Google+ is one of the top social networks you can’t afford to ignore as a business owner. The more active you are in the community and the better connections you make, the more success you will achieve through this community. You can always import your G+ activities to your blog or publish your latest posts to Google+ to gain more traffic. These plugins help you handle those jobs:

Google+ Crossposting: lets you import your public activities from Google+ into your WordPress blog. This plugin automates this process.

WP Google Plus Connect: connects your blog to your Google+ account. Lets your visitors register on your blog using their Google+ account. They can import their streams too.

WPGPlus: this plugin posts your blog posts to Google+. You can pick and choose which posts get posted. It lets you add more content to your posts using your excerpts.

These plugins make the process of importing your Google+ posts to your blog or sending your blog posts to G+ a piece of cake. They are not perfect but do get the job done.

In the age of social media, promoting your photos and images is much easier. Being active on Facebook and Twitter can help. But there are plenty of other social networks you need to be involved in. Here are 5 social networks you can take advantage of to promote your photo sites:

Pinterest: a fast rising social network to promote photos, infographics, and other types of visual content with. It is a social e-board which can drive a considerable amount of traffic to your site.

Google+: not a site just for photo sharing, this amazing social network can help you improve your site’s ranking and drive more traffic to it.

Fancy: not only you can use this to save your favorite images, but you can promote your work and set yourself up as an authority in your niche market.

Imgur: should not need any introduction. You can use this to share your photos with the world. Since many folks visit Imgur to find cool photos, your work could go viral fast.

bo.lt: similar to Fancy and Pinterest in many ways. It lets you save and share web pages online. You don’t want to over-promote yourself but being involved in this community does not hurt.

Being involved on these sites will take time and effort. But if you play your cards right, there is no reason you shouldn’t be able to increase your site’s traffic significantly. These are especially great social networks for photo-heavy sites.

We all digitize some of our most important documents at work. Unfortunately, scanners are not always portable or easy to carry around. There are portable scanners available on the market but you will have to pay a considerable amount of money to get your hands on a quality model. These 4 apps let you use your iPhone, iPad, or Android device as a scanner:

Scanner Pro: one of the best scanner apps on the market for iOS devices. It scans your documents and processes images smartly. You can protect your documents with passwords and send them to your Mac or PC easily. The app supports Dropbox, Evernote, and Google Docs.

JotNot Scanner Pro: turns your iPhone into a portable scanner. It handles whiteboards, business cards, notes, recipes, photographs, and everything in between. It lets you send faxes too.

CamScanner: compatible with Android devices, CamScanner can scan receipts, bills, tax documents, business cards, books, resumes, and notes. This tool can auto-detect edges of images, auto-crop and auto-enhance images. You can use it to create multi-size PDF files.

Handy Scanner Free PDF Creator: a free application that turns camera pictures into print-ready PDF documents. Lets you capture, enhance, and share documents on the go. OCR is supported through Google Docs.

These apps are affordable and save you time scanning documents using your tablet or smartphone. Using them beats having to carry a scanner around.

Unlike some so-called gurus have claimed, Google+ is not a ghost town. It is a growing community with millions of members. As a business, you can’t afford not to be involved on the site. Google has already integrated Google+ in many of its services. That will only continue in the upcoming months and years.

Most bloggers use WordPress to run their websites. The good part about that is you won’t have to struggle to find plugins that could add necessary capabilities to your site. These 5 Google+ plugins for WordPress help you better take advantage of this community:

Floating Social Media Icon: an awesome plugin that makes adding social sharing buttons to your website a piece of cake. It has multiple styles and is highly customizable.

Google Plus Favicon: uses your Google+ profile picture to create a favicon for your website.

WP Google Authorship: want your Google profile picture and information to appear in the SERPs? You need to take advantage of Google Authorship. This plugin handles that.

Google+ Crossposting: want to showcase your public Google+ posts on your website? This plugin is what you need.

WP Google Plus Connect: this cool plugin lets your visitors register on your website using their Google+ account (effectively making the process super easy for them).

Google+ is here to stay. Thanks to the above WordPress plugins, you will have an easier time integrating it into your website.

As a webmaster, your goal should be to provide your visitors with the best content possible. Their experience on your site matters too. If your site is slow, it could turn them off. There are plenty of ways to speed up your website. The easiest way to do so is by reducing the average size of images used on it. These 5 image optimizers help you do that fast:

Smush It: a brilliant tool by Yahoo! that reduces the size of each image you provide it with. It is a lossless tool so your images won’t show a dramatic drop in quality.

Kraken: a user-friendly tool to optimize your GIF, PNG, and JPEG files. It lets you optimize multiple images at once. Kraken has Chrome and Firefox add-ons too.

Riot: this tool has been around for quite some time. Includes all kinds of image files. It has a dual view which you can use to compare originals vs. optimized images.

Shrink O’Matic: an Adobe Air application that gives you a ton of options when it comes to optimizing your images. It works on multiple platforms.

Image Optimizer: this is a pretty simple online tool that optimizes your images based on the quality and dimensions that work for you. You can also download this to your computer.

These tools are free for the most part and optimize your images for the web. They can speed up your website significantly.

Creating websites and making money from them only from AdSense is not exactly a bulletproof business model. But many online marketers rely on AdSense to keep their businesses afloat. Google already has a sophisticated reporting system for the AdSense program. These 4 iOS and Android apps allow you to check your AdSense earnings on the go:

QuickAdSense: uses OAuth to authenticate with AdSense and show your revenue reports. It has an elegant interface too.

myRevenue AdSense App: shows your account statistics on your iPhone. It works in portrait and landscape modes. It is pretty fast too.

AdSense Dashboard: gives you everything you need to analyze your AdSense earnings. It displays CPM, CTR, page views, clicks, and estimated revenue, and other important data.

AdSense Monitor Widget: want to quickly look up your AdSense earnings for the day? This app has you covered. It shows Today’s and Current month’s revenues. It updates its results every hour or on-demand.

Google AdSense should not be your only source of revenue. At the same time, it can bring a small stream of revenue to your business. With the above applications, you will have an easier time keeping up with your AdSense data when you are on the move.

Many small businesses make the mistake of going with the cheapest hosting solution possible to get their website online. When you are starting, that may not be the most terrible (it certainly is not a wise one). Once your business starts to grow, you should consider investing in a premium hosting plan to handle all the traffic coming your way. It is even better if you start with these types of hosts right from the start.

Just paying a ton of money for a hosting plan does not mean you will be getting a decent service in return. You should always do comprehensive research before picking a hosting partner. Here are 4 web hosts that we have found to be very reliable:

Liquid Web: these folks give you a ton of options as far as their hosting plans are concerned. They have one of the best support teams in the industry. Their hardware packages are quite impressive too. They have plans for growing and established businesses.

WiredTree: WiredTree has pretty decent Managed VPS and great Managed dedicated server plans. It offers superior support, including server hardening, phone support, and proactive server monitoring and restoration.

Rackspace: offers premium cloud computing and managed hosting packages. Many startups and established online businesses work with these folks. Their prices are not always the cheapest but they do handle complex server environments well.

VPS.net: VPS.net has one of the best VPS cloud hosting services around. This is a useful service for people who do not want to commit themselves to the restrictions of a dedicated server. They offer server space in various parts of the world.

There are plenty of web hosts that offer fancy deals and freebies (e.g. advertising coupons or free domains). You often do get what you pay for in this industry though. So if you want to work with a reliable partner, stay away from too good to be true deals. The above mentioned hosts offer flexible plans and premium customer support services, which are what growing businesses need.

Your turn:

Have you worked with any of these web hosts in the past?

Anyone who has run a website on a premium server knows about SSH and some of its capabilities. You can use it to connect to your server, move files, run commands, and do all kinds of neat things. Clients such as Putty and Terminal allow you to make SSH connections on Windows and Mac machines easily. If you need to connect to your sever from your mobile device, these 3 apps have you covered:

iSSH – SSH / VNC Console: an awesome SSH client for iPad. It has all kinds of fun bells and whistles. It supports multitasking. Works in portrait and landscape modes. Telnet, VNC, and RDP all work on WiFi, 3G, and EDGE.

ConnectBot: an open source SSH client for Android devices. It offers simultaneous SSH sessions and allows copy/paste between other applications.

SSH2GO: works great on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. It works in landscape and portrait mode. It gives you access to control keys too. It has unlimited programmable keys.

These mobile SSH clients are pretty decent and let you control your server on the go. There is a lot to like about these.

In order to access your files on your web server, you are going to need a decent FTP client. It would certainly make your life easier when it comes to manipulating files and moving things around on your server. These 4 FTP clients let you access your files on your iPhone, iPad or Android device:

FTP on the Go Pro: one of the best FTP clients around for iOS. It supports FTP, FTPS, and SFTP connections. It offers enhancements for the iPad too. Downloading and uploading files in this app are easy.

Gusto: a code editor and FTP client for iPad. It offers syntax highlighting, tabbed editing, and support for FTP & SFTP.

AndFTP: a FTP, FTPS, SCP, and SFTP client for Android. You can download, upload, and synchronize files with this app. SSH RSA/DSA  keys are supported too.

FTP Client Pro: if you just need a FTP client without all the bells and whistles of the other apps on this list, FTP Client Pro is worth checking out. It lets you view and edit files and upload images to your server.

If you need to access your server files on the go on iPhone or Android, you can’t go wrong with the above apps.

Your take: what’s your favorite mobile FTP client?

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems around these days. It has enabled plenty of small businesses and startups to get online for a very low upfront cost. In order to build a killer site using WordPress, you need to make sure it is based on a solid foundation. The Thesis theme gives you that. It is a superb WordPress framework that is highly customizable and SEO friendly. The sky’s the limit on what you can do with Thesis. These 5 Thesis skins let you bring your site online even faster:

Clip Cart: an elegant e-commerce child theme for Thesis and Genesis frameworks. You get the best of what these have to offer plus full support for Cart66 plugin.

Feedpop: a Thesis child theme that lets you showcase your social profiles and content on your site in an elegant fashion.

Marketers Delight: designed for businesses that want to use Thesis to gain new leads and take their business to the next level. Whether you are interested in gathering email addresses for your newsletter or promoting your services, this theme has you covered.

ThesisFolio: this child theme is developed to handle portfolio sites. You get 12 color schemes and a highly customizable homepage.

Foxy News: want to create a news site with Thesis? The Foxy News is a sophisticated template with 9 custom widgets and 8 new widget areas. It has an automatic related posts section too.

The Thesis framework is easy to get started with and can be a big difference maker for your online business. By using the above themes, you will have an easier time adopting Thesis for your online business.