Adding a Contact Form to your WordPress Blog

I wanted to start adding contact forms to my WordPress Blogs, and just found an easy to use plug-in that is both configurable and offers the ability to combat spammers.

Contact Form 7 can be downloaded, extracted, and easily installed by FTPing the entire contact-form-7 directory to your blog’s ../wp-content/plugins directory.

In your blog’s admin console, you need to go to the Plugins page to activate the plugin.  Once activated, you can use the Contact Form 7 link under your blog’s Tools menu to configure the plugin.

Next, copy the following code from the Contact form 1 section of the configuration page:

[contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"]

Add a New Page to your blog titled “Contact Us”, and paste the text above into the HTML editor.

Save it, and you have a functioning contact form allowing your users to email you directly.

The nice thing about this plugin, is that you never expose your email address to the end users.  This is completely hidden, and email delivery is automated.

You also have the ability to add a Validation Question or Captia to the form to reduce the chance of automated form spam.  This allows you to ensure that a real person is sending you email instead of an automated bot.

In the Contact Form 7 configuration page, select the dropdown option for Generate Tag.  Select Quiz as an option, and enter a question and response to be used for validation.  For example, this can be in the form of 5+5=?|10.  This will generate code that you can paste into your form on the left.  You can customize your message to the user with instructions on how to complete the form.  I set mine up as follows:

<p>To make sure you aren’t an automated SpamBot, please answer the following question<br />
[quiz quiz-755 "5+5=?|10"] </p>

Contact Form with Quiz

If the answer to your Quiz question is not entered correctly, the user is prompted to correct the answer.  None of the other information in the form is lost if an invalid answer is provided, so the user will not have to re-type their message.  If the answer to the Quiz is entered correctly, then the email is sent by the system.

This plug-in also supports Captia, which is an image containing a word, or numbers.  The user would be required to enter the words or numbers displayed in the image into the validation field before the message could be sent.  This is an even more secure method of combating spammers, because automated bots have trouble converting image data to text.  I plan to test out the Captia next.  It involves changing the security on a couple of plug-in directories to make it work.  I will enable this feature after I have a chance to verify the security settings and will followup with the results and configuration options required.

Stumbling for Visitors

There is a method of traffic generation called comment marketing.  The idea is that you visit blogs that are within your niche, and then leave a relevent comment to a post.  The subsequent visitors to the blog are then given the opportunity to follow your comment link back to your website.

This method only works for blog commenting systems that allow a Name/URL for commenting.

Don’t enter your real name in the Name field.  Find a good keyword rich phrase for your name.  Look for phrases that are tasteful and not too spammy if you want your comments to be approved.  You will find that some comments are held for moderation, and others are automatically approved.  While these links are typically ‘No Follow’ (meaning the SERPs won’t give you any juice) you will benefit from qualified visitors to your website.

So I just set up the Sociable plugin for one of my WordPress blogs tonight, and noticed that StumbleUpon.com was one of the bookmarking icons included.  So I headed over to StumbleUpon to bookmark a recent blog entry.  Soon after that I realized that I had burned 20 minutes aimlessly surfing websites.

I decided to Stumble my Niche.  The next thing you know, I’m stumbling websites and blogs in my niche area.  This has done two things for me.  It has gotten the creative writing juices flowing by seeing what others in my niche are doing.  It has also had me Stumbling onto blogs in my niche that I have been able to do some comment marketing on.  I realized that this could be a way to put comment marketing into overdrive.  StumbleUpon is known for driving traffic.  It has the ability to send large volumes of traffic to websites.

So it seems natural that you can benefit from a website’s StumbleUpon popularity by having your comment posts on those sites.  Once you comment, give it a thumbs up, and help kick it into overdrive.  The website owner will appreciate it, and so might you.  And want to increase your chances of having your comment approved?  After making an intelligent comment, tell the author it was a great post and that you gave him a thumbs up.

Online Business as a Profitable Hobby

Making money online has been a hobby of mine since 1999.  I’ve always been fascinated by how people make money online, and love dissecting the methods and processes successful people profit from.  I’ve made my share of money, and my share of mistakes over the years.  I always lament that I could have retired at an early age, had I known then what I know now.  My biggest mistakes over the years involve:

• Not seeing clearly the opportunities that present themselves
• Not taking full advantage of opportunities
• Not being positioned to act quickly when an opportunity presents itself

Online opportunities are all around us each day.  Simple ideas can be turned into profitable businesses.  Persistence is a key component to success.