Keyword Research Techniques

Written by Matt Carteron December 15, 2010 and posted in Niche Research—

In the video below I have demonstrated an some important that will ensure you are choosing keywords that will make you good money for longterm. Hope you guys enjoy!

--

View the Original article

Affiliate Internet Marketing Tips

Written by Matt Carteron December 20, 2010 and posted in affiliate marketing—

Hi everyone,

In this video I have demonstrated a few very important that are essential in order to increase your affiliate conversion rates.

That’s all from me, I hope you found these useful, just remember to do your market research, its vital!

--

View the Original article

The Difference Between Blog and Email Marketing

Blog and email marketing are two totally different things. They are two complete different ways to market something, whether it is a product, or a service. You are going to find that just because someone may use email marketing to make an income, does not mean that they always use blog marketing as well.



Blog marketing is when you use a blog to promote a service or a product. You can market the product or service so that it appeals to others, and is something that they might want or need. By using a blog you can get the word out about the product that you are using and let others know all about it. There are several ways to do this. It can be done as simple or as complicated as you want. For example, you can market your blog by exchanging links with other blogs that are relevant to yours. You can also leave comments on other blogs that will in return get you more visitors and readers to your own blog. Don’t forget to update your blog as often as possible as well. As that will make a huge impact on your blog.



Email marketing is when someone uses an email to get the word out about a product or s service. You simply would have your visitors to sign up for newsletters, and then send an email out to all of them that did so. However, you will also find that email marketing is great for many other things than just getting the word out. You can put affiliate links in your newsletters and hope that your readers will sign up under you and you will get a commission for those things.



Marketing in every way is pretty much the same. You have to know who your audience is and who wants what you are selling. Once you know this, the rest of it is cake. Whether you are email marketing, affiliate marketing, or email marketing. Even if you are into marketing offline, the same will apply. You will need to know who wants what you have to sell and you should have no problems selling it.



Blog and email marketing are alike in many ways, but yet also very different. When you are using a blog for marketing, you are going to see that you have to post what you are selling on the blog. But for email marketing, you can use an email to those interested parties. When you use a website to have people opt in to your newsletter for email marketing, you know that you are not sending spam, but something that they requested from your site. This is something that they asked to be sent when they sign up for a newsletter. Where as if you are marketing a blog, you would do this much the same way as you would a website, and get visitors to come to you.



Whichever you prefer, whether it is blog marketing or email marketing you can still get the results that you want and that you are looking for. Just know that it takes time and persistence to achieve what you want, and get it from marketing online. Patience is key to getting your blog out there to everyone that is interested in it.

Staying On Top Of Blog Marketing News

Blog marketing is something that many take seriously. However, if you are into blog marketing and make your living off of your blogs, you are quickly going to realize how important staying on top of the blogging news is. Blogs are also known as web logs, and are used for many things. They are used for journaling, promoting things, and just getting your point across at times. Using a blog to get any of these things done is a great thing. That is because so many people love to read blogs, and they like to hear what others have to say. If you are a blog owner, then chances are you read blogs yourself and often appreciate other’s views on things. Whether it is something that you are looking to purchase, a hobby, or news. Blogs are loved by many.



Blog marketing is only as hard as you make it. You market a blog a lot like you do a website. You are going to find that blog marketing is somewhat less expensive than owning a website though. For example, when you buy a domain, you do not buy it for life, you only buy it for so many years. That can be just one year, or more. Which is a personal preference. So, starting a blog does not have that cost up front that you are looking at for a website, nor does it cost anything monthly to host as a website would. With all of the free blog options that are available to you, there is no need to pay for one.



When you are blog marketing, it is a great idea to stay on top of the news for blogging as well. This will ensure that you are aware of the new things and tools that become available to bloggers. Whether they are promotion tools, or tracking tools, any of them will allow you to keep track of your blog and market it better than ever. Whenever a new tool or technique comes out, you can bet that it will be talked about in the blogging news. Which is great because that makes you as well as other bloggers aware of what is going on.



Not only does blog marketing news make you aware of new things, but it also keeps you up to date on old things that you all ready use. For example, if pinging your blog no longer was good for a blog, you would definitely find out about it in the blog marketing news. So, it can be used for new techniques and tools as well as old ones.



Blog marketing news can be found anywhere that you would go to find website marketing news. You will see that it is also blogged about so if there is anything particular in the news that you are looking for to read about blogging, you will not have to go far. But by reading other blogs about the new news, you are able to get others views on the tools and techniques as well.



As you can see, it is very important to keep up to date on blog marketing and the new things that come out for it. You never know when the latest thing is going to hit the blogging world again, so keeping your eyes peeled is great idea.

Small Business Blog Marketing: What Does It Entail?

Blog marketing can be quite complicated for anyone that has never even blogged before. If you are considering getting into small business blog marketing, you will want to first have a blog and see what that is like before you get into something more. Blogging requires dedication and patience. You have to update your blog on a regular basis in order to keep your readers happy. Doing so will keep them coming back for more and to see what you have new to say.



Small business blog marketing consists of blogging about your business. It definitely is a great tool that you should use to get your business out there and known by others. However, you will need to be patient because it is a long process that will require much of your attention. Just because you have a blog does not mean that someone is going to find it and read it. You are going to have to make it known. If you have a website for your business, you can link your blog to it and that will let the ones that know about your business and business website know about your blog as well.



Small business blog marketing is something that anyone can do. Having a blog and keeping it up to date with the latest information is not hard. All you need to have is a plan and you will be set to market any type of business from your blog. Whether you are selling a product or a service, it does not matter. A blog that is marketed the right way will be beneficial to any business whatever it might be.



So you are probably wondering how you are going to accomplish this small business blog marketing. When you are marketing a blog, you pretty much do it the same way that you would market a website. It is going to need keywords, and content. You can write the content yourself, or pay someone else to write it for you. That part is totally up to you. However you will want to be sure that the content is decent and something that your readers will want to read. This will keep them coming back. Make sure that the content is written from special keywords that you choose. You will also want to become familiar with SEO which is Search Engine Optimization. SEO will help you to optimize your blog to get a better ranking with the search engines.



Once you have chosen the keywords, and gotten some content published on your blog, you will be ready to get it out there some more. Link exchanges are wonderful for marketing your small business blog. You want to try and exchange links with sites that are relevant to yours, but not in direct competition. If you try to exchange links with sites in competition with yours, you are going to find that many of them will turn you down in fear of losing business to you.



Paid directories are a big part of small business blog marketing as well. You can pay some directories to list your blog URL in their directory under the specific category that it falls under. However, some of these even have specific qualifications that you must have to get in. Follow all of the application steps, and you should be ok. Just do not try to submit your blog to a directory that it does not qualify for, or fit in.



Another important thing to remember when you are into small business blog marketing is that if anyone leaves you a comment on your blog, you should acknowledge it and respond. You can also comment on other blogs that are relevant to yours, and leave a link to your blog as well. This will help bring in visitors to your blog, and you will begin to see more and more traffic.



Small business blog marketing is not rocket science, however someone that has never marketed a single thing before in their life may have problems. Just be persistent, and don’t give up.

Six Figure Blog Marketing

Blog marketing is sweeping the internet world. It is something that most everyone is doing and using to make an income. There are some that are even six figure bloggers. How do you become a six figure blog marketer? Anyone that is making six figures with blog marketing is not very likely to give up their secrets. Unless they can sell it to you in an ebook. However, if you are serious about making that amount of money and you have money to invest in it, chances are you could be a six figure blog marketing guru as well.



Six figure blog marketing is more than likely not done with one single blog. It would take many many blogs to create a six figure income, and if you have the funds and the resources, it could be done. The first thing that you would need to do is find out the markets that are low in competition but are high in the search engine rankings. Doing so will give you a great idea of what you should be marketing in your blog and what you should stay away from. Finding a niche market that is barely touched in the world of internet marketing is the best thing to do. However, you then have to decide if the niche markets that you have discovered are ones that you are interested in. Some start out with things that they know and get great results, whether they are niche markets or not.



When the goal is six figure blog marketing, you are going to find out real fast that outsourcing some work to others is not a bad idea. Doing all of the work yourself is not something that is possible when you are wanting to make that amount of money. Just be sure that you hire those that you can trust and have a great reputation for getting work done on time and accurately. You will not want your workers to put you behind schedule.



While you are planning to outsource some of your work to others, you may want to decide and get an outline of just what is needed and the priority. Perhaps you need someone to set up your many blogs, or maybe you need someone else to write the content for the blogs. You can easily find experts on particular markets that you are wanting to blog about and pay them for the rights to their articles. Then post them as needed on your blog.



When you start looking to make a six figure income with your blogs, you are going to see that you will need to be sure that they are all updated in a timely manner. You are going to have to update them as often as possible, and maybe even hire help to be sure that everything goes smoothly with that as well.



Making a six figure income with blogs is the ideal work at home job. You make great money, and have great people working for you. Just be sure that you hire those that know what they are doing and are fluent in the language that you are marketing in as well. Someone that speaks and writes poor English will not help your income, but may hurt it if you have English based readers.

Learning About Blogging and Blog Marketing

Blogs, which are also known as web logs are all the rage right now online. Everyone has a blog, and everyone is making money by blogging. The question is how are they doing it? What is so special about a blog that you can make money by posting on it? First you should know that a blog is a little bit like an online journal. You can make posts in it about anything that you want to, and then publish it for the whole world to read. If you have never blogged before, it is a good idea to do so just for fun in the beginning, so that you can get a feel of what it is about.



Once you have become familiar with the blogging platform, and kind of get the jest of it, you will be ready to try and make some money at blogging. However, for a beginner blog marketer, you want to take it slow and one step at a time. You will need to do things in order and that will help keep you from getting overwhelmed with it all.



The first thing that you want to do is find a niche to blog about. This can be anything that you know, want to know, or want to learn. Become an expert in that field. The more you know, the better. The niche can be anything that you want it to be. It can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be. Think about something that you know and love, something that you want to learn all about. You will come up with a niche that will be perfect before you know it.



Now that you know what your blog will be all about, you are ready to get down to business. First of all you want to decide how often you will update your blog. Will it be daily? Every other day? Maybe even weekly? Whichever you choose, stick with it and make sure that you hardly ever miss an update. Once you get readers to your blog you want them to know that you will update it as often as you say. They need to know how often to check and visit your blog for new information. If you post like you say you will, you will end up with a large reader base that will follow you anywhere.



So now that you have a niche, and have decided how often your blog will be updated, it is time to get down to some marketing. To begin with, you need to get back links. Back links are important and they mean that someone is linking to you. There are a few ways that you can get these much needed links. You can look around on the internet and find some sites that are relevant to your niche and request a link, or your can post comments on other blogs that are relevant and leave a link behind with your comment. Either way, they both work and they both count as links that you need to your blog.



Are you trying to sell things from your blog? If so you are going to find that promoting products in your blog is a great marketing technique that you can use as well. People do it everyday and make lots of money from it. Whether it is affiliate links, or your own products and services that you are promoting, you are going to find that blog marketing is one of the best ways to get the word out and let people know that you are in business. Marketing from your blog has never been easier.



With all of the great tools that are out there now for blog marketing, it is really hard to have a blog fail when you use them. Make sure that you ping your blog every time it is updated, and work on those links as they will make a huge difference.

Great Blog Marketing Techniques

Marketing your blog is not all that hard to do. You have to be persistent and want success however if you want your blog to do well. You cannot just make a post and forget about it. You have to continue updating your blog and marketing it so that it will become popular and one that everyone wants to read. There are other ways as well that are good marketing your blog. Keep reading for more information.



Interviewing people and posting it on your blog is an excellent way to market it. Just be sure that the people that you interview pertain to the market of your blog. You want all of your posts to be relevant, including any interviews that you might do. For example, if your blog market was vacuum cleaners, and you did an interview with the owner of Hoover vacuum cleaner; that would definitely pertain to your market.



If you hear any news on the market of your blog, be sure that you post it. Everyone loves news, and event he readers of your blog will appreciate you blogging about the current events in the market that you are blogging about. Something to keep in mind when blogging about the news is the more current the news, the better. No one wants to reread old news, so it is a great idea to try and stay as current as possible when you are blogging about the news.



Contests are another way that you effectively market your blog. Having contests on various things would be a lot of fun, and something that will keep your readers coming back. Everyone loves to win things, and you can also make the prize that you are giving away relevant to the market you are promoting on your blog.



While good content is something that you will need for your blog, you also want to ensure that it is original content as well. You can market a blog with something that is copied and that you do not own the rights. Plagiarism will get you in trouble with Google as well as the person that originally wrote the content. Be sure that all of your posts are ones that only you own the rights too. This is a great thing to know and do when you are marketing your blog.



Press releases are also an excellent way to market your blog. Sending out a press release or having one made for you is a great idea. You will find that they are even affordable for most budgets, and some companies offer a package deal for example, if you let us write your press release we will submit it for half price. Who could resist a deal such as that? Especially when you are budgeting and trying to get the most from your funds.



Comments on a blog are also a very important aspect of blog marketing. You will want to be sure that you always answer and acknowledge the comments that are made to your blog as well as others. When you show that you are an actual person that can hold a conversation, you are showing others that you are real and that you really and truly have the best intentions for your blog. Make sure that no comment goes unanswered.



Marketing a blog comes naturally for some and can be a little harder to focus on for others. Another important thing that you will want to do for your blog is to be sure that you find links. Exchange links, get one way links, and ask for more and more links. You will never have enough links to your blog. The more links the better in this case.



Blog marketing is not hard to do. Just be sure that you follow all of the proven and tried techniques that others are talking about and you wont go wrong. Just don’t give up and keep on marketing because it will pay off sooner or later.

Getting Started With Blog Marketing

Blog marketing is quite easy to get started in. If you all ready have been blogging, you will more than likely pick it up very easily and naturally just as if you have been doing it all along. Also, if you all ready blog, you might find out that you have been marketing the whole time anyways, and just not realizing it.



For anyone that has never blogged before, you will of course want to start a test blog just to get the feel of how it is. You want to become familiar with the blogging platforms that you will be using and know how to make a post. While most blogs are free, you are also going to see that many of them are quite different. You will have to get to know the kind that you are using, and want to use. Otherwise, you might get lost along the way. So starting a blog and just blogging for a little while will help you with this. You can blog about anything that you want to. Maybe journal for a few weeks, or talk about your favorite movies. The sky is the limit.



So once you have become familiar with blogging and what it takes to post and make changes, you are ready to go further. The next thing that you are going to want to do is choose a niche market. You will want to choose something that is low in competition, but yet is something that people are searching for. If you happen to have a hobby or something that you love to do, there you go. Otherwise, you may have problems coming up with topics.



Now that you have your topics in place, it is time to begin blogging. When you are blogging for the purpose of marketing, you want to give your readers something that they have to keep coming back for. You want to peak their interest and make them want more from you. This will keep your readership base up and will allow you to have followers that will follow you anywhere to see what you are going to say next on their favorite topic.



Now that you have a topic, you want to determine just how much time you are going to spend updating and posting in this blog. If you tell your readers that you are going to post on a daily basis, do so. If you let them know that you will be blogging weekly, you should also stick with that do that also. Whatever you tell them, be sure that you do not let them down. Otherwise they will find another blog to read in the place of yours. Which is something that you will not want.



Learning SEO and applying it to your blogs is something else that you may want to do. This will help you as far as search engine rankings are concerned and will allow you to go further up the page. After all, that is the point to all of this, right? If you do not have time to learn what SEO also known as search engine optimization is all about, you may want to hire someone to apply it to your blog for the best results. You will find that some SEO gurus are quite affordable.

Blog Marketing That Gets Results

Blog marketing is something that most anyone that has a blog can do. However, can just anyone that owns a blog do it and do it effectively so that it gets results? Yes, just about anyone that has a little bit of internet knowledge and common sense can market a blog so that it will get the results that you are looking for. If you are wanting to begin marketing a blog that you started a while a go, and are familiar with blogging and what that entails then you are a step ahead of the beginners.



If you are beginner blogger, then there are some things that you will need to know. The simplest thing that you can do is to start one, and just journal in it for a while. This will allow you to learn just what it takes and what it is all about to keep up a blog. When you are just journaling your thoughts and what is on your mind, you have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. You don’t even have to make your blog public if you don’t want others to read what you have to say. That is a personal preference. However, doing this will let you see how it works. Then you can move on to trying to market a product or a service. Just to get familiar with blogging though, you should have a practice one. You will be glad that you did that later.



Content is king, and so very important when you are marketing a blog, website, or what ever you choose to market. When you have your own blog, you are in charge of the content that is posted on it. You can decide what is said, and what is not. You are after all writing it all, right? So, the sky is the limit. Whether you want a blog that does website reviews and takes nominations, or you want to sell things that you make out of your home, the choice is yours. Using a blog to get the word out about whatever you want too is a great way to market and promote something. You will get results that you will love by using good content that is original.



Blog marketing is only as complicated as you make it. You are going to see that anyone can market something if they have the mind set to do so. Getting your blog up and going is the first step and most important one make sure that you have chosen a topic niche that will get you good results as well. As that will mean that there is not as much competition for the topics that you choose, but yet there are many searches that are done for it as well. Finding a niche that hardly no one else has touched is kind of hard to do at times, but can be done if you look hard enough. Start by thinking about things that interest you and things that you like to do yourself. If at all possible, find something that you know all about all ready or can learn quickly to become an expert in that field.



Blog marketing is all about results. If you market long enough and hard enough, you are going to get the results that you want and are looking for. The keys to achieving this are patience and determination. Something that you have to have to do most anything.

Blog Marketing Scams: Being Aware

You are ready to get out of the corporate world; you are ready to make that much needed move. Working for someone else is not always what it is cracked up to be, and you need a major change. Working for yourself can be rewarding and something that you might even be good at. However, you need to know where to start.



Blog marketing is a wonderful to get started with working for yourself. There is no risk involved other than time, and it cost nothing to get started. This makes it something that almost anyone can do and start. However, you will need to be motivated in order to make it work, and also someone that does not need a boss breathing down their back to get things done and done on time.



With the internet being something that everyone in the world has access to, it is no wonder that everyone is starting a blog and making money with it. However, you have to be aware of the scams that are out there and the people that will take your money from you and give you nothing in return. These people are the ones that will tell you that you are getting a great deal, and just what you need, and will in return give you nothing for the money that you give them.



With all of the scams and scammers that are known of in the in internet marketing world, you have to watch your back when you are blog marketing as well. Knowing how to spot the scams will help you immensely, and let you get the most for your money and not be scammed.



Because the internet is constantly changing, you have to keep up with the changes, as well as the scams. Someone that has a website can simply change the URL and face of the site in a matter of hours, and be back on the scamming end of things again. Trying to take money from those that do not know better is what scammers do, and you want to avoid them if at all possible.



The best way to keep from getting caught into a blog marketing scam is to follow someone that has been there and done that. Anyone that is successful as a blog marketer can give you tips and mentor you along the way. Find someone that you trust that is willing to take your hand and lead the way. All you need is to be shown once and you will know the direction to take your other blogs if you plan to have more than one.



Blog marketing has scams in that market and field just like all of the others. Know who you are doing business with and what is involved. Ask for references and if in doubt, never do business with someone that just does not seem to have all of their ducks in a row. That is a great way to avoid getting scammed and losing your hard earned money to someone that has no conscious. Ask your blogging friends for recommendations and use the people as well as services that they trust.



You can protect your self from blog marketing scams if you know how. Research everything that you can about any company, or new service that you are interested in. Doing might prevent you from giving your heard earned money away to someone that is up to no good. You are going to find that when questioned, most scammers are quite defensive, so take that into consideration as well. You can avoid blog marketing scams if you research and check out anyone that you are thinking of giving a try before you use them. You will be glad that you did in the long run, and it will end up saving you time and money from back tracking and fixing their scamming mistakes.

Blog Marketing Online: What You Should Know

Marketing your blog online can get complicated and confusing if you are working on your first one. However, for a blog marketing guru, it really is not that complicated. Anyone that is familiar with blog marketing online knows that it takes dedication, hard work and consistency. For someone just starting out with their marketing campaign, it may seem like a lot of work with little or no pay off to be seen right afterwards. However, just know that marketing is something that you have to build. You have to work on it and continue to market your blog.



There are many things that you can do to market your blog and get it out there to be seen by the world. One of the most important things is to visit other blogs that are relevant to yours and leave comments. Doing so gets your blog out there to readers of other’s blogs. And in return can get you some new visitors as well as readers. While all of this might seem confusing at first, after a while you will get the hang of it and it will make sense and fall in place.



Posting on your blog on a regular basis is another way to get new readers. Who wants to read a blog that is never even updated? Would you? Of course not! So give your readers what they want with new content and give it to them often. Post daily, weekly or bi weekly and be consistent about it. This way your readers and visitors will know how often to check your blog for a new post.



Know where your traffic is coming from. Know which search engines are directing people to your blog and which are not. Find out what keywords are bringing people to your blog as well. If you know all of this all ready, use it to your advantage. Write more content on the keywords that are working for you and monitor where you fall on the search engine pages that are sending visitors.



If someone leaves a comment on your blog, be sure to acknowledge it. No one wants to have a conversation with themselves, and it will only take a brief moment to reply and let them know you appreciate them. Otherwise if you have a section full of comments and you have not replied, chances are that you will not be getting many more. The readers may even drop you off of their list of blogs to visit frequently as well. Using your head and treating others as you would want to be treated is a big part of marketing.



Make friends with other bloggers. Network with them and find out how they get so many visitors to their blog and what they do to keep them interested. Exchanging ideas with other bloggers that are successful is a great idea and a good way to make friends. If you want, you can even become friends with other bloggers offline as well. Use this to your advantage and do not just take from the conversation though, be sure that you share all of your blog marketing techniques as well with your new found blogging friends.



If you happen to be quoting an article from another source or blog, always be sure to provide a link back to the original. Other wise this is known as plagiarism and something that is looked down on in the world of marketing. Stealing someone else’s content is not a good idea and not something that you will get away with. You will get caught if you try to say someone else’s work is your own of it is not. This is not a good way to start off in the blog marketing world as well.



Blog marketing is a great way to make extra income and get your blog out there and known. Use these techniques above to get your blog more traffic and readers and you will eventually reap the rewards.

Blog Marketing: How Much Money Can You Make?

When you are using blog marketing to make an income, really the amount of money that can be made is something that you determine. You are in charge of the amount of work that you put into it, and therefore in charge of the amount that can be earned. Of course, the more you do, the more you can possibly make. The old saying, “If you build it, they will come”, is one that is not true in the marketing world of the internet. Not only do you have to build it, you also have to market it and promote it. You have to get your blog out there so that people can find it and know that it exists.



Blog marketing is not something that will give you a limited income. The more you promote and market, the better your chances of making money or more money. Lets say you all ready have a blog set up. You are promoting some services and products through your blog, and you are making a nice little effortless income. Well you want more income; you want to make more money with your blog. What do you do? You promote it more. Maybe you can start with the paid blog directories and submit your blog to those. Investing some of the money that you make is a great idea, especially if you are looking to increase your income.



However, there are also many free tools that you can use to promote your blog as well as techniques. There is the comment section that is on just about every living blog on the internet. The comment section is a very useful and powerful tool that you can use to get visitors back to your blog. For example, lets take a market like model airplanes. You have a blog on model airplanes, and you want more traffic. Well, the first thing that you would need to do is to find a blog that is about airplanes, or models. You can even use your direct market if you wish which are model airplanes. Once you have found an authority blog that gets traffic, and comments on a regular basis, you can leave comments as well. Leaving comments with a link back to your blog will give others that read the high authority blog a way to get to yours. If your blog is of interest to them, they may even bookmark it, and become a regular reader.



If you are not all ready, be sure that you update your blog regularly. Doing so will allow your readers to know when they can come back to your blog for new content. Let them know how often you are going to update, and stick to it. If you tell them you will be updating once a day, do so. Or you just might end up with readers that will not follow you because they can not depend on you to give them what they are looking for; new fresh content.



When you use blog marketing to make money, the sky is the limit. The amount of money that you can make is determined by you, and something that you set. The more work and patience that you put into it, the more money you will get out of it. Whether you are promoting your favorite things, or someone else’s, do it with a passion for the best results.

Blog Marketing: How Easy Is It?

Blog marketing is one of the latest trends of marketing online that you are going to find. Blogs which are also known as web logs are very popular in this day and age. You can make a blog on any particular subject that you want and then publish it for the world to read.



If you are just beginning in internet marketing, you are going to find that starting a blog is very easy to do. Anyone can sign up for a free blog, and then proceed to market basically anything that they want to. Because blogs are free to have and make, this makes blog marketing even better. Where as if you have a website, and are wanting to market things that way, you would have to pay for your domain, pay for your hosting of the domain, and then know some HTML or hire a website designer.



Search engines love blogs, and are always pretty fast to index them. Getting yours out there for the world to see is not going to be hard. There is this cool tool that you can use every time you update your blog that is known as pinging. Pinging your blog after every entry that you make will let everyone know that your blog has a new entry and updated.



Depending on your overall goal with blog marketing, you can update your blog as frequently as you like. Which could be daily or weekly. Whichever you choose, just be consistent with it. If you start out updating daily, stick with it. This way your blog readers will know that they can check your blog daily for new postings.



If you are wondering exactly what you can market in a blog, you can market whatever you want to. However, it is best to stay within one market in your blog. If you have several different things that you would like to promote, and none of them really fit together well, you can create a blog for each market. Remember that if the markets are not related, do not mix them on your blog. For example, if you have a blog on vacuum cleaners, you will not want to also mix in television sets on the same blog. This is because both vacuum cleaners and televisions sets are two different markets. But, you could mix vacuum cleaners and handheld mini dust busters. Make sense?



There so many things that you can market in your blog. Whether you want to sell your own products and services or someone else’s and make a commission off of what you sell. The sky is the limit when it comes to marketing. Affiliate links work great in blogs as well. Signing up to sell other people’s products and then marketing them in your blog is a great idea.



If you are considering having both a blog and a website that will work if you have enough information to cover in both. Linking them both together is a great idea if you do decide to have both. You can always use the website to hold your main information and products, and the blog to promote them and discuss any issues regularly.



Wondering about hosting? If you have a website, you can either host your blog on the same server you use for your site, or you can leave it where it is. The choice is ultimately up to you, either way you can have successful blogs that will begin to bring in revenue to you.



Getting links to your blog is a good way to gain new readers. Another great tool you can use is the RSS feeds. When you use the RSS feeds, it allows people to publish your blog on their site, and in return it gets you more visitors.



Blog marketing can be pretty effective if it is done right. However, you cant just set up a blog and expect people to find it. Get your blog out there and make it known to others just as you would a website. Exchanging links with others will help, so will article marketing using your blog.



Blog marketing is easy and anyone that wants to can do it. Getting your blog out there and known will be your biggest challenge, but just know that the harder you work at it, it will pay off. Find sites that are related to the market you are promoting, but not in direct competition and ask for link exchanges.

Blog Marketing For Money

Blog marketing is something that most everyone is doing that owns a blog. You are going to find that many of them are blogging for money, and many are not. The numbers really vary and depend on what you are looking at. If you are wanting a home business that consists of blog marketing, then you would be blogging for money. However, if you just have a blog that you use to write your thoughts and journal more or less, you are probably not blogging for money. Everyone blogs for a different reason.



Blog marketing to make money means that you are simply blogging for a profit. If you are going to make an amount of money that will add up to become anything, you need to be persistent, and consistent. To do so there are some things as well as techniques and tools that you must know and know how to use. Keep reading for more.



While good content is something that you will need for your blog to make money, you also want to ensure that it is original content as well. You can market a blog with something that is copied and that you do not own the rights. Plagiarism will get you in trouble with Google as well as the person that originally wrote the content. Be sure that all of your posts are ones that only you own the rights too. This is a great thing to know and do when you are marketing your blog to make money. Content is the key to successful marketing lately.



Tracking is another part of blog marketing for money that is so very important. You want to be able to track your visitors and clickers to know where they are coming from. You want to be able to tell what keywords they searched on to find your blog and where they did their searching. Doing so will help take out all of the guess work when it comes to blog marketing and making money while blogging. You will want to know what keywords are working, and which are not. So that you will know which keywords to use more of and which ones to drop.



Another thing that is important when you are blog marketing for money is to find other sites and blogs that are in the same market as yours, but not in direct competition with you to exchange links with. This will help you out a lot as well, especially if you can get some good exchanges with high authority sites. The higher the page rank of your link exchange, the better for your blog. Google and the other search engines will recognize your link exchanges, and the more the better in this case.



Blog marketing for money can be done. You just simply have to know what works and what does not. It is truly a trial and error basis. If you think you might know of a new way to market your blog the most effectively, try it! You just never know if it will work for you until you do. Then if you find something that works and works well, consider making it in to an ebook and marketing that as well. You will have the know how, it is just a matter of using it.

Blog Marketing and Scams

Blog marketing is something that has really peaked an interest in the online world. Many people across the interent are blogging, and have blogs. A blog is also known as a web log. But you will hear the term blog more often than the term web log. It basically is just an online journal that you can use and publish for the world to read. Whether you choose to write about personal things, or business. Maybe you want to use it to promote products or services. The way you use your blog is totally up to you. However, you should be aware of the scams that are out there, and what to avoid while you are trying to market your blog.



Blog marketing or really any kind of marketing has scams. Just like everything else you are going to come around. There is always someone that is wanting to scam someone else and take money from the ones that do not know better. So what can you do to protect yourself? The best way to protect yourself from blog marketing scams is to become familiar with them, and know what they are. While this can also be hard to do because the scams change as much as you change your clothes, just stay on top of them, and know what to be looking out for.



Many times when a blog marketing scam surfaces, you will find that someone is going to write about it. They are going to try and warn others before they can fall into it. So, just make sure that you read and know what you are getting into. Do your research when you are marketing your blog. Ask others if they have heard about something that you are interested in doing. Chances are, if you are wanting to pay for some marketing of your blog, that you will find someone else that has used every company out there. Get feedback from your fellow marketers for the best results. Ask them if they have recommendations, or know of places that are legitimate.



If you have been scammed, chances are there is not much that you can do other than get the word out about it. However, just remember, if you have paid someone through something like paypal that protects you, then you have a time limit to get your money back and freeze the scammers account. But, that does not always work. Most of the time the scammers are all ready aware of things like that, and they work fast to move to not be caught. If that is the case, you really can not do much else about it other than alert the proper authorities and count your losses.



While there are many that will scam you with blog marketing, there are also many that will not. There are just so many legitimate resources that you are going to find that you can use and trust. The best thing to do if you are new to the blog marketing world is to ask around and find out who is the best for the marketing that you are trying to do. Doing so will often keep you from falling into a scam, and throwing your hard earned money away.



Unfortunately, you are going to come across those that have no regrets what so ever about scamming others. The only thing that you can do is your research at times to make sure that you are using a service or person that you can trust. Ask for references, and make sure that you will be getting the best that you can afford. You will not regret it in the long run, and it will pay off to check someone or a service out before you go and invest your hard earned cash. Actually contact the services or person’s references to make sure that they are who they say, and that they can deliver what it is that you are looking for. It only takes time.

Blog Marketing and Home Businesses

Blog marketing is something that all blog owners do. They market their blog so that they can get readers, and make a profit from their blogs. Marketing their blog means to get it out there so that others that are interested in it can find it and read it. It is also a great way to sell things by using affiliate links and programs. Blog marketing can very well become a home business if that is something that you are interested in.



Having a home business by blog marketing would definitely entail that you have more than one blog. If this is something that you are considering, you will want to make a list of markets that your blogs can cover. You will find that your blogs will do best when you only have one market per blog. For example, if you have a blog about cats, you will not want to include anything on the blog about kitchen appliances. This is because the readers that read your blog and visit your blog to learn more about cats and what you have to say about them will not be interested in learning anything about kitchen appliances. Once you have overcome the relevancy issue, you will be ok. You can however, have a blog about pets, and then blog about all of the many pets that you want to include.



In order to make a living by blog marketing, you need to know every aspect of it. You need to know what needs to be done to get readers to your blog, how to write about the things that you are promoting and how to get it up in search engine rankings. Doing so will lead to successful blog marketing and making a home business income with it.



One big aspect of blog marketing is SEO. SEO is search engine optimization and it consists of optimizing your blog so that the search engines will find it and rank it as high as possible. Which also leads to more traffic and leads from your blog. If you do not have time to learn SEO, and apply it to all of your blogs, hiring someone to do this for you might be something that you want to consider. Especially if time is an issue.



Outsourcing much of your work is something that you will need to get used to if you plan on making a substantial amount of money with your blogs. You may want to hire bloggers or writers that can write the content for your blogs, and someone else that can leave comments on other blogs with a link back to yours. Spread out all of the duties on a spread sheet and decide how often each thing needs to be done for each blog. Doing so will help you to be more organized and know what you need to do when, as well as prioritize. Using a spread sheet will also help you to keep track of who is doing what, and keep you from asking more than one person to get one job done.



Blog marketing for a home business is not much different from any other home business. You are going to get out of it what you put into it. If you only put in a couple of hours a week into your blogs, you can not expect to make a full time income with them. However, being consistent and working on your blogs every chance that you get will pay off in the long run. You will also discover that there is no better feeling in the world than owning your own home business, and working for yourself.



Just remember to start small, and work hard. That is all you need to become successful at blog marketing and make the income that you are dreaming of. All of your hard work will pay off if you are persistent and keep it up.

Beginner Blog Marketing

Blogs which are also known as web logs are the new thing on the internet. They are pretty much a platform that you can use that will allow you to post your thoughts on most any subject that you want to. They can be used for journaling, promoting, writing, and publishing, anything that your heart desires. However, if you are a beginner and new blogging as well as marketing, there are some very important things that you will want to know.



Blog marketing is pretty easy if you have a marketing mind. You are going to find that many people use blogs as a diary, and many times these blogs that are used for this purpose are not intended to make them money, but simply a way to put there thoughts out there and find others that are going through the same thing. If you have never even had a blog before, the simplest thing that you can do is to start one, and just journal in it for a while. This will allow you to learn just what it takes and what it is all about to keep up a blog. When you are just journaling your thoughts and what is on your mind, you have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. You don’t even have to make your blog public if you don’t want others to read what you have to say. That is a personal preference. However, doing this will let you see how it works. Then you can move on to trying to market a product or a service.



Using a blog to market something is cheaper than using a website. This is because there are so many free ones out there that you can use to get the word out, and they are really just as good as having a website that you pay for. There are of course some advantages to having your own URL, but for a beginner, a free one will work until you get the hang of it and want to move it all over onto your own server. The free blogs are just not that customizable. If you are not familiar with HTML, you are going to find that your blog will look like everyone else’s. But, that is ok in the beginning. You can always make changes later on once you are becoming successful.



When you have your own blog, you are in charge of the content that is posted on it. You can decide what is said, and what is not. You are after all writing it all, right? So, the sky is the limit. Whether you want a blog that does website reviews and takes nominations, or you want to sell things that you make out of your home, the choice is yours. Using a blog to get the word out about whatever you want too is a great way to market and promote something.



Blog marketing can get complicated if you let it. It is really only as hard as you make it. While there are some bloggers out there that are making a six figure income with the use of blog marketing, we all know that it can be done. We just want to know how. Well, for any beginner, start small, and be consistent. The six figure bloggers all did. They started with one, built it up, and then added another blog, built it up. Then, keeping up both blogs and not letting them fall behind, they continued to add more and more. Of course they had help, and they outsourced a lot of their work. If you are looking to make a massive income with blogging, you will need some help.



Blog marketing is a great thing to learn. If you can sell things from a blog, you can sell them anywhere. Making money by using a blog is one of the most satisfying things that you will ever learn how to do. Just do not expect to make money over night, know that you have to work at it consistently everyday, and remember to put into it what you want to get out of it.

Understanding SEO

There are a lot of things to know when if comes to , and I can’t go over everything in a single post.

However what I will be discussing in this post, are the reasons why you might experience a drop in rankings in Google and what you can do about it. If you want some more detailed instructions on SEO, I recently did a post on this here: Increase Google Rankings.

I receive a substantial amount of email from my subscribers, and unfortunately I can’t reply to all of them, apologies if you fall into that category, however one question I get asked a lot is, why sometimes Google rankings drop suddenly?

People email me extremely worried that they have done something wrong and that the big scary Google monster has caught them and is now penalizing them with a drop in rankings.

Of course Google can and do penalize sites all the time, but from my experience it’s not for common things that marketers like you and I would be doing.

The email questions I get go something like this: “Matt I have just built some links yesterday doing XYZ and now today my site is nowhere in Google, help!!! What have I done…please help me!!”

You might think I’m exagerating with that example, but believe me I’m not.

Anyway it’s never a nice feeling when you check your Google rankings, only to see your site has experienced some form of a drop. So now let me explain to you what I have come to realize about drops in Google rankings and the reasons for them.

If you have a new site, with no trust with Google yet, then not only can it take some time to show up in the first 10 pages of Google, but it can also go through what’s known as a “Google Dance”

A Google Dance, is simply where your site can bounce around in Google. I’ve had sites go from page 1 to nowhere and back again in the space of a few days. When I first experienced this, many years ago now, I was amazed, it felt like an emotional roler coaster ride!

View the Original article

How to Get Listed in DMOZ

Google are all about trust, by this I mean how much trust they have for your sites.

It’s a good idea to show Google you’re sites are trust worthy. This can be done is a number of different ways. In this post I’m going to look at one way, and therefore be discussing .

DMOZ in my experience is hard to get into, and in fact I have tried before with this blog and not had any luck. Other sites I have, so it makes little sense to me. Before I discuss some of the things I’ll be doing to help make sure I get in, I want to discuss why getting into DMOZ would be a good thing in the first place.

Google knows that DMOZ is hard to get into, because every single site that is submitted is reviewed by a human reviewer. It’s all done by volunteeers also, as far as I’m aware. When there’s human review involved and no money spent to guarantee acceptance, then this is the best filter process for a decent site.

So Google ride on the back of DMOZ’s scrutiny and reward sites with better rankings that have been accepted into DMOZ. This is the same for all directories that have human reviewers and payment doesn’t assure acceptance, such as the Yahoo directory.

With that said, the more trust you have with Google the better, so it’s not a bad idea to try your best to get into DMOZ.

The first thing I do, is go to DMOZ and look for other sites that have been accepted already that are very close to what my site is about. Let’s say for example that you had an acne site, what I would do is type into DMOZ “acne” and see what sites they show.

In the image below, you’ll see a category for acne that one of the sites I found was in.

View the Original article

Amazon Carousel Widget

Written by Matt Carteron October 21, 2010 and posted in General—

Amazon Widget

I hope you like using this Amazon widget, as I am using it on a lot of my Amazon affiliates site now. I think it works best on the home page though, I haven’t used it on any of the others deep pages in my sites, but it mighe work, just have to see what looks best on your sites.

I’ll be in touch soon with some more tips.

Thanks for stopping by,

Matt Carter

--

View the Original article

Buyer Keywords

One of the best lessons I learned in my career as an internet marketer, was how to find customers that are ready to buy online.

The way you do this, is through the keywords these buyers use when they search online. In this post I’ll be giving you some great tips on .

Before I give you a list of , I first want to explain the sales process online, so you can understand the thinking behing , and come up with more yourself.

When someone is thinking of buying something online, let’s say for example they are considering buying a new TV, then they may first initiate their search with keywords such as “best TV’s” or “TV reviews”. These keywords can make money, but really, people typing these kind of keywords into Google are still in the research mode and not ready to pull out their credit card yet.

Let’s continue with the example, after typing in “best TV’s” the person may find some sites that explain that the best TV’s are LCD’s as they last longer than plasma’s perhaps. So now the searcher is set on an LCD, but they still don’t know what LCD is the best. So what do they do? They type in “Best LCD’s” and continue researching.

This process usually continues on until the user finds the LCD they want, and when they have narrowed it down to the XYZ LCD, they will most likely type into Google “Buy XYZ LCD” or “XYZ LCD review”, and bingo they are now officially a buyer!

This is when you want to get your webpages in their view, so that they can read your articles and click your affiliate link before buying a product. It’s not rocket science, just common sense with !

So with that said here are some that I often use:

buy
purchase
review
best
cheap
new
bargain
budget
economical
inexpensive
low cost
low priced
reduced
compare
model numbers
brand names

Another kind of buyer keyword, is where the person is indicating that they have some form of a problem that they need fixed, this is especially true for health problems. For example if someone types into Google: “How to stop snoring” then they have indicated that snoring is a problem, and people tend to be happy to pay for a solution to a problem that is affecting the quality of their lives.

Some more examples of these include:

learn
stop
prevent
help

So remember you need a lot less traffic from to make sales than you do from other kinds of keywords, so take the time to target these on your sites, as it pays off big time!

What would be great is to hear from you all, so if you could take the time to comment below and let me know what you think and if you have more great then please list them for us all to share.

Hope that helps,

Matt Carter

--

View the Original article

Keyword Domains

A question I get asked a lot is about what domain name to build my site on. So in this post I will provide my opinion about domains and choosing the best ones for SEO and conversions.

Most people want to know if they should go for or not bother and just go for something more general. To answer this all I can say is that I have both kinds, for various sites I own. Some domains are the exact keyword I’m targeting for that site (mini sites).

For example if you decide to target a keyword phrase such as “women dress watches” then it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go out and see if you can register www.womendresswatches.com, if the .com is gone then go for the .net or .org instead.

By having the exact match you can get an SEO boost and rank with less backlinks, in most cases than other competing sites. If you can’t get the exact match, then try for something close to it, such as www.bestwomensdresswatches is still effective, just not quite as much of an SEO boost.

These exact are good, but they are not absolutely necessary, and for my sites that are a lot larger and more general in nature, by that I mean that are targeting a broad range of products, I don’t worry about the keyword as much, but I do try and fit some form of keyword in there.

Non

Now to throw spanner in the works, I’ve tested buying high page rank domains that have nothing to do with my niche and building sites on these, and the results are often staggering. I’ve seen these sites get very quick rankings in Google and make sales for me. The name of the domain really needs to be something that is very general and could mean anything at all.

What About Hyphens?

Often when you try and get a domain with the keyword that you want in it, it can be hard, because other people have bought them already. This then leads to the dilema of whether or not to buy the hyphenated version, and if we stick to our example it would be something like: www.womens-dress-watches.com.

This is an option to get , but they don’t look that great,  and can give the impression that the site is less of an authority. Nonetheless I have also tried this approach and had sites rank very well, so from my own experience it does work.

Other Extensions?

Apart from the main ones of .com, .net and .org I have not actually tried any other extensions, because I have heard that they don’t perfrom as well in Google, so I don’t want to risk it, but then again maybe I should set up a test of my own.

Brand Names in the Domain?

Another very common question that gets asked is whether or not you can buy domains that have brand names in them. The short answer is no, its a trademark breach and you can get into trouble.

So why do we see so many of these kind of domains in Google then? It’s a valid question, and from what I know, unless the company who’s brand it is that you are using, contacts you with a please cease and desist notice, then you can carry on. I personally don’t do it, and my advice to you is not to, but if you want to take the risk then you can, and this is another way to get too.

In closing if you are building a long term asset, and the kind of site that will get passed around via word of mouth, then it’s a good idea to get a domain that is short, easy to spell and catchy. This is more the case for e-commerce stores, because people can tell their friends where they bought something, and your domain can become recognized.

--

View the Original article

Affiliate Article Marketing

is a great way to make money online, and there’s a few ways that you can approach this for maximum benefit. In this post I’ll be discussing this topic and providing some practical tips for getting the best results from your articles.

What is ?

For those of you that don’t know, article marketing is where you write articles and submit these to article directories with intent of driving traffic to an affiiate offer to make money!

The concept is rather simple and there are some great advantages of using it, some being that you don’t necessarily need a website to make any money, and another advantage is that the articles themselves can rank fast in the search engines if they are published on authority domains such as ezinearticles.com.

Article Traffic

Article marketing can be a good source of traffic generation. The reason for this I’ve just mentioned above, which is that when you write an article and publish it on authority domains, these articles can rank high in the search engines and usually require a lot less backlinks to do so. If you can get an article to rank you should get free traffic from it.

View the Original article

Submitting Press Releases

Hi everyone,

In this post I’ll be dicussing another way to get some great backlinks to your sites, which is by writing and .

Press releases are very similar to submitting articles to article directories for links, however the angle is slightly different.

The idea behind a press release is that the content you submit, needs to have some form of news in it. I struggled to understand how I could write an article about my affiliate sites and make it sound news worthy for a long time, so I just didn’t bother much with it.

However now, when I build a new site, I realized that in itself is kind of news worthy, even if only in my little world! So I write the article/press release explaining that a NEW site has arrived on the scene and is helping people to find the best deals on XYZ. That’s just one idea, I’m sure you can come up with other ways to write news into your articles.

You can creative with it, just make sure you don’t try and submit a regular product review style article, otherwise the press release site might just ignore it and not pubish it on their site.

My goal when , is to get backlinks to your web pages, so don’t forget to place anchor text links back to these pages somewhere in the press release.

In saying that I have actually made some sales, not many though, not enough to bother focusing on it for sales anyway, from , because sometimes other sites grab the press release and publish it also, and so you get more mileage out of each submission.

I’ve also noticed that not all press release sites have the same rules, much like article directories, so be sure to read the submission guidelines first and stick to the rules.

I don’t use software to submit to these kind of sites, because I simply haven’t come across anything decent that does the job I need, so my team and I just submit manually to sites we find. Here’s a few sites we are submitting to:

ADD PR (PR 3)

Press Expose (PR 3)

Health (PR 3)

That’s it for this week tip on .

Thanks

Matt

--

View the Original article

List Building Advice

In this post I will be focusing on . The first question is, should you be collecting emails from people in your niche or not?

Does it work for all niches, if so what ones? In this post I’ll be discussing my opinion on that matter and sharing what has worked for me.

Depending on who you have been influenced by in your internet marketing career, you’ll have different views on whether to collect email addresses or not.

I for one collect emails in some niche markets and in others I don’t bother. The internet marketing niche is obviously one of the ones I have the largest email list in,  and this niche is a classic example of one that it is a good idea to do so.

What Niches Work Best for Emails?

A niche market who’s customers have a keen interest in a subject where this interest will be ongoing and which potentially has a large number of quality products available. Anything that is hobby related can work well, because people in this niche will usually be interested in their hobby for some time and have some degree of passion towards it, which means they will most likely spend money on products .

Other classic niches are ones where people require ongoing education, whether it be a hobby or more of a business focus where they welcome information from other people involved in the niche itself, of course the IM niche is a good example of this (although I despise they way so many people do it in this niche).

What Niches Should You Avoid Using Emails For?

I have quite a few niche markets I’m in that make me great money and I don’t ever collect a single email and I never will. The reason is that these niches usually solve  a specific problem for people and the problem is not something they are interested in long term, in fact they couldn’t get rid of the problem fast enough, so they hardly want to be reminded of it via emails again and again.

Therefore it would be a waste of time for me to collect emails and write all the auto-responder sequences and manage the list, because it would simply not bring me in a good return on time invested.

The other thing to note is that in order to really monetize an email list properly you have to be collecting a decent number of leads everyday, as you can’t just rely on the same contacts and leave it at that, you always need new people coming along. So if you’re in a niche and you are not able to collect regular leads, then again I personally wouldn’t bother with it.

How to Collect Emails?

I assume the next logical question is, how do I get people onto my email list in the first place?

Well before I answer that, I think a more important question is, once people are on my email list what will I be offering them? What will I be able to do to help them. Far too often people want emails so they can make money off people, but I don’t like that approach, of course it’s ok to sell stuff, I mean your email list is not a charity list, but you have to think about quality first.

So with that said, in order to encourage people to get on your email list, you need some form of quality incentive. For example, I recently created a free wordpress theme for people to use. However you can create anything, but again make sure it’s quality. Videos go well, free reports, just make sure they are actually useful. You see, first impressions count, and if people sign up to your list and you promise them something amazing and you deliver something terrible, you have immediately given a bad impression of yourself.

So once you have good stuff ready, you now need to get people opting in. There are a few ways to do this, you can have a flying pop over on your site, which I am about to put on this blog, and then drive SEO traffic to the sites pages, and collect the leads this way.

You can also leave a link in your forum signatures and link it to a squeeze page. Another idea is to create Youtube videos and link off to your squeeze page from these. Yet another idea is to create a product in the niche you are in, this is more for info product markets, and then you can get affiliates to drive traffic to your product and collect leads this way.

It’s also not a bad idea to have an exit grabber on certain sites to entice people to opt in before they leave. I have one niche where I get about 30 people a day from this alone. Some is to use paid traffic methods for gaining leads, but you have to track everything carefully. I don’t collect leads from paid traffic much anymore these days, although I have done so in the past.

Creating an Opt In Gift

I thought I might just add a little on some practical tips for creating an opt in gift. I find video works well, but not for every niche,  so if you want to do video, then you can always use the free screen capture software called Jing. Another option is to create a PDF free report and again one free tool that can easily make PDF’s for you is Open Office, a free tool that is pretty much the same as Microsoft office, but it has a PDF creator built in.

I don’t use private label rights stuff very often, as I find the quality is usually absolutely terrible and I don’t want to hurt my reputation by giving out garbage, but if you can find some decent PLR content, then this can also work.

At the end of the day, remember that email marketing is about building relationship with your list. Not everyone will like you, some will down right be rude, but that’s ok, just keep providing as much good content as you know how and monetize your list in an appropriate manner.

One final thing I want to reinforce is, if you do your best to provide as much free, and quality content to your subscribers, you will get them opening more emails that you send out. More opening emails is a good thing for obvious reasons. I have spoken to people in the IM niche, who’s names I will not mention, who tell me they get a 5% open rate on their emails, and that they were happy with that!!! Can you believe that, 5%!! I almost feel off my chair, that is appalling if you ask me.

It was after that conversation in particular, that it dawned on me, this guy didn’t focus on providing quality and did nothing but sell, sell and more selling to his list. My open rates are 6 times higher than this guys, and although he has more people on his list, I get more people reading my emails. I tell you this to explain the power of quality.

That’s all the from me,

Thanks

Matt Carter

--

View the Original article

Very Interesting New Beta Program

One of the main things we want to do as bloggers and publishers of information is to create a network of links leading back to our sites. The Web 2.0 social thing has certainly created an initially interesting opportunity to do that, but that was a secondary benefit to the social sites’ primary intent.

Now there are new sites popping up all the time that are far more sophisticated versions of the original ideas. Some of these sites incorporate even better incentives to participate by rewarding great content and excellent ideas with backlinks and traffic to your site (blog).

I just discovered one of these yesterday and wanted to let you know about it.

It’s called Qassia.com and they seem to be up and coming on the scene. I’m going to test it out for the next 3-4 weeks and see how it goes. I’ll post the results back here.

If you want to sign up, you can only get an account from someone who already has one.

Here’s my beta Qassia signup link that should work. If it doesn’t, it means they stopped letting new people in for now and you should just check back next month when it will probably go live.

From their FAQ:

What exactly is Qassia?
Qassia is a site to which you can add your websites. You can also add your knowledge, in the form of tidbits of information called “intel”. The more intel you add, the better your sites will rank, the more backlinks you get, and the more money you make.

Qassia is 100 percent free, and does not require reciprocal links. You can get unlimited quality backlinks to your websites from Qassia.

Also, here’s what you’re NOT allowed to do and this is why I think they may stand a good chance of doing well:

What You Should NOT Do:

Do not add intel about your website or product.
New users will typically start off by adding intel about their own website, in the following vein: This amazing website/product offers blablabla and has lots of cool stuff and info and blablabla. It was launched on whenever and gets lots of visitors, and there is some stuff you will find useful. Check it out! This is basically an advertisement. An advertisement is a form of information, and therefore allowed, but it won’t help you much.

Do not add poetry, short stories, jokes, or other creative writing.
We allow poetry and short stories and other creative writing because, technically, it is information. And we do not want to ban poetry because there is a thin dividing line between opinion, essay, lyrical writing, and poetry. However, passing your poetry off as intel is not a good idea if you want to promote your websites effectively, because most users do not appreciate poetry, and neither do the search engines.

Let me know if the signup link doesn’t work as well.

I’ve only gotten started, but it seems like Qassia could be a big player in the coming months.

We shall see.

Have an excellent Friday,

-Zack

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! 5 Responses to “” Andy Bailey Says:
March 1st, 2008 at 3:47 pm

it looks like an interesting site but with so many social networking types of sites, I rarely have time to remember which one to keep visiting! maybe it’s best to find one and stick to it?

Andy Bailey’s last blog post..Goodies in the pipeline for FiddyP Land

Zack Says:
March 1st, 2008 at 10:13 pm

Hey Andy, I’m also feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of new sites like this showing up now. I think you’re right to just pick a few top ones and focus on them. I rely almost completely on advice from other folks I trust to steer me toward the good ones. Jack Humphrey over at Friday Traffic Report mentioned this one, by the way . . . he’s usually spot on with these sorts of things so I figured I’d add just one more site to my towering list

View the Original article

The Electronic, Dynamic, Interactive Business Card: Do You Have One?

I’ve been talking to some friends who own small businesses recently and they all wonder what this whole blogging thing is all about. And when I start to explain, I inevitably start describing all the benefits of blogging and end up likening it to an electronic, dynamic, interactive business card. Of course, it’s much more than that, but it’s a great starting point for a fun conversation about blogging and marketing.

As it turns out, even though those of us who blog take it mostly for granted, the vast majority of people have still never heard of blogging (don’t gasp so loudly, you’ll hurt yourself!) or still consider it as novel as email once was just a few short years ago. Because of this, it’s not unusual for me to start at the very beginning when explaining.

Of course, my response to anyone asking about a blog is to suggest that if they’re serious about building their business and serious about creating a fantastic platform for interacting with friends and customers, they need a blog yesterday.

So i have started to use the business card metaphor and offer the following reasons why blogging is like a super charged business card, only far better and why it will be a big part of succeeding in small business (I believe) as we move forward.

A business card lets you quickly give someone your contact info.A blog has your contact information and far more constantly available 24 hours a day. And you can’t lose a blog the same way you might lose a business card.A business card is a reminder of a conversation you might have had.A blog IS the conversation you had, saved and stored and searchable online for future reference. Not only that, the conversation is bigger by far than a one-to-one telephone or email conversation since it involves potentially anyone who stops by and has an interest in joining in.A business card is a way of developing brand awareness using color, logography and short, pithy tag lines.A blog is a way of creating more than just brand awareness, it allows your customers to help you define your brand in an ongoing conversation about your mutual needs and interests.A business card is an impersonal pointer back to your business.A blog IS your business and it’s a humanized and honest invitation to be a part of creating powerful solutions. A blog creates an immediate opportunity for interaction on a personal and individual level whereas a business card is just a reminder of such a potential opportunity.

Of course there are some stretches here and some may argue that it’s silly of me to try to compare a business card with a blog, but I felt it was important to attempt to draw whatever parallels I could since so many people can relate to one and not the other. (Me? Silly? That’s unpossible!) A blog is also a heck of a lot more work than designing, printing and handing out a business card, but the rewards are orders of magnitude beyond anything a simple business card will get you.

If you want to maximize your marketing effectiveness, you will obviously want, not only a blog and a business card, you will, of course, have a business card with the address of your blog on it!

A blog is a powerful means of getting the word out about the ongoing nature of your business. It’s a calling card on the Internet, a tireless brand builder, and a marvelous conversation starter. If you haven’t figured out how important I think it is for you to have a blog, then please let me know so I can jump up and down and wave my arms while singing the happy blogger song . . . no, no, wait, I mean, seriously, what i meant to say is this: A blog is a critical part of your business and a fantastic way to open the lines of communication and create more transparency. If you don’t have a blog yet, stop wandering around in the dark and flip on the light!

If you would like more information about the benefits of blogging and why you should have a blog, have a look at a few of the resources I found while researching this post.

The Social Customer Manifesto

Small Businesses and Blogging

10 Great Strategic Benefits of Blogging

Small Business Blogging (advice)

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! 11 Responses to “” jamy Says:
March 5th, 2008 at 11:23 am

Great post. Stumbled.

jamy’s last blog post..Old and broke.

Kerry D. Friesen, M.D. Says:
March 6th, 2008 at 12:45 am

Ahhhhh! I finally get it. I mean I thought I knew what blogging was all about….but now I “know”.
I love this concept…this is a great concept. More of this please!

Kerry D. Friesen, M.D.’s last blog post..Brain Bliss: What’s Empathy Got To Do With It?

Zack Says:
March 6th, 2008 at 7:31 am

Hi Jamy, thanks for stopping by, and thanks for the stumble!

Zack Says:
March 6th, 2008 at 9:42 pm

You bet, Kerry! Thanks for commenting and I’ll see about more stuff in this vein . . . oh yeah, pun intended

View the Original article

Five More Misused Words That Make You Look Like a Dummy

Are you making these mistakes? Proper word usage will make your writing efforts powerful and effective and build credibility with your audience.

Day-before-yesterday I read a great post over at skelliewag.org that stirred up an excellent discussion about whether or not it’s important to write well online. I’m not a great writer myself and, in fact, I started this blog in part to get a little more practice.

But this got me thinking about writing in general, word usage and credibility. So I put on my tall, pointy hat and decided to post my opinion about five words that really annoy me when misused. Here they are in no particular order.

Our first word is unique. No, really, that’s the word!

Unique
Like being pregnant, you can’t be a little bit unique.

Wrong
Hey I woke up the other day and realized I was somewhat unique. Later I got over it.

Right
Hey I woke up the other day and realized I was unique. Thankfully, I’ll never get over it.

Next up, a word which will probably produce a little argument. I maintain that, unlike unique which should never have a modifier, quality must always have one.

Quality
I saw someone write (for the thousandth time at least) that, “this thing is a quality piece of work.” Or, in another instance, “that’s a quality blog.” The only thing missing is a clue as to whether the confounded thing is any good or not! Quality has to have a modifier. Bad quality, good quality; the word quality by itself is utterly meaningless.

But I’m afraid it may be far too late to get that issue fixed as it’s really gotten embedded in the English-speaking world’s psyche, no thanks to the foolish aristocrat who first pushed that concept out there in the 14th century. Blast that dictionary for contradicting me anyway. Nevertheless, I’m right.

Wrong
Hey buddy, you gonna’ finish that quality bowl of lecithin gravy?

Right
Hey buddy, you gonna’ finish that top quality bowl of lecithin gravy?

Irregardless
There is, in fact, no such word. I finally figured out why this is such a common mistake. I believe this to be the illegitimate child of the marriage of “irrespective” and “regardless”. It may sound like it’s a good idea, but regardless of your intense desire to misuse this one, and irrespective of all the reasons you might offer in your defense, using “irregardless” is probably the biggest no-no of the bunch since it’s not a real word.

Wrong
Bill continued to awkwardly reach toward the precariously balancing bowl of warm, lecithin gravy, irregardless of the inevitable disaster which was sure to follow.

Right
Bill continued to awkwardly reach toward the precariously balancing bowl of warm, lecithin gravy, regardless of the inevitable disaster which was sure to follow.

Hopefully
It’s almost always used incorrectly these days. Cotton really wrecked it for everyone back in 1702. “. . . Hopefully, we’ll see you tomorrow.” Hopefully I’ll do this, hopefully I’ll get that; this is just so wrong I can’t begin to even tell you. (Granted, according to the dictionary, my attitude about this word apparently places me in the traditionalist camp, but I’ll address that in a sentence at the end of this post.)

Wrong
Hopefully, the unicorn-riding space travellers from Alpha Centauri will arrive and give us plankton, chocolate and some sort of odd, gravy-like substance.

Right
I hope the unicorn-riding space travellers from Alpha Centauri will arrive and give us plankton, chocolate and some sort of odd, gravy-like substance.

In the wrong sentence above, the literal meaning suggests that the space travelers will be feeling hopeful as they arrive bearing their lovely gifts; they will arrive feeling hopeful. However, 99.9% of the time, the writer writing this intends to suggest that they themselves are the ones feeling hopeful about the arrival of the space travelers bearing gifts. Always ask yourself, “who is feeling hopeful?” and then make sure the sentence is reflecting that properly. (I know, purists will also say I should have said, “s/he himself/herself is the one feeling hopeful” but man, isn’t that awkward!?.)

Anxious Instead of Eager
Many people use the word anxious to describe an upcoming event they are excited about. In fact, by using the word anxious, they are saying they are worried about it. If you’re excited, say you’re eager. If you’re worried, then use anxious.

Wrong
Ludlow was anxious to open all the incredible presents he knew he would be receiving at his very first lecithin-gravy party.

Right
Ludlow was eager to open all the incredible presents he knew he would be receiving at his very first lecithin-gravy party.

Now many will probably hassle me endlessly about the swiftly changing nature of the spoken language arguing that anything that gets used often enough becomes validated by its very ubiquity.

But hey man, I’m tellin’ ya, if we don’t have at least a few ground rules and standards, I might as well start riggle plag mimmbly bum toothbrush the squirrelpaste. Know what i mean? How will we understand each other if we make up our own rules and just run with them? I’m as excited about change as the next guy, just as long as it’s change for the better.

If you are as excited and curious about language as I am, and if you want to find more ways to avoid those embarrassing usage boners, have a look at some of these related articles I found during my travels.

10 flagrant grammar mistakes that make you look stupid
Common Errors in English by Paul Brians
Style Guide from The Economist
Words & Expressions Commonly Misused from Bartleby.com

Disclaimer: I’m no expert grammarian and also don’t think anyone is a dummy. I’m just a grammar muckraker raking up some muck. Hope you liked it. I also encourage healthy debate.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! 34 Responses to “” Judi Says:
March 11th, 2008 at 9:10 pm

Great post!

These remind me of people who say “I could care less.” When they really mean “I couldn’t care less”.. as in “I could not care any less”..

OTOH, I am always being corrected by my daughters when I am not saying good and well in the proper way, and tired brained as I am most of the time, I just don’t get it.

Judi’s last blog post..Heads or Tails – Green

Bob Gladstein Says:
March 11th, 2008 at 10:43 pm

I’m with you 100% on “quality.” That beer with the slogan “quality you can taste” always makes me wonder whether I’d want to.

Bob Gladstein’s last blog post..Universal Search Mocks Me

Gavin Mitchell Says:
March 12th, 2008 at 5:30 am

The whole concept of language ‘mistakes’ assumes that there was a time when the English language reached a pinnacle (handily around the time dictionaries first appeared) and that any deviation from the rules of grammar and spelling of this time is somehow undesirable.

Language is constantly evolving and there is nothing we can do to stop it – as the French are finding out with phrases like ‘Le weekend’. Given the nature of language development, it’s actually a little bizarre that we’re still abiding by arbitrary decisions that people like Samuel Johnson, Robert Cawdrey and Noah Webster made hundreds of years ago.

After all, Shakespeare apparently couldn’t decide how to spell his own name and still managed to make himself understood. Possibly the greatest ever wordsmith to grace the English language would today be mocked on Digg for his spelling mistakes.

Walk Through Money Online Journal Says:
March 12th, 2008 at 6:34 am

Not everybody is a real writer in blogging. Just some hobby of sharing. I hope not everybody is looking for a perfect grammar but more on the what you can learn from an article. Excusing myself since I admit that I have a lot of imperfections on my grammar. Thanks for sharing. I learn a lot from this post. I will try my best.. More power

Zack Says:
March 12th, 2008 at 8:53 am

View the Original article

If You’re Getting Banned, You’re Doing Something Wrong

Photo by Redvers

This is only the beginning. It’s going to get much, much bigger.
Social marketing is all the rage right now and if the signs are to be believed, this is a mere taste of the future. Part of social marketing involves joining various online communities in your niche and adding value to those communities.

Social marketing is most definitely not about joining as many groups as you can, regardless of their relevance to your niche, and spamming the living daylights out of everyone with “ME! ME! ME!” kinds of advertising and requests. This will get you banned, and rightfully so.

I wrote a post earlier that basically said marketing is really about making friends and exchanging value honestly and transparently with others in your community. I especially emphasized the importance of giving freely without immediate expectation of return, or profit.

Recently I’ve noticed traditional marketing folks who are excited to do this “new” social marketing thing and botch it up terribly by forgetting the cardinal rule of all human interaction. Namely, give before you request. Offer your assistance, advice, service and do so without expecting anything in return. Be a member of the community first and then you won’t be a so-called marketer.

View the Original article

What is Internet Blog Marketing?

So you have been hearing all about these blogs that are all the rage lately in the internet world. However, you have yet to start one of your own, and pretty much figure that you are the last person on earth that does not have one. While you may think that this is true, you are going to be shocked that not everyone has a blog, and most of those that do, have them for internet blog marketing purposes. Internet blog marketing is all of the rage just as much as blogs are. When you talk about internet blog marketing, you are meaning that you use the internet to market things on your blog. That would be the most simplest way to put it.



Marketing things on the internet is not as easy as it was just a few years ago. Everyone is into marketing online because of the pay per click programs that everyone wants a part of. And that means that the competition is fierce. In order to market things online and become successful at it, you need to choose a market. You can not just use one single blog to market a number of things unless they are all relevant. If you tried, you would really get no where and fast.



So, choosing your market is even kind of hard to do. Some people will tell you to choose low competition markets to begin with, that have many searches. However, other people will tell you to choose something that you know and love, and that you are passionate about. Even something that you can be known as an expert about. When you do so, you gain trust in the internet world, and many people will know you for your market and your views on it. And that in return will make you successful. However, you must truly know what you are talking about, or you will be found out. It has even been known that some will choose a topic to become an expert on, and when they do, learn all that they can about it before they begin to promote it. Even if they never knew much about it to begin with.



Internet blog marketing is still easier for some than others. It is easier the sooner you get started with it. Because the internet changes every day and things are not all ways the same, the faster you learn the best marketing techniques and tools now, the easier it will be for you once they change and start to become more complicated.



Not only does the interent change frequently, so do the search engines. For example, Google changes about four times a year. You will find that when it does go through a change and update everything, your page ranks are different, and so are your search rankings. When you might have been in the number two spot on Google search for 3 months, after they go through a change you just might find yourself to be on page three.



Internet blog marketing is all about knowing and becoming familiar with the internet. The more you know about it the better off your blogs will be. However, if you are just starting out, don’t get discouraged, you can still learn everything that you need to in order to become successful at blog marketing.

Is Your Affiliate Sign-Up Page Insecure?

Photo by DeclanTM

Have you ever found a great affiliate program that you really wanted to start promoting right away? Have you started filling out their signup form and realized they were asking for your social security number and that the form was not secure?

Recently I found the affiliate page of a famous and successful business development and marketing guru and was in the process of signing up with his affiliate program. But when I realized I would be submitting my social security number in the clear, over an insecure connection, I decided to forget it, at least until I could make the time to use an alternate and secure signup method.

But since I didn’t want to waste time faxing, or using some other more secure means, I put it off. And after I had gotten absorbed in a number of other things, I forgot about it completely as there were lots of other programs equally as good vying for my attention.

Why does this matter? Simply put, your social security number should be treated just like your credit card number, or any other sensitive information you don’t want out on the internet for anybody to casually grab and start abusing.

If I might borrow a phrase from Mad Eye Moody, one must exercise “constant vigilance”. I’m fairly shocked that this still even happens these days.

So what do you think? Do you care if a sign-up form is insecure, especially when the form asks for a social security number or a password?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

View the Original article