Dave Winer claims he has earned over $2M from his blog, and not an ad in sight. Ever. Wow.

Dave clearly gets what the value of his blog is to his business: It proves his expertise to his market with every post.

I have talked before about how online content models are notoriously poor performers if the goal is to make money directly from the content via advertising or selling premium content. There are exceptions, sure, but on the whole, unless your blog is grabbing 2,000 sets of eyeballs a day or better (fraction of % of all blog sites on the web, by the way), advertising really isn’t going to make you rich.

But if you blog to prove your expertise, to provide value to your intended audience, to extend your brand and increase your visibility, then even a modest few hundred monthly visitors can turn into a valuable increase in your business.

Content proves expertise. Use your blog to engage your market and demonstrate what you know, and you’ll stay flush with paid work.

(NOTE: I was asked by a friend how I could afford to give away so much knowledge on my blog for free, if I hoped that people would pay me for my expertise? My answer is simple: General expertise is free. Applied expertise isn’t.)

The overwhelming reason we recommend and use WordPress almost exclusively is this: the community of plugins developers is nothing short of amazing! We regularly support and donate to those that show a commitment to keeping updated, clean code available.  We test new ones all the time, and really like the new crop of social media integration plugins we are seeing. But those aren’t for everyone’s corporate site.

Over the years, we have locked in on a “go-to” set of old faithfuls. Almost without fail, these plugins are installed before the first pixel is altered or the first word penned.  So without further delay, here’s our list of 10 WordPress plugins we cannot live without (feel free to ad your links to other indispensables in the comments below):

1. All-In-One SEO Pack Does what is says…says what it does. Finer-tuned adjustments of keywords and page titles.
2. Ad Rotator Widget A highly flexible little bit of code, perfect for callouts and, well, ads, of course.
3. FormBuilder Essential for sites that need multiple, different, customized forms, and a simple interface for managing and assigning them to pages. Go ahead…get carried away!
4. PodPress The quintessential plugin for managing a podcast on WordPress. It’s the little extras that have always wowed us with this one, and the incredible work put into it by Dan Kuykendall!
5. Google XML Sitemaps Some say it helps, others say don’t bother. But every time we install it on an established blog, we see positive jumps. That’s reason enough for us!
6. Maintenance Mode Making changes under the hood? Switch over to a maintenance page with the click of a button. Stylable, customizable, clean, simple functionality. Surprised this one hasn’t been baked into the core code already. Just remember to turn it off when you are done.
7. Subscribe2 Yes, it’s admittedly pretty Web 1.0, but we still have people who prefer to sign up for email notices. Who are we to stand in the way of those standing in the way of progress, right?
8. WP Email Also old-school, but clients always ask for this functionality, and the potential for abuse has never materialized for us. Anyone disagree?
9. WP Print The super-fast and easy way to get a stylesheet up and running for print-versions of your posts.
10. Akismet (of course!) If you don’t know what this one does, it’s because you’ve been so buried in spam email for YEARS that you haven’t been able to come up for air. Pity.
11. BONUS: ThinkDesign Blog’s Test Post Pack A no mess, no fuss way to make sure yo are styling all your elements correctly, without forgetting anything. Sure beats the manual method of creating a bunch of posts, ages and comments with various kinds of content!

These fine coders are all worthy of your accolades and donations. Because of them, web sites actually DO things.

(TIP for designers: I created a directory on my computer that contains all of these plugins, so copying them up to a new WP instalation is super-quick. They are all outdated versions, of course, but with WP v2.7, I can click and upgrade them all very quickly before activating them.)

The title probably says it all, but let me unpack the “why” behind the question.

Internet 101 time… The reason people get online is to find things. In a word, content. Whether it’s Google or YouTube or blogs or traditional media outlets, the web serves up content. Content is KING.

So. We all consume it. But how many of us produce or provide it?

Being a content provider is really about adding value. Participating in the information economy is the first step toward proving your expertise in your market. It’s also the most viral way of telling others about what you know and what you do.

Where are you on this ladder? Have you added a blog comment or a review lately? Have you started blogging or podcasting yet?

The ones at the top of this ladder know something you might not know yet: Content isn’t as hard to produce as you think, and the rewards are often quite large.

In economic down times, businesses have more and more to do to generate the same levels of revenue, with fewer and fewer resources allocated to those tasks. It’s no secret that marketing activities are usually one of the last areas to be affected, because marketing is (correctly) viewed as the one activity that can still have a bottom-line impact.

But not just any run-of-the-mill marketing activities. After all, marketing dollars have to be stretched too. The holy grail of recession marketing is figuring out how to separate the most expensive, least profitable prospects from the prospects who are eager and willing to do business today, perhaps even at a premium. So how does this happen?

Stand up and be the expert in your market.

It is generally accepted that recognized experts make more than others for the same basic work. It is also generally true that experts stay busier, with fewer recession-related dips in business.  With such compelling reasons to demonstrate your expertise, what steps can you take today to begin doing just that?  Here’s our list:

1. Start Podcasting. A simple, sustainable, 5-minute podcast production every week with one central point that touches on your area of expertise; that seminal item that you get paid to know or do for your clients. Use the podcast as a teaser to demonstrate the many solid reasons your prospects should be calling you today.
2. Release regular Video Tutorials that address the most painful problems your prospects face. If done artfully, the unspoken conclusion of these short, pointed video productions is that you are capable of providing the solution they desperately need.
3. Create a Blog. If you do either or both of the items above, then you will be using a blog to do it, anyway.  A blog post twice a week builds a record of authority, both for human visitors and (perhaps even more importantly) for Google.
4. Get your best customers to go on the record by testifying to the value of your expertise. A written testimonial, or better yet, a video testimonial can be a compelling badge of expertise.
5. Begin Publicly Speaking. Anywhere. Anytime. In front of any audience with your market’s focus. This is a long-play strategy, however.  If you signed up today to speak for a group, it might be 5-6 months before the actual engagement.

Expertise is currency. And those that can demonstrate it to their market stand to reap rewards far greater than money alone.

Happy New Year! Some of you no doubt would like to put last year far behind, but if there was one word to sum up what this new year holds for all of us, in my opinion, it would be: OPPORTUNITY.

As a small business person, opportunity has always been found in the places where there is real need. In our case, those needs have centered on companies who are branding and creating marketing messages in various digital forms. We are so proud to have worked with such a great client roster during the past year, and hopefully met some pressing needs in web design, print design motion graphics design and video production. Thank you all for making last year such a fun one for us!

As a feeble thank you, here are 9 Low Cost Opportunities for Your Business in 2009.

1. Determine the stress points of your customers, and develop legitimate marketing that positions your product or service as the immediate relief they seek. Acute economic stress can become a great motivator to solve a nagging problem.  Do you know what your product or service addresses in today’s buying climate?
2. Down time during the first quarter? There is no better time to revisit your web site strategy and make sure it is really working for you. Some of our clients saw exponential growth occur in their business, simply by optimizing a few pages of text for search engines, or adding intelligent, descriptive video!
3. Take advantage of the holes in your market left by competitors who couldn’t weather the recession. Many competitors are thankful when a business offers to step up and take over a client roster, to support their orphans instead of leaving them in a lurch.
4. Position yourself as an expert in your market. Write articles. Take speaking engagements. BLOG! Much of the “getting to know and trust you” phase of new client development can be taken care of in this way.
5. Twitter. Share valuable links to solid, relevant information aimed at people in your marketplace.
6. Organize a small social event for people  in your client list who need to know each other.  Ask them to invite some of their best customers as well.
7. Revamp your business card. It’s an inexpensive move that can have a transformative effect on your first impressions.
8. Start a podcast to cover industry news, or tips and tricks, Q & A, how-to.  Offer the audio in a player on your site as well as a downloadable, and get your feed listed in a dozen or more podcast directories where people often look for information related to your area of expertise.
9. Has the economic news spooked your customers and made them overly price sensitive?  Find ways to redefine your value in terms that make sense to them in this light.  An example: KFC started a video commercial campaign that more or less dared people to try to cook a 7 piece dinner with two sides for less than could be had in their stores.  No one was paying attention to the fact that it used to be an 8 peice deal for the same price, because the focus became the value of the deal they were offering, compared to the time and expense of making it yourself.

Well, from the team at Harkins Creative, we sincerely wish you a prosperous New Year full of ripe opportunities! Let us know how we can help.

Wired is on to something with their recognition of how the new v2.7 of WordPress is a step toward a more fully fleshed out Social Networking platform, or at least tight integration with one.

So far, I am having a hard time coming up with any reasons to NOT like this update. The Flash uploader still doesn’t work with Flash 10, though.

After trying out a handful of Twitter apps, I decided that there just isn’t one out there that does exactly what I want. Having been a part of a development team, and hearing users say we were missing the boat sometimes, I thought I would tell anyone interested what I’d like to see in a Twitter app for a Windows Mobile device. If you build it, let me know!

1) An immediately accessible line on my Today Page, where I could text my Tweet and get it live with no hassle, just like Twit Today (bravo on this, Dale Lane!)

2) A compact yet beautiful stream browser with avatars, an easy way to @ someone’s specific Tweet, and even integrate with TwitPic, like ceTwit, although the UI on that one needs a sprucing, imho.

3) The familiar “Older” button from the Twitter site, for going back in the stream a ways. Of all the apps I tested, NONE had this, and I cannot imagine that it would be that hard to do.

For mobile use, this is about all I really want. Account management, follow/unfollow, etc. is not all that important to me.

Thanks in advance!

(Update: I just found pocketwit and it has pretty much THE BEST interface design of all of them I found. Avatars, twitpic support with access to camera and image browser, GPS updating. And a Sa-weeet kinetic interface! Kudos and thanks!)