For the past several months I had received the odd complaint from visitors and readers that my blog was taking a bit of time to load up. I had checked it out and found that it took about 10 seconds to fully load up and thought that it was not worth the hassle of tinkering just to shave off a couple of seconds.

How wrong I was!

I had a few little minor problems with the admin panel as well. It was nothing that I deemed to be too troublesome for me that it warranted messing about with the files. It just meant that I could not have certain plugins as they did not show properly or run correctly.

Finally tonight I had decided to finally act. I had received several emails complaining of the slowness and a couple of plugins had started spitting out complaints about my site not loading quick enough for them to work.

Since I had a bit of free time I rolled up my sleeves and got under the hood of my blog and had a bit of a tinker about. Within fifteenth minutes I had made my blog load up twice as quickly as I had done before!

Here is what I did.

1. Get Rid Of Those Unwanted Themes

I must admit that this is mainly something for speeding up the admin panel, and certainly making it look nicer to your eye.

We have all done this at one time or another; you upload a load of themes, pick the one you want, but more often than not you just don’t remove the ones you don’t want. Save them onto your PC if you really have to but get them off your server.

2. Deactivate & Delete Those Plugins

Plugins are great, they help you do all manner of things to your blog. The problem is that the more plugins that you have on your list, the most they slow down the loading of your blog. Even if they are deactivated.

When I had a look at my list I had what I would considering a lot, I had 37. I decided to be absolutely ruthless and deactivated and removed the ones that I could do without or simply did not need.

I whittled the list down to 22, which I think you will agree is slightly more manageable.

3. Repair & Optimise Your Database

WARNING: Backup your database before you even think about editing it!

I actually found out about this little tip completely by chance. I typed in ‘how to speed up your wordpress blog’ into Google and this was one of the methods. I’m not 100% sure how it works but what I am sure of is that it does indeed work.

You log into your Hosting Cpanel, go to the phpMyAdmin page of your database, tick all the tables and then click Repair from the drop down menu. Once this is done do the same again but this time select Optimise from the menu.

4. Installed The W3 Total Cache Plugin

I know some cynics might say that my blog has speeded up because of this plugin. Well you are wrong, my blog was speeded up before I installed the plugin. This baby just helped make it load even faster!

Download W3Total Cache Plugin

If any of these methods help you then I’d love to know via the comments section.

Most of you will no doubt be aware that I have a policy when working with networks and companies. That policy is that I like to give networks and companies the benefit of the doubt when I work with them. A lot of the time it works but some times, like now, it can backfire on me and leave me feeling rather stupid.

I first came across Blog Advertising Store when it was going by the name of Paid Post, they then changed their name to Paying Post before finally changing it to their current name of Blog Advertising Store. I’m not sure if they have had more than three name changes.

Some people might point out that any company that changes their name three times in two years obviously should be avoided. Even the $100 payout minimum did not look too off-putting to me.

As I write this I have earnt a total of $116 and even though I have sent them at least half a dozen emails they have not paid me and have ignored every email I’ve sent. And apparently I’m not the only one, nobody has received a payment from them and a quick Google search proves this.

Will I learn something from this? I doubt it. The next time a network comes along with great promises, and an excellently designed web site, I’ll probably still sign up and write about things like sexy costumes because I’m an idiot.

How Do You Distract The Distractions?

Since I have started trying my hand at blogging full-time I have learnt a number of small lessons. But the most important lesson that I have learnt has been that there are lots of little things on the internet that will distract you from your task and can seriously hurt your income.

You know what I’m talking about, those little things that you find yourself doing instead of writing that article or meeting that deadline for a client.

Personally the things that distract me the most are Facebook, Twitter, Live Windows Messenger and checking my emails.

Now ones I listed above may sound like trivial distractions to you, but to me they are a big pain in the butt and a huge contributory factor to why I don’t make as much money as I could.

I find it hard to concentrate at the best of times and it doesn’t take much for me to stop what I am doing and log into one of the applications I have listed above.

Received Another Payment From Linkworth

On Tuesday I received yet another payment from Linkworth. I have received payments from this network before and although this time it was only for $26.71 I am still happy to receive it.

Passive Income With Article Content Sites

During the week I read a blog post on the excellent Smart Passive Income blog about 13 alternative ways to earn money with article writing sites. Thanks to this interesting post I joined a load of them and have submitted some articles. It is the kind of thing that will generate income over time, not straight away.

I have already started seeing results from Bukisa and Hubpages.