included in the price of the course, or a monthly program they can join after the course – and I offer packages for continued support after a year.

Nowadays with the current economic downturn it has become imperative for people to search for a means of passive income. There are a number of people who are struggling to try and establish or find a way to establish a passive income business. There are many legitimate home based passive income businesses. Many people who are not good at selling stuff think they cannot make some extra money.

Today however with some knowledge and a good idea you can make money with online advertisements such as Google’s Adsense. You don’t need to be an active seller or have any experience selling products or services. Now Adsense if you don’t know is actually Google’s advertising branch. Using Adsense is simple you just paste a few lines of code on your blog or website.

I’m not going to tell you that Google’s adsense is the only way you can monetize your website or blog for some passive income. There are many other services that will also place ads on your website and blog and probably even pay you more than Google. The problem is that many of them are not as easy to setup and require that your website or blog receives lots of traffic.

Don’t think that Google’s adsense is the only way for you to make money off your website. There are other programs as well such as adbright that sometimes pay higher than what Google does. Some companies will require that you get a few thousand visitors a day before you are willing to place ads on your website. So it really depends on who you are targeting and how well you are doing it.

Google’s Adsense is better and easier than other types of advertising since it doesn’t require any hard work on your end. Your work is only to get things done and setup, from there onwards Google will do everything else.

Apart from Google’s adsense and online advertising there are many other ways of making a passive income without doing much work. You can be happily employed at another job or take vacations with your family but still be earning money from the seed that you have planted.

All you need to do if you are a programmer is to make something useful and hand it over to a network of affiliates and then sit back as you watch your product grow in popularity. There is only an initial investment of time and maybe some money when you are developing the produce regardless of whether it’s an ebook or a piece of software. A good book can be sold pretty well and many people who do make money do so while they sleep.

The possibilities of what you can do is virtually unlimited. You can even become a good sales person or a marketing person to make some good passive income. You can even do so by selling other people’s products and service for a good commission. Today selling digital products such as software and ebooks is good business you only need to know how to get your word across and a professional website.