We are proud to announce the launch of the NetQuote Affiliate Program (Auto & Home Insurance) on Pepperjam Network!

We encourage you to log-in to your affiliate account at www.pepperjamnetwork.com and create banners, text links, and pepperjamADS right away for the NetQuote Affiliate Program and the other 250+ programs (including eBay) available on PJN.

HIGHLIGHTS: To date, NetQuote has connected over 25 million users to insurance agents and offers the insurance industry’s largest agent network. Join the NetQuote Affiliate Program on Pepperjam Network and make $9.00 per auto insurance lead and $7.00 for every home mortgage lead!

About the NetQuote Auto Insurance Affiliate Program:

“NetQuote is the Internet’s most popular comparison insurance website! Since 1989, we’ve connected over 20 million people to the web’s largest network of insurance agents. Complete an insurance quote request in just 6 minutes and let the industry’s best agents compete for your business.”

Commission: $9.00
Cookie Duration: 45 days

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About the NetQuote Home Insurance Affiliate Program:

“Let Netquote Home connect your customers to local and national homeowners insurance agents from the industry’s most trusted insurance companies. Whether they’re looking for home owners insurance, condo, or renters insurance – in just six minutes, they’ll get multiple insurance quotes and big opportunities to save.”

Commission: $7.00
Cookie Duration: 45 days

Not a member of the NetQuote Affiliate Program on Pepperjam Network?  Sign-up here.

Welcome to Week #7 of the Pepperjam Network “Meet the Affiliates” Interview Series!

This week I interview Paul Bourque, also known as “Uber Affiliate” from the popular affiliate markting blog – UberAffiliate.com.  Find out why Paul would rather be a rock star than a hollywood celebrity and learn a few tips that will make you more money.

Read on.

Here are the rules… 

The Pepperjam Network “Meet the Affiliates” Interview Series will feature an original up-close interview with an affiliate marketer every Friday.  Priority will be given to Pepperjam Network affiliates, but that is not a requirement to share your story.  If you’d be interested in being interviewed please submit your request here – please make sure to tell us why you think your story is especially entertaining or educational and worth sharing with our readers.

As the series progresses we will do our best to ask questions that both entertain and educate!  We encourage you to comment on each of the interviews, as well as ask follow-up questions of the interviewee.

Lastly, if you are a blogger or just someone with a network of likeminded affiliate marketing friends, we encourage you to share our interviews series with anyone who you think may benefit. Also, since you won’t want to miss an interview once it’s published I encourage you to join the Feedburner Pepperjam Network RSS Feed, which is located at the top of this page or by clicking here.

Well…let’s get on to the interview!

Meet the Affiliates: Interview #7 

Paul Bourque
UberAffiliate.com / Uber Camp

Question #1

KRIS: Tell us the story of how and when your first got involved in affiliate marketing…

PAUL: I first got into the game while in college.  I was never a person for crappy part-time jobs at minimum wage or doing seemingly pointless homework every night.  I was browsing Myspace and thought there may be money in it (little did I know), so I did some searches on how to build a web page.  I came across Digital Point and made a couple contacts there, learned about affiliate marketing, and the rest is history.

Question #2

KRIS: Where do you live?  Are you married?  Any children? Animals?

PAUL: I currently live near Buffalo, New York.  I’m not married but I’ve been dating my girlfriend for 2 years now, and that’s been a great experience as well.  No lil super affiliates yet, and as far as animals do I love dogs and will be getting one soon.  I just moved into a new home that I bought, so that’s been exciting as well.

Question #3

KRIS: You recently created quite a bit of buzz within the affiliate marketing community through the announcement of UberCamp.  What is UberCamp and why should affiliate marketers sign-up?

PAUL: UberCamp is a simple idea with a common goal: to put smart affiliate marketers in touch to network and brainstorm ways to make money from affiliate marketing and improve what they already have.  I’m an active member and affiliate just like they all are, and some of the conversation and discussions going on are great.  The forum isn’t for complete beginners, and that’s why I created an application process.  If you have some experience in affiliate marketing and want a place to network and brainstorm with a great group of guys, you can apply for UberCamp here.

Question #4

KRIS: What are your top five favorite musical groups of all time?

PAUL:

1) Blink 182 – cheesy and mainstream but I’m a drummer and love Travis Barker, and they’re the band I grew up to.
2) The Beatles – simply can’t beat them.
3) Angels and Airwaves/Plus 44 – Blink 182 broke up and split into these two bands.
4) John Mayer – dude has talent, his concerts are great.
5) Paramore – a new addition to my favorites list.  She’s a girl, she’s got a voice, and she’s in a rock band.  Hott!

Question #5

KRIS: What are your top three three tips to becoming a super affiliate?

PAUL:

1) Lose the fear.  I say this ALL the time in my blog; you can’t be afraid to lose money.  It’s going to happen, it’s how we learn.  I’ve lost a few thousand in the past 3 days testing out new campaigns but I’m not flipping out because I’m figuring out what works with that money.  It’s an investment, not a loss.  Don’t be afraid to invest a lot.

2) Get out there and do it.  Instead of spending 80% of your day reading, spend 10% reading and 90% testing.  You’ll never know if something odd and random works unless you test it out.

3) Understand that a lot of this game is connections and luck.  The old saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” partially stands true in affiliate marketing.  I get hookups with networks, advertisers, and other affiliates just by networking and building my list of contacts.  Part of the game is luck too…sometimes you just land on the right keywords and right offer at the right time.  But by getting out there and doing it (90% test 10% read), you increase your chances of getting lucky.

Question #6

KRIS: Share with us what a typical “Day in the Life” of Uber Affiliate (aka, Paul Bourque) is like…

PAUL: Ahh, a day in the life…

9am – wake up cupcake.

9am-2pm – eat breakfast, check emails, update campaigns, start some new stuff, clean the house, play some xbox.  I’m basically hanging out in my house working every now and then.

2pm-4:30pm – go to the gym, come home, eat dinner.5pm-8pm – talk to some affiliate networks, make a couple phone calls, and check on campaigns.

8pm-1am – hang out with my girlfriend or friends, just do something with them and relax.

I live on a pretty relaxed schedule that fluctuates…some days I spend more time working, some days I don’t work at all.

Question #7

KRIS: Would you rather be a rock star or a movie celebrity? If a rock star, who would you be and why (i.e. Slash)?  If a celebrity, who would you want to be most like and why (i.e. Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights)

PAUL: I’d be Travis Barker, ex drummer of Blink 182.  I LOVE playing the drums and I’m actually pretty good at it…just being able to play in front of thousands of people would be awesome.  I think I’m going to buy a new drum set and set up a little recording studio in my basement and post some stuff up online.

Question #8

KRIS: One of the ways that super affiliates like you make a ton of affiliate revenue is through the use of tools.  Can you share with us your three favorite money making tools (i.e. KeyCompete) and what they can do to help other affiliates make more money?

PAUL:

1) Networking.  Networking isn’t a “tangible” tool, but it’s definitely the best tool you can have.  I call on people all the time for help with things or hook ups on an offer.

2) Prosper202 (Find it here).  I use the Adwords pixel to track, but I also set a lot of stuff up in Prosper202.  It’s 100% free self-hosted affiliate tracking.  I know the creator and he’s an awesome guy, he really made a tool that’s helping the community tremendously.

3) As far as other paid tools go, I really don’t use any.  For my higher volume campaigns, most of the keywords come of short tails that come from my mind coupled with a little bit of Google’s keyword suggestion tool.  I’m sure there are other tools out there that could help speed up the campaign building process, but my tool is either my mind, or internal tools/systems built by my programmer that are completely custom.

Question #9

KRIS: In my opinion (and in the opinion of many people here at Pepperjam Network), your blog is one of the most informative blogs in affiliate marketing. It’s no wonder why you have thousands of reads.  Can you share some tips for fellow bloggers on what makes a successful blog?  Are there any specific suggestions you can make that other bloggers can use to increase readership and reader participation?

PAUL: To a certain extent there is a strategy in blogging.  I started off with a guest post on Shoemoney detailing exactly how I cashed in on Facebook Ads back when they were brand new.  I got a ton of people telling me how stupid I was for not just keeping it a secret.  So there we had an initial article posted on a blog with mega traffic, and the article gave out more information than anybody else in my position would have given out.  I got a few hundred readers from that post alone, and then started writing good content.  I kept writing good content, and then added in some earnings screenshots.  They’re motivational to affiliates and great link bait to be honest.  So with a little strategy and a lot of quality content, anybody out there can have a successful blog.  You just have to have the motivation to write, and that’s what it comes down to.

Question #10

KRIS: What is the future of affiliate marketing?  What does it look like and what opportunities will exist for affiliates to become super affiliates?

PAUL: The hierarchy of affiliate marketing won’t change.  You’ll have a very few number of affiliates making the majority of revenue.  Over time affiliates will become smarter and competition will continue to rise.  Search engines will continue to update their quality score standards, and the better affiliates will win.  “Super affiliates” will continue to use out of the box promotion and brute force/capital to dominate over 99% of newbie affiliates who are afraid to lose money.  Every affiliate has an opportunity to be an affiliate, what it comes down to is how much they’re willing to put on the line for the prize of potential riches.

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Next on deck for Meet the Affiliates: John Chow from JohnChow.com

John’s exclusive interview will be published here on the Pepperjam Network Blog next Friday, June 27, 2008.

Make sure you don’t miss it!  Click Here to subscribe to the PJN Blog and have each interview delivered to your e-mail box.

___________________________________

Read Previous “Meet the Affiliates” Interviews:

Week #1 – Sam Harrelson
Week #2 – Scott Hazard
Week #3 – Rosalind Gardner
Week #4 – Colin McDougal
Week #5 – Zac Johnson
Week #6 – Harrison Gevirtz

We are proud to announce the launch of several new affiliate programs on Pepperjam Network, including MyFax.com, Mployd, iPodJuice, and “Break 80 Today.”

About the MyFax.com Affiliate Program:

“With no hidden fees, your customers will be impressed with this award-winning faxing solution! MyFax.com allows you to send and receive faxes using email, the web or a handheld device. Plus, there is NO setup fee, NO hardware or software to download and each customer receives a FREE toll-free number upon sign up! These benefits, coupled with the low cost of just $10 per month, make MyFax.com a successful industry leader! Program Details

> Partners may run this program in the UK as well. Review our links for UK specific creative in both our text and banner inventory.

> Earn $12 for Every Free Monthly Sign-Up! > Earn Additional Commissions For Paid Subscriptions — an added $14 for up to 24 paid subscriptions, an added $20 for 25-49 paid subscriptions, and an added $30 for over 50 paid subscriptions with our generous tiered structure > 45 day cookie duration – get the credit you deserve > Monthly newsletter – stay informed of all the latest promotions > Dedicated, professional Partner Program Management through PartnerCentric.”

Commission: $12 per lead
Cookie Duration: 45 days

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About the Mployd Affiliate Program:

“Mployd.com is one of the internet’s leading online employee recruitment websites. Mployd takes pride in its ease of use and ability to find excellent employees for its employer clients. As an affiliate partner, you will be in charge of finding employers to post their job positions on the Mployd website or purchase services offered by the Mployd partner network. Unlimited job postings, resume templates, resume management system and employer profile pages are just a few of the great features Mployd offers to its job seekers and employers. Posting a job with Mployd allows employers to reach millions of qualified candidates. Job candidates have an option to join the Mployd network to enjoy some of the amazing features or apply directly via our quick apply feature. Mployd has partnered with Pepperjam.com to provide our publishers a leading edge third-party tracking, real-time reporting, and monthly commission checks. Mployd and Pepperjam strongly believe that publishers are the lifeblood of affiliate marketing. Therefore, we provide the necessary resources and educational materials to help publishers become Super Affiliates.”

Commission: 20%
Cookie Duration: 45 days 

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About the iPodJuice Affiliate Program:

“iPhone, which will also need a replacement battery.

We believe that our robust iPod batteries, detailed iPod battery replacement instructions with color photographs, effective iPod battery replacement tools, and superior iPod battery customer support before, during, and after the sale make us the best choice for your battery replacement needs. We offer same-day shipping, our items are always in stock, and we stand behind our iPod batteries with a full 10 year guarantee! iPodjuice.com doesn’t focus on selling goofy accessories and other bells and whistles – there are a ton of companies out there doing that. Our goal is to provide you with products and services that allow you to safely replace the battery in your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Generation iPod, iPod mini, iPod Photo, U2 iPod, and 5th Generation iPod Video. We have literally helped thousands and thousands of satisfied customers replace their iPod batteries, and we would like to help your visitors, too!”

Commission: 15.00%
Cookie Duration: 60 days 

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About the “Break 80 Today” Affiliate Program:

“Break 80 Today provides world class golf instruction through golf tips and through our How To Break 80 golf ebook. If you feel your golf swing isn’t producing the kind of power it can, you want a rapid way to reduce strokes, or just need some help with any other golf problem, it is our hope that you may be able to use every resource on this site to achieve a better golf game. Earn 15% on all sales!”

Commissions: 15%
Cookie Duration: 45 days

Not a member of Pepperjam?  Sign-up for free at www.pepperjamnetwork.com

eBay extended an invitation for Pepperjam Network to attend the official eBay DevCon conference being held as we speak (June 16 – 18) in Chicago.

Pepperjam’s COO Michael Jones and I decided to accept the invite and we will be heading to Chicago bright and early tomorrow morning.   The nice thing is that we can fly direct out of our local airport so we don’t have to fly-in the night before like we typically do with most other conferences.

We look forward to spending some time and having a few drinks with our contacts at eBay and the eBay Partner Network (EPN) – we anticipate discussing a range of issues with them and we hope to come back with some new enhancements to the existing eBay affiliate program on Pepperjam Network!

If you are an EPN or eBay on PJN affiliate and are at DevCon we’d love to meet-up with you!  Drinks on us!

Kris & Mike

Welcome to Week #6 of the Pepperjam Network “Meet the Affiliates” Interview Series!

This week I interview Harrison Gevirtz. OK, for all of you out there that think becoming a super affiliate is impossible – Meet Harrison Gevirtz – Harrison is 15 years old and anticipates becoming a millionaire by the end of the year.  How did he do it?  What are his secrets?  Well, you can read the interview below to learn more, but I can tell you having met Harrison in person and reading about his success online and in magazines, this guy is at least 10 years more mature than his age and he ranks as one of the brightest and most impressive affiliate marketers I’ve ever come to know.

Read on.

Here are the rules… 

The Pepperjam Network “Meet the Affiliates” Interview Series will feature an original up-close interview with an affiliate marketer every Friday.  Priority will be given to Pepperjam Network affiliates, but that is not a requirement to share your story.  If you’d be interested in being interviewed please submit your request here – please make sure to tell us why you think your story is especially entertaining or educational and worth sharing with our readers.

As the series progresses we will do our best to ask questions that both entertain and educate!  We encourage you to comment on each of the interviews, as well as ask follow-up questions of the interviewee.

Lastly, if you are a blogger or just someone with a network of likeminded affiliate marketing friends, we encourage you to share our interviews series with anyone who you think may benefit. Also, since you won’t want to miss an interview once it’s published I encourage you to join the Feedburner Pepperjam Network RSS Feed, which is located at the top of this page or by clicking here.

Well…let’s get on to the interview!

Meet the Affiliates: Interview #6 

Harrison Gevirtz
CPA Share / blitzlocal.com

Question #1

KRIS: Where are you from?  How old are you? Where is the most exotic location you’ve ever been to – tell us about your trip…

HARRISON: I am 15 years old, turning 16 on June 19th. The most exotic location i’ve ever been to that I can remember is Tokyo (which was about 2 weeks ago). I flew to Tokyo for only 5 days but had a blast. The culture of asia was unbelievable and I REALLY enjoyed my time in Tokyo!

Question #2

KRIS: Please share with us the story of how (and why) you first got involved in affiliate marketing…

HARRISON: I started out at 12 years old selling Diamonds and coins on eBay. After successfully doing this on eBay for almost a year I got bored and started to make simple turnkey websites on the side of running my eBay business. Eventually I totally stopped selling Diamonds & Coins and went full fledge on the internet stuff.

I purchased a turnkey myspace website script and made a simple website and was able to turn the $15-20 I spent on a Domain & The script into about a grand. I continued to work on my site, and eventually made my own website that was not turnkey.  After months of struggle with various ad networks playing games (Adsense banned me before I even had a chance to make any money… (I REALLY didn’t click my ads..but who cares) I started reading about affiliate marketing with search, etc and tried out some direct linking to affiliate offers on my websites via Banners, Links etc. This was profitable for the few clicks it generated daily and I decided to pursue more of an affiliate revenue lifestyle. I lost money on search for a while and finally got a hang of it. Now affiliate marketing really isn’t my full time gig as I am beginning to focus more on the client side of PPC with small business, and some b2b type clients. I still do affiliate stuff now, just not as much.

Question #3

KRIS: Have you made your first million yet?  If not, at what age do you expect to be a millionaire?

HARRISON: My personal goal is by the end of this year to be able to crown myself with the title millionaire. Too bad a millionaire is in any currency, not in euros or pounds!

Question #4

KRIS: Why are you such a successful internet marketer, while others struggle?  Are there any tips that you can share to help someone who may be struggling to be as successful as you?

HARRISON: I get asked this question all the time and it’s really hard to answer. I really value analytics and I feel the main issue starter affiliates have is the wrong mindset that if you make a campaign, and it’s profitable at the beginning you don’t have to do anything to keep it profitable. People sometimes make a campaign and don’t tweak everything, If it’s not profitable at the begining they just pause it and try something else. Optimize Optimize Optimize, it really does help!

Question #5

KRIS: Take us through a typical day-in-the-life of Harrison Gevirtz…

HARRISON: Well I Travel quite a bit so my schedule changes day to day BUT when I’m home I typically wake up around 11am-1pm. Work for a few hours, eat some lunch or dinner depending on the time. Sometimes I go out, Hang out with friends, have to go to school etc but my schedule isn’t really set in stone. I get most of my work done during the night hours even though my mom really doesn’t like that, and usually end up getting to bed around 2-4am.

Question #6

KRIS: What is the future of affiliate marketing in 200 words or less?

HARRISON: I believe the future of affiliate marketing industry is going to become far more legitimate and the reputation will improve. I am seeing more and more companies launch affiliate networks like yours without all the scammy offers and I believe that actions like this will improve the views of affiliate marketing to outside consumers who are aware of the industry, In addition to just motivating affiliates to promote the good stuff, not the scams!

Question #7

KRIS: Do you feel that being “only” 15 years old has been an asset or a liability as an affiliate marketer?  Why or why not?

HARRISON: Being 15 is a huge liability and every day I wish i were 18, or 21. I have people take me for a complete idiot who believe they can just play me to get info out of me etc. I won’t lie I have trusted people whom I shouldn’t have and that’s why I say I’m still learning. People who have done business with me for a while do realize that I am not the stupid 15 year old they initially thought I was But I do have people not trust me because of my age, and people tend to treat me like a KID not a business acquaintance. It really sucks!

Question #8

KRIS: Tell us about your most profitable day or week (your choice) ever as an affiliate.  How did you do it?  Please be as specific as possible:

HARRISON: With A question like this, specifics are key. But both you, me, and all readers know the level of specificity I provide may not be all that specific ! Without being too specific I would like to say that some of my most profitable endeavors have been done outside of the normal search engines but through discovered untouched traffic sources which remain gold mines for a long time. I recommend new affiliates look around to find spots/networks that I have found which are cheap, quick, and awesome in terms of a ROI!

Question #9

KRIS: What do you do when you’re not making money online? Do you have any pets, hobbies, a girlfriend?

HARRISON: Well, even when I’m not working, I’m probably making money online, or somethings probably wrong!

My main hobby right now is to travel. It is something I really love to do for numerous reasons. One reason is that I hate the town I live in now/have grown up in. For being an outgoing 15/16 year old Santa Barbara california is simply boring and uninteresting for me and as I tell family members of mine “I Try and avoid Santa Barbra Like the plague.”

I actually just got an awesome Road Bike in Boulder CO (where a company I am a partner in is located) so I think biking is going to be one of my new hobbies. I also will probably be getting a dog soon, since it’s been almost a year since my dog passed away.

Question #10

KRIS: Pretend it is 10 years from now.  Tell us about your life.  What will you be doing.  What will your title be?  What do you think your net worth will be?  What will you have accomplished?

HARRISON: In 10 years I expect to still be doing what I do today. Working with clients is a new thing for me and I am really starting to like it. This doesn’t mean I wont be an affiliate because I really enjoy the bossless affiliate lifestyle. A Title?? Probably less than I have now, When I made my first business cards for my LLC I decided to be a CEO. I plan to change my title to something more basic and less ego’y. Since I’m not the turnkey CEO with a big leather chair and a private jet. hehe!

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If you guys can’t get enough of Harrison Gevirtz here is a great interview that was featured in Revenue Magazine.

Next on deck for Meet the Affiliates: Paul Bourque, AKA “Uber Affiliate“

Paul’s exclusive interview will be published here on the Pepperjam Network Blog next Friday, June 20, 2008.

Make sure you don’t miss it!  Click Here to subscribe to the PJN Blog and have each interview delivered to your e-mail box.

___________________________________

Read Previous “Meet the Affiliates” Interviews:

Week #1 – Sam Harrelson
Week #2 – Scott Hazard
Week #3 – Rosalind Gardner
Week #4 – Colin McDougal
Week #5 – Zac Johnson

After a week of vacation, and then a second week spent frantically catching up on the backlog of emails and work that poured in while I was away, we’re back on track and ready for part three of our series. As a recap, in Part 1 we covered brainstorming a topic, as well as potential monetization methods. In Part 2, we covered finding and buying a domain name, as well as keyword research.

In Part 3, we’re ready to cover installing Wordpress as the CMS for our affiliate site. This may be a step a lot of you can skip, as Wordpress is really simple and once you install it once, you should be able to install it again without any issues in just a few minutes. For those of you who had never used it before, read on.

What we need to do is set up a MySQL database and user for Wordpress. Many hosts now offer cPanel, which makes this task a breeze.

Just click on the MySQL Databases link…

click to enlarge

We want to…
1) Add a new database (write the name of this down somewhere)
2) Add a new user and password (write this down as well)
3) Add the user to the database with all privileges

Simple enough, right?

Now, since we’re going to be using Wordpress, head on over to Wordpress.org and download yourself the latest version. (Make sure you keep up to date on these, new security updates are added pretty often as exploits are found. And, you know… blackhats looking for quick link injection opportunities. Which I’d know noting about. For the record. Ahem)

So, you’ve downloaded Wordpress and have it saved on your hard drive. Now we need to do a bit of editing. Don’t worry – they have made this as simple as possible. All we want to do is look for the file named “wp-config-sample.php” and open it up in Notepad (or whatever your editor of choice happens to be.) Right up at the top we see…

Now, all you need to do is put in your database name, user name, and password. These are the items you just made a few minutes ago. Aren’t you glad I made you write them down? Insert those into the fields labeled ‘putyourdbnamehere’, ‘usernamehere’ and ‘yourpasswordhere’. Like the note mentions, chances are localhost will be fine. If you run into trouble with this, contact your host and they should have an answer for you quickly. If not – it’s time to look for a new host. Now, after we put the three new items in, we want to save the file as “wp-config.php” and get rid of that “sample” that was on the end.

That’s it – you’ve just done all the editing needed. Now, we need to upload Wordpress to our host. You’ll need an ftp program for this. Personally, I use FileZilla since it’s free, easy to use, and available for windows and linux so I don’t have to get used to two different interfaces when I switch from my laptop to my desktops. In 8 years, I’ve yet to find a feature in any of the non-free FTP programs that I’ve needed. Don’t buy one. Seriously. As for your ftp information, it should have been provided by your host. You will normally connect to ftp.yourdomain.com with the username and password you received when you purchased your hosting account.

After you’ve uploaded all the files, you’ll want to go to: http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php and click to install Wordpres.

Fill in your blog title, and email and then hit install. Write down that username and password combo – you’ll need it to log into Wordpress. Don’t worry – you can always change it later on. Congratulations, your site is set up, and ready to be tweaked, filled with content, and monetized.

In Part 4, we will cover uploading new plugins and themes to Wordpress so that you don’t have to keep the standard template. I’ll also share a pack of the free seo plugins I use with every installation of Wordpress, plus recommendations on a premium plugin or two.