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WordPress is the preferred blogging platform for over 35 million bloggers, and this WordPress Tutorial will show you some very interesting (yet uncommon) ways to use WordPress. Although the majority of users choose WordPress’ easy-to-use software for blogging, its power extends far beyond building blogs and static websites. In fact, with over 12,000 plugins available today, you can make your WordPress site do virtually anything you can imagine (well…. except for maybe cutting your grass)!
Not only is it dynamic and capable of doing what you want, WordPress plugins do exactly what they are described to do and “plug right in to your WordPress blog”. This means that with simple configurations a world of opportunity is open to even the most basic user. To get your creative juices flowing, we’ve put together a list of our favorite uncommon uses of WordPress.
DISCLAIMER: We try to recommend the best FREE tools available to you in this WordPress tutorial, but sometimes the best require a purchase. Throughout this post, various affiliate links are used to suggest premium tools. If you end up buying something by clicking one of these links we’d like to thank you in advance for helping to fund our company!
Squeeze Pages, Sales Pages, & Landing Pages
The OptimizePress plugin creates high-converting squeeze pages that allow you to capture users’ information with an ethical bribe. For example, “Give me your name and email and I will send you my free ebook on how to make money online”. Once you have your page set up, you can drive traffic to the page and easily capture email address, pre-selling your future customers on your paid products through your email marketing list. You can also create Sales Pages using OptimizePress – giving you the best of both worlds. Create a high-converting sales page with no technology background by combining WordPress’ ease-of-use with OptimizePress’ advanced technology.
Membership Site
Maybe you have premium videos and articles, and you only want to give access to only select users of your site. The Wishlist Member membership plugin creates protected content, different levels of user access, easily allows both free and paid members to register through your site, and even integrates with your shopping cart to sell access. Your website continues to appear normal to the rest of the world, so you can continue to draw traffic in through your blog and automate your marketing funnel.
Review Site
If you are passionate about a certain niche and interested in finding the best products and services, a great thing to do is to create a review site with MyReviewPlugin. Find and review products, compare them side-by-side, and when people search for product reviews in the search engines, you review will show up with your affiliate link attached!
Video Blog
If you’re like most of us, writing doesn’t come naturally to you! Grab a camcorder and film a daily show or some YouTube videos that are featured on your blog. People like Gary Vaynerchuk and Chris Pirillo have become massively successful through their video blogs. With the right theme choices like VideoZoom Or Groovy Video, you can easily embed your videos right to your blog and, most importantly, they are displayed in a way that is easy for your viewers to watch and interact on your videos. Also check out the collection of Multimedia Themes from WooThemes.
Portfolio
With only seconds to make a good first impression, it is a great idea for artists, photographers, and web designers to have a theme accommodating to easily uploading and showcasing your work. Portfolio themes allow you to do exactly that! We highly recommend the Aperture Theme and ProudFolio Theme. Or, you may not be able to choose which one you want! At WooThemes you can Join the Theme Club and Get All WooThemes for Just $125!
Forum
Forums are considered one of the early forms of social networks, and have been around since the beginning of the web. Naturally the creators of WordPress wanted to make it easy for you to add a forum to your WordPress site! Enter bbPress, a 100% FREE, Open-Source WordPress Forum plugin, from the creators of WordPress themselves! Easily create, following, and manage discussions on your website with this free plugin.
E-commerce store
Using E-Commerce Plugins, you can easily turn your WordPress site into a online mall, allowing your customers to add your products to their shopping cart. Let’s say you don’t have actual products to sell. You may have a great niche in mind, and using an E-Commerce Plugin you can aggregate specific products that you are affiliated with and use your website to sell affiliate products. You’d make a smaller percentage this way, but it allows you to get in business fast, build traffic and a reputation, and later you can increase your profit margins by bringing in products that pay you higher margins. You can also connect your new shopping cart to multiple different merchants, including popular options such as PayPal and Authorize.Net. For a free E-Commerce Plugin, check out WP E-Commerce. It’s powerful but lacks some of the options you’ll only find in a premium plugin, such as Cart66.
Wiki
Almost everyone has heard of Wikipedia by now. A wiki is a collective of information that is created, edited and maintained by the users. Basically you have your users writing all your content. Obviously this is a pro being able to crowd source your website, however the accuracy of the information can be in question, and you should keep an eye on the information your readers are adding to your website. If you want a Wiki-style WordPress website, check out the FREE WordPress-Wiki.
Social Network
Most likely, you’re not going to duplicate the success of Facebook. However, the success of that behemoth Social Network leaves massive opportunity to build your own niche social network! By integrating with Facebook, you can bring your users to a private social network where they can talk about things they have in common. One of my favorites that is not a WordPress site is Give It to Me Raw; a vast growing social network for raw foodists. With the FREE BuddyPress Plugin, you can build your own social network on your WordPress site!
Business Directory
A business directory is a great way to increase your website’s SEO and build revenue. Imagine building traffic and having other business owners pay you to list and review their business! Business Directory Plugins do just that. For a FREE Business Directory Plugin, check out the Business Directory Plugin. For something a little bit more fancy-pants and easy to use, visit WPDirectory Pro.
Job Board
Looking to hire a new helping hand? Maybe you’re a startup looking for interns, or a local non-profit looking for helping hands. There is no easier way to publish an online job board than by publishing one on your WordPress site. Using a Job Board Plugin, you can focus on creating content and attracting your ideal hires – all while easily listing your positions and getting your job in front of the right eyes. Check out the FREE Job Manager Plugin or the Premium WP Job Board.
Daily Deal Site
As you’re reading this post, the hottest thing on the Internet is the phenomenon known as “Daily Deal Sites”. More specifically, sites like Groupon and Living Social have ‘exploded’ by connecting businesses with special offers to the right customers. As these sites with huge waiting lists are tapping into the local markets, it creates a whole new untapped marketspace for niche daily deal sites like Gather Green, which provides health conscious offers to the greater Los Angeles Area. Now with the Group Buying Site Plugin, you too can create your own daily deal site!
What’s Your Favorite New Idea?
We’d love to hear your feedback on the ideas listed above, and any other incredible websites you can build with WordPress. Leave a comment under this post and let us know what you think : )
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{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
You guys gave some great information here on various plugins to use. I really liked the Job board idea and also the business directory.
Thank you Justice! Appreciate the comment and come back and show us what you build.
Thanks for the Tips! I liked the Daily Deal Site because of my some fellow Broadcasting Students and I were looking to create a web show for restaurants in our area and the first I thought about was ” How To Monetize It”. I found my answer!
Sweet we are glad we could help Lorenzo! Give us an update here once you have it up and running.
The Daily Deal Site is fabulous!
Did you set one up Kimberly?
Awesome information here – so many ideas and now I will go and check out some of these plugins. I see a blog post coming up!!
Thanks for taking the time and sharing.
Thank you Lynn, when you make your new blog post come back and share it here for everyone. : )
Cheers!
FBF you rock!!!
This is Jesus from south America and I´m glad to be part of FBF as a customer because this kind of information that you share with us.
I like when you guy say “If you end up buying something by clicking one of these links we’d like to thank you in advance for helping to fund our company”
That´s the kind of honesty I like, which is rare in today´s internet marketing world.
THANKS!
Glad you enjoyed it Jesus. Thank you for being a FBF customer. Gotta keep it real…right? ; )
“If you end up buying something by clicking one of these links we’d like to thank you in advance for helping to fund our company”
Can I borrow that? Thanks so much for sharing this golden information.
You guys da bomb!
My pleasure Deb thanks for the comment. Hahaha yeah go ahead and take it.
Awesome, awesome post. I definitely learned something today
Thank you Patrick, glad you liked it.
1 question… what plugin or code did you use for the facebook comments?
i am sure i can find it out but your response would be easier since i run most of my blogs on thesis.. btw, great post man… you are doing good! Bradley is another great being! kudos and good luck
Hey Salman,
Thanks for the compliments. The plugin is called Facebook Comments for WordPress.
Thank you so much for putting this together. Not being a coder, I would often look at these kinds of sites thinking you needed to hire a webmaster or something to create some of the complexities. I am glad to have this post now to reference to when I need it.
Thanks for the compliments Rebecca. I totally know what you are saying. I spent months myself trying to figure it all out and still don’t know a lick of code. WordPress is just so flexible for us non-tech savvy folk. Come back anytime you want ; )
http://diythemes.com/thesis/
Rachelle, Thesis is definitely solid. Had dinner with Chris Pearson at the Affiliate Summit in Vegas. Sharp guy behind the brand. : )
Just a question, could be possible for you Bradley PLEASE!! to place the social sharing bar from the left to an other place?? May be because of my screen size I can´t delete it in is very difficult and annoying to have it over the text. At this very moment I can´t see part of what I typing because that bar. THANKS!
Hmmmm thought we fixed that. John, you can hide it by clicking the “hide this” link at the bottom of the widget. We are improving the blog as we speak! Thanks John.
Thanks for the answer, but in my screen the “hide this” apparently is out of rich because that part of the bar seems to be below the lower limit of my screen. I hope it is fixed soon because I really enjoy your blog.
Thanks
Hi John, what browser and resolution are you in? We have it set to not appear on screens below 1280×1024 resolutoin
John, we moved the exit button to the top-right of the box, how’s that?
GREAT guys, thank you very much. Now I can read comfortably and without distraction.
Thanks guy for take care of this.
Glad it is working for you now John : )
Great variation of interesting solid business ideas. I am particularly interested in E-commerce store. I would like more information on this business idea and how I can set my up. Can you kindly point me on the right direction on this with the right tools tutorial
Email us at support@freeblogfactory.com. Our team will help you out!
Email us at support@freeblogfactory.com. Our team will help you out!
Great list. Wordpress is the most versatile CMS out their.
Great Info.. Thanks for all your help.. And of course thanks Free Factory Blog for my website!
Thank you Larry. Glad we can help!
wonderful idea! this ivery helpful… thanks for the info.
Great information! I’m working on my first website and this site has paved the way for me helping out my future and reaching my goals. Thanks! I will definitely be in contact once my website is up!
Thanks a lot!
Hello. I’m new here. Do I choose correct category of the forum – this to ask my question?
Maybe someone can help me? Where to purchase zithromax suspension at cheap cost in Australia without a prescription?
Thanks.
Thanks for the great post. I didn’t know there are forum plug-ins for WordPress. Navigating the maze of available plug-ins can be tricky.
excellent info, very useful for me…
thanks,
http://www.eblogresources.com/
if you’re buying a groupbuying plugin.. stay the HECK AWAY From http://groupbuyingsite.com <<< complete joke and a scam…
Hello Vishal Lamba.
We know that you’re disappointed with GBS but we don’t understand why you would post the above comment (and the many others) since they’re completely inaccurate. Your GBS username with us is “vishy” and it’s still current, if you were to use your currently valid API key GBS will work without limitation; your account is absolutely not “disabled” but you’ve acknowledgment that you know this already. It’s obvious your comments are meant to vilify GBS, regardless of accuracy.
The facts are: with a full understanding of the functionality GBS has to offer you demanded we add an obscure feature that our users could not benefit from, we explained that the request would tie up a considerable amount of our development resources and declined to offer it and respectively we requested/suggested you defer to a WordPress developer to help you build your customization, at that point you filed a dispute with Paypal that was ultimately settled in our favor; after the dispute was settled you emailed asking for us to renew your membership and we respectfully declined because of your actions up to that point (which anyone could understand). Now you’ve threatened us with disparaging inaccurate comments that you’re spamming blogs around the internet (this being one of them).
We run a respectful, honest company that cares for it’s customers. I would expect you would run your own company in the same manor, instead I see you trying to blackmail us into something against our will by spamming comments on respectable websites like this one.
Here is a collection of links associating you and your business practices to gain perspective for all readers: http://sqworl.com/544jw9
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