InternetBusinessJunkie

Make Money Using Blogs - Lesson 2

2010-11-04T17:46:00.000-07:00

The goal of this exercise is to provide beginners with a solid foundation on which to build an online marketing business. Most of you are eager to DO something online but you just don't know where to start. As I mentioned in the first lesson, the best place to begin is with your own blog. Why? Simple... Blogs are free and they are an excellent way to learn the basics of online marketing without spending money to do it. Start with one blog and learn how to tweak it using SEO techniques that I will give you as we move along. Ultimately we want your blog indexed by Google. If you do this correctly, Google will eventually start sending traffic to your site. How long does this take? It depends on many factors but I have found that my main blogs have all been indexed within a few weeks and in one instance - 3 days. (the blog you are reading now)

Before moving on let's clarify a few terms so you have a better understanding of what we are trying to accomplish.

Indexing - This term refers to the search engines. Simply put - Do the search engines know that your site exists? If they do then you have been indexed. How can you tell? Just query the search engine using your URL address ie. http://makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com - if they find your site then you have been indexed. If it says that no page exists by that name then you aren't indexed.

There are many search engines but we are only interested in the top three; Google, Yahoo and MSN. These 3 engines account for 75% of all search engine queries carried out on any given day with Google processing the most queries by far. (50% estimate).

If you go to Google and type in a query - let's say "how do beginners make money online" - Google will look through all the pages it has indexed (read and recorded) from all the sites it continuously crawls on the Internet in order to present you with a list of the most relevant sites concerning your query.

The brains at Google have come up with algorithms that determine relevancy based on several factors, some we know about and some we don't. The factors we know of include things like page content, the age of a site, keywords, sheer volume of unique content, page rank and most importantly, relevant back links.

Let's look at these factors a bit more closely.

Page Content.

Google likes unique content. You will get indexed fast if you use original material on your blog. If you copy and paste content found elsewhere on the Internet you won't get indexed very fast and usually not at all. You can also get into copyright troubles doing this.

The age of a website or blog

The older the site the better. This is not crucial but Google will give older sites a higher preference over new sites simply to eliminate all the spam blogs and sites that are created daily from dominating its index. This can be overcome with the proper technique.

Keywords

The term keyword simply refers to what your topic is. If I wanted some info on Ugg boots, I would type in "Ugg Boots" on Google and it would present me with a list of sites related to Ugg Boots. Google uses keywords to generate its search. If you have a website or blog that discusses Ugg Boots and you have used this keyword enough times in your posts then Google will rightly assume that your website is about Ugg Boots. If you only used the keyword once while talking about Australian fashion then Google will probably not use your site in its list for Ugg Boots but may decide that your site is about Australian fashion instead.

Keywords are very important for getting your site listed in the proper category. If you are starting a blog that sells Ugg Boots then you had better make sure that the search engines know what your site is about. This is done by using your prime Keywords in your page titles, post titles and sprinkled a few times in your articles. Beware that using your keywords too many times will get you into trouble as Google will see your site as a spam blog and delete you from its index. The rule of thumb is that you don't want to use your keyword more than 2 or 3 times per one hundred words. (keyword density should not exceed 3-4% of your total article) This is very important.

Content Volume

The more pages you produce the better. Search engines like content - the more the merrier. If you keep adding pages to your blog or website, the search engines will crawl you regularly and your site will get listed more often when your keywords are queried. Why? Think of it this way. If you write just one article about a subject, how much info can you give in three or four hundred words. A bit but you will leave a lot of pertinent info out. Take Ugg Boots for example. My first article might discuss the history of Ugg Boots and where to buy them. This is fine and I may get listed whenever someone queries the following keywords; "Ugg", "Ugg Boots", "Ugg History", "Ugg Purchase". The problem is that I won't get listed if someone queries "Types of Ugg Boots" or "How to remove stains from Ugg Boots" or "Colours of Ugg Boots". Are you getting the picture. The more articles you write the more content you give the search engines to list your site under. If my site has a thousand pages on everything there is to know about Ugg boots then I guarantee I will get listed for every query made about Ugg boots. The more you get listed the greater your traffic will be and the more clicks your adsense ads will get.

Note: I have used the Ugg boot keyword so many times in this article that it will fool Google into thinking this post is about Ugg boots and it will get listed for that query - the unfortunate user will find out that this is really about making money online with blogs. My apologies to anybody who found this page while searching for boots.

Page Rank and Back Links

Update 2009 - Over the past few years Google has removed the weight it used to give to pages with high page rank. As a result page rank now has little to do with how well your site will rank for a targeted keyword. I have left this info on the page but it no longer is of much concern. I have dominated many keywords in the search engines with low PR sites and pages.

Page rank is closely associated with back links. To separate the wheat from the chaff Google has devised a page ranking system that it uses to determine how important your pages are. For example, if you followed the first lesson then you have now created a blog on Googles' Blogspot.com. At present you only have one post on it and it should resemble the post I left on my new blog Blogger Basics for Beginners. It is highly unlikely that Google has found your blog yet but if it has then you would be indexed for whatever topic you picked. Someone looking for your post using Google search would likely find your site listed a couple of hundred pages deep in the search listings. This is effectively like not being listed at all. I have had traffic come to my sites from as deep as six or seven pages back in the Google listings but most people will not search more than the first two or three pages. Ideally you want to be on the first page to get the most traffic. To get on the first page you need, above all else, back links. Only the sites that Google deems as highly relevant get on the first page.

Let me explain this further.

Every site is ranked between 0 and 10. The higher the number the more important your site is. If your site is a 10 then I guarantee your site will be listed on the first page and no doubt in the top position. Currently the new blog you set up has a ranking of 0 (zero). Content and the age of your site will gain you some ranking over time. If you do nothing else but post unique content then you might get a ranking of 2 in a year from now, possibly sooner. A ranking of 2 will not get you much traffic. How can you speed up your ranking? Simple... get back links and get lots of them.

Back Links

What are back links? They are links placed on other websites or blogs or forums or directories that connect people to your site. In other words they are click-able links that point back at your site (called hypertext). The theory is that the more sites that have links pointing back at your site the more important your site must be. This makes sense. If other sites are sending traffic to your site then you must be some kind of authority for your niche or topic. As a result Google will give you a higher page rank because of your importance. With a higher page rank your site will then get listed higher in the searches.

There are some rules to this however. The back links that count must be relevant to your topic. If your site is about "Dog Grooming" then links from pet sites and animal care sites are great. If you have links from a site like mine then Google will ignore the links because my site is in no way relevant to dog grooming.

The page rank of the sites giving you links is very important. If you get 1 hundred links from pet stores to your dog grooming site but all the incoming links are from sites with o page rank then you might get a ranking of 1 or 2. If you get half a dozen links from relevant sites that have a page ranks of 5 or higher then you will end up being ranked a 4 or 5. If you can get a link from a page rank 7 or higher you will vault up the rankings quickly and the age of your site will not matter.

Note: You can get thousands of links from sites that have no relevance to your site and this won't help you much. I mention this to caution you against using link exchanges or link farms. These types of links worked in the past but no longer as Google ignores them. By the way if Google catches you linking to sites that are not relevant to your site you will be penalized and lose ranking. This is how link exchanges work - people buy or sell links to anyone else regardless of relevancy. Stay clear of this.

One last thing. You will gain more from one way links. Lots of sites that are relevant to your site will trade links with you. They link to you and you link to them. This is called a two way link. Don't bother as this won't help you much. The exception would be if the other site has a high page rank. In this case go ahead but in reality high page rank sites only want links from other high ranking sites. They will not link to you unless there is an advantage for them. One way links are the best because Google sees them as a confirmation of your importance, ie. other sites think you important enough to give you a link without getting one in return.

The good news is that it is easy to get lots of relevant backlinks. I will get back to this shortly.

The Google Sandbox

One more - one last thing... You may or may not of heard about the sandbox effect. When it comes to Google nobody really knows the whole story on how they tweak their system. One of the most confusing programs they employ is the sandbox a system that keeps your site off the charts for a indeterminate period of time. This is in order to stop spam sites from getting listed fast. A new site may sit in the sandbox for 6 months collecting quality backlinks and lots of unique content and still not get listed in the searches. Then one day you find Google suddenly recognizes all the back links and content and bumps your site way up the charts.

I have several good sites that have been in the sandbox for several months now. This is normal and I have learned to be patient and use the time to get good backlinks and keep adding content. The confusing part is that this particular blog you are reading spent zero time in the sandbox. Google indexed this site in 3 days and has credited me with 135 backlinks already. This has meant traffic has been coming from the search engines since practically day one. I still don't have a ranking yet (all the backlinks are from O page rank sites) and yet my keywords are being placed on the first few pages of the listings. This blows me away as this blog is less than two months old and I am already high in the listings for certain keywords. I should mention that Yahoo and MSN has me even higher. (it's normal to get listed in Yahoo and MSN long before you get any listings in Google).

I mention this because I know what I did different in this blog and my guess is that Google approves and has rewarded my efforts. This is the same technique that I am going to teach you.

I received an email asking how much I was going to charge for these lessons. Apparently the fellow thought I was going to give away a few tidbits to get you all hooked and then hit you up for money before I gave you the really good stuff. Don't worry - there is no fee and there won't be one. Spreading this knowledge around doesn't hurt my business at all and to be honest these lessons will make great content for my blog.

OK, that's a lot of background and we haven't got around to today's lesson. Actually it's pretty simple but you will have to make yourselves do it. Write an article about your Blog's subject matter and post it.

The rules

Try for about 400 words. (Longer is also good but not necessary)
Use your Keywords a couple of times throughout the whole article.
Use your Keyword in the Blog Post Title
Use your Keyword in the first sentence.
Use your Keyword in the final sentence.
Try and Put your Keyword in Bold type at least once in the article - a sub headline is a good way to do this.
Put your link in the link field so that the post links back to your site.

Your link is http://yourblog.blogspot.com - replace "yourblog" with your sites url name.

Post your article on your Blog.

After you have finished on your Blog go to GoArticles.com

Select Submit/Edit An Article

Fill out the info to join GoArticles.com (It's free) and then I want you to re-write your article leaving all your keywords the same but use synonyms for all the rest of the main words. Synonyms are words that mean the same thing as the original word. ie. "New" is a synonym for "Original". (Sorry if I am insulting your intelligence but some people won't know this)

I'm asking you to do this so that you have two articles that say the same thing but are written differently. You will post the second article on GoArticles.com. (It's easy to do and the site explains how)

If Google finds duplicate articles they will not index the pages that the articles are on. (This is the theory at least but isn't quite true - a story for another day) This way you will get your blog indexed. The GoArticle posting is what will get you those free and easy backlinks I was talking about earlier. I will explain more about this in the next lesson.

Before posting the second article I have to show you how to embed your sites backlink in the first sentence of the article. I will explain the reasons for this next lesson, for now just follow my instructions as this is very important.

Example. Let's say your keyword is "dog grooming".

Your Blog Post Title should be just "Dog Grooming". The less extra words the better. You could add more keywords though... like "Make Money Dog Grooming" or "Dog Grooming for Profit"

Your Sub Heading should be something like "Everything you need to know about Dog Grooming". Remember to put this in bold print in your blog post. (GoArticles will not let you make it bold.)

Your final sentence in the article would be something like, "Thanks for visiting my Dog Grooming site".

And now the important sentence... the first sentence would be like this...

"If you think dog grooming is hard then please read this article."

I will now show you how to put your sites link where you typed "dog grooming" (this is only for the GoArticles post - not for your blog post.) You can see what I mean in the first sentence of my GoArticles post here Beginner Basics for Making Money Online Using Blogs

<*a href="http://makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com/">dog grooming <*/a> (replace dog grooming with your keyword and "makemoneyforbeginners" with your sites url name)

(Update - I have removed the working links in the following examples for SEO reasons but the information is correct - just no example. )

This is the code to make a hypertext link - the two * should be removed as I had to put them in as spaces for you to read this code. With out the * you would see this dog grooming If you hover over the link you will see the backlink pointing to makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com in your browser window.

Highlight the entire block of code, copy it and paste it after highlighting the keyword in your first sentence. The final sentence will look like this;

"If you think dog grooming is hard then please read this article."

You have now put a backlink into your article that will point back to your site from whatever sites end up downloading your article and posting it as content on their sites.

Note: GoArticles has an authors box that allows you to put a backlink to your site in it. When people publish your article on their site they are required to post the whole article and your Author Bio (containing your link) as well. Sadly a lot of sites will just post the first few lines of your article and tell their readers that they can find the rest of your article at Goarticles.com by using a link that says "More, click here". This effectively cuts out your backlink in the author's bio which is located at the end of your article. By putting your link in the first line of text they can't eliminate your back link if they don't publish your whole article.

If you haven't figured it out yet, this is how you will get lots of backlinks to your site - one way backlinks, the best kind! You will be surprised how many times others will use your articles as content on their sites. (you can see how many times my articles have been downloaded here... GoArticles Top Authors - I'm number 7 last I checked.) People don't want to create their own and are happy to download someone else's work. Keep in mind that you will be downloaded more often if you have picked a popular niche. If you are still writing about "pre-Cambrian rock formations" you may not get any downloads.

Another Note: The sites using your article will likely not get the page indexed as Google will hit them for duplicate content. You won't have to worry because the GoArticles post is different from your Blog post. While your competition is busy not being indexed using your article you will be getting indexed because of your unique content. Your competition actually helps you by giving you backlinks while you hurt them by giving them duplicate content. Imagine there were only ten sites on the net that competed for dog grooming. Your site uses unique content and you supply the other 9 sites with duplicate content embedded with backlinks to your site. What would Google see? They would rank you at the top as the authority because all the other sites are pointing at you.

Obviously you will never get all the competition pointing to you but out of every 1 million competitors for every keyword I bet 99% use duplicate content which is how the 1% that use unique content get listed on the first few pages. Out of a million competing sites you really only have 50 to 100 real rivals, others that know what they are doing and are working on their rankings. You just have to out perform these sites to get top ranking. Stick with me and I will show you how.

That's enough for today, my fingers are tired.

Tune in again for lesson three of Make Money Using Blogs

(notice how I snuck my Keywords into the last line - and bold to boot)

Later folks.

5 Tips for Marketing Online to an International Audience

2010-11-02T17:24:00.000-07:00

Expanding your marketing efforts to an international audience can be a great opportunity to grow your company and reach potential customers that may not otherwise discover your brand, products or services. Reaching an international audience, though, entails understanding regional cultures, laws and online behaviors.

Before kicking off your international digital marketing strategy, consider the following five tips on how to successfully market to an international audience.

If your business has already begun to optimize your online presence for a global community, add your own tips for online international marketing in the comments below.

1. Start with Cross-Cultural Competency

Having your site translated into other languages is a huge advantage to marketing to an international audience, but having a deep understanding of your own and other’s cultures is also important.

The first step to improving cross-cultural competency is understanding the cultural barriers within which you and others in your business operate. Having a grasp of the cultural assumptions and biases that you hold will help you identify cultural differences that may jeopardize business abroad.

Only after you understand your own culture can you begin to learn about other cultures and make note of differences. Reading books and essays on a particular culture can only take you so far. These readings often generalize or stereotype a given culture. Once you “learn” these generalizations, take them with a grain of salt and adapt accordingly.

While studying abroad in China, for example, a schoolmate taught me some Chinese Internet lingo for chatting on QQ and MSN Messenger, the instant messaging platforms of choice among young Chinese at the time. Instead of saying “再见” for goodbye, I tested out “88,” which sounds like the English “bye bye” when spoken in Chinese. Among my Chinese classmates, it wasn’t universally used, which makes perfect sense — even in America, only certain age groups and types of people use cutesy emoticons and shorthands to communicate online. My shortsightedness and excitement to fit in abroad had led me to overlook the fact that not everyone in China communicates online in the same way.

Think about how your country or region’s cultural norms differ among age groups, genders, geographical areas and so on, and then consider these differences among consumers in other cultures. Learning about and respecting other cultures will help you localize your brand’s message.

When possible, talk with, learn from and spend time with people who represent the audience you’re hoping to reach.

2. Understand Regional Laws

When marketing to a global audience, your business should be aware of regional regulations on products, advertising and sales tactics.

Advertising Regulations: In some regions of the world, advertising related to certain types of products are subject to approval by various governing bodies. For example, in many countries, advertisements for pharmaceuticals must be approved by local health ministries.

Furthermore, comparative advertising is treated with varying degrees of hostility across the world. While America may be relatively relaxed about using phrases like “best” and “better” to describe products in relation to other brands, Germany, France and Belgium are all known for having very strict principles when it comes to competitive messaging.

Verizon’s commercials that compared 3G coverage across America between Verizon’s and AT&T’s networks, for example, made it to fruition in the States, but this type of comparative, and possibly misleading, sales tactic may not be permissible in other countries.

Regulation of Sales Tactics: Various sales promotion tactics — such as contests, sweepstakes, deals and premium offers (i.e., buy one, get one free) — are usually regulated differently across borders. Make sure your desired promotion tactics don’t conflict with local laws before running them.

Product Laws: If you sell your product online to an international audience, it is subject to product development laws regarding chemical makeup, safety, performance and packaging designs, including languages, sizes and materials used.

3. Customize Search Engine Marketing Based on Local Usage

International search engine marketing is a mixture of choosing the right search engines, localizing content and understanding keywords.

Choose the Right Search Engines: Figure out which search engines are used by the particular markets you are targeting. While you can reach many English-speaking customers via search by advertising on the top three search engines in the U.S. — Google, Yahoo and Bing — international use of search engines varies. Often, local markets are best served via local search engines, because the English-language search engines don’t always suffice for niche, local content.

Localize Your Content: It isn’t enough to simply translate your website into target languages if quality is your goal — don’t serve second-rate content to your international clients. When possible, localize your product, services and messaging for each market you serve. This can be costly, so weigh the options carefully.

Choose Native Keywords: With international SEM, you shouldn’t focus on translating keywords into foreign languages. Instead, work with native speakers trained in search marketing to figure out native keywords that would be best associated with your website and its content. Remember that keywords aren’t words, but instead shortened thoughts used by Internet browsers to find particular types of content. Therefore, keywords are often influenced by culture, which is best navigated by locals.

4. Optimize Site Design

In many cases, the first portal for your online communication with potential customers will be your website. Optimize your site design to allow for ultimate flexibility for global visitors.

There are a lot of considerations when developing a global-friendly website, a few of which are:

Colors and Symbols: Colors and symbols are deeply ingrained in cultures; research perceptions of colors and symbols among your target audience and adapt accordingly. In most of Europe and the Americas, for example, white is associated with purity and marriage. In Japan, China and parts of Africa, though, white is traditionally the color of mourning. But don’t be fooled — in Westernized Asian cities, white weddings are becoming more common. Beyond colors, make sure any icons, logos or graphics you are using are acceptable and looked upon in good light in areas you wish to reach. Check out some resources for working with color on the web.

Currency Conversion: If you are in the e-commerce business and offer international shipping, make sure you also enable users to convert their purchase amount into their own currency. Conversion can be confusing to the average consumer. Giving users the option can only make it easier. There are quite a few currency conversion API tools to choose from, but they can be difficult to sort through — check out Exchange Rate API for starters.

Use of Text: There’s more to worry about than whether your site is easily translated. First off, minimize the use of text in graphics, as these cannot be translated. While it may be impossible to eliminate all graphics with text, read up on other design options made possible by the rise of web fonts. Furthermore, make sure your web design flows to accommodate machine translation. Some elements may be fine, but others may not display properly. Test your site using a machine translation service and make adjustments as needed.

Loading Speed: Check out the Yahoo Developer Network for some best practices on speeding up your website. It’s particularly important, when it comes to reaching a global audience, to use a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which is a collection of web servers around the world. Instead of serving your site from one location, you can improve load times by offering it from the server nearest to your site visitor.

5. Adapt Social Media for Various Languages

If your company already serves multiple markets and your site sees a lot of international visitors, you should consider looking into ways to reach your global audience via social media. Here are a few ideas for some popular social platforms:

Facebook: On the world’s largest social network, there are two key strategies for reaching global audiences — creating one Page or many.

By creating one brand Page, you can target updates by location, demographics and language. This is a good option if you are looking to have one hub for content creation. On the positive side, users will be receiving targeted updates in their news feeds, and they will still be gathered in one place. The downside is the possibility of confusing users who visit your Page and find updates in multiple languages. This could limit interaction on your Page.

Creating multiple regional Pages increases the localization of each Page, but this method requires more time to customize, as various logos and text should be created for each one. You’ll have to figure out the right option for your brand, but considering your strategy before launching is a good start.

Direct2Dell_JP 「信じる道をいこう―Take Your Own Path」ブランド・キャンペーン第二弾開始！ http://bit.ly/d6dYUl 20 Jul 2010 from twitterfeed
DellenDirecto Nuevo Concurso para Colombia: La Familia Inteligentehttp://bit.ly/cG2j9i 24 Jul 2010 from twitterfeed
Direct2Dell_CN 在世博探讨业务及IT趋势 http://bit.ly/bdPoCc 25 Aug 2010 fromtwitterfeed
Direct2Dell @obsoletecritic This is @LionelatDell. Please reach out to@DellCares. They can help you with your #dellstreak voicemail. 24 Sep 2010from Seesmic Desktop
DellDirekte Dell på miljøtoppen i USA: Her i Norge ser vi kanskje ikke på USA som et foregangsland når det gjelder miljøvern, … http://bit.ly/akiUZe 18 Oct 2010 from twitterfeed

Twitter: If you expect to tweet in multiple languages, you should create multiple Twitter accounts. This minimizes confusion with readers who don’t speak all of the languages you tweet in. Dell’s Direct2Dell corporate blog, for example, has Twitter feeds in English, Norwegian, Chinese, Japanese and Spanish.

YouTube: While creating video content in various languages is a huge task that may not be possible,adding subtitles to your YouTube videos is a great way to reach a larger audience on the world’s largest video site.

In the end, the goal is to widen your audience by making it easier for them to access your content. These five tips will set you on your way to marketing with greater care abroad. Add your own tips for marketing online to an international audience in the comments below.

How to Make Money Using Blogs - Lesson 1

2010-11-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

How to Set Up a Blog on Blogger.com
This post was originally created in early 2007 and there have been numerous changes done to Blogger since that time. Most of these lessons are still applicable but there have been some changes. Rather than re-writing them all from scratch I have added little "Update" sections (in March 2008) where necessary. If the Make Money Using Blogs posts (There are 5 of them) seem a little contradictory at times this is the reason why. If I have missed anything or you find something that just doesn't jive please let me know and I will fix it. Thanks and if at anytime you don't understand something please leave a comment.

Griz.

Note - As of 2010 I have removed the final 3 lessons as they are now too outdated to be of use. I am attempting to spew forth a complete up to date beginners course which should be done as soon as Golf season ends. :-)

Judging from the emails I have been receiving, a lot of my readers are a bit overwhelmed by the online money making business. You probably don't know where to start and it's hard to get anyone who knows what to do to spill the beans. This is by design as letting everyone in on what works and how to do it is thought to be a death blow to all those currently making money online. I don't share this view. There are potentially several billion buyers out there and estimates of about 150,000 online marketers. There is room for every one.

If you are starting out, you probably don't know how to go about setting up an online business.

You have lots of questions;

Do I need a website?
Do I buy one or build my own?
How do I build my own?
What do I put on my site?
How do I find a niche market?
What is a niche market?
How do I sell stuff?
How do I set up adsense?
What is adsense?
What is adwords?
What tools do I need?
How do I generate traffic (visitors) to my site?
What's the secret behind making money?
etc...

I'm sure the list could go on for a while yet.

The point is most of you want to know where and how to start an online money making venture. The trouble is that all the online marketers are only too happy to tell you what to do... as long as you buy the product(s) that they offer. Everyone has a different scheme for you to try. A sure-fire guaranteed way to get rich! You have heard this enough I'm sure. Who do you trust?

Let's get down to the basics, before you start spending money needlessly. Forget about websites, forget affiliate marketing, forget adwords, forget MLM and JV's, forget everything and start from scratch.

Let's start with "Google Adsense" and Blogs.

This is the cheapest and fastest way to get started making money online. You can set up a blog for free. Google will provide advertisements for your blog for free. You will earn an immediate commission from Google each time some one clicks an advertisement on your blog. Once you get your blog up and running you can diversify with affiliate marketing and other methods of making money. A blog is very simple to manage. The new Blogger (just out of Beta) program (owned by Google) is a beginners dream as a complete computer illiterate can set up a blog just following the onscreen directions. Once you have a blog you will then learn how to market it - get traffic to your site. When you have learned how to do this you can transfer this knowledge to websites and other online ventures. A blog will teach you the basics and you can learn without spending gobs of cash in the process.

I'm sure you have seen screenshots of people who are making hundreds of dollars a day from adsense. Is this bullsh*t? Nope. They earn what they say but beware that they are not telling you the whole story.

There are several strategies for making money with Google Adsense but let's look at the two most common.

1)Using Adwords or other paid advertising to generate traffic to your Adsense sites and hence generate Adsense clicks.

2) Getting free traffic using SEO techniques (Search Engine Optimization) and harnessing the power of multiple Blogs to generate Adsense revenue.
So what is the trick?
Using Adwords

This is what they don't tell you.

A lot of those screen shots show you the money they brought in. They never tell you how much they spent to earn that income. They may make $600 a day but if they are using adwords to generate traffic then they likely spent several hundred a day as well. They always show you the gross, not the net. This doesn't mean that they aren't making a profit - they are or they wouldn't continue day after day - but that their profit is a lot less than they lead you to believe. This is done in order to make you believe that the product they are selling will help you generate profits of $600 a day. If they were completely honest they would admit that it might generate SALES of $600 a day - not PROFITS.
Using free traffic

This is what they don't tell you.

This is the best way for a beginner to start out. Build a blog on a particular niche(topic), create good quality content for it, have Google index and rank your page high for your keyword (topic) and sit back as Google sends hordes of visitors to your site. Finally, count your money from all the Adsense clicks. Right? Well almost.

This is the procedure but they don't tell you that to make serious money at this you will need to create dozens of blogs. Yes, you heard right. Your main blogs will have decent pages addressing the needs of your visitors and suitable for marketing products. The majority of the blogs however, will be set up to simply generate Adsense clicks. The articles will be unique but crappy and visitors that end up on these blogs will quickly leave - hopefully by clicking an ad that will take them to where they were trying to go in the first place. This is called spam blogging and as unethical as it seems, it is how many people make a lot of money with Adsense. No one talks about this aspect of making adsense profits. No one wants to admit that they use this tactic and yet this is the main method of generating decent money with Adsense with out spending money to get traffic.

This is also the system (modified a bit) that I recommend to all beginners. It's the cheapest way to start earning cash, it will teach you all the main aspects of Internet marketing and you can start immediately. However, you will have to decide if ethics or making money is your top priority first.

Decided?

Let's begin.

We will keep this simple to start. In future posts I will explain more and more techniques as we go. For now we need to get a few blogs set up.

Go to Blogger.com and set up your account.

When you have completed this we can begin.

Before creating your blog you will have to find a topic. This is called a niche. There is a lot to learn about finding the right niche but for now just pick a topic you like. Let's learn how to set up a blog before we worry about what kind of blog will make money.

I will set up a new blog with you so you can see how I do it.

In blogger select Create Account.

Select a name. Try and use your keyword in the name and the blog address. (Use Capitals in your name but only lower-case in blog address.)

ie. I want to call my blog "Blogger Basics for Beginners" using the following address"http://bloggerbasics.blogspot.com". When I checked the availability I was told this address was already taken.

When this happens try using a dash like this;"http://blogger-basics.blogspot.com" - notice the dash, this is a way to still use your main keyword by adding a dash between them. As it happens this address is also taken.

Next I try this;
"http://beginner-blogger-basics.blogspot.com" - This address is available and I am still able to use my keyword in the address and my title which is "Blogger Basics for Beginners".

Note: The more popular the niche the harder it will be to get an address for your keyword. If you are doing a "shoe" blog I can assure you that all possible "shoe" combination's are gone. If you are using "Pre-Cambrian Rock Formations" as a keyword you can probably get it for your address.
It is important to use your keyword in your Blog's Title and Address. This will greatly help you when it comes to search engine rankings and indexing. This is a big topic that I won't get into right now - just trust me on this.

Fill in the word verification and hit continue.

Note: The reason for the word verification is to stop automated programs from setting up thousands of blogs. Basically it is there to stop you from doing what I am going to show you how to do. Don't worry, it doesn't stop the automated programs, they have evolved to take this delay in hand and let you work around it.
March 2008: Update. It now appears that Blogger has a new flagging system that can catch most auto-software trying to set up multiple accounts. As you can no longer use link farms effectively this is a moot point and you should only be creating 3-4 blogs per account. Do not use the same keywords in each blog. ie. Don't create related blogs in each account. If you want ten blogs targeted to 1 niche then put each blog on a separate account.

You will now be asked to select a template. Later you can experiment with all the different templates but for now just choose Minima as you will find it easier to follow along with me. (It is the first choice and it should already be selected automatically) I have found this to be the most professional looking template and I use it frequently. You are reading this post on a Minima template. It is also perfectly optimized for SEO without having to tweak it.

Hit continue to select the Minima Template.

Next you will see a page that says "Your Blog has been created".

That's all there is to it.

Hit "Start Posting" and we will begin the next step.

Before posting let's go into "Settings" and make a few customizations.

Fill in your description. Make sure you use your keyword at least once in your description.

After your description scroll down the page and hit "Save Settings". Don't change any of the yes/no settings. Leave them on default.

Select the "Publishing" tab.

Select "Yes" where it says "Notify Webogs.com" and hit "Save Settings" (the default is NO) This will help notify the outside world each time you post something to your blog.

Select "Formatting"

Change "Show" to 1 posts on the main page. (Default is 7)

Select your time zone.

Set "Show Link Field" to Yes.

Leave everything else as is and hit "Save Settings".

Select "Comments"

Select "Show" for Backlinks.

Select "Yes" for Pop up Window.

Select "No" for Word Verification.

Enter your email for comment notification.

Hit "Save Settings", and leave the rest of the options on default.

Select "Archiving"

Make sure the frequency is set to "Monthly" and the "Enable Post Pages?" is set to "Yes".

Select "Posting" and we are ready for your first post.

You will notice that you have a Title Field, a Link Field, and a big box where you will type in your post.

It is important that each and every title you use has a keyword (a term you want to rank for) in the Title. (Again this relates to SEO - and again just trust me without further explanation at this point.)

In the link field you want to type in your blog address so that the post links back to your blog (your home page or the post page).

My link is typed as follows; http://beginner-blogger-basics.blogspot.com/ - this is the URL of my homepage.

Replace beginner-blogger-basics with your address.

My first post is short and to the point. It will mention my keywords at least twice.

It reads as follows;
Welcome to Blogger Basics for Beginners. This site provides tips and techniques for beginning bloggers in order to make money online. If you have questions not covered in Blogger Basics please feel free to email your question to bla bla bla

Make your first post the same way. Use your keywords a couple of times and then hit "Publish".

Then hit "View Blog"

Congrats - you are now a blogger. Simple wasn't it?

Now you can customize your blog. You will notice that your title is a hypertext link pointing to your site. On the right hand side of the page is a section called "Blog Archive" and below that is an "About Me" section.

You can add and remove any section you like by selecting "Customize" from the top right corner of your screen.

I am going to remove the "About Me" section and add a new section for Adsense. Always leave the "Blog Archives" so that visitors can find your previous posts.

Select "Customize"

Click the edit link on the "About Me" box. I am going to select the "Remove Page Element" option to get rid of this but if you want to keep the "About Me" section just fill in the info boxes and click "Save Changes".

Let's Add a Page Element. From the main customization screen click the link that says "Add a Page Element" (Use the right hand column box - not the one on the bottom of the page.)

You will get a pop-up screen with a lot of Page Elements listed on it.

Let's add Adsense to our blogs. Click the Adsense "Add to Blog" button. If you don't have an Adsense account follow the instructions to get one. You will get a publisher ID from Google that will enable you to post adsense ads on your blog. Once you have this pick a Format and use the Blend Template option regarding colors. (it's the default).
Update: Note - if you want to use adsense channels to track your blogs then you will have to create your Adsense code in Adsense Setup in your Adsense account and then copy/paste the code generated into your blog manually. Don't use the "Adsense" element for this - use the "HTML/JavaScript" element and paste in the code after the box opens.
Update: As of February 2008, Google requires all blogs using Adsense to post aPrivacy Policy on their blogs. To see what this entails view mine in the sidebar A Very Boring Privacy Policy"

For right hand column ads I stick to the 160 x 600 vertical Banner Format.

Click "Save Changes" and you will notice that an Adsense box has been added to your right hand column at the top.

Click "View Blog" and see the results.

It takes a little while for Google to recognize your content and place corresponding ads on your site. At first you may only see public service ads or nothing until Google figures out your keywords. Just be patient as this is normal. Having said that, I was given ads related to Blogs/Make Money immediately and you may have got appropriate ads as well if you followed my instructions. Why? Remember I told you to use your keywords several times in setting up your blog. I did this so that the Google bot will have no problem figuring out what your blog is about. If your keyword is about something that has advertisements Google will find the ads. If you used the "Pre-Cambrian" keyword you may never get anything but public service ads as I doubt that there are many advertisers selling anything related to this keyword... I could be wrong though.

Let's stop for today and let you concentrate on the next lesson. You will have to sit down and write one decent article about your keyword. (I can hear you non-writers cringing at the thought) Later I will show you how to get unique content without writing your own but for now you will have to bare down and do a little typing.

Before leaving go to my just created Blog "Blogger Basics For Beginners" and make sure that yours is set up like mine.

PS. Don't be afraid to add and delete elements/Widgets on your blog in the meantime. Play around and learn how to use the Page elements. You can also edit the Blog's type, fonts, colors and element positions. Experiment a bit. Just don't delete your initial post.

7 Ways to make Money Online

2010-11-01T17:37:00.000-07:00

The more you understand about money-making programs, the more likely you are to choose winners and avoid losers.
Even with the best of programs you can always learn more about how to maximize your earnings. There is no substitute for your own knowledge, understanding, and competence, which you may be able to increase by studying these articles.

	Blogging Tutorial – How To Make Money Blogging
	How Much Money Can I Make With AdSense?
	How Much Money Can I Make With AdSense?
	Why Blogging Is One Of The Best Free Customs To Make Money Online
	How to Make Money With Your Travel Blog
	How to Make Money with Your Blog
	Using the Internet to Earn Fast Money – Is This For Real?

Top 9 Ways Of Forcing Google To Crawl Your Site Faster

2010-10-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

Content means a lot on the Web, but webmasters know that the best content in the world is only good if people can find it especially if that content is time sensitive. Getting your site crawled by the search engines quickly can easily make the difference between a load of traffic and a little traffic, while directly affecting your bottom line.

Before we get started I’d like to clarify something. This post ain’t about how to get INDEXED by the search engines quickly. Please note that CRAWLING and INDEXING are two different things.

Crawling is simply the search engine bots/spiders going through your site to see what you have to offer while Indexing is when they archive what your site has to offer so that it appears in the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) each time a query is run for a particular keyword.

As R3R at the Google Optimization Tips and Tricks Forum says:

Crawling is to Vacation as Indexing is to Memories. You go on vacation to create memories. Search engines crawl your site in order to index the pages.

HOW TO GET YOUR SITE INDEXED BY THE SEARCH ENGINES FOR THE FIRST TIME

If you are looking to get your site indexed for the first time by Google, there are a boat load of tutorials about that online. Two hours MINIMUM and 48 hours MAX is all it takes to index a client’s new site using the four methods below:

Once the site/blog has been completely setup with articles and all that, install and activate the XML Sitemap with which will automatically create a sitemap.xml file and then ping Google, Bing, Ask and Yahoo. At the same time, I also make use of wordpress ping features to alert other directories/sites about the existence of my new site.
Proceed to tweet several posts/pages from the new site. Over the last few months, I’ve noticed that Google tends to crawl my tweets quite well as does a particular RSS directory.
Finally and most importantly, I update the Dofollow Blogs folder of RSS reader and hope to God that they’ve got something interesting about which I can leave a few comments. The trick here is to make sure that Google loves these dofollow blogs and crawls them constantly, that way your new site’s link will be detected, crawled and hopefully indexed.
Submit your site to Google via the Google Webmasters Tool which is one of the Top 10 Google Products Every Blogger Needs.

The three tips above do ESSENTIALLY two things. They get Google to crawl your sites and then index them. If the crawling part is made tedious for Google, chances of your site not been indexed are HIGH and that’s why James Adams is going to show you how you can make the crawling process easier for the search engines so that they keep coming back frequently .

Here are 9 ways of getting your website crawled faster.

1. Optimize Your URLs: Rather than having your site create URLs with redundant information in each one, try sending the repeated information to a cookie and making each URL more unique. This means that anything in the page URL that does not affect the content of the page should be removed. Because crawlers don’t have to deal with this redundant information, your site should get crawled much faster because there will be much less duplicated content.

Quick Tips:

If you’re using wordpress, set your permalink structure to either/%postname%/%post_id%/ or /%post_id%/%postname%/. These structures are amongst the best for every wordpress blog.
To avoid the duplicate content penalty, be sure to make use of the More Tag and to also apply nofollow to EVERY tag link on your site. Using All In One SEO, which forms an integral part of the Top 16 Most Essential Wordpress Plug-ins, be sure to activate noindex for Categories, Archives and Tag Archives.

2. Control What Gets Crawled: Use a robots.txt file to tell crawlers to skip content that they are unable to index or that you do not want indexed. This will reduce the time it takes for the search engines to scour your site. You could also use the robots meta tag to tell crawlers whether they should be crawling a page or not.

Quick Tip: If your site is wordpress based and wordpress was installed in the root directory iewww.yourname.com and not www.yourname.com/chuks, you can make use of this robot.txt.

3. Build More Backlinks With Relevant Anchor Text: Google (and Bing/Yahoo!) is known to place more weight on sites that it considers more important based on the number of quality links the site has. By working on your SEO, you should see spiders crawling yourself more frequently as you build links from related high quality websites, particularly competitors.

Quick Tip: Go crazy commenting on forums and blogs while leaving your links behind ( either in your forum signature or the URL field of the blog where you’re commenting). Dofollow, Keyword Luv and Comment Luv enabled blogs work best .

WARNING: Make sure not to use the same anchor text everywhere as Google might think you’re trying to spam them.
Also make sure not to leave your link within your blog comments as you would be tagged a spammer in no time and once Akismet get’s wind of it, your backlink creation days will be hampered.

4. Optimize Your Server: If your site is extremely slow to load (or the pages are massive) then Google may not crawl your site as often or as deep as it could. Log into Google Webmaster Tools (create a free account if you don’t have one) and see if Google has limited its activities with your site because of slow response time. Spend some time optimizing your server for speed so that robots (like Googlebot) can access your content quickly and reliably.

Quick Tip: The speed of your site depends heavily on two factors – The quality of the server on which your site is hosted and the use of external images and JavaScript.

Make sure your host has a reputation for quality in every angle such as Hostgator does.
Try as much as possible to host about 95% of your images and JavaScript on your site’s domain or a reliable CDN provider. You can even create your own CDN using a subdomain .
Even though the server on which your site is hosted runs pretty fast, you are strongly advised to use cache plug-ins to minimize the load on the server especially if you’re using shared hosting. Check out my step by step guide to configuring W3 Total Cache.

5. Simplify the Structure of Your Site: By streamlining the paths around your site you can speed up the time crawlers take to index it. Make sure to externalize common files such as CSS and JS and ideally use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to host them so that spiders and users can download them in parallel along side the actual page. Be sure to use a logical tree directory structure with short names that is not more than a few folders deep.

6. Pay Close Attention to Competitors: By looking at a site in the same niche as yours that gets listed higher in search results, you can get some clues as to how to configure your site. Look out for how they structure their site, how frequently they update it, etc.

7. Improve Your Internal Link Structure: Often website owners get so busy working on content that they forget that the internals of the site impact how often it is crawled by the search engines. Every page should have at least one link to another page, ideally many more. You want the links to be similar in context and with decent anchor text so that they are more effective.

Quick Tip: Whenever you are writing creating a new post/page for your site, be sure to add links to your past articles which are totally relevant to the new post just like I’ve done in this post, if you’ve cared to notice .

8. Add New Content Frequently: One of the easiest ways to get your site crawled faster and deeper is to update it frequently with news, reviews of products, commentary, etc. There’s always something you can write about, even if you’re in a boring niche. Just make sure you do it!

Warning: In as much as adding fresh content to your site on a regular basis will keep the crawlers coming back ever so frequently, you ought to be carefully not to water down the quality of your posts ’cause if you do, you risk losing the respect of your loyal readers and prospective new readers.

9. Promote Your Best Content on Social Networks: Get your links on Facebook, Twitter, and social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Digg. If you can use these sites to drive traffic to your site, links will follow and the crawlers won’t be far behind!

Search engines are the lifeblood of most websites. Follow these 9 ways for getting your website crawled faster and you will get better results, more timely visitors, and more money in your pocket.

Have you got tips of your own on how we all could get our sites crawled faster? Please be kind enough as to share with us below. Cheers

6 Must Have Apps and Bookmark-Worthy Sites For Home Business Owners

2010-10-28T17:04:00.000-07:00

Image via Paladin 27

It’s a tough economy. Lay-offs, plant closings, higher taxes, higher costs for everything from food to fuel, and in most homes, two incomes are the norm. In fact, two incomes is almost a requirement these days.

However, not all couples have the time to work full-time jobs. Let’s face it, a lot of us want to stay home and raise our kids. NP. There’s plenty of web-based work if you’re willing to hustle for it and you’ve got some skills.

Typing, data entry, simple bookkeeping, concierge services, proof-reading – these are the kinds of things home-based business owners do in this outsourced world – and they can do it from anywhere for any company. And still keep an eye on the kids.

Here are some “must haves” for the budding, home-based business owner. Work at home, earn some cash and raise a family. In the age of outsourcing, you can build a profitable business in a matter of weeks without shelling out a lot for tools, or even job leads.

1. Skype

Skype is a popular VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) tool that hooks you up to anyone, anywhere via computer.

Calling another Skype user is free, and dialing a phone, even half-way around the world, is just pennies a minute. You can talk to your clients on the other side of the planet for 20 minutes. Total cost using Skype or some other VoIP system? A couple of bucks. Really.

Skype also has a messaging service, serves as an e-mail client and you can even hook up a video cam to show off the professional you. Today, your clients for outsourced virtual services can be anywhere. And staying in touch is part of your work-from-home job. And while there are other VoIP plans you can purchase through your cell phone provider or Skype owns the on-line VoIP market.

Cost: $5.00 to open an account.

That buys you $5.00 of Skype time so the service is a give-away. You can also set Skype on auto-pilot by giving your credit card number. Then, whenever you run short of Skype time, your card is charged automatically so you never get cut off mid-sentence.

This is a must-have app for the work-from-home start-up that doesn’t want to see profits gobbled up by phone charges. VoIP cuts costs down to nothing, or at least keeps communication expenses under control.

2. Zoho

Zoho delivers a strong menu of virtual office applications because, as a virtual business owner, you need a virtual office for everything from conferencing to customer support.

And while Zoho won’t handle every task smoothly, it’ll simplify the home-based business task list with everything from virtual web conferencing (very cool, very simple, very essential) to on-line collaborations with clients in some distant corner of the world.

I also like Zoho because it provides the tools that enable the start-up, work-at-home business owner to expand his/her list of service offerings from day one. Not a total fix, Zoho solves daily problems and cuts workload down to manageable levels. It also equips you to do more for your clients – and that’s how you build an ever-expanding client base. Deliver more services faster and more reliably and they’ll be knocking on you virtual door looking to sign on for your service offerings.

Cost: $0

3. Basecamp

Basecamp isn’t free but the basic package, which is all you need, won’t be a budget buster, and you can chalk it up to the cost of doing business.

Basecamp is an on-line, virtual office and project management suite that delivers the flexibility your clients expect.

Using Basecamp, you set up work rooms for each client. Examine your work postings for the day from clients, mark projects complete on delivery, upload super-sized files in any format, track project progress at a glance and control your business from an adaptive, intuitive graphical user interface, also called a GUI.

And because each client around the globe has his or her own “virtual” space to share with you, that client feels special, and that’s what keeps clients coming back with that next assignment.

Cost: $24 a month for the basic membership; handles up to 15 accounts simultaneously.

4. Meebo

Meebo is an instant messaging service that links into all of the most common web portals – at least the ones used by the biggest percentage of your client base.

With this one app, you can send and receive instant messages over AOL, Yahoo, My Space, MSN, Jabber, Facebook and other IM services – all from a single launch pad.

Meebo runs in the background, unobtrusively, and keeps you in touch with clients quickly and simply and, today, that’s what your clients want. Fast communications simplified.

Regardless of what IM service your new client uses, you always get the message with Meebo, all on a single page GUI that also serves as CRM – customer relations management – software, keeping a complete record of all communications with clients. This tool is designed to prevent misunderstandings.

Cost: $0

5. Kappix DRoster

Kappix DRoster is a robust scheduling tool that you use to schedule the activities of your clients. No matter what type of work you do from home – from virtual assistant to web designer – you can absolutely be certain that one client will screw up YOUR work schedule by failing to submit docs or other information required to get the job done quickly.

Kappix DRoster replaces a manual client scheduler, like MS Outlook, automating messaging and scheduling of client-side deliveries, approvals and other work-related activities. You control the actions of the clients with this app, not the other way around.

Working from home means organizing the activities of your clients, and this scheduling tool let’s clients know what THEY have to do (and when) to keep the work flow smooth and yourwork-at-home business sailing along.

One disorganized client can shred your whole schedule in seconds, but with this app, YOU notify each client of what’s due and when. Sure, you’re the service provider but if your clients don’t cooperate, your business suffers. It’s as simple as that. Kappix DRoster keeps clients up to date on what’s expected of them. tTat collaboration and pro-active approach to client scheduling is critical to work-at-home success.

Cost: $0

6. Elance

Elance is, perhaps, the best known site for finding work in a range of categories. Are you awork-at-home programmer? Sign up with Elance. Administrative Assistant? There are 323 jobs listed under this category today – from data entry gigs to concierge buying requests.

Copy writer, lawyer, architectural services – regardless of what services you offer from home, Elance has job listings.

This service will cost you, however. Elance does have an entry-level, FREE plan but it’s really limited. You can’t connect your Elance profile and you’re limited on the number of jobs you can bid. (Yes, you bid on jobs on Elance and each bid costs 50 cents.)

Also, Elance takes an 8.75% chunk of the cost of any gig you get. That percentage goes down as you earn Elance more cash, but they will get their money from you, that’s a fact.

Tiered packages are also available for a monthly fee. The basic membership will set you back $9.95 monthly and the professional-tier goes for $19.95 a month.

However, you’ll make that back on the first job you land through Elance. Keep your bids low (give it away) until you get feedback from happy clients. Then gradually, raise your bids and earn more. The competition is fierce on Elance, but some of the jobs pay well by web standards and it’s a great way to network your way to home-based business success.

Instead of sitting around watching soap operas, or playing solitaire on that shiny new computer you just bought, earn some money working in your slippers, keep an eye on the kids and be your own boss. Millions of people are earning money from home.

Are you the next one to join their ranks?

10 Internet Marketing Strategies for Building Brand Awareness

2010-10-28T04:29:00.000-07:00

So before I begin, lets make sure we have a clear understanding of what brand awareness means.

Brand awareness is a marketing concept that measures consumers’ knowledge of a brand’s existence. At the aggregate (brand) level, it refers to the proportion of consumers who know of the brand.

This basically means, marketing your product so that it’s recognizable everywhere, like Coke, Mc Donald’s and Walmart. Take into consideration that these multi-million dollar companies (maybe even billions) spend a fortune on advertising every year to maintain their brand awareness in order to build loyalty for their customers. But for the everyday person starting an internet business this may seem almost impossible.

Brand recognition takes time and effort, so I have provided a few internet marketing ideas which will help you create a successful brand.

1. Sell Yourself First. Brand building can be as simple as being yourself. I can’t count how many times I have been undecided about purchasing a product, the final decision was between two very similar choices and I chose a the product based on a the fact I liked one company (or business owner) more than the other. Building a brand isn’t just about the product you’re selling, but it’s about brand perception. Do people like you? Do people speak highly of your business? Because if they do, they are more likely to purchase from you and tell their friends.

2. Use the Product Yourself. As a small business without much start-up capital brand development can start by simply using your own product! You would be amazed at how simple this marketing concept is, but sometimes overlooked. Every small business should have an online marketing strategy which includes multimedia (videos, images, audio, etc.) of the owner using their products. Allowing a potential customers to see the owner stand behind their products’ quality and is passionate about it’s value will convert into potential sales.

3. Follow Up and Stay Accessible. Brand advertising and development is on going. Most people rarely purchase a product the first time they see it online. Potential customers will bookmark the product, come back, get outside opinions and then make a decision after careful consideration. Your direct marketing strategy should always include following up with a prospect, since it usually takes 6-7 exposures to a product before someone actually buys something. Always take every opportunity to answer questions, respond to emails and phone calls because this can mean the difference between making the sale or not.

4. Article Marketing. Writing articles will help you build credibility and brand visibility on the internet. This marketing strategy is easy, time consuming, but extremely effective in branding your website. By writing short 400-500 hundred word articles and submitting them to the top article directories, your search engine rankings will increase and people will begin to find your site in popular search engines more easily.

5. Smaller Niche Markets. Brand awareness isn’t just for larger companies who can afford to hire top dollar marketing consultants. There are hundreds of thousands of small businesses thriving online by narrowing down their niche to be more specific. So instead of concentrating on building a brand around ‘poodle grooming supplies’, it might be more profitable to concentrate on ‘pink poodle dye and nail polish’. Successful brands realize the importance of starting small while building brand loyalty.

6. Social Media. Since the emergence of social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, branding experts have come to realize that these free social outlets can greatly contribute to brand development and potential sales. Social media marketing strategies can include building a following for your customers to stay informed, offering coupons and incentives and providing direct one-on-one contact with your customers. Social media is critical to building brand awareness for small businesses with limited funds and brand experience.

7. Make a Bang with Multimedia. Every day start-ups are looking for the biggest bang for their buck and the best way to create a buzz around your brand is with multimedia – specifically video. One of the biggest explosions of internet marketing is online video. Once a company starts creating real videos, with real people along with unique content, they become more accessible to the consumer. Because know matter how many brand development techniques you implement, the reality is, people want to deal with real people. Not companies.

8. Build an Email List. List building is one of the most important online marketing strategies available today. An email list is when you offer visitors to your website something free (coupons, discounts or exclusive content) by having them sign up for your weekly newsletter or mailing list. If you have an email list, then you will essentially have direct marketing access to people who are interested in your products. So when there are new additions to the website or a special insider sale, you can reach your customers directly and potentially make more sales.

9. Send Regular Emails. Brand creation doesn’t end once you have captured a long list of names and emails. Brand loyalty occurs whens when you keep in constant contact with your subscribers. As an entrepreneur, you should be sending emails regularly, around once a week (you don’t want to be annoying). These emails should include additional information about your products, news and articles during the week they may have missed.

10. Research Keywords. Keywords are the specific words people input into Google (yes, or BING or Yahoo) search in order to locate information on the internet. For example, if I am looking for Karate classes in Richmond Virginia, I may go to Google and type in ‘Karate class Richmond Virginia’ and the most popular options will show up first. If you are the owner of a karate class in Richmond Virgina you would make sure you use the keywords ‘Karate’, ‘class’, ‘Richmond’ and ‘Virginia’ were appear on your website (within the page title and body text) and perhaps even in some article titles for article marketing.

The brand building process is on-going. Even after you have implemented these internet marketing strategies, there is always more that can be done. Becoming successful online is a lot easier that most people think. All you need is time, energy and knowledge while keeping people’s best interests in mind.

Top 5 Ways To Make Money Online

2010-10-28T04:21:00.000-07:00

This entire blog is a testament that there are hundreds of different ways to make money, both online and off.

But today we are going to have a look at the top 5 most popular ways to make money online.

Make Money Building Niche Websites
Make Money Writing Your Own Blog
Make Money Advertising CPA Offers
Make Money Selling E-Books
Make Money Taking Surveys

Make Money Building Niche Websites

We all know that your best shot at making money online is to appeal to a specific group of people – a niche market interested in a specific topic. If you try to appeal to everyone then very few people will actually buy what you’re selling.

That’s why topical content sites are a great way of making money. You simply pick your topic, build a site around it and wait for the money to start coming in. So long as you focus on a profitable topic you’re home free…

Make Money Writing Your Own Blog

More and more people are realising that blogging is one of the best ways to start your own online business. It requires minimal start up costs, you can build an impressive and loyal readership over time and once you know how to monetize your blog it can also bring in a decent income that will keep on coming even on the days when you don’t update your blog.

There are several ways to set up a blog online. You could use WordPress, Blogger, or another free site that hosts your blog for you; or alternatively you can set up your own blog under your own domain name.

Make Money Advertising CPA Offers

With the internet such a large part of our lives today, more and more individuals are looking for opportunities to make money online. While some are doing it to bring in some extra cash, others are looking for full-time careers and are being quite successful with their endeavors. Many are doing this by becoming marketers of CPA opportunities. You, too, can make money marketing CPA offers.

Make Money Selling E-Books

Make no mistake – e-books are big business online. No matter what you search for there will be someone out there selling an e-book on it.

But the best thing about them is that they provide one of the most potentially lucrative businesses you could ever hope to start online. So long as you do your homework and don’t try and cut corners you can start making inroads into this business within days of deciding to get started. There is plenty to learn but none of it is beyond you – and even if you don’t think you’re up to the job there are plenty of people you can call on to help you.

Make Money Taking Surveys

Are you looking for a legitimate way to make money online? Maybe you want some extra spending money. Or perhaps you need the money to pay bills. Either way, getting paid for filling out simple surveys can be a fun and lucrative way to earn that extra cash.

In fact, there’s quite a lot of money to be had — and the cool thing is that you can earn it in your spare time. Any time you can spare a few minutes — or a few hours, you can make money.

Why You Should Stop Using Free Email Services For Your Business

2010-10-28T04:17:00.000-07:00

Stop Using Free Email Services For Your Business

Free Email Services

Do you want your prospects to take your business serious? Then you’ve got to stop using free email services to run your business! Come to think of it, how will you feel if you receive an email from Apple Inc. and the email address is mr_apple@gmail.com? You most likely will assume that the email is fake and probably the work of scammers. Successful Entrepreneurs don’t use such services to run their business!

Why You Should Stop Using Free Email Services

The online community has a peculiar way of evaluating business outfits. You will hardly be taken serious as an entrepreneur if you do not have a unique domain name registered for your business. Online prospects will simply assume you are not a serious entrepreneur if you refuse to pay as little as $10 to have a domain name for your business.

So likewise you will not be considered a serious businessman if you keep on using free email services provided by Yahoo, MSN, Google e.t.c. If you really mean to convince your prospective customers that you have quality product or services to render, then you must be willing to spend a little cash to get an email that bears your business’ domain name. Failure to get one may damage your business profile.

Using your own domain name as email address adds credibility to your small business. It creates the impression that your business is a well organized corporate organization. For example,admin@mydomain.com, sales@mydomain.com and support@mydomain.com looks and sound more businesslike than admin2007@gmail.com, sales2007@yahoo.com andsupport2007@hotmail.com.

Free email services often add advertisement as footnotes to each email sent through them. You are not at liberty to determine the kind of advertisement that is embedded in the emails you sent. Such advertisement oftentimes serves as distractions, as potential customers are lured to click the links in such advert instead of taking the action you wanted. Such adverts are usually written by expert Sales Copy Authors, so they are often more appealing and persuasive than your message!

Also, since the advert is the last thing your readers will see in the email, the probability of them forgetting the message of the email is very high. Why should you be promoting others business instead of yours?

Having your own email accounts that are tailored for different purposes such as Admin, Info, Sales,Support etc, makes it easier for you to organize your emails for quicker response. You will be better positioned to attend to urgent emails while those that are less important can wait till a more convenient time.

If you have your own emails, you can make use of auto-responders to send pre-written emails in response to generic requests. This can save you invaluable time that would have been lost writing the same kind of email each time a similar request is made.

Finally, I will strongly warn you NOT to use Free Email Services for financial transactions. It can be quite risky as crackers can hijack such email and use the information to defraud you or your client.

Freelance Links

2010-10-27T15:09:00.001-07:00

5 Tips To Personalize Your Online Communication Using Automation

2010-10-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about blogging is that it has such a strong personal aspect. Most effective (and popular) bloggers are that way because their subscribers are able to identify with their personalities.

The more you blog, and the better you get at it, the more people subscribe to your blog and newsletter (hopefully). People want to follow people who are interesting, and who they can learn a lot from about topics they are interested in.

Here’s the thing – the more subscribers you have, the harder it is to communicate with each person individually.

The potential problem this poses has to do with the reason most people come to your blog – the fact that they can identify with your personality. The question is – how in the world are you going to communicate effectively with a thousand, ten thousand, or even ONE BILLION SUBSCRIBERS (Austin Powers voice).

The answer to that question is simple – Automation.

With services like Aweber, automation becomes a cinch, and if used effectively, you’d be surprised to see how much value you can add to the relationship between you and that individual subscriber.

Ok, I know what you are thinking. How can automation make me more personal? Great question! And there are several answers to that question. What follows are five tips for doing so, and examples of how I’ve applied them to my business.

Tip #1: Speak To One Person, Not Everyone

When someone subscribes to your mailing list, they are most likely doing so to receive communication from you. However, there are so many mailing lists out there that bulk people together with statements like “Hi guys”. This tells the individual that you are communicating to a group and, at some level, makes them feel they aren’t important.

My recommendation is this. Whenever you write a followup email, or broadcast email, think of what you would say if you were writing to a friend that asked you about the topic you are going to write about. Keep it simple, but personal. Here’s an example of an email that I’ve sent out to my subscribers:

Hey FIRSTNAME,
I just finished writing an article on my blog, and I thought that you would find value in it. It really questions what most people think about starting an online business and says something that most people won’t say. You should check it out.
Here’s the link!
Let me know what you think by leaving me a comment.
Leslie – The Freebie Guy

Short, sweet and to the point, but the important thing is that you don’t feel as if that’s going out to thousands of other people, even though it most likely is. When I send an email like that, I’ve clearly noticed that my clickthrough rates are SIGNIFICANTLY higher than when I don’t have the personal element in there.

Tip #2: Reveal Who You Are And What You’ve Done

The more people get an insight into who you are, the more they grow to trust you (if you deserve their trust). This is a great thing for both parties. Great for you because you get a stronger following that can grow quickly, and great for them because if you are providing value (which you should be), they can benefit by learning things to help them reach their goal.

One of the things people identify with is other people who also make mistakes. There are so many so-called gurus out there that appear to never make a mistake that when people see individuals on the path to success that share their mistakes and lessons they’ve learned, those individuals really stand out, and are more interesting to the average Joe (like myself).

In one of my followup sequences, soon after someone subscribes to my list, I send them a link to a video, where I talk about how difficult it was for me to get started online, how I invested college tuition money and money that was supposed to go towards my wedding to start my online business, and how I lost it ALL in the process.

I know what you are thinking – “Wow, that was stupid!”. Well, that’s exactly how I felt, and that’s exactly what I shared. Then I told them the lessons I learned and how that contributed to making me a better (and hopefully smarter) entrepreneur.

Here’s one of the comments that illustrates the kind of feedback that was left on that video:

Leslie, first off thanks for opening up and sharing your story. I too have made some silly decisions with everything that I have done… Just listening to your story lets me know that there’s a light at the end of this dark tunnel.

Is it likely that the person who left that comment (along with the others) are going to open my next email? I’d like to think so

Tip #3: Provide Value Before Asking For Anything

Let’s be real – there are a ton of blogs out there that are competing for attention. Many of them try to get people to buy something from them, but don’t contribute much in terms of value.

I’m a strong believer that growing a successful online business is not about what you can get, but what you can give. Everything you do should be because you are trying to provide value. With every email you send out ask yourself the following question – “What am I saying in this email that will help Bob or Sue (the individual) move towards reaching their goal?”

When you sell something, are you selling it just to make money or is it because you know that buying that product will help someone reach their goal? If it’s just for the purpose of making money, you might want to re-evaluate what you are doing.

I’ve done this in my business by providing lots of video training, where I teach specific concepts in a way that attempts to make it easy for anyone to understand. They receive all of this valuable training before I even sell them anything.

I’ve gotten tremendous feedback from these training videos and I strongly believe they have contributed to making my relationships with my subscribers much stronger.

Tip #4: Ask For Input

Have you ever been in a relationship with a talker? You know the kind of person I’m talking about. The kind of individual that doesn’t need anyone around to have a conversation. I’ve been in that situation before and let me tell you – it didn’t last long AT ALL.

A effective relationship is a two way street. It’s not all about you sharing. It’s also about them sharing. When there’s that “give and take” situation, both parties feel as though they are valued, and the likelihood of the relationship lasting goes up significantly.

People are more likely to stay connected to something or someone if they have a vested interest in that thing or person. When you get someone’s opinion on what direction you should take, they are more likely to feel like they are a part of the process.

I’ve seen this firsthand in a very strong way when I ran a forum. When making a number of key decisions, we opened those decisions up to suggestions from the community. Whenever we did that, the members were more supportive of the changes we’ve made.

I’ve also done this by conducting surveys among my subscribers, asking them to help me make certain decisions. The fact is that every decision I make about my business will affect my subscribers in some way. I might as well get their input on some of these things.

Tip #5: Communicate Regularly

Way too often, when you sign up to a mailinglist, you get what you signed up for, and then don’t hear from the individual again for a very long time. In the last two weeks, I’ve received emails from two marketers saying something like:

“Hey, remember me. I’m the guy whose list you signed up to a few months back. I just wanted to let you know that . . .”

At that point, I went back to their website and couldn’t even remember who they were and what I signed up for. This is BAD business. No, this is TERRIBLE business. Yes, it takes time to develop content for your newsletter, but it is definitely worth the investment. You always want your subscribers to have you in their minds. You can do this by communicating with them on a regular basis.

In the past, I’ve done this by doing regular broadcasts. However, it is much more efficient to work on setting up a weekly follow up sequence so that every person who signs up to your list a year from now get the benefit of going through your content in a predetermined sequence, and you get the benefit of not having to do any additional work in that process.

The Alternative

There are some people out there that believe that automation is a terrible thing. They would prefer to deal with every person individually. I used to share the same sentiment, until I was spending COUNTLESS hours attached to my computer, trying to deal with the demands of a growing following.

When I reached to the point where I didn’t have enough hours in my day to keep up, I was super stressed, and my wife started complaining about the time that I WASN’T spending with her, I knew that something had to change. However, I never wanted to loose that personal touch.

That is why I did it in the way I outlined above. My followers started receiving better support than they had received before, and my business continued growing in a way that didn’t mean more stress for me, or for my wife.

(Side note: They say that if you can keep your wife happy, you will be happy too )

I know there are varying opinions on automation out there. What do you think? Is it good or not? Do you use it? Let me know in the comments below.