Day 20, Some interesting observations and learnings

I'm now on day 20 of the thirty day challenge.

I have learned some amazing things. Most of my biggest revelations have come around keywords.

As you may know I only recently figured out the importance of and how to do quality keyword research. Until then I was just kind of winging it. Now I'm feeling all happy and proud that I'm looking for good quality keywords with good traffic and low competition.

Here's the catch. I still don't seem to be getting great traffic. what the?

Here's what I learned last week in the thirty day challenge. The traffic numbers given in your keyword research tools are generally NOT the number of actual visitors that keyword is getting. What? then what's the point?

I asked myself that too. That's when Ed trots out this great new tool created by one of the owners of wordtracker. It is completely free, and will tell you the approximate actual numbers of hits on a keyword.

They put this together by working with google trends and doing some pretty tricky stuff to figure out just how much traffic a keyword is actually getting. For all the details stop by the thirty day challenge

Here's what it means to me. I went back through my lenses and looked up the keywords using this new tool and it quickly became apparent why I was not getting the traffic I had expected, because the searches just weren't there.

This new tool is easy to use and makes quick work out of finding good keywords and then making sure they actually have the numbers it appears they do. It does make keyword research a little more difficult, at least finding keywords with the kind of numbers you want, but in the end it is totally worth it. I would rather take an extra 30 minutes to find a good keyword or three, than spend all the time it takes to build a lens and have it do nothing.

If you are building keyword related lenses I highly suggest you get over to the thirty day challenge and check out what Ed teaches about keyword research and pick up this new keyword tool.

Holy Moly ~ What a thirty day challenge

I must confess I have started the thirty day challenge on more than one occasion. I don't know what happened, I got bored, distracted I don't know.

With this new focus on FOCUS I'm getting through it this time.

I am currently on day 13. Yes, I know it's only the 4th of April, but I just couldn't wait.

What I was learning was some stuff I already knew, however, there were so many little pieces I was missing that change the WHOLE GAME!!

If you are trying to make money online. If you are doing research and building squidoo lenses and just aren't getting the traffic and making the sales I definitely recommend you get over to the thirty day challenge ~ NOW. Don't wait a minute longer, it seriously can change everything for you.

So far I have completed the "market research" part of the challenge and I have come up with two phrases I will be working with throughout the rest of the challenge.

I tried really hard to find something that would focus on my business, but I couldn't get my head around it and it was counter to all the directions I was being given, which got me very distracted. I decided to just go with something that worked with the instructions I was being given. I can and will apply this to my business once the challenge is over and I have the whole picture.

It's difficult to do something that is counter your instructions, especially when you don't know where you are going and what you are going to be doing. Once I have the whole picture I think it will be easy to apply it to anything you already have going. It's just a matter of getting the process down.

We are moving on to the "traffic" aspect of the challenge and I have finished the first day of this piece. I am again, having difficulty doing what is asked of me because, I don't know where we are going with what I'm doing. I guess that shows my "control freak" nature. :) shhhh.

I hope you are all doing well with the challenge. I'd like to mention again the 30 Day Challenge group we've set up over at Ning. I'm not seeing much activity, but I think once we get some content going people will show up to help one another out with stumbles and diggs etc.

I have to say, I have received more traffic to my Internet Marketing for Mommies blog in the last few days since I started stumbling posts and getting other people stumbling my posts. It's quite impressive, to have this regular traffic coming.

So don't forget to stop by the thirty day challenge and do the work for the day. Stop by and let us know how things are going with you and ask any questions you might have. Feel free to come by the 30 Day Challenge Group too, we're glad to help you!!

Jackie Lee :)

We're back with a 30 Day Challenge!!

Hey everybody! Great to see you again. I know we fell down for the last couple weeks, but we're back.

This is a very good lesson though. If you are not excited/interested/passionate about what you are blogging about it's very EASY not to blog!! Keep that in mind when you are starting your blogs out there.

So here we are at the beginning of a new month and a new experiment. This month we've decided to make it a challenge. A 30 Day Challenge ~ of the Ed Dale variety.

That's right. This month we will be working our way through Ed Dale's Thirty Day Challenge. So the goal for this month is to make your first 10 dollars online. If you've already made 10 dollars online don't worry about it, there will be plenty of learning involved anyway.


This 30 day challenge will take you through the 4 major components of internet marketing.

1. Market Research
2. Traffic
3. Conversion ~ or the sales process
4. Products

I think you will have a better handle on each of these areas when we are done with the challenge and that will allow you to continue with your project and/or start new projects when we are through.

The entire 30 day challenge is completely FREE!! We will be using web 2.0 for a wide variety of pieces in this marketing puzzle and Ed Dale will be teaching it all.

So for this blog I think we will be talking about our learning, and growing and other aspects of the challenge itself as they come up. Since I haven't done the challenge I'm not sure what's going to come up ~ so that will be a surprise. :)

I do know that Ed encourages you to put together a group for this project. He recommends facebook, but since we already have the ning community up and running I suggest we gather there. I have set up a 30 Day Challenge Group at the Internet Marketing Action Plan community over at ning. Anyone and everyone is welcome to join.

This group will be for support and sharing, as well as giving stumbles and diggs and helping one another out along the way through the challenge.

I look forward to seeing you all there and hearing the success stories at the end of the month!

So here we go! We started on April 1st, so you are not behind, just come on in and join up.

Here's the info you need to get to the challenge itself.

30 Day Challenge homepage.

If at some point you have already signed up for the challenge it will show your email is already in the system, go here to sign in. I believe you can request your sign in info from this page as well.

There is quite a bit of "preseason" information. This is information about different web 2.0 applications we will be using throughout the challenge and how to install and set them up. Don't freak out about the preseason stuff. You can do it bit by bit and catch up ~ even wait until the weekend if you want. :)

Just go ahead and TAKE ACTION!! Just start at day 1 it's completely painless and the song is hilarious. You'll know what I mean when you get started. :)

See ya at Ning! Here's to a great 30 day Challenge and 30 day marketing experiment.

Jackie Lee

Instant Message Marketing ~ Just how do you market with Instant Messenger?

Today I'm going to go over some of the specifics you need to think about if you are going to use instant messenger for your marketing.

Screen Name: This is the first important decision you will need to make. You want to choose a screen name that is interesting and unique. You want your name to have meaning to you, but not necessarily be related to your product or service. When I chose my username at Yahoo I chose AbundanceCoach2006. I am an abundance coach ~ but most people don't really know what that is, so they ask, "hey what's an abundance coach?" This allows an opening for me to talk about coaching and abundance. The 2006 was special to me, abundance coach was taken, I already had the intention to be able to leave my J-O-B and be working from home by the year 2006, that's why I chose that number. Turns out in April of 2006 I left my job and have been working from home since. ;) (you gotta love the power of intention)

Your Profile: Your profile is a huge element of this system. When you create your profile you want to talk about YOU, really fill in your profile, fill it all out, and don't write about your business. In fact, I would not even put my company site as the homepage they allow you to have. If you have a blog or a page on a social community I would put that instead. This allows people to get to know YOU better. It also lets people know you are a real person. They are much more likely to listen and converse with a person than someone they perceive is out to sell them something or get them to join a business.

This happened to me today as a matter of fact. I had someone instant message me. I immediately went to her profile which was barely filled in, and her website was a turnkey work at home business site.

Funny thing ~ being the smart-alec that I am I asked her if she had read my blog on instant message marketing this month and gave her the link. lol. We did converse briefly, but I probably wasn't the best contact she's ever made.

Your Personal Quote: Most instant message programs whether it's yahoo or myspace give you the space to add a personal quote. This is very important. You can tell just about everything about a person from the quote they choose. Think about this ~ which of these two people would you rather approach someone with the quote " Eighty Percent of success is just showing up" or "Life is a highway and I'm always stuck in traffic" Which do you think is going to be open to learning new things and willing to put in the work to make it happen? I think you already know.

Your Introduction: This brings me to the next point. How you introduce yourself to this person you are instant messaging. Max Steingart does this amazingly well, so make sure you read Mary K's post with the Max Steingart article. You want to say hello and bring up something about them. You want to get the talking about themselves so you can see just how they will fit in with what you have to offer ~ if they even need it. So ask questions. If you are looking for teachers you might say "I notice you are a teacher, how long have you been teaching or what do you teach". Know that people will look at your profile to see what your online agenda is. If you profile smells of selling they will not respond.

From your introduction you will want to continue the conversation, hopefully moving it in the direction where they will ask you what you do.

Don't give it all away: This is the next big thing. You don't want to vomit your business speech all over them just because they asked you what you do. You want to give them an idea and let them ask the questions for more information. Max does this quite well in the Instant Message Marketing article Mary K posted.

From here you should be able to tell if they are interested, if you are doing affiliate marketing you can recommend the product or tell them how it's worked for you. You can shoot them a link to the website ~ it needs to be a cloaked link so it doesn't immediately appear as an affiliate link. I showed the readers of my Internet Marketing for Mommies a great way to cloak affiliate links using subdomains if you already have hosting and a domain name.

If you are doing network marketing or trying to talk to them about a company you can get them on the phone or to your company call from this point.

Remember ~ this is about being social, it's about helping people, it's about getting to know people.

You have to go into this system with that intention or people will smell salesman on you and just won't respond or will leave the conversation very quickly.

More and more people are relying on friends (both online and off) for recommendations and are MUCH less likely to respond to any kind of sales pitch. Remember to be a friend helping out another friend and you'll do well.

I'd love for you all to try this system out and come back and let me know how it went. If this sounds like the perfect marketing method for you check out Max's website, his products really will teach you everything you need to know about being an expert Instant message marketer. (no affiliate link there ~ just solid recommendation)

See ya next week.

Jackie Lee

Instant Message Marketing and 'Relationshipping'

As Jackie mentioned, this week's 'system' incorporates messaging. While Instant Messaging plays a big part in this system, keep in mind that all messaging systems allow us the opportunity to connect with and get to know people and make new friends.

I think it's important to make a distinction between 'Advertising' and 'Marketing'.

My Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary says:

advertise - 1: to make something known to: NOTIFY 2 a: to make publicly and generally known b: to announce publicly esp. by a printed notice or a broadcast.

advertising - 1: the action of calling something to the attention of the public esp. by paid announcements

market - 1a (1): a meeting together of people for the purpose of trade by private purchase and sale and usu. not by auction. (2) : the people assembled at such a meeting b(1): A public place where a market is held

marketing - 1a: the act or process of selling or purchasing in a market b: the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service 2: an aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer

Notice that MARKETING is more focused on the people... getting a message to people certainly, yet it might serve you to keep in mind that advertising focuses on the thing being marketed... where good marketing focuses on the needs of the people being marketed to. (please ignore that dangling preposition... it will be safely caught when you are clear about exactly who makes up your market! ;-))

I feel it's an important distinction to be made when we're talking about a system using Instant Messaging because I can promise you that you will not be warmly embraced if you're simply grabbing people's time and attention to throw some advertising at them!

As Jackie has pointed out there are a variety of places you will find Instant Messaging tools. The important thing to remember is they are all attached in one way or another to a community... and most communities give their members a place to fill out information about themselves. That's your profile page. And it's by searching other's profile pages that you will find people to connect with and get to know.

That's a really important part of this system and the reason you want to have a clear idea of just who you are looking to meet.

So, while you're creating a profile page, sharing information about yourself and what your interests are, give some thought to the people most likely to be interested in your product or service.

Though it may at first seem counter-intuitive, the more you can narrow down the description of your 'perfect' customer... the more successful you will be in using this system to market your stuff. The reason is because when your target is very clearly defined you know exactly where to aim.

This doesn't mean you can't be flexible and approach different groups of people with the same product or service... you just want to increase the likelihood that the people you are introducing yourself to will share something with you and possibly be served by what you have to offer.

Now, for me one of the best ways to get an understanding of this is to be with someone who is actually initiating a conversation with a stranger online. So I want to share an example with you. This is an article shared by Max Steingart in the March 2008 issue of TheNetworkMarketingMagazine.com
Though the feedback Max shares is being given to Network Marketers, there is much to be learned for any marketer online. Let me know what you might find valuable here!

How to use the poor economy to YOUR advantage

Walk through an online conversation with Max and a potential prospect… great stuff!

by Max Steingart

—————————————————————

Max Steingart's Recruiting Tip: "How to use the poor economy to YOUR advantage!"

One thing on everyone's mind at the moment is the "bad economy" and the "recession". And to be sure, things are looking pretty bad for a whole bunch of people. Although it doesn't HAVE to be bad news, and often these trying times are actually opportunities in disguise.

See, in times like this, some industries in particular are having a rough time of it... so you not only watch my special techniques grow YOUR business, but you can also give someone else who's having a hard time of things a hand-up.

Everyone wins!

So in this conversation, I share with just how easy it is to engage someone who you know ahead of time is perhaps in an industry where their primary income is likely to be under pressure right now. The famous marketer, the late Gary Halbert, once said, "You should sell to a starving crowd". And this is a great example of me doing just that. I've used "THEM" to preserve the privacy of the other person involved, but it's a genuine conversation I had, and, what's REALLY important is this so easily COULD be YOU talking to as many of "THEM" as you wanted!

Probably the best way to get the MOST from this powerful conversation is to print it out, grab a cup or glass of your favorite beverage and go sit somewhere quiet where you can follow along with the commentary and reference the lines in the conversation. I promise you, it'll really be worth that little bit of extra trouble to go over it.

==================================================

Recruiting Tip:

"How to use the poor economy to YOUR advantage!"

==================================================

1. Max: Hello from Miami Beach My name is Max I'm
waiting for someone I work with to come online
and noticed your profile. What is the condo
market like in Daytona Beach?

2. Them: Hi...I'm <>. It's a buyer's market -
a lot of good deals. People who are anxious to
sell are wheeling and dealing. Are you looking
for a condo?

3. Max: It's a buyers market here in Miami Too I'm
shopping for a good investment in an ocean front
condo how long have you been selling real
estate?

4. Them: I specialize in the condo market. Have
been doing this 6 years. What kind of condo are
you looking for? How big?

5. Max: 2 to 3 bedrooms in an upscale building on
the ocean or waterway. What prompted you to get
into real estate sales?

6. Them: The market was hot 6 years ago. My best
friend was making tons of bucks so I got my
license. When are you looking to buy something?

7. Max: I'm not in a hurry I think the market will
go much lower than it is today. What did you do
before real estate?

8. Them: I was in pharmaceutical sales. I sold to
doctors and hospitals. My first year selling
condos I doubled my income. Things are slow so
you know you can get a great deal. Sellers are
serious.

9. Max: I'm sure they are. I expect they'll be even
more serious next year. Some of my friends in
real estate have taken on second jobs to make
ends meet. How are sales going for you
personally?

10. Them: The market is tough. It's like that
everywhere. I've also taken on a second job for
extra income. What do you do?

11. Max: I have an internet business I work from
home. That gives me the time to travel and do fun
things and I teach other people how to do the
same thing.

12. Them: I'd like to have an internet business
myself. What do you sell? Could you teach me?
I've been thinking of selling things on eBay.

13. Max: Perhaps I could. My business is in the
health field. Are you open to learning new
things?

14. Them: Yes I am, very much so. I'm a fast learner
and want to know all about it. I really need to
secure another income until the market comes
back. But I have an appointment to show a condo
now. It's not on the water or I'd tell you about
it. A very motivated seller. Can we connect later?

15. Max: Of course. I'll be online later after 9.
How about you?

16. Them: If not tonight, tomorrow in the day for
sure

17. Max: until later bye for now

18. Them: bye

Commentary:
In Line 1, I do as I always do and kick off the conversation in an interesting and non-threatening way. In this case, because I know the real estate market in Daytona is pretty tough, I also know she is going to be interested in talking to me if she thinks I might be a buyer. See how this is exactly the REVERSE of a "normal" MLMer's approach?

And in Line 2 I get the kind of response I expect. Reading between the lines, so to speak, she's DESPERATE for business!

In Line 3, I acknowledge her statement by saying it's bad in Miami, too, and then neatly segue the conversation into HER business. As I said last week, people LOVE to talk about themselves. But notice how this isn't just idle chatter to pass the time of day. I have a definite REASON for asking her about how long she's been in real estate -- I don't just want her talking about herself... I want her talking about her BUSINESS.

In Lines 4 through 6, she shows me even MORE evidence of how bad her business is and so gives me a darned good idea how receptive she'll be to my business. But here's something you MUST get into your head: even if your prospect is "desperate", you still cannot jump down their throat and give yourself too easily. Human nature being what it is doesn't value anything free (because if it's free, what's it worth? NOTHING!). If you, yourself seem too eager to give your opportunity away, there's no incentive for your prospect to take advantage of it. Desperate or not, your prospects are human beings with self-respect and dignity and you should treat them that way. Odd though it seems, if they have to "work" to "qualify" for your opportunity, they'll value it a lot more.

In Line 7 I get her back on track the way I want her to go, and in Line 8, it pays off, the "floodgates" open and she's telling me EXACTLY how bad things are right now.

So in Line 9 I subtly show her how it's NOT just a temporary "blip" and how her whole industry is in trouble -- I do this in case she's burying her head in the sand and thinking it's all just going to "blow over" in the next month or two. Note also how I sow the seed, by suggesting my friends have taken on a second stream of income... and then asking her how SHE's doing, personally -- I can make a darned good guess, of course, although it's much more powerful if she tells me herself.

And, indeed, in Line 10 she tells me exactly what I want to hear: things are bad enough for HER, too, that she also has had to take a second job. Plus she asks me that magic question we always want to hear: "what do you do?"

Accordingly, in Line 11, I tell her. But look at HOW I tell her. I don't really talk in terms of a "business". I talk about the BENEFITS I get from it: spare time, and fun... and also throw her a lifeline by mentioning the fact I teach others to do the same.

And in Line 12, MORE magic words from her: "I'd like to have an internet business myself", and "could you teach me?" How much easier can this be, Jake? But see in Line 13 how I'm still being cool about the whole thing. I gently "qualify" her by implying she'll have to learn new things.

After all, it's better to find out NOW if she's a lazybones than later when I've invested even more time in her, right?

In Line 14 she's practically begging me for more information about my opportunity. She's got to go and can't chat any more, but I know she's interested. At this point, even when she's asking for more, most MLMers would start to panic and pressurize her to get a phone number or some kind of "commitment". This is absolutely the WORST thing you could do, though. It's like reeling in a fish: jerk the line too hard... and you'll snap the line and let it swim away!

So in Lines 15 to 18 I simply gently "let go" and loosely arrange to speak to her sometime later. No panic, no fuss... and you know why? Because... I KNOW I've done my job properly using the exact same skills and "softly, softly" techniques I teach my students... and that means I also KNOW... she'll be BACK!

If you'd love to use these tips but find you don't have enough people to talk to, I can help you with that. Simply go to my website and download your free copy of my Endless Free Leads eBook.

Max Steingart,
The Master of Internet Prospecting
www.maxsteingart.com

Using Instant Messenger to Make Money Online

This week's "system" is using instant messenger. The king of this system, hands down, is Max Steingart. He has produced some great products that will teach you everything you need to know about using this system, with great success, to make money online.

I purchased one of Max's programs a few years ago, and I know his techniques have changed a little bit over time, so I will be able to give you the basics of this system. If it is something that speaks to you go ahead and check out Max's website and the products he has to offer.

Today I'm going to give a basic overview of the system and my next post will go a little more into detail for each of the steps.

This is a really simple system ~ and other than buying a product that might help you be more successful in using the system it won't cost you a dime.

All you will need is an instant messenger service ~ heaven knows there are tons of them now. In fact many of the social communities have their own instant messenging ~ like myspace. You can use a general service like yahoo, ICQ or AIM messenger or you can go with a community messenger like the one at myspace. I used this method using yahoo messenger, if I was doing it now I think I would focus on myspace. People are already there to be social. I think you would have a better chance of starting a conversation, and you can get a lot of information about the person before approaching them before approaching them, on myspace than you might just instant messaging anyone in the world.

Now that you've decided on a messaging service you will need to set up an account for yourself, including filling out your profile so people will know who you are.

Next you will search for people to start a conversation with. You can do this by searching through the messenger's (or myspace) database of users. Search on words or general ideas that interest you and are relevant to your business or product.

For example if you are marketing an Entertain Your Toddler ebook you will want to look for moms of toddlers to contact. This should be easy enough to do if you use keywords. If you are looking for someone to join your network marketing company you will want to look for people who have a problem your product may solve ~ or someone looking to make money from home.

Next you want to instant message the person and strike up a conversation. Really ~ the point of this system is the CONVERSATION, so talk to the person. As the conversation progresses, if you are looking for people to join your business, you will want to at some point ask them what they do ~ which will lead them to ask you what you do. You will then have the opportunity to say something that will make them want to ask more about that. If you are trying to talk to them about a product you will want to converse with them about the topic so you can offer the solution ~ your product.

Then all you have to do is wash, rinse, repeat. Continue finding more people to talk to and continue having these conversations.

Like I said it's a pretty simple process, however, there are some things you can do to increase your level of success. I will be discussing those specifics in my next post.

Until next time ~

Jackie Lee

Beliefs - An Idea and a Lens

WOW! It's another one of those fast-moving weeks and I'm amazed to see that it's Thursday already!

Even with a plan I find I'm frequently de-railed. The benefit of having the system though is that I can take a deep breath and climb right back on where I fell off. I'm loving that in bigger ways than I imagined!!!

So... the idea I was playing around with was BELIEFS. As you can imagine that's a pretty b r o a d topic... nine times out of ten when I mentioned it to people their immediate question was some variation of, "What kind of belief?!?" I simply had to narrow it down!

Now... to be fair, I must explain that I have a motive for wanting to work with beliefs right now as I have been working in partnership for the past month or so revising a most brilliant course called BeliefBusters. It's a course providing a series of processes that have an amazing ability to help you break through disempowering beliefs you may not even realize you hold... resulting in personal transformation like nothing I've ever experienced before.


You may have guessed that I am passionate about personal growth and development and it's clear to me that we all have adopted some beliefs that simply do not serve us and until we uncover and release those... we are stuck at the level of our beliefs.

So, I was left with the question... how do I select a keyword that expresses all that?

Perhaps I should declare here - "Do what I say... not what I do". LOL I simply decided to go with a very long tail keyword... Belief Busters for Personal Transformation
(my motto - when in doubt, tell it like it is ;-))

So that's the lens I built today... I decided to focus on creating a lens filled with a variety of resources that support breaking through limiting beliefs. I decided to keep it a bit broad on purpose as I intend to create a few lenses on specific resources like this that I will 'hook' together.

It's late and I'm too tired to do any bookmarking. Since Squidoo hasn't even indexed my lens yet it's undoubtedly better for me to wait until tomorrow anyway!

I'll keep you posted about this experiment...
--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

A MAP ~ Affiliate Marketing Action Plan ~ Part 2

If you've been following along you now have a great idea and a Squidoo lens. If you aren't why not?

Today we are going work on the second half of this system. This is the part that drives traffic to your lens.

We're going to drive traffic in a couple ways.

We are going to use social networking and social bookmarking to get high quality backlinks which will increase your rankings in the search engine as well as drive traffic from the communities themselves.

The second way we are going to drive traffic is by article marketing. This will also provide you will quality backlinks and direct traffic.

Social bookmarking. This is a great way to let people know about your lens. There are some must use social bookmarking sites.

StumbleUpon ~ this site has the ability to drive a LOT of traffic to your site. In fact, I recently had two different incidents of over 600 visitors in a day from StumbleUpon. You will have to sign up for an account with stumbleupon, and then download the toolbar. It will not drive traffic every time you stumble your lens, but it will be another great backlink, and a good possibility of getting some traffic.

Digg ~ depending on your topic. If you are doing anything about making money don't bother with digg. When you do your digg bookmark make sure you write a description that sounds more like a newspaper story.

There are a million social bookmarking sites available, and more being created every day. Getting your bookmarks can be time consuming, but it is a necessity.

A couple suggestions and then I'll give you some ideas on how to make it a little quicker.

Take a few minutes when you sign up for your account to add a little description and a picture. I suggest using the same picture for all your social networking pages. People will begin to associate your picture with you and feel they know you no matter what community they are in.

Now making quick work of bookmarking.

You can use social marker ~ which once you have an account at each of the bookmarking sites will fill in all the information for your lens. All you have to do is put in the captcha and click submit.

If you want to do even more bookmarking than social marker I have put together a free report to help you set up a system for quick and easy social bookmarking

Bookmarking is pretty self explanantory ~ but important to build quality backlinks and drive traffic.

Article Marketing is the next piece of the traffic puzzle.

I suggest you come up with at least two keywords for each of your lenses that you can write articles on. I suggest you write a couple articles for each keyword. They will be used for a couple of different purposes.

The first article will be written for google. You will write this article using your keywords in the title and within the article and then submit it to ezinearticles.com. If you've chosen good keywords with not so much competition you should easily be able to get to page one or two of google with your article. (this should give you two of the top 10 links in google 1 to your lens and one to your article with a link to your lens)

The second article on the same topic is going to be used for backlinks. You will want to submit th is article to all the article directories you can find. I had you write a second article so you don't get dinged for duplicate content and not show up on google. This is just for the links, so no need to worry about the duplicate content.

Again, submitting to article directories is VERY time consuming. You can cut down on some of the time by using Article Submitter. Once you've created an account at each of the directories article submitter will fill in all the info about your article in each of the directories. All you will have to do is choose a category and click submit. This will make your submissions process much quicker.

You can/should do this process for each of your keywords for each of your lenses. I get asked how many articles do I have to write for each lens. Here's the answer ~ as many as you need.

Sorry ~ what I mean is you have to keep doing this until you start to see the level of traffic that you want/need for that lens to start making you the money you want. So if you aren't on page one of google yet, submit to some more article directories and write another article or two to submit to ezinearticles.

It probably won't take as much as you think.

In fact, yesterday I created a lens on Easter Crafts for Kids, I have not gotten around to writing articles on it yet, I just bookmarked it and it's already on google and getting traffic. Now it's just a little traffic, so once I get some articles written and submitted, I imagine it will create a stronger stream of traffic.

The last step in this system and it's an optional step is to set up a blog.

This blog is designed to give you more quality backlinks. You want to think of a blog topic that will be able to encompass all your lenses.

For example ~ I set up a "how to blog". My only purpose for this blog was just to get more backlinks to all my lenses. I am however, quickly falling in love with this little green blog. It allows me to do all the things my other blogs don't let me do. I get to post quick, one small paragraph posts and then link to my lens. I also get to add nice pictures which I don't do on most of my other blogs.

So instead of it just being a backlink creator I'm actually starting to drive traffic to the blog itself. Doing this will lead people back to my lenses and hopefully to the merchant pages where they will be moved to buy the product. :)

You can even make a post and link to your ezinearticles. It is all about making a huge web of links all interconnected, and giving people a ton of different ways and opportunities to find your site.

That's it the basics of this system.

Get an idea ==> Build a Lens ==> Bookmark for backlinks and traffic ==> Articles for backlinks and traffic ==> Blog for backlinks and traffic

Pretty simple, but I know even though we've laid it all out there for you actually doing it and following through will be tough.

Just try it. Follow this plan 1 time and see what happens. If you notice an increase in traffic to your lens and an increase in your commissions DO IT AGAIN. If you don't I'd still suggest doing it again. Not every lens will be a huge hit. You may have to build a few lenses before you hit the big one.

If after building 10 lenses following this plan you are still seeing nothing ~ then move on to another system and try it out.

If this just wasn't quite clear enough, step by step enough for you, keep an eye out for my new ebook A MAP ~ A Step By Step Affiliate Marketing Action Plan. It should be ready soon.

However ~ if you have not followed each and every piece of this puzzle I don't want to hear "it just doesn't work" because it DOES work, you just have to work it.

I look forward to discussing the next system next week. See ya then. Get started today on this though. You can easily get a few lenses done before Monday.

Jackie Lee :)

Creating an Affiliate Marketing Action Plan ~ A MAP

A MAP is what most people are missing in internet and affiliate marketing. It doesn't matter how much information you have, if you can not put it into a concrete and easy to follow system and have a plan to follow it's useless.

I'm really excited about this month. It's really just dawning on me how important it is to have a system and an action plan. We are going to work on four different marketing strategy systems and hopefully provide you with a MAP (marketing action plan) for each.

Mary K mentioned our first system will be

Idea ==> Squidoo Lens ==> Bookmark ==> Article ==> Blog

This is the system I currently use the most and love the most. In fact I am in the process of writing and in depth ebook that will provide the reader with A MAP(affiliate marketing action plan) for this system. So if you enjoy this week's system please stay tuned for the release of my ebook.

Today I'm going to discuss the first two aspects of this system, finding an idea and setting up a Squidoo lens.

Coming up with an idea is a crucial piece of the internet marketing puzzle. It can be as complicated or as easy as you want to make it. There are two schools of thought on idea generation. One side says "do what you love" the other says "choose something that's hot". I think there's great value in doing BOTH. When you are looking for an idea choose something that interests you, but check and make sure people are searching on your keywords and other people are paying for advertising on that keyword as well.

That sounds really complicated but it is NOT. Believe me, this was the part that took me forever to get, and I was really just making it too complicated.

I generally get a lot of my ideas from Amazon. It's a huge marketplace. They've already divided everything into categories, and I'm sure if it's at Amazon, someone is buying it. So go ahead and go to amazon. Click the big orange button on the left and check out all the categories, open up the categories that interest you until you find something fairly concrete you can discuss.

This will be considered your "broad keyword". This will probably NOT get you into the top 2 pages of google because there's too much competition. Let's just go see how much competition there is. Let's say I found a bunch of information on Wedding Planning at amazon. I find planning a wedding pretty interesting so I'm going to choose that as my broad keyword.

Let's go to google now. Go ahead and put your broad keyword in the search box. You are going to take note of a couple things when the search results come back.

• how many sites are returned in your search results
• how many google ads are on the side of the page

If the number of results comes back over 10,000 (and I'm sure it will) you will need to refine your keyword. (this is the process of finding a great long tailed keyword). You are going to take note of the google ads because this will show you if there are people paying money for this keyword. You can bet if there's people paying, there's people buying.

OK ~ so the next step ~ since you have over 10,000 results in your search is to refine your search term or keyword.

Use the Best Keyword Tool (which is free). Put your broad keyword in the search box. When the results come back you want to look through them and pay most attention to the last column of numbers.

You want to find keywords that have under 1000 in that last column. Don't worry about the order of the words, if you can move them around and make an intelligent phrase write it down.

Keep in mind while you are looking for results that you are going to monetize a squidoo lens for this phrase ~ so think about if you can monetize the phrase through amazon (are there books, movies anything for sale on the topic?) Are there other affiliate options you will have for the topic? For example one of the keyword phrases for wedding planning was maui wedding planning. If I was doing a lens on planning a maui wedding I would want to see if there was an affiliate program where I could get paid for referring people to particular flights, hotels, activities etc.

Make sure to think outside of the box ~ there's an affiliate program for just about everything you can think of.

Take the long keyword phrase with less than 1000 in the last column and go back to google. Now you are going to put this phrase in search box in quotes and see what comes up. So for the maui example I put in "plan a maui wedding" It came up with 2,230 results and there are a more than 10 ads on the page. This will be a very good phrase to build a lens around.

That's really all there is to it. It doesn't have to be difficult.

The next step is to build your squidoo lens. We have discussed building Squidoo lenses quite thoroughly during the Squidoo Challenge. You can go back and read the month of January on this blog if you need a refresher on Squidoo.

I do want to make a few points about Squidoo I've learned since we did that experiment.

• Use your keyword phrase in your url. You can break it up with dashes or if it's taken you can add a number at the end (google won't care)
  
• Use your broad keyword AND keyword phrase AND other related keywords in your lens title and introduction module title (it says keep it short, but you can make it long)
• Use your broad keyword and your keyword phrase throughout your lens
• Name your pictures with your keyword phrase (this will help people find your lens through image searches)
• If you use link modules make sure you use your keyword phrase, and other related keywords in your anchor text
• If you use the poll module use keywords as your answers and hotlink them to a product
• Go ahead and bold/italicize your keywords a couple times throughout your lens
  

The more google is able to understand and SEE what your lens is about the more likely it will be to choose your lens to spotlight on page 1. Make sure google knows exactly what your lens is about by using your keywords when you can without making your lens look or sound crazy.

I'd also like to recommend some modules for you to use when creating your squidoo lens. This is the format I use and it serves a few purposes. It allows me to be focused and use my keywords often. It also allows me to break up the text, and add some interesting points or emphasize the important points. It also allows for interactivity within your lens ~ which is what the community of Squidoo is all about right?

Here's my system for quickly creating quality, interesting Squidoo lens.

• Amazon Spotlight
• text/write
• poll module
  
• amazon spotlight
• text/write
• talk bubble or post it note
• amazon spotlight
• text/write
• guestbook

That should get you going ~ remember you want to provide quality information, but if you make your lens too long you will lose readers before the end.

There you have it the first 2 steps in your MAP. I'll be back on Thursday to run through the last steps of this system.

Remember ~ no matter how much information you have it doesn't amount to money unless you DO something with it. Go DO IT!

Jackie Lee :)

Testing SYSTEMS - 1, 2, 3, 4

A most happy and welcome March to you!!!

It's time to wrap up our 30 Day BLOGGING Experiment and introduce our next Experiment.

I have to confess that while I love blogging and know it as an important element of marketing online, I feel the information shared here over the past month has been a bit scattered and disorganized. A good clue that some change is needed on my part. In fact, it served to inspire the direction Jackie and I are going to take for the next month of our 30 Day Marketing Experiment.

We are going to experiment with different "systems". This certainly won't be all inclusive... though we will aim to present a different system over each of the next four weeks.

A 'system', as defined in my Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary is:

1: a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole

In other words... you can have a group of items, or activities and with a sense of how they relate to one another, how they can build on one another... you have a system that results in a unified whole. Without the sense of how they relate to and build on or enhance one another you simply have a group of activities... or a group of tools... not doing you a whole lot of good.

One important thing to keep in mind is that there will be systems that 'work' for you... and systems that invariably fail to help you produce the results you seek. Don't make too much of any particular system. Just keep experimenting until you find the system that works for you!

A system that works for you would:

• fit your budget
• fit your schedule
• feel quite effortless
• inspire new ideas/thoughts
• bring in cash
  

The system we're going to cover this week looks something like this:

Idea ==> Lens ==> Bookmark ==> Article and take it further in a blog

We'll reiterate some of what we've talked about previously with a focus on the FLOW. I've frequently found that it's not until re-visiting information after pondering it a bit and experimenting with it to gather more information... that I experience those 'lightbulb' moments that allow me to suddenly see how it all flows together.

So... this month Jackie and I will experiment with a variety of systems in order to discover which ones work most powerfully for each of us. Feel free to share what comes up for you... voicing pro's and con's of various systems is a great way to get clear about what serves YOU best!

For now... I'm off to refine my IDEA -- I'll share that with you in a day or two.

until then... stay present to the moment ;-)

--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Blog for Traffic and Traffic for Blogs

Today I want to talk a bit about TRAFFIC and blogging. It's always been interesting to me that people frequently talk about creating a blog in order to drive traffic to your website...

yet that has always left me wondering where is the traffic TO your blog supposed to come from?

Of course, I understand that frequently updated content keeps your blog fresh and increases the chances that someone doing a search for a specific phrase in your area of expertise might find you, yet I thought it might be valuable to share with you some ways to optimize your blog so that the search engines give you a high listing when that search happens... the natural kind of searching by people looking to find out just the kind of information you can provide.

You can find many books, big books, written on the topic and I won't be getting that in-depth but an overview might serve well.

How can SEO (Search Engine Optimization) help you get traffic?
As we've shared before, the goal of any website is to get targeted traffic. And that includes your blog. If your area of interest is pets, someone looking for information about quilting is simply not going to be part of the market you are looking to attract. The search engines role is to help the people looking for information about their pets find the sites about pets! Someone hot to find information or spend money on YOUR niche.

Stop and think about what your blog is about. Actually, what each post of your blog is about. You'll want to set up each post of your blog to be sure to let the search engines know exactly who to send you.

Where to start?
There are two factors that determine how much traffic the search engines will send you. First is the information you have on your own blog. Second is how many other websites and/or blogs are linking to your blog. Those are the two areas you'll want to work on in order to crawl up higher on the search engines for your niche.

On your blog and in each post be sure to use the keywords for your niche. If your blog is about "Marathon Walking" then be sure to use the term "Marathon Walking" as your title and in the body of your posts. Easy and obvious.

Your offsite goals are just as easy. Work on getting other people to link to your blog by writing articles, leaving comments on other subject-related blogs and include a link back to your blog, and even posting on forums.

KEYWORDS
Be sure to include your keywords or key phrases on your posts. You don't want to go overboard but you do want your page title to be very descriptive.

Bad SEO Title: "Why I'm Having a Crummy Day"
Better SEO Title: "The Effects of Acne on Self Esteem"

Assuming these posts were written with the same content, the search engines will understand the "Better SEO Title" more.

We've talked about this before yet I'll reiterate because keywords are so important whether blogging, creating websites, writing articles, building squidoo lenses, etc. There are tools you can use to find keywords that are being searched.

• Overture - A free resource that will give you ideas for keywords. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles but it's a good place to start. http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
  

• Wordtracker - Provides a tool that displays the number of people searching for a term, as well as the competition. Wordtracker offers a free trial so you can test their service. http://www.wordtracker.com

Where to include your keywords
Once you have an idea of which keywords you're using stay consistent. Come up with a title that includes your keyword/s and use that word or phrase at least once in your post.

Off-Site SEO
Search engine optimization is a two-part process so work on optimizing your blog content (on-site) and work on getting many incoming links (off-site).

Think about why the search engines consider incoming links to be important. When you find impressive information on a website or blog what do you do? You link to it. This is not only proven with articles and blogs but other types of websites too. If you find a free piece of software or a really inspirational video, you may mention it on your blog or website and include a link to that website or blog where your visitors can claim it.

That's what people naturally do. The search engines recognized this and realized that the more popular websites like CNN.com or ESPN.com are linked to quite frequently and naturally.

So... how can you "force" other sites to link to you? Of course, I don't recommend any illegal or spammy methods so here are some tried and true ways to get other sites to link to yours:

• Create quality sites with unique, informative and/or entertaining content. Visitors will be more open to linking to you if you have much to offer.

• Do something newsworthy and write a press release. Not only will you have incoming links from the press release distributors but you also stand a chance to get your story picked up by TV, radio and print newspapers.

• Become a columnist for another website. Contact websites or blog owners in your niche and offer to write a regular ongoing column for them -- even provide a weekly tip or idea. You'll get plenty of links - and build a networking relationship by doing so.

• Write and submit articles to article directories. You can even use a blog post, perhaps with a bit of re-working, as an article. Simply write an informative article and let others publish it with your Author Resource box at the end which includes your URL.

These are just a few ways you can increase the number of incoming links to your blog. With a little creativity and a bit of work you'll see more traffic coming through those links in the coming months.

And there you have some thoughts about drawing traffic to YOUR blog!
Have a fabulous weekend... I do appreciate you,

--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

There's SO much more than make money online

When I first jumped into blogging I erroneously assumed the best way to make money online was by blogging about making money online.

I think a lot of people new to making money online and new to blogging think the same thing. In fact, I hear from a lot of people ~ I have this blog on making money online, but I'm not getting any hits, I'm not making any money.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and be BOLD. When you are looking for a topic for your blog DO NOT CHOOSE anything about making money online.

There I've said it, it's out there. Flog me if you must ~ but I think it is true.

Look, there are about, oh I don't know, a gajillion people out there blogging about making money online. Some of them ARE making money online. MOST of them are not. Who do you think people are going to listen to when they want advice about making money online? The person who is making 20,000 a month or the person who is only getting 4 hits to their blog a day ~ themselves, their husband, mom and dad?

I don't mean to be harsh here, but think about it logically. It really is true.

Don't DESPAIR ~ even if you already have one of those how to make money online blogs. (keep working at it, no sense leaving your baby now)

What I want to tell you is this: you have a much better chance of making money online with a blog that has NOTHING to do with making money online.

People come online to look for answers and to solve problems. These include answers and problems for anything and everything your can imagine.

What is it that you love to do, what gets you fired up? Do you think other people get fired up about that thing too? Do you think people have questions about that thing and want answers and solutions? I am SURE they do.

Why not start a blog about what you love and are passionate about. Do you feel passionate about essential oils? Maybe you even sell essential oils. Do you use your essential oils to care for your animals in a holistic way? Now that's a great blog topic. Holistic Animal Care. Do you think people who are interested in holistic animal care would find you? My guess is there is not a gajillion other blogs on holistic animal care, and chances are people would find you. Do you think if you provided interesting information about how to care for your animals holistically people interested in that subject might keep coming back to see what you else they can learn? Do you think if you wrote an article about how this particular essential oil will manage fleas so you don't have to use chemicals on your pets that people might purchase that essential oil from an ad you have on your blog?

I'm just sayin'.

There is so much more to offer, that is more likely to bring you profit in the world of blogging than just another make money online blog.

If you are short of ideas try this: go to amazon.com. In the top left corner click the button to check out all the categories. Look around and find something that interests you. Dig a little deeper, see what Amazon offers on the topic, if it's something you are interested in, chances are someone else is too, and if Amazon is selling products related to it (especially a lot of products) you can guess they are making money, and so can you.

There are products at clickbank, commission junction, linkshare and a million other affiliate marketplaces that have absolutely nothing to do with making money online. There's plenty of opportunity elsewhere. Take advantage of that. Give yourself the chance to talk about something you love every day!

Jackie Lee :)

Make Life Easy with Must Have Wordpress Plugins

When I first moved my wahm work at home mom blog from a free site and installed it on wordpress and my own hosting I realized there were a couple serious things I would have to take care of that wordpress used to manage for me.

This is where plugins come in. The wonderful world of wordpress plugins. Much like looking for a "perfect" theme you can get lost in the wonderful and seriously expansive world of wordpress plugins.

Instead of leaving you confused and wondering just what plugins you need to install I'm going to make it easy for you and just tell you ~ from my many hours researching this ~ the ones you must have and then the ones that are just fun to have (and also serve a purpose). These are the actual plugins I have installed on all my blogs.

SPAM~ this is one of those things wordpress used to manage for me, now I'm responsible for dealing with all the spam comments that come in. (it is really strange the kind of comments you find) This is the first and in my opinion MOST important plugin and the first one you should install. It is in fact, the same spam management system that wordpress uses. Akismet. This plugin will manage all your spam comments, it will delete them after 30 days, you don't even really need to think about it. (I sometimes look through my captured spam comments just to see what's in there, but I'm kinda weird)It is an excellent plugin, I have never had any spam get through, and I think I've only had 1 or 2 comments that were real end up in the spam folder. This plugin will save you tons of time weeding through spam comments. Download Akismet ~ a must have plugin.

All In One SEO Pack ~ The second most important plugin and definitely the must have plugin for SEO. This will allow you to optimize your posts for searchability. The functions in this one plugin used to be in a couple different ones, but now it's nicely bundled in one place.

Smart Update Pinger ~ This plugin pings your blog each time you add new content. You can add a personal list of sites you want pinged.

Google Sitemap ~ This will build and install a google sitemap for you site. All you have to do is install the plugin and fill in a couple blanks. It does all the work for you.

All in one Adsense and YPN ~ This plugin allows you to easily and effortlessly add adsense or Yahoo ads, or both to your site. It is really easy. I only added this plugin recently because I wasn't using adsense on my sites. However, I started earning money from adsense as soon as I installed it.

Tagalize It ~ This allows you to tag keywords to both technorati and ice rocket.

What Would Seth Godin Do? ~ A funny sounding plugin with an important job. This plugin uses cookies to place a message on your blog reminding new readers to sign up for your RSS feed. You can set the number for how many times readers see the message. After they have visited more than that number they will no longer see the message.

Those are the MUST HAVE plugins ~ here are a few I have on my blog and appreciate the work they do for me.

Viper's Video Quicktags ~ This plugin will be considered a must have for anyone who posts a lot of video on their blog. It allows you to one click add video from a variety of sources. It gives you a button on your blogging task bar.

Wordpress.com Stats ~ I started my blog at wordpress.com. I got used to the little view graph. I love it. I was sad when I moved my blog and didn't think I would be able to get the chart anymore. Then I found this plugin. It's exactly the same as wordpress.com. Of course google analytics has more info, but I love the simple chart. :) You can use both.

Sociable ~ This is a social bookmarking plugin that will put icons to social bookmarking sites at the bottom of your posts. I have tried a couple different social bookmarking plugins and this one is my favorite. You can choose which buttons you want included.

Related Posts ~ I have this installed and have yet to figure out how to make it work right. However, I'm still recommending it because I know all the blogs I read regularly that have it I read waaaay more articles on than the ones that don't.

This is the last one, and may seem a little redundant, but I am really working on getting my RSS subscriber numbers up, so I added it.

Subscribe Remind ~ This plugin adds a little reminder at the end of each post to subscribe to your RSS feed if they enjoyed the post.

There you have it ~ my plugin list, both the must haves, and the just for funs. If you are hosting your own blog you will find these plugins help your SEO as well as make your life much easier.

Jackie :)

Why blog - to earn or not to earn...

I found it interesting that when Jackie wrote a post about monetizing a blog someone left a comment asking, "What if you don't want to monetize your blog?"

Jackie responded with the simple and sensible... "Then don't" ;-)

I find myself still pondering the question. It prompts me to remind myself, as well as others, to be clear about our purpose, passion and pleasure when it comes to blogging. If you're blogging for public viewing you might want to ask yourself to what aim? Are you simply interested in sharing information? Looking to make connections with others who share your interests? Perhaps you simply enjoy writing and find pleasure in drawing an audience to appreciate your talent. Maybe you you want to supplement your current income using a blog. Maybe you want to ramp up your current income and a blog will complement that. Or maybe it's a combination of any or all of these.

At this point, I hope you have an idea of the kind of blog you would like to start as well as the reasons for starting that kind of blog.

Naturally, if you don't want to monetize your blog you would not provide any links in your blog that would connect you to payment for a product or service. And if you DO want to monetize your blog then you DO want to connect through links in your blog with something that pays you directly.

We've talked about how to get ideas and be clear about the kind of blog you want, some of the ways to drive traffic to your blog so that people are actually viewing what you are sharing and we've mentioned some of the ways to make money from your blog.

For those who DO choose to add an income stream through their blog I want to talk a bit more about that.

Text links are advertisements placed on your blog in the form of hyperlinked text. Just in case you're not familiar with the term 'hyperlinked' it means there is a link to a url embedded (hidden) in an advertising message like

"Cl'ck here to get the FREE Report Cash Pulling Blog Tactics Revealed!" or it can simply be a single word like "Toddlers" which will contain a link to a site like Jackie's lens offering activities for toddlers.

Text links like this have become very popular and are quite effective because they show up within the commentary that is only being read by people genuinely interested in the subject... a very likely candidate for your product or service.

Something I'm just learning about are text ads...
I want to share with you something I've discovered through the guys who wrote that report mentioned above:

There are basically two ways to add text ads to a blog:

1) An advertising broker

2) Text link generation software

In exchange for a share of the revenue, the following
brokers will add text links to your blog:

Adbrite.com

Advolcano.com

Blogads.com

Blogkits.com
Chitika.com

FederatedMedia.com

Text link generation software is a really great alternative
to text link brokers because you do not need to be approved
by a broker in order to start running text ads and you have
a lot more control over the both kind and quantity of text
ads appearing on your blog.

Perhaps the best software for generating text ads is called
Click Bank Text Ad Generator. Once installed, this software
will automatically scan all of the content of your blog for
certain keywords and turn those keywords into affiliate
links for products listed on Clickbank.

The products listed on Clickbank are great products to link
to because they tend to have much higher payouts than
physical products. With clickbank, it's not uncommon to
have $97 product with a 75% commission payout ($72.75
payout per sale).

A few text ads with a $72.75 payout can be very lucrative,
even if you only receive a few hundred hits a day.

For example, suppose again that your blog was receiving
just 500 visitors a day.

If 10% of these visitors clicked on one of these high
paying text ads every day and 4% of these visitors
purchased the product you would then earn a whopping
$145.50 every single day!

10% x 500 = 50 clicks

=> 50 x 4% = 2 sales

and 2 x $72.75 = $145.50!!!

And remember that all of this would be done without you
lifting a finger!

....Talk about easy money :-)

Fascinating to me are all the new discoveries to be made... we might not have the time or inspiration to implement them all and that's okay... adding even a couple of new actions periodically will boost your traffic and boost your earnings.

Here's to Prosperity!
Catch ya later...

--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Hosted Wordpress Blog without Hosting

Today I received an email, that normally I probably would have ignored, however, with this month being a blogging experiment I've been a little more open to random emails about blogging stuff. ;)

Once I clicked the link I was taken to Myccblog.com and pretty quickly I started getting excited! This is exciting news for people who really WANT to host a wordpress blog so they can benefit from all the extras available but just can't swing it right now.



You can now have a hosted wordpress blog ~ with 60 themes to choose from, the most important plugins already plugged in for you (including all in one SEO pack, akismet ~ to manage spam ~ automate pinger, sociable ~ so people can add your post to social bookmarking sites ~ and much more.

All of this ~ plus videos to show you how to make it work for FREE!!

Yeah I was a little skeptical at first myself, so I went over and signed up and sure enough. Everything they said would be there was and it was all for free. You can only have one free blog ~ but you can have more than one for a small fee.

It's a great way to get started. You will be able to get your posts ranked in search engines, your affiliate links are welcomed, there are plenty of themes with customizable headers so you can even put your own header in your blog.

It's definitely worth checking out if you want to host a wordpress blog and just can't swing it right now, you will have the freedom and ease, without the fee.



It's also a great idea for people who already have established wordpress blogs and want another way to get solid backlinks to your site. Start a free blog and with My CC blog and make posts quasi related to your main blog and add a link to your main blog using your keywords in anchor text within the post. (making sure it makes sense to the reader) For example, this blog is about a marketing experiment, I might do another blog about driving traffic, and link back to this blog for more information about marketing strategies. See?

There are a lot of ways you can use a free service like this. I would make sure I had a good idea of where I wanted to go before I got my free account since you can only have one free blog. You can of course purchase additional blogs if you find it's working really well for you. However, remember hosting costs are between 6 and 10 dollars a month, so don't spend more than that on any blogging service. You could be hosting your own blog with the ability to host up to 10 more sites for that price. (depending on your hosting company)

Think a minute about what you want to do, then run over and get your own blog. Don't let the thinking part keep you from the action part. Make a decision and then move. :)

Jackie Lee

Can Blog Content turn into Articles?

Okay... so that's a no-brainer of a question. Of course you can turn Blog content into Articles. In fact, if you're clever you'll do just that!

You see.... Search Engine, Internet Marketers, website owners and ezine publishers are constantly hungry for fresh quality content.

Notice the emphasis on quality. While there is a LOT of content all over the Internet a great percentage of it is mindless babble. I feel confident there will never be an over-saturation of QUALITY fresh content!

Which simply means offering information that informs the reader about a certain topic.

If you can do that you can easily get backlinks and traffic to your website. And if you have a blog, creating quality articles for submission to the major article directories is a simple matter of taking your own quality content and packaging it into 350-500 word articles with catchy headlines.

So gather together a few blog posts on a certain topic and create an article. Once you have the article put together you will want to submit it to a few major article directories. There are many article directories and manual submission can quickly become very time consuming.

I tend to prefer using a submission service or two... one of the newest I've recently discovered is set up to distribute your articles to thousands! It's a free directory submission service with a very long reach.

As you're probably aware, a big benefit of writing and submitting articles is receiving traffic from the link you're allowed to include in your 'resource' or 'bio' box. If the readers of your article find value in what you've shared they are likely to click on that link to learn more about you and what you have to offer.

What you may not have thought of is ways to ramp up your traffic from articles in a more high-powered way.

One is by becoming good at writing headlines that tease a readers curiosity and gives them a reason to choose your article over someone else's. Much to my amazement, statistics continue to support the truth that words like, 'secret', 'discover', 'important', 'amazing', 'incredible', 'unbelievable', 'shocking truth', 'how to' -- continue to be part of the catchiest headlines.

It's also very powerful to use your headline to ask a question (which, hopefully, will be answered for the reader by reading your article and continuing on to your website).

"Is it possible to..."
"What you don't know about..."
"When is..."
"Who is..."
"Have you seen..." etc.

Now here's another 'secret' to increasing your traffic from articles...

Instead of giving them the whole article, split the article in 2 and then use your resource box to direct them to your blog or website for "Part 2". Using a tagline like, "Read the rest of this article at www.yourwebsite.com" will force far more click thru's than the usual..."More can be found at..."

There's a bit of an art to split articles at the right point. It's an art you can easily hone with practice and experimentation. You want to split it at a point that will entice readers to read the rest. This doesn't mean you must have an actual 'cliffhanger' (though that is an interesting touch ;-)). You do want to go through the article and find what you believe to be the most interesting or most informative part and retain that portion for your blog or website. One way to approach this is to list the ideas your article shares. Retain the best ideas for your blog and in your resource box you can say something like, "For the Top 3 Incredible Ideas, Please visit www.myblog.com"

Hope this helps you understand the relationship between blogging and articles and how you can drive more traffic to your blog with your blog's content.

Thanks...
I appreciate you...
--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!