30 Day Marketing Experiment

How to Start a Niche Business

2009-03-17T11:09:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since we've run a 30 day experiment. We've both been so busy. However, here's a great experiment you can try on your own.

Start a niche business.

To get started you need to do some keyword research and find a group of tightly related keywords. Your keywords should have at least 500 searches/month, and less than 30 thousand competing pages.

Then grab create some content related to your niche.

Create a niche site based on your keywords and the content.

Find some affiliate products to promote on your site.

Building links is that last step and this will help you get more traffic from the search engines to your site so you can make more sales.

Do one of these sites each week. Let them "simmer" for a bit after you've done the marketing and see what you have.

If this sounds somewhat impossible I assure you it's not. However, you can make it easier on yourself by picking up a niche in a box. This is a niche site kit. It comes with everything you need to get started.

15 keywords
5 articles
products to promote.

It's a jumpstart ~ quick start ~ get your niche business built magic wand!

~ well it's not really magic, but it certainly makes building niche sites a heck of a lot easier. ;)

Day 20, Some interesting observations and learnings

2008-04-11T14:27:00.002-05:00

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

2008-04-04T17:18:00.001-05:00

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!!

2008-04-02T09:08:00.006-05:00

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.

Market Research
Traffic
Conversion ~ or the sales process
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?

2008-03-13T11:20:00.004-05:00

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'

2008-03-11T21:49:00.003-05:00

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

2008-03-11T15:38:00.003-05:00

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

2008-03-06T23:36:00.006-06:00

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

2008-03-06T10:04:00.006-06:00

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

2008-03-04T12:39:00.003-06:00

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

2008-03-03T22:11:00.006-06:00

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

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Blog for Traffic and Traffic for Blogs

2008-02-29T21:30:00.005-06:00

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

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There's SO much more than make money online

2008-02-28T07:45:00.003-06:00

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

2008-02-26T13:46:00.002-06:00

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...

2008-02-25T20:24:00.004-06:00

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

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Hosted Wordpress Blog without Hosting

2008-02-21T08:56:00.005-06:00

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?

2008-02-18T23:15:00.003-06:00

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

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Hosting your own blog ~ do it ASAP

2008-02-18T11:03:00.005-06:00

Ok, let's talk about the difference between hosted and free blogging. I've done and still do both. I do them for different reasons though.

I started out with a free blog, because I didn't think I could afford to pay for hosting. I had about 60 posts on my blog when one day I logged in and there was a big red banner across my blog. It said ~ you are violating terms of service and your blog will be erased if you don't comply ~ or something equally scary.

I freaked out ~ and I actually went back and read the TOS. I was using wordpress.com and soon realized they are NOT make money friendly. In fact you are not allowed to have affiliate links or any type of advertising on your blog.

Considering my blog was about making money from home ha ha. Well I made a quick backup of my blog so I had it in case the worst happened. I still was in denial about being able to afford hosting, so I went through my whole blog, took out all the links and cleaned it up so it fits terms of service.

At that point it was really useless for me to be blogging. I finally started looking around to see how much hosting would cost, and I think more importantly tried to quell my fear of "using hosting". It was a whole new learning curve and I had no idea how complicated it was going to be.

I looked into a few of the often recommended hosting companies and called Lunarpages ~ which is the hosting I finally decided on. I talked to the customer service rep who answered the phone immediately and was very willing to answer my crazy first timer questions and was really nice about it.

I have since called back every time I have had to do something new so someone could walk me through it. :) I'm not sure that's what customer service is really for, but they have happily helped me through it all.

I also have taken advantage of their forum. In fact, I have asked questions and had them answered within 5 minutes, and my replies answered immediately after that. Which is VERY helpful.

All in all, for a year of hosting it cost me 98 dollars, and I have had help at each step along the way. I installed my wordpress blogs with one click. (make sure whatever hosting you choose has fantastico) I have installed a forum with one click. I can now upload reports, images and host them. It's very handy.

But anyway, back to blogging.

A hosted blog allows you ultimate freedom. You can choose from a million themes, you can have a custom theme made. You can make SEO built in with a certain plugin. You can monetize in a million different ways. Your content is your own. No one can ever take it away from you. (except a crazy computer if you forget to back up ~ which you can also put on autopilot with a plugin)

The reasons to have a hosted blog are plenty. If you are trying to make money with your blog I definitely recommend having your own blog on your own hosting.

With that said ~ I also use free blogging sites. I use these to basically have a place to backlink to my "real" blogs. I set up blogs around the internet and write quick articles or link to other articles, but I can always have a link in the post and in the blogroll with my keywords in the anchor text. This lets me get great backlinks for my sites, and helps me drive traffic.

I don't really try to make money on these blogs, I'm just driving more traffic and building backlinks for my other sites, and squidoo lenses.

The last thing I will say about this is if you are going to try to make money on a free blog make sure you choose blogger.com. It is the ONLY free blogging service that allows you to make money from your blog (all hail google). You still have to worry about google randomly pulling the plug one day ~ and if you don't believe it happens stop by the warrior forum and put blogger blog disappeared or something similar in the search feature.

Make sure you back up your blog regularly in case this happens and save the first 100 bucks you make and go to Lunarpages hosting and get hosting for a year then upload wordpress. If you can't figure it out, send me a note and I'll walk you through it. :)

A Professional Looking Blog - inexpensively!

2008-02-15T23:41:00.003-06:00

There are tons of free blogs available to use online. With millions of registered users, I've heard that blogger.com is by far the largest provider of free blogs. Also, according to others I've talked with, blogger.com blogs tend to be a little more sophisticated than other comparable free blog services.

Notice... you're at blogger.com right now! ;-)

I can assure you that it's entirely possible to make money using a free blog. Yet you'll hear many people advise you against using a free blog if you intend to monetize. It's important to consider that position.

Here are a few very valid reasons why you will want to secure your own blog (which you have to pay for):

1) With blogger.com, Google owns your content. That's right. They have the authority to shut down your account without warning if they don't like what you're blogging about. (You might want to back up those blog posts you've made. ;-)). This takes away your control over your own blog.

2) You miss out on some options. For instance, Blogger doesn't allow categories so you can't sort your posts into different focuses.

3) You are limited in how you brand yourself - With blogger you can publish to your own domain, but you can't do significant changes to it.

Because of these things there are many that feel if you are interested in making serious money with your blog that the number one recommendation is WORDPRESS. Wordpress has a 100% FREE version that contains no advertisement and has fewer limitations than what you find at Blogger.com though to have all of the options and features available to you the best thing of all would be to host a Wordpress blog yourself.

I have to confess that I haven't taken that plunge yet myself... so I don't have personal experience to compare with. Maybe Jackie will fill us in on the challenges as well as benefits that she has experienced having blogged both ways.

That's enough for today... now go off and have a fun-filled weekend!!!
I appreciate you!
--Mary K

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Make Money Blogging ~ 7 Great Ways to Monetize Your Blog

2008-02-14T09:44:00.007-06:00

How do I make money blogging?

It's a question I get asked quite frequently ~ especially when people don't want to do a "make money blog". There are numerous ways you can monetize your blog no matter how much traffic you get or how many subscribers you have.

Today I am going to show you 7 Great ways to Monetize your blog. I will add one caveat. I would wait until you have at least a couple weeks worth of content (14 or 15 good quality posts) before you monetize. There are others who will tell you to wait at least a couple months before you start to monetize your blog. I see the benefit in that, but if you need to start making money try one of these ideas at a time, wait a couple weeks in between.

Don't over do your monetization. People come to your blog for information or solutions not to buy things. If you provide your readers with good quality content and help them solve the problem they came to you looking to solve they will be much more likely to purchase a product or click an ad to find out more.

Contextual Ads ~ Everyone knows about at least one of these ~ google adsense. It can be somewhat confusing to the beginner blogger though. Adsense is when you have google put ads on your page. You get paid each time someone clicks on one of the ads on your page. There is no fee to you to do this. All you have to do is set up a google adsense account.

What everyone doesn't know is there are many more of these contextual ad companies including Yahoo. You can google "contextual ad network" and you will find many places that will provide ads for you to show on your blog.

Text Link Ads ~ These are a little different than google ads. These are ads that advertisers pay you to put on your blog. They become an underlined word in your content. Content ads are more frequently clicked on possibly because they look less than advertising than other ads on your page.

Targeted Advertising ~ This is a great way to make money blogging. I think this would be much easier if you have a very targeted niche blog because this is when an advertiser comes to you and asks to pay you a monthly fee for advertising on your blog. This is kind of like the holy grail to bloggers. It can happen! It will only happen if you have good quality information in your blog. It does not necessarily matter how much traffic you are getting if you traffic is very targeted to a specific industry.

Affiliate Links ~ Another great way to make money blogging. It will also cost you nothing. All you have to do is sign up at an affiliate network like clickbank, commission junction, linkshare ~ there are tons of them out there. You find a particular product that fits well with your blog topic and add the link within an article or in the sidebar of your blog. (You can see we use this method on this blog ~ the friend blaster pro banner). The kind of products you can find online with affiliate programs in endless. You can sell digital products like ebooks or you can recommend real world products by creating an affiliate relationship with a store. Did you know Wal Mart has an affiliate program? Anything you can find at Wal Mart you can offer to your blog readers. :) Pretty cool huh?

If you are looking for an affiliate program for a specific product or niche just go to google and search for "your product + affiliate program" this should lead you to a number of affiliate programs for what you are looking for.

Sell Your Own Products ~ This is a huge money maker and beginners generally think they just can't produce their own product. Hogwash. It's really not that hard. In fact if you are blogging on a specific niche topic you could pull out some archived blog post and put them together as an ebook.

Any idea, system, information can be turned into an ebook. Take a look at what you do during your day ~ it may seem mundane and easy to you, but I can bet you there are people out there that could benefit from some of the things you know and do during your day.

An ebook does not have to be a Phd dissertation ~ it can be written in a friendly tone as though you were talking to a friend.

Another great idea for a product is interview someone about your topic. Have the interview transcribed or turn it into a podcast and sell it. If you get over the idea you can't have your own product you will start seeing product ideas around every corner.

The cool thing about having your own product is you get to keep all the profits ~ unless of course you set up an affiliate program so OTHER people can start selling your products for you. (Then you'll have to pay your affiliates) ;)

Sell Niche Related Products ~ You can set up a virtual store at Cafe press where you can make products related to your niche that others can buy. Just put the link to your cafe press store on your website. There are plenty of places online you can do this now, cafepress is not your only choice ~ Zazzle is another choice and I found it much easier to understand and get up and running than cafepress.

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You could also build an Astore from Amazon ~ offer books about your niche or topics your niche would be interested in. This is really more of an affiliate topic, but you would be selling real books. :)

Take Donations ~ this one probably won't make you scads of money unless you have a loyal readership. You can do this by putting a "donate" button from paypal on your blog. If you a hosted wordpress blog there is a plugin you can use that will encourage people to "buy you a beer" (or a cup of coffee) at the end of each of your posts.

Within a week or two of installing the "buy me a coffee" plugin in at my Internet Marketing Tips blog I had a women send me a 10 dollar donation. She read and implemented the suggestions in my post on My Story Marketing at Myspace. She said it had already produced more clients for her and she was grateful. So she sent me some money to say thank you ~ that's the kind of thank you most bloggers like best ~ right? It can happen, although it may not happen often, I think it's worth having the reminder there. If you don't ask you don't get.

Those are my top 7 ways to monetize your blog. Believe me there are plenty more, but I don't want to overwhelm you.

If you are thinking about monetizing your blog and don't know how to go about it, leave a comment below and Mary K and I will help you make it happen.

You can also come over to the new Internet Marketing Action Plan community. You can get assistance in setting up your personal action plan and get support and accountability to follow through as well as lots of CELEBRATING when you accomplish your goals. :)

Google's Blog Search Function

2008-02-13T22:49:00.003-06:00

Hello fellow blog readers...

I love running across new tools and when they cost
nothing it's even more exciting. So I'm dropping by
to share my excitement around today's discovery.

Are you familiar with Google's blog search function?
it's pretty cool. http://blogsearch.google.com

Maybe it's been there awhile...yet if I just discovered it today it may be new
to you too!

The value here is that it makes it so much easier to find others
who are talking to YOUR niche... YOUR target market. Really
helpful if you're affiliated with a variety of products and services
like I am!

Reading good blogs can serve in many ways...
like giving you tips, tricks and tools that you might not have found otherwise.

And leaving a helpful comment on a popular, well-read blog allows
you to serve others, feedback to the blog owner and get yourself
exposed with a backlink to your site...

So there's the cool tool... use it well and may the force be with you!!!
;-)

--Mary K

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Blogging ~ Hot to pick a HOT topic for YOU!

2008-02-11T22:28:00.000-06:00

Okay...Right up front I'm compelled to share one of the strange things that I love about blogging... it's done on a keyboard!!! When people talk about 'journaling' I cringe because my handwriting is so illegible that even I have to struggle to read it at times...

which makes me really mad cause I'm one of those who not only found myself in daily Palmer penmanship classes with NUNS in the late 50's/early 60's... making those d*mned circles and lines that are supposed to slant a very specific direction on a piece of paper at a very specific angle... add to that I'm a natural lefty and you might understand why I have a few 'issues' with penmanship! LOL (The nuns told me to sit on my left hand... I told them they better consult God about that since 'she' made me this way...end of conversation!)

So, now that I've confessed this I can share with you that I LOVE blogging because I LOVE using a keyboard... it gives me the freedom to write legibly while pretending to play the piano! (Another thing a nun tried to teach me... unsuccessfully, though I have the music in my soul. ;-))

Today I want to talk about 'blog topics' because if you're interested in making money with your blog your topic will have an impact. If you're like me and you simply experience joy in using the keyboard then you might be okay with blogging on a topic that doesn't fully float your cork but is very profitable.

There are several schools of thought -- some bloggers suggest you can only write a blog well if you are truly passionate about the subject. Others claim that if you want to make a lot of money with blogs then you need to create blogs centered around profitable topics.

In other words... topics with a lot of potential traffic. Makes sense?

Personally... I imagine the ideal is something that combines the two. So the slightly less than ideal might be a compromise. After all, if you have absolutely no interest in the subject matter, blogging on a topic will soon feel like drudgery and that will come through in your writing. It's a very unattractive energy that I'd avoid. So obviously it might benefit you to find a topic that is both potentially PROFITABLE and ENJOYABLE... that's a combination bound to win the gold.

Having said that... I do know that anyone can start a blog based on a hot topic they have little interest in if their inspiration to make money is powerful and they are willing to do the necessary research needed to produce fresh, quality content. (And they do little, if any writing themselves... we'll talk about that later)

After all... the hotter your topic the faster it will pull traffic... and lots of traffic = $$$

This means you need to do 4 things --

Find hot topics or niches with a lot of traffic potential (what are people talking about?)
Constantly add quality, fresh content to your blog
Get lots of free traffic to your blog from word-of-mouth and search engines
Monetize the resulting traffic

Simple enough. Here's a partial list of hot topics you might choose from:

Cars
- Buying
- Insurance
- Loans
- Repair
- Audio Systems
- Car Rims

Dating
- Internet Dating
- Dating Advice
- Attraction
- Seduction

Dogs
- Breeding
- Grooming
- Ownership

Finance
- Student Loans
- Grants
- Home Mortgage/Loans

Food

Gardening

Gambling/Online
- Gaming
- Poker/Texas Hold'Em Home

Remodeling

Home Business Ideas

Interior Design

Medicine
- Alternative Medicine
- Homeopathic Medicine Travel

Las Vegas

Vacation
- Family Vacations
- Hotels Video Games

Weddings
- Dresses
- Planning
- Invitations

Naturally, this is not a comprehensive list. You might want to do some exploring online to find out what people are talking about, asking questions about, interested in learning about. One idea is to go check the list of top lenses in each category over at Squidoo.com. They are typically top because so many people are interested in their topic.

Remember... their are many blogs out there that outrank websites with the same topic and competing for the same keywords just because blogs can consistently deliver fresh, quality content! And CONTENT is KING!

That's it for now... see you in a few days! ;-)
I appreciate you...

--Mary K

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Become a Blogger

2008-02-11T14:12:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite bloggers Yaro Starak has made a series of videos to help new bloggers Become a Blogger. The whole series is free and Yaro walks you through everything you need to know to set up a wordpress blog and monetize that blog.

You might be asking why do I have to have a wordpress blog when I could just get a free blog at Blogger or wordpress.

Take a sneak peek at the first of Yaro's videos and he will answer that question for you! When you go to Become a Blogger to watch the rest of the videos I encourage you to download his Blog Blueprint Profits. It's my favorite blog ebook!

Blogging ~ It's about Consistency!

2008-02-07T13:15:00.000-06:00

Blogging is a LONG TERM marketing strategy. If you are going to choose to start a blog please understand this is your blog for life. It's kind of like adopting a dog or having a kid. There will be days you just don't want to get up and walk the dog in the freezing cold, but you have to because it's yours. There will be days/weeks when you don't want to post but you have to ~ because it's yours. And being CONSISTENT is KEY with blogging.

Nothing irritates me more than finding a really interesting blog only to realize the person is not posting regularly.

Which brings me to the topic of regularly. There's some debate these days about how frequently you should be posting. Here's my opinion. Just DECIDE, based on what works for you. If you can only post 1 time a week, cool. Post 1 time a week, every single week, no matter what. Your readers will expect to hear from you once a week, don't disappoint them or they will leave you for one of the millions other blogs out there that are being posted to regularly.

I don't really think it matters how often you post as long as you maintain a consistent posting schedule. With that said, it may take you longer to get search engine ranking if you are only posting once a week. I recommend 2 or 3 times a week to post.

Posting at this frequency accomplishes a couple of things. It gives your readers new content on a regular basis. It gives the search engines new content on a regular basis. It also gives your readers a chance to bookmark, Digg, Stumble and otherwise share you posts before they get buried.

If you are concerned about such a long term undertaking and having enough to say about your topic, please stay tuned to my next post which will cover creating content. (It was meant to be this post, but I got sidetracked.) :)

Until Next Time!

Jackie Lee :)

30 Day Marketing Experiment - BLOGGING!

2008-02-04T22:16:00.000-06:00

It's time to launch another 30 Day Experiment ~~

For the next 30 Days (or so ;-)) we're going to focus on Blogging!

Whether you feel the whole blogging movement is narcissistic, materialistic, or truly valuable, publishing a Web Log (bLog) is an activity that's here to stay in one fashion or another for a good long while!

Since this is a marketing experiment we will focus on, to borrow a phrase, taking
Blogging to the Bank!

That's the title of a very well written and truly helpful book written by Rob Benwell. Rob makes six figures just with Blogs, only working a few hours a week... which simply tells you that the guy knows what he's talking about. To get all of his tips and tricks you'll have to buy the book...

and if you stick with us for the next 30 Days you'll know how to effortlessly apply those tricks even if you've never written a blog before.

Today I just want to talk with you a bit about blogging and it's role in your overall marketing plan.

The amount of money you can make blogging depends on a variety of things including, which niches you choose, how many blogs you create, what you are promoting, etc.

Some people may only make a few hundred a week or a month... nothing to sneeze at but hardly rock star money... and others will make ten or twenty times that much.

It's like anything else... the more you're willing to put into it, the more you'll get out of it.

In fact, it's my opinion that the more passionate you are about your subject the more fun you'll have blogging... and the more fun it is for you, the more you'll get out of it... tangibly and intangibly!

What is blog marketing?
It's simply using a blog for the purpose of monetizing that traffic.

One of the biggest benefits of blogging for making money online is, of course, FREE TRAFFIC! A good blog is a traffic magnet. Getting courses like Rob's Blogging to the Bank 2.0 really can show you how to automate many of the things that get your blog in front of the people that would most appreciate it... and that, along with sharing valuable and interesting content is the whole game when it comes to blogging!

With or without Rob's course, using a blog to market a product is a lot cheaper than using a website. Mainly because of the availability of free blog services that are in many ways just as good as having a website.

Thanks to both the human and Search Engine demand for quality content, it's truly possible to make serious money from creating, promoting and maintaining blogs... as long as you understand the basics of marketing on the Internet. True... that's an ever-changing thing. And one of the beauties of blogs is that you can get up to speed quickly about new techniques by...

reading Blogs!!! ;-)

Which brings me back to that word about content... quality content.

What is quality content?
It's any content that does not exist anywhere else on the web and actually provides valuable information to the reader. Or... puts information that might be available in different places all in one spot for people...

Just remember... the more meaningful and unique the content is to your readers the more traffic you will receive as word spreads about you.

If you can keep the Search Engines and your human readers happy, you will do very well. Creating fresh and informative content regularly to your blog is relatively easy, even if you're not the biggest fan of writing.

In a day or two I'll be back to chat about picking a topic for your blog.
Until then... go read a blog or two...or three. Pick a topic you're interested in and then enter it, along with the word blog, into your favorite search engine. Have FUN!!!

--Mary K

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SQUIDOO ~ A Winner!

2008-02-01T21:40:00.000-06:00

You may have noticed that it's now February 1 --

It's 10 pm in my world and I just noticed that myself! Whoops, time to turn the calendar page. ;-)

So we wrap up the Squidoo.com experiment with a big 5 STARS!

Certainly not because I made so much money from my lenses this month (though I DID make some money!! ;-)). It's earned it's stars as a successful 'experiment' because of the wealth of information, tips, tricks and tools that have been discovered in the process of exploration!

That's speaking for me... I certainly hope YOU have found something new for yourself. Whether you were already familiar with squidoo.com or it was brand new to you... I hope you've received some value from tools to various other resources as well as our walk-through of the various aspects of building a squidoo lens!

Hmmm... what will the next 30 Day Marketing Experiment cover?!?

Stay tuned...
--Mary K

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p.s. Happy Ground Hog's day tomorrow!!!!

Squidoo Resources

2008-01-31T09:10:00.000-06:00

Here it is the last day of the Squidoo Marketing Experiment. I have a couple things I want to do today, in addition to my wrap up.

I have been talking to Mary K about why our lenses might not be doing as well as some of the "Squidoo Greats" like Kelly Stone, Tiffany Dow, Lewis Smile. Today I think I may have found the key. I was reading Lewis' blog and went to check out a lens he recommended. On the lens he was talking about tagging tricks. He happened to show a screen shot of his tags from google for one of his lenses. (It happened to be a lens on myspace) I have a lens on myspace that's doing ok, but not super and I wanted to see what the difference was.

Here take a the two lenses.

Mine: How to Add More Friends at Myspace
Lewis': How to Get a Million Myspace friends (1,000,000) (free download)

OK ~ I just noticed I don't even have myspace in my URL. duh. But I think the bigger difference lays in the lens itself.

You will find my lens is kind of boring by comparison. There really is different energy between the lenses. My lens has fairly large modules of text. Lewis' lens has short sweet modules, with added images and some "feature this" modules. Although by the end of the lens I felt really great and even learned a couple things.

I think this is a key point for ME. I am LONG WINDED ~ as a reader of this blog you know. People who search the internet don't come on to find 4 pages of information on any given topic. They go looking for an answer to a question or problem.

It might do me well to learn to get to the point. If you notice on Lewis' lens he asks a question in his title and url. Within his lens he uses the modules as a numbered list of answers to the question. Each of his modules is only a couple sentences long ~ with another piece of the answer to the question. This ends up providing an interesting and informative lens, but small enough pieces the person doesn't get bored and never get to the bottom.

This is really a brilliant idea and from the screen shot of his traffic it's working. I started looking around at his lenses and he employs this technique on many of his lenses.

That's going to be my last tip of the Squidoo Marketing Experiment. If you want to continue to learn about Squidoo I am going to give you some of my favorite Squidoo Blogs. I subscribe to all these RSS feeds and learn quite a bit from them.

Lewis' Blog: SquidooCool.com
Tiffany Dow's Blog: SocialMarketing101.com
Jennifer aka Pot Pie Girl's Blog: PotPieGirl.com

Those are my three favorites and I'm sure you will learn a lot from them.

So now for the wrap up. I did some good research on some new niche ideas. I set up a couple new lenses this month and they are building traffic. I have tweaked some of my old lenses and I am getting even more traffic now. I am making a sale every few days from one of my lenses which is a marked improvement.

I am still wrestling with the ideas of building lenses on what you love vs. doing research and building lenses about what other people love.

I think I have settled on doing lenses on things that interest me, but doing some research to find keywords others are looking for related to that topic. It turns into the best of both worlds.

I imagine if I am interested in something there must be other people interested in it as well. Having some interest and passion around a topic will give a better energy to the lens as I build it. People can feel whether you do something just for the money or for the love.

It never hurts to do some testing though. Build a couple lenses on topics you love, and build some you think will be big hits from your research. Watch your stats and see what happens!!

I look forward to working with you all next month with a new marketing experiment. If you have any questions regarding Squidoo, please don't hesitate to give us a shout and we'll do what we can to get your questions answered.

Jackie Lee

Some Squidoo Freebies

2008-01-30T15:27:00.000-06:00

What a fun month it's been. I've learned a lot and hope we've given you a good start to start making money with Squidoo.

Today I thought I'd share some Squidoo Freebies with you.

First is a pdf explaining how to build your list with Squidoo. (we all know how important the all mighty list is right?)

The second is a step by step guide to making money with Squidoo.

The third is a great guide to using Ezine Articles.com to choose keywords for your Squidoo Lenses.

I hope you enjoy the freebies and learn even more than you have throughout this month. :)

Here you go ~

List Building with Squidoo

Squidoo Profits with EzineArticles.com

Squidoo Profits Plan

Enjoy!

Jackie Lee :)

Groups on Squidoo

2008-01-25T23:56:00.000-06:00

Squidoo is more than simply a site filled with lenses...

In other words, it's actually quite a bit more than that 'encyclopedia' analogy I gave a few days ago. One of the things you won't find in an encyclopedia is a sense of community with others who also use the encyclopedia. At Squidoo.com -- you WILL!!!!

You won't find the same kind of socializing that you can experience at online communities that provide forums for people to get into conversation at. Yet the GROUPS over at Squidoo are something you want to be aware of and participate in.

After you create a lens you might consider searching for a group or groups that are on your topic and add your lens to that group. Your lens is likely to get more views, plus, if the group page is set up well it will contain related key words that can improve your lens ranking in the search engines (as well as that of all the lenses in the group).

AND...

You can start a GROUP of your own, invite your friends to create lenses for your group. Plus if a friend is a new lens-builder and makes $15... you both receive a $5 bonus! Pretty sweet!

There are plenty of groups to choose from... and new ones being created all the time so why not yours? Here are ten of the NEWEST GROUPS just to give you a small idea - I just know you'll think of something even better! ;-)

My travel pages by MarkBentley
Caribbean Travel by ZachG
advertising queries by ford2008
Biggest Coin Tower in the World...on a website! by ford2008
Marketing Theater - Help Sell Those Empty Seats by CharlesSeymourJr
Health Is Wealth by silverfox51937
South Pacific Everything! by pureliveliness
NoNAISWA by Elisheva
Free Tips To Lose Weight Add Comments by Kavita
Mister Rogers Neighborhood by JDWheeler

What's YOUR lens about?!?
--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

8 Great New Modules

2008-01-24T17:01:00.000-06:00

I talked recently about all the money making modules, today I want to talk about the new get your attention modules.

What the . . ?

Squidoo has implemented some really fun modules that are designed to accent something or grab your reader's attention.

They include ~

The talk bubble
The sticky note
The black box
the polaroid
the big arrow
the most important thing
the duel
and the countdown

Sounds pretty cool huh? Like most anything there's a great lens that shows just how fun these 8 new modules can be!

Stop by and check it out, then see how you can put one in your next lens!

Until tomorrow,

Jackie Lee :)

Get More Link Love with TaggZilla

2008-01-23T10:55:00.000-06:00

Do your lenses need more link love? Do you want more people add your lenses to social bookmarking sites, and give you some diggs?

Taggzilla's your place then. Taggzilla is a free networking community based on link love! Members join the community and then join a "group". Once you are in a group you can post links you'd like to have other group members take a look at, favorite, digg, rate ~ whatever you need them to do.

You can also specify what keywords you want them to use in links and a ton of other stuff.

There's a groups specifically for lenses. I joined. If you head over to Taggzilla look me up. My username's Jackielee and I'm on Ivan's team. I'd be glad to send some link love your way.

Taggzilla is still in Beta, and came out of the 30 Day Challenge. Although they are not connected to the 30 Day Challenge, it was members of this year's challenge who saw the benefits of forming a community such as this and put it all together.

There are tons of other features in the community, link love is just one (big) aspect. I think you'll find it beneficial to be a member. I'm looking forward to watching my traffic climb!!

Until tomorrow,

Jackie Lee :)

Another Squidoo Utility

2008-01-22T23:26:00.000-06:00

I LOVE that new button Jackie showed us!!!!

There are so many discoveries to make when it comes to Squidoo Lenses. I can't decide which is more fun... coming up with great content for a lens or finding and applying new tricks and tools to ramp up traffic to your lens or ease of creating a lens or simply ease of using Squidoo.

Today I want to share a discovery that will only benefit those of you who happen to use Firefox as your browser. IF that's not you then I certainly encourage you to give Firefox a try and if it's to your liking then you, too, can take advantage of the WONDERFUL Firefox extension!!!

This primarily serves those of us who find ourselves frequenting Squidoo. ;-)

When you download this extension it adds a direct link to Squidoo onto your browsers toolbar. I just decided today to go ahead and download it and I can't tell you how many times I've already appreciated the ease and speed with which I can get to any and all of my lenses!!!

In addition I can instantly add a URL to any of my lenses that I choose so if I run across some wonderful, pertinent information I can instant edit a lens and update it's content.

Yep... it's one of those things that has me shaking my head wondering why I didn't get it sooner. Go for it... you'll thank yourself later!

Hey... have you built a lens you want to share... leave us a comment and post your link!
--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Make a button for your lens

2008-01-22T09:21:00.000-06:00

You know the old adage "You learn something new every day?" Well today is one of those days. I am in the process of installing a new hard drive in my computer, and so I'm going through all my "stuff" trying to make sure I don't lose anything in the process.

I was looking through an ebook from Tiffany Dow and found this little gem.

Did you know you can make a button that will lead people to your lens? I didn't!!! You can make these buttons and then put them up on your blog, or your myspace page, website or wherever you can stick some html ~ this will let people quickly and easily access your lenses.

Here's the link to build a button it's really easy. All you have to do is insert the URL of your lens and Squidoo does the rest.

Here's some examples!

Pretty fun huh? There are a lot more to choose from too. So go on over and make a button for your Squidoo lens, then put it up everywhere you can find some space!!

Until tomorrow,

Jackie Lee :)

The encyclopedia called Squidoo

2008-01-21T23:50:00.000-06:00

I recently heard Squidoo described as a 'living encyclopedia'. I love that description; in part because it puts a whole new color on the idea of ENCYCLOPEDIA. If you are of a certain age... you may recall doing research for school projects by using the somewhat stuffy presentation of facts found around a given subject in an encyclopedia.

The assignments were always given with the warning: 'Do not, under any circumstances, copy directly from the encyclopedia!' Who would have imagined that decades later we would be creatively contributing, in interesting and even entertaining ways, to the ongoing development of an ENCYCLOPEDIA?!?

Indeed... that is a great way to sum up Squidoo, with it's ever-growing number of lenses that "contain information on all branches of knowledge or treats comprehensively a particular branch of knowledge". The reason I mention all of this is because I want to nudge you to USE Squidoo as a 'first search' spot whenever you can.

You'll be amazed at the quantity and quality of the information accumulated over at Squidoo and at the same time you will uncover 'gaps' that exist in it's knowledge base. This can reveal for you a subject that needs exploring and a lens to share the results of that exploration. When you do a search on a certain topic if no pages exists for that topic you are instantly encouraged to Create a Lens about it. And if find lenses that exist in your area of interest you can decide if they address your specific slant on this interest... if not you may strike gold by creating that lens yourself.

Because one important thing to keep in mind is that if YOU are looking for information on a certain topic, there are bound to be many, many others also looking for information on that topic!

So my advice today is simply make SQUIDOO your favorite research tool. You'll be amazed at the impact this will have on your marketing!

Happy squidooing....

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Everyone Is An Expert

2008-01-18T20:20:00.000-06:00

Hi...

I know I've been 'missing in action' for a couple of days. Lots going on personally... I have never known so many people with major health issue as I know this winter! Here's lots of love, light and energy going out to any and all who can use the boost!

Today's post will be brief. I just want to share a wonderful resource with you.

It's a 32 page PDF written by Seth Godin, the creator of Squidoo (and so much more)

Everyone Is An Expert

Seth's intro reads as follows:

This book is for anyone who wants more online traffic, more revenue, more followers, more attention, more interest, more donations or more influence.

The paradox, of course, is that the best way to get all these things is by delivering less.

This is a book about focus and meaning. Feel free to share it.

Give it a read... it goes a long way toward explaining Squidoo!

Have an amazing... and healthy, weekend!

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

What the heck is Plexo?

2008-01-18T09:17:00.000-06:00

I was looking around SquidU ~ you know the university of Squidoo :). I found this great article on Plexo I thought I'd share with you. I think people misunderstand or DON'T understand Plexo. If you would like to learn more about how to Squidoo, don't forget the amazing resource of SquidU

What is Plexo, really?

What the heck is Plexo? You've seen it on lenses, you've noticed "Plexo" modules hanging out in your Add Modules function. Well…. according to Seth, “Plexo is social bookmarking meets Digg meets the long tail.”

A Plexo module is an interactive voting module that allows you to do things with your lens, and for your readers, that the regular modules don’t. For example, with a regular module, you can make your very own Top 10 list of great movies or music, or the ugliest cat pictures, or whatever. That's great. Those are your recommendations. BUT, others can’t tell you what THEY think.

By offering favorite movies in a Plexo module, registered Squidoo users can vote on your picks, and even add their own if you decide to let them. Why would you want to use Plexo on your lens?

1. People LOVE lists. They love to take polls and surveys too. This gives them the opportunity to make their opinions matter. Focusing on your readers is just plain smart.

2. If you vote in an especially interesting poll, chances are you'll come back later to see who's winning. No? Sure you would. A-ha! Repeat traffic to your lens. Plexo introduces a new watercooler effect to Squidoo.

3. If you let people "grab" your Plexo, they can take that list and stick in on their blog or site, or even clone it onto their lens. This points more people your way, multiplies the votes on your lens, and positions you as the expert running the poll.

Hint: If you just want to list your own stuff, favorite links, best videos, etc, keep using the standard modules. Plexo is for recommendations that you want to leave open to popular opinion.

Why not add a Plexo Module to one of your lenses today?!

Until tomorrow,

Jackie Lee :)

Money Making Modules at Squidoo

2008-01-17T14:04:00.000-06:00

When I first started at Squidoo there were 2 money making modules; Amazon and Cafe Press. It appears my crazy little head still thinks this is true. HA HA HA NOT!!!

I just went looking through the modules to find something to blog about today and holy shmoly !! I just went to the A-Z directory in the "add modules" area and started looking. By the time I got to M there were already 25 money making modules listed.

I just had no frickin' idea!!! Where have I been? I know where I've been. Stuck in the affiliate marketing world, doing things the hard way. This is a great lesson, don't overlook what your platform offers you easily and effortlessly.

Before Christmas I started a "Gifts for Everyone" lens, but got sidetracked because I wasn't getting into the affiliate programs I wanted. Well hells bells, do you know how much money I probably lost over the holiday season? I could have done a great lens with just the money making modules offered by Squidoo.

Go in there and check it out, whether you've got a niche all picked out or are still struggling for ideas, go check it out. You will probably find a way to monetize your niche (buy.com) or you will find a fun and exciting niche you never thought of (legal seafood, wine, shop at home tv?) They all sound pretty fun to me.

It never ceases to amaze me how much they keep adding to Squidoo. It really is an amazing platform. So easy to use, easy to rank in google and now (duh) even easier to make money.

IF you are stuck in analysis paralysis JUST GO DO IT!!! Look through the modules and the first thing that excites you just start DOING IT!!

It's not something you can mess up, and you can always go back and add and edit. But you have to get started!!!

Go out there and find something new to Squidoo today. :)

Jackie Lee :)

How to Get Your Squidoo Lens on Page 1 of Google

2008-01-16T08:25:00.000-06:00

Of course the most important thing to get your Squidoo lens on page 1 of google is good content and developing a quality lens. With that said there are some things you can do once your lens is developed that can help you too.

Once your lens is finished the first time ( you will be going back to add stuff as you go) go to the groups in your category and add your lens to 4 or 5 groups that match your topic.

Then go to the top 100 groups. Add your lens to 4 or 5 of those groups. There are plenty of groups that will accept any/all lenses so join those.

This serves a couple of purposes. It will help with your lens rank, which will drive more traffic to your lens. More people will see your lens via the group. (Yes, people really look through groups to find information).

And lastly, it will give you some good backlinks which we all know google LOVES. I was reading Search Engine Myths Exposed last night and found out links are one of THE most important things when it comes to ranking high in google. More important than page rank and fresh content. Joining the top 100 groups will definitely help you get your squidoo lens on page 1 of google, some of the most popular groups have a page rank of at least 7!!

My next suggestion is to make sure you ping your lenses each and every time you update. (unless you update three or four times a day) Ping no more than once a day, or you may get dinged for ping spam. If you are unfamiliar with pinging it is basically telling the directories you've made changes to your lens. You can ping both rss and blog directories. I use Feedshark, but Pingoat and Pingomatic are also popular pinging sites.

Bookmark your lenses. There are millions of social bookmarking sites. The more links your lens has the higher you will be ranked in google. You can use services like social marker, and only wire to automate the process.

Do a quick search on Squidoo looking for other lenses related to your topic. Go check if they have a guestbook, if they do leave a nice comment. This will give you a backlink and can drive traffic when people look at the other lens.

These hints should help you get your Squidoo Lens on page 1 of google. Just remember the more links the better. Just don't do them all at once. Getting 0 to 8 backlinks a day is optimum for a new site. If you have a lot of lenses or websites and want to automate your linking pick up the Search Engine Myths Exposed report. There's a special offer at the end for a great linking service.

That's it for today! Get out and get linking!!!

Jackie Lee :)

more Effective Promoting ON your Lens

2008-01-15T23:12:00.000-06:00

Being able to effectively promote what you want to share on your lens goes hand-in-in with creating an attractive, remarkable lens.

And of course, if people are remarking about YOUR lens then more eyeballs are going to land on YOUR lens and if you're touching people through your lens you WILL see more click thru's to YOUR remarkable products and services. ;-)

So I just have to share a bit more about how you can build the best lens ever. Find out what the people who know and love Squidoo lenses look for when looking for a great lens.

Sound difficult?

Not at all... you simply go search out a 'Squid Angel' or two... or three... or more! Not only do they have a lot to teach us... if you are very good, and/or very lucky... you might just even end up with a 'blessing'! ;-)

I'll save you a bit of time and share what I discovered from a couple of those marvelous Angel's. I hope that serves you and I still encourage you to seek out more!

Oh... what is a Squid Angel you ask?

How do you get a blessing? Well, you can go to The Angels Forum or to The Squid Angel Group and post a request. They look at a lot of lenses every day so you might find an angel has been by anyway! You'll find what the Angels look for in a lens there as well. *hint, hint...goldmine here*

Gods Grace Notes says:

Squidoo has created the basic structure, allowing us to decide which "modules" we want to use in our lens, then fill it with our personalized content...

The pages are uniform...things like the orange header, each frame contains basic information and the tools you need to create and edit your content...

Like a tool box....everyone gets the same tools; you just have to decide how many of them you choose to master!

A Squid Angel's "job" is to evaluate lenses based on how effectively the creator has used the tools at their disposal...

Did you create an informative, engaging lens about your topic...

Did you give the who, what, where, when and why's?

Did you provide contact information?

Is your lens interactive? (for instance; email, guestbook)

Does your lens make people want to know more about you, support your cause; or click out to your resources and make purchases?

Did your audience find your work compelling enough to coax them to your website?

Those are the criteria that determine a great lens!

*******************************

Flaming Lacer says:

If you want a blessing check out my top ten list of do's and don'ts - it will give you an idea of what we look for.

1 - Proper titles given to the modules - default titles are just plain lazy in my opinion. If you don't care enough about a subject to give the modules a proper introduction, then leave it alone!

2 - Lensmaster Bio - I do like to see something in here, even if it is a general bio for all your lenses, it gives me a feel for the person and how/why they are dealing with the subject. I prefer to see an image (not necessarily a photo) because it makes the lens look more cared for. A specific bio for that lens gets extra points as it is indicative of the Lensmasters interest in the topic.

3 - The Introduction should be just that - short, sharp and to the point. I don't like to see all / most of the lens content in here and I particularly don't like to see it all in bold. It is hard on the eyes and aesthetically unpleasant.

4 - A good variety of modules which are suitable to the subject. Interactivity via Polls, Plexos, You Tube etc is always a plus - where it is appropriate. Sometimes I feel modules have been put there just because the Lensmaster thinks it's a must have and it doesn't add to the lens.

5 - Appropriate images - they help break up large blocks of text and make the lens more attractive visually but again, only if appropriate.

6 - Good grammar, punctuation, spelling are an absolute must - no need for a reason here!

7 - A good flow to the lens, a logical progression of information and content. Monetised modules should be appropriately placed so that they follow the natural rhythm of the lens.

8 - Length of lens - I don't have an issue with long lenses (I have a tendency that way myself!) but I don't like encyclopedic lenses. If you have that much content - split it! Viewers lose interest after a while.

9 - Visually attractive - spending a little time to make sure your modules are properly formatted and look good is always worth it, viewers prefer it and will spend time browsing a lens that is pleasing and easy on the eye. Technical wizardry is not necessary - it doesn't win or lose 'points' and should only be used if it adds to the lens.

10 - Most important with all the bells and whistles you can muster is CONTENT. Good content is the most important thing of all. I try never to judge the subject - that is not the role of an Angel in my view. If I read a lens and feel at the end of it I have knowledge that I did not have before, or that my knowledge has been enhanced (even just by being presented well) then it is a good lens. If I have been entertained as well, so much the better.

Okay... I hope that gives you another idea about what steps you can take to tweak and hone your lens... and perhaps you'll be inspired to search for even more 'how-to' information over at Squidoo and come back and share with us. There are only so many hours in the day, ya know? The more we put our heads (and eyeballs) together the more we ALL gain!

Thanks, I appreciate you even more than Squidoo...
and I LOVE Squidoo!!!! ;-)

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Promoting Affiliate Products on Your Squidoo Lens

2008-01-15T12:57:00.000-06:00

No matter what you are talking about you can bet there is a related product you can sell on your lens. Now I'm not encouraging you to just run out and find products to throw on your lens, but I do want you to understand there are sooooo many more resources to find products to sell on your lens than clickbank.

Clickbank rocks for information products~ like ebooks.

However, what if you have a lens about cooking? Wouldn't it be great to offer some great kitchen tools, bowls, a mixer or whatever you need from the kitchen that's related to your lens?

Didn't think you could do that? Well you most certainly can. I was pretty surprised to find out almost every store you can think of, including Wal*mart and Target have affiliate programs. That gives you the complete inventory of their online store to share with your readers.

I was working on setting up the How to Clean Cloth Diapers lens and I wanted to promote Charlie's Soap which is a great way to clean cloth diapers. I went to the Charlie's Soap website, but saw no affiliate program. I then did a quick google search like this Charlie's Soap + affiliate program. I found there is a kitchen warehouse that does have an affiliate program that also sells Charlie's Soap.

This kitchen warehouse runs their affiliate program through Commission Junction, where I already have a membership, so I just went in and applied. It does take a couple days to get approved for most programs, so it pays to think ahead a little bit.

There are tons of affiliate program directories. You can find them by doing a quick google search for "affiliate program directories".

Some of the ones I belong to are

Linkshare
Commission Junction
Associate Programs

and there are tons and tons more, but you will find Linkshare and Commission Junction have the biggest names around and you will most likely be able to find anything you need to promote on your lens.

Keep your eyes open and when you are talking about something in your lens think if it might do your readers well to be able to purchase it. If it will, you can probably find a way to make it happen.

The other cool thing about promoting affiliate products in your lens ~ you don't have to share the profits with Squidoo. :)

Promoting ON your Squidoo Lens

2008-01-14T19:09:00.000-06:00

Okay... so I got a bit sidetracked on my way to this blog...but now I'm ready to talk about promoting ON your Squidoo lens and then... promoting your LENS itself! (They are very different things, ya know.)

And MAN! I've been learning a ton! I figured I'd just move forward with the learning rather than come by and post that I was over-whelmedandcrankybecauseIjusthadtoomuchtolearn!!! So look at it like this, I saved you! ;-)

See, that's one of the wonders of this 30 Day Marketing Experiment blog... WE go through the 'over-whelm and cranky' so you don't have to! Ha!

Onto today's topic...

Remember, we are talking about MARKETING, so we want to monetize our Squidoo lens in the most effective way possible. It's one thing to build a lens and another to build a lens designed to bring you a powerful and growing stream of income.

So we want to think about how well we are PROMOTING products and services on our lens. I'm going to assume that by now you've explored some of the modules over at Squidoo and I encourage you to explore on a regular basis; there are new modules added frequently!

Here are some pointers to keep in mind as you build your lens -

Use Royalty-earning modules
Don't just use one of them, use more than one in different ways. You can spice up the display and functionality of your lenses if you offer slightly different Amazon, Ebay, and SuperStore modules. For instance, you may spotlight a specific book from Amazon in one module and then provide a selection of DVD's on topic on a different Amazon module.

Consider hand picking items instead of letting the modules choose for you
In some cases, letting the affiliate service choose the items works well. And sometimes, there's more leverage in personally holding up specific, particular items. Don't just show me 10 random books on kayaking, show me the 10 best books you personally recommend.

Sometimes less is more
How much are you personally recommending? Consider whether there's more promise in the One Book You Need to Read, the Three Magazines You Need to Subscribe to, the Two Tools You Need to Own than in a long, long list of anything and everything. Give people less to choose from. Make some real, personal recommendations.

Explain why someone should buy something
Don't just hold up an item, hold forth on why you're holding it up. Consider adding a description that explains why you recommend a tool or resource, how you use it, why it works, and why someone should drop their dime. This will give people more information about a given product, and it will further communicate your expertise and advice.

IMPORTANT: alternate content modules with commerce modules
Are you dropping all your royalty earners to the bottom of your lens? Or clumping them all together anywhere? If you pair content -- information about a given aspect of a topic -- with tools people can use to learn more about that aspect -- it might work better. And, it might not make people scroll so far down before they see a tool they can use. Consider going back and forth between content and commerce modules.

Linking Like Lenses
While it's important to be sure you're sharing the best and most useful resources and tools, it's also important to think about the length of your lenses. You don't need to hold back on sharing your knowledge. Just consider making multiple lenses that approach the topic from a variety of angles. You can then lensroll each of your lenses to connect the pages together, making it easier for whoever finds one lens, to find the related lenses at the same time. You'll be surprised at how much more visibility your products have spread out over 2+ lenses instead of one long one!

I'm likely to come up with more... and that's it for now!
Keep building...and most importantly, HAVE FUN!

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Choosing Tags for Your Squidoo Lens

2008-01-14T09:20:00.001-06:00

There is often a lot of confusion when it comes to creating tags or keywords for your lens or any website for that matter.

It can be difficult when choosing tags for your squidoo lens. It may be hard to think of more than a few related keywords. It can also be difficult to find keywords where it's possible for your to rank well.

We've talked about how important keywords are so today I thought I'd shoot you a little gift to make your keyword research a little easier. Happy New Year!

Here's an easy keyword research tool, it's free and there's a nice video explaining the install and how to use it. Have fun!

Jackie Lee :)

Building a Squidoo Lens?

2008-01-11T09:38:00.000-06:00

Today we are going to look at building a squidoo lens around your long tail keyword. First of all you want to make sure you have an open account at squidoo. Once you have your account opened you want to put the url you would like to use in the search bar. So continuing with yesterday's example I would want the url www.squidoo.com/how-to-clean-cloth-diapers. When you put that in the search bar it will either bring up a lens someone else has already done on this topic, a note that someone has this url and are still building it or you will see a nice little hello sticker. This little sticker says this lens can be your if you just claim it now.

Just click on the place it says click and it will take you to the set up process to get started on your lens. Mary K has walked you all through this part already, but I want to add a couple points.

Make sure you use your long tail keyword as the title of your lens, also once you get inside the editing area make sure you use it as the title for your intro module.

If you are using this lens to refer someone to an affiliate product make sure you jump right to the chase in your intro module. Leave out the hi I'm Jackie Lee stuff ~ make sure to put it in your bio though. I say this because google will pick up the first paragraph of your intro module to put as a description. You want people seeing it in google search results to know this is EXACTLY what I'm looking for. So start off your intro module with the problem you are solving, and try to get your long tail keyword in the first two sentences exactly as you are trying to optimize for. This will show up in bold in your search engine listing, giving you bold keywords twice in your listing.

The next step is to give the meat of your lens. You will need at least 2 more modules, and then of course a guest book. It's always great for fresh content to have a guest book. I'd try to start with a couple of write/text modules. Start giving the reader information about the problem you are trying to solve in the first. Then in the second text module go ahead and show them how you are going to solve the problem.

There's some conflicting opinions on just how to do this. Some say to leave all the outgoing links out of your module until google has got them, but I don't know how true this is. I would probably stick to only one or two outgoing links in the beginning.

Remember, you need to update your lens every day or every other day for the first few weeks so you want to leave yourself room to grow.

Tomorrow I'm going to talk about how to find products for your niche. If you don't have any products, but know the solution to the problem go ahead and get started, don't worry about links you can put them in as you go. You can also rearrange, change text and whatnot ~ which will be counted as fresh content.

When you have at least 4 modules in your lens go ahead and hit the "publish" button. Once it has published go ahead and "view lens" to take a look at what everyone else is going to see.

As you can see the logistics of actually building a lens is not really my strong suit in explaining. So maybe I will have to start making videos again since the research part is really over. ;)

No matter how much information you have it never matters until you use it. Now Go Build Your Lens!!!! Talk to you tomorrow.

Jackie Lee :)

Choosing Long Tail Keywords

2008-01-10T08:56:00.000-06:00

This is where the rubber meets the road. Choosing long tail keywords. This is the point where some people get nervous or feel like they don't know what they're doing. That's understandable ~ I mean come on . . . long tail keyword?!

Yesterday the task was to come up with a list of questions, concerns, and problems that your niche experiences. Did you get to 100? If not, don't worry, as time goes on you will see more things you can write down on your list, just remember to do it so you won't forget them later.

I bring up this list because if you look at it closely it could look very much like a list of . . . (drum roll please) Long tail keywords!!!! Did you guess that? It can also look like a list of TITLES for articles and Squidoo lenses!

So really there was a method to my madness you see.

Look at your list, what is the one issue you found came up most for your niche. What is their biggest problem, question or concern they are looking for an answer to?

Let's say you are working in the Cloth diapering niche (a niche close to my heart :) ). What's the one question people might really want to have answered. It could be one of many but let's say "How to clean cloth diapers" when I googled it with quotes it came up with only 5 other competing websites and there were google ads on the page!! That's a really good long tail keyword. (in fact I think I will stick with this example for the rest of the experiment) :) Here's what I mean by that:

Advanced Search
Preferences

Results 1 - 5 of 5 for "how to clean cloth diapers". (0.18 seconds)

As you can see the results this long tail keyword only brought back 5 other websites optimized for that keyword. That rocks the house!

You see the questions people want answered are going to be YOUR long tail keywords. Now you see that list is an invaluable resource huh?

When you're done choosing your long tail keywords you want to take it to google, and put it in quotes and see how many other competing sites come up, just like in the example above. If it's less than 10,000 you are good to go. Squidoo can easily outrank other sites with less than 10,000 competing. If you see there are google ads on your keyword search results this is an excellent thing. It means people are paying money for your keyword, so there is money to be made there.

Ok ~ check it out today, throw a couple of your long tail keywords through google and see what comes up. Find one that has less than 10,000 competing websites.

Tomorrow we're going to start building a lens around our chosen long tail keyword!

Have fun and see ya tomorrow!!

Jackie Lee:)

NIche knack...

2008-01-09T23:41:00.000-06:00

I really am getting the knack of this!

Okay...that may be a stretch but it sure is FUN when you let it be! ;-)

The trick about attracting people... is paying attention to what attracts YOU! ;-)

As I've been contemplating my next Squidoo lens one of the first things I had to decide was what I wanted to focus on. There is quite a bit of advice online about finding something that people are hot for right now... listen for what they want and then provide it for them.

Certainly I see the sense in that and I have to admit I had some concern about whether there would be anything in high demand that I would personally feel passionate enough about that I could market it effectively. I know myself well enough that if something doesn't hold my interest over a sustained period of time I'm likely to resist working on it.

I let myself get momentarily distracted by some well-meaning advice to find a product sharing a good price point with a high demand so it would sell well and focus on that... and it took me a few days to admit that the whole idea, while having good business sense... simply didn't FEEL GOOD! This brought up a few issues for me that had to be resolved before I felt the energy to move forward.

The reason I share this is because some of you may be feeling the same way. And to those of you who might have similar struggles I'll save you a bit of time and let you know that if you take the time to explore your interests, then put your 'ear to the ground' to find others who share those interests you will find a product and market that fits the bill.

One of the fun things that has resulted from my search is that I discovered, through my listening and searching, that I already have a long list of keywords and I know many of the places where I will find the people likely to be interested in my product!

Now it makes sense for me to use the tools available to hone and refine my approach. I had it all backwards before. I thought I was getting confused by the detail... but instead, I hadn't really locked onto the bigger picture with enough clarity.

So today I simply want to remind you that it's important to balance the 'inner' game with the 'outer' game! Out of the clarity of who you ARE comes the inspiration to DO what will serve best!

Thanks... I appreciate you!

--Mary K

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What's your niche starving for?

2008-01-09T09:03:00.001-06:00

You hopefully ran your 3 or 4 choices through google analytics yesterday and now you have a good idea of which one is your "best" choice.

You know they are starving (traffic trends at google), now you just need to know what they are starving for. Knowing this information will be key to building a lens at Squidoo, as well as setting up any other pieces of a marketing campaign you may want to add, like PPC or a website, articles etc.

How do you find out what your niche is starving for? Eavesdrop!! Yes, eavesdrop. You wrote down the url to the busiest forum on your niche in step 2 right? Great, if you didn't just go through step two and find it again. Go over to the forum, sign up for an account, and listen.

What is your niche talking about? What are the questions they are asking? what kind of problems are they dealing with? What kinds of threads have the most replies? Read between the lines a little to really get at the meat of what they need.

Now this next step is going to seem revolutionary, but it is a vital step.

Get a piece of paper

Crazy huh? It's important to get a piece of paper because while you are in the forums discovering all the things your niche needs you are going to write them down on this piece of paper.

I want you to keep writing, and writing until you have a fabulous list of 100 things. Yes, I said 100. You also want to note any niche related lingo you may see, as you will want to use their language in some of your writings later. Believe me building your lenses and creating an entire campaign around this niche is going to be easy cheesey if you just do this one step!!! I promise.

That's your task for today. Get in there, get to know your niche and make a list. You can also start making some posts in the forum. You will know if you are getting to know your niche if your posts get some replies. If your posts are NOT getting replies, you need to take a look at yourself and see if you are wearing your Magical Marketer Hat. IF you are ~ take it off right now!!!! Your job is to blend in, belong, become! You want to become so familiar with your niche that you feel like you are part of it.

You Can Do It!!!! That's it for today!!

Jackie Lee :)

Squidoo Modules

2008-01-08T23:21:00.000-06:00

WOW! I hope you took the time to check out the videos Jackie posted today... they are really helpful and eye-opening!

Today I'm going to familiarize you with some of the many 'modules' that are available over at Squidoo so you understand just what an easy 'plug and play' approach to website building is provided over there.

When you go to the 'module picker' from your lens by clicking on 'Add Module' when you're in editing mode, the first thing you will see is what is called the Starter Package:

Amazon

X

Amazon

The trusty Amazon module you know and love. Feature your favorite stuff (books, CDs, DVDs, geekware...) and comment on it. (Beware, you could earn money!) If you want people to vote on your list, or submit their own items, or share your list... try the new Amazon Plexo module instead.
Add This Module
Duel

X

Duel

Ready, set, BATTLE! Stage a debate on your lens. This is no piddly little Guestbook... this is a place to sound off, to put people who disagree right next to each other and see what kind of sparks fly. Have fun.
Add This Module
Flickr Photos

X

Flickr Photos

Flickr is a popular and powerful photo site. Add pics to your lens! (No, you don't need a Flickr account. Tip: If you DO have a Flickr account, create a photoset tagged to your topic for quick adding to your lens.) Want to start a PhotoPhight? Try the Flickr "Plexo voting" module. Or stop by www.squidoo.com/photophights/hq.
Add This Module
Google Blog Search

X

Google Blog Search

Be the life of the party. Put Google news and blog alerts about your topic right on your lens.
Add This Module
Guestbook

X

Guestbook

Find out what your visitors think of your lens and your topic! Add a Guestbook module and let them shower their praise upon you. (It's okay, if they get ornery you can always delete blurbs. The ethics of it is up to you).
Add This Module
Link List

X

Link List

Feature the best links on your topic, and help searchers get where they need to go, fast. If you want people to vote on your list, or submit their own items, try the new Links Plexo instead!
Add This Module
Poll Module

X

Poll Module

Add a polling module to your lens. Here's the answer to all your Q&A dreams. Vanilla or chocolate? Tea or coffee? Let your visitors decide.
Add This Module
Text / Write module

X

Text / Write module

Formerly called "The Write Modules" this is a very popular module with a lot of creative applications. P.S. You can upload a photo to it, too!!
Add This Module
Yelp

X

Yelp

Squidooers love Yelp! Yelp.com is a site where you can find reviews of great stuff in your neighborhood, from pizza to pinstripes. Add a Yelp module to your local lenses and give your readers a head start.
Add This Module
YouTube vids

Next to each of these module titles is the word ADD. When you hover over this word you will see a popup with a brief description of the module. Sometimes these descriptions are helpful in that they give you an idea of what you can do with the module... like the following info for Amazon:

Amazon

The trusty Amazon module you know and love. Feature your favorite stuff (books, CDs, DVDs, geekware...) and comment on it. (Beware, you could earn money!) If you want people to vote on your list, or submit their own items, or share your list... try the new Amazon Plexo module instead.

And sometimes they are simply tantalizing and don't really give you any more clarity about what it does so you find yourself clicking on it simply to explore. The great news is that you can easily delete any module if you decide it's not a particularly helpful tool for the kind of lens you're building.

Don't feel like you have to use every module offered in the Starter Package. Just follow your wisdom and inspiration!

In addition to finding modules sorted under various tabs you can also search for modules alphabetically. For instance... when you click the Search (A-Z) tab and then select the letter 'W' you will see the following list:

Washington Post

X

Washington Post

A live feed of current events.
Add This Module
Washington Post Issue Tracker

X

Washington Post Issue Tracker

Let the Washington Post help you keep track of all those pesky political issues.
Add This Module
Watch The Olympics

X

Watch The Olympics

USA Today's feed of the 2006 Olympics in Torino. *For a limited time only. If you add this module to your lens it will remain there, but after the Olympics are over you won't be able to add this module to new lenses.
Add This Module
Weather

X

Weather
Add This Module
Weather Widget

X

Weather Widget

The Weather Channel, widgetized. Woot.
Add This Module
Wikipedia

X

Wikipedia
Add This Module
Wine.com

X

Wine.com

Mmmmm wine. Does your lens topic go well with wine and crackers? Try this module and find out. You could earn royalties for you or for charity.
Add This Module
Wired News

X

Wired News

Wired news to go.
Add This Module
Wonkette

X

Wonkette

Politics for people with dirty minds.
Add This Module
Word of the Day

As you can see, it's not always easy to tell what function is served simply by reading their names. I mean, would you guess that the 'Wonkette' module description says, "Politics for people with dirty minds"... whatever that means! LOL

As our blog is about marketing online, I presume you are interested in monetizing your lens. Some modules lend themselves more easily toward that than others and it's valuable to be creative and think outside the box. I have received the most comments about various lenses about fun widgets that were found on my lens that didn't directly earn me any money but gave my lens some word-of-mouth that increased the likelihood that someone interested in purchasing would land on my lens!

And since we're talking about money here I'll share with you how Squidoo divvy's up the dough.

Ah, money.

One of the great features of Squidoo is the ability to make money for yourself or charity by selling items through one of our monetized modules. How does this work?

You add a money making module to your lens. Some examples include Amazon, eBay, and CafePress.
Someone buys an item
When the transaction clears though the website where the purchase was made, you get a commission
You decide if you want cash (which is paid out monthly through PayPal) or for the commission to go to charity. You also decide your minimum payout in your Dashboard preferences.
Commissions for month one are paid in month three. So anything you make in January will be paid in March.

The total commission made from each sale is split up. Five percent off the top goes to our charity. Yay! The remainder is split 50-50. Squidoo gets 50% to run the site, and you get 50% to play with.

Several advanced users also become affiliates for websites and products not yet offered through one of our money making modules. This allows them to offer additional products that match their niche topics.

Hope you're inspired to go explore and take advantage of this brilliant no-cost playground for attracting people to you!

I appreciate you,

--Mary K

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Analyzing your niche with google analytics

2008-01-08T08:25:00.001-06:00

I was going to talk about this yesterday but then I got all sidetracked with using the TV. :)

The next step in your research ~ you should have your 10 niche ideas narrowed down to 3 or 4 ~ is to run them through google trends to take a look at the possible search volume for your niche idea.

I could try to explain exactly how and why you shoul use google trends, but I decided to let you hear it from a master. Travis Sago (THE Bum Marketer) has done two videos on using Google Trends to analyze your niche.

Here they are!

I hope that clears things up. I know when I put my 3 niche ideas through google trends I was seriously surprised by the results. The niche I thought was going to come out on top was not the best niche. It gave me some clear ideas of the direction I needed to go.

It also showed me why many of my previous campaigns had not done as well as I thought they would. Just because a niche seems good, does not necessarily mean it is. Why not just take a couple minutes and run some research?

Until tomorrow!

Jackie Lee :)

Comparing Products at Squidoo

2008-01-07T08:44:00.000-06:00

Comparing Products at Squidoo is a great idea for building a lens. Mary K mentioned last week to look to TV for niche ideas. The more I thought about it the more I realized this is REALLY a great idea, and I would add you have to do a little reading between the lines.

Here's what I mean. Super Nanny, Nanny 911 ~ and who knows what other shows are on cable, which I don't have. If you read between the lines you might start to see people want to know more about "how to handle your kids" or "how to discipline your kids" people might want to know more about "difficulties parenting" you know, that might be a really good niche ~ and it might be worth running some research on. If you found it could be profitable niche you could build a lens comparing different parenting books, or the different parenting shows (I'm sure they're out on dvd).

Think about comparing products at Squidoo that you see on TV. You see a million different weight loss drugs, exercise videos, workout equipment on the TV. What about the million different types of cell phones? My guess is that all of them have an affiliate program or there's a store that stocks them that does. Why not do some research on each of them and then write reviews of each. (of course providing your affiliate link in each section) So no matter which one the reader feels is right for them ~ YOU WIN. Another benefit of the comparison lens is people don't feel like they are being sold. You are simply providing quality information and therefore the lenses tend to have a much higher conversion rate.

You can easily put together a lens comparing products at Squidoo. Simply put each product in a separate "text" module. You can add banner ads at the top or bottom and post a text link within the review or at the bottom that takes them to the merchant page where you have an affiliate relationship.

You can also add one review a day to make the process a little more "natural" for google's sake and it will be a great update, which you know you need to do every day or every other day for the first week or so.

When thinking of keywords for this type of lens make sure you are going for the long tailed keywords, and make sure to include compare or review (or something similar that fits) as part of your keyword.

When doing these comparison or review type lenses go to google and check your long tailed keyword (keyword made up of more than a couple words) with quotes around it to see how many other websites are fighting for position. You also want to look for google ads on the side. If you see google ads it means there is money to be made. Those people are paying for clicks on that keyword.

If you can find a keyword with less than 10,000 listings and some google ads you are in business.

Here's another google tip: Try using allintitle when you search your keywords. You are going to use your keyword as your url and title over at squidoo, so see how many sites come up when using allintitle. This will show you ONLY the listings that have your exact keyword in the title. It would look like this in the search box at Google ~ allintitle:"your long tailed keyword here" You may find you have even less competition than you thought!!!

Get out there and get some ideas!

Jackie Lee :)

Did you find an Active Niche?

2008-01-04T09:47:00.001-06:00

Did you find an active niche? I'm assuming you played along and came up with 10 possible hot niche ideas right? ;)

How do you know if you found an active niche? Easy enough, you look for forums.

Hop on over to google and enter "your niche" + forum and see what comes up.

Go into the forums and take a look around. When was the last post made? Was it today, months or even years ago? How many replies are people getting to their messages? How many views?

Yesterday I went into a forum on one of the hot niche ideas I was looking at. There were 20,000 replies to ONE topic. It have even more views than that. Now that's an active forum! That is a great indicator of an active niche.

You know your niche is active if there are lots of forums with lots of people talking. An active niche is made up of passionate people who think about your niche idea a lot.

You can also take a look at yahoo and google groups. See how many groups there are on your topic. Groups gives you a little bit of upfront and easy data. You can see how many people belong to the group. Yahoo groups tells you on the front page how many posts have been made each month since the group began. You can see if this niche is on an upward trend or starting to lag.

Now you have some ways to find out if you have an active niche, go out there and DO IT. :)

Take your 10 Hot Niche Ideas and run them through google and/or Yahoo groups and see what you come up with. You might want to classify the forums and groups for each niche idea on a scale from not at all active to super duper active. It will make it really easy to see which niche ideas are active and which aren't.

Once you figure this out you want to cross the "non or minimally active" niches off your list. Your goal in this part of the process is to narrow your 10 niches down to 3 or 4 for further analysis.

See ya tomorrow, (with 3 or 4 niches to proceed with)

Jackie Lee :)

A 'finding hot niches' p.s.

2008-01-03T23:51:00.000-06:00

I'm not really writing about 'finding hot niches' today but since Jackie brought it up I want to add one place not included on her list. There is a good possibility many will disagree with me but I want to suggest you look for 'hot niche' ideas by paying attention to television ads.

Yes! You heard me correctly. ;-) And no... I'm not suggesting you should compete with the 'big guys' who can afford TV advertising rates. But think about it...

They've spent tons of money doing the research to find out what people are looking for (or, at the very least they've spent tons of money deciding to convince us we're looking for certain solutions. Heck...until pharmaceutical companies decided to advertise directly to the consumer I just never knew there were quite so many things that could go haywire!)

So, pay attention to what are presumably people's concerns and then zero in on a little subset of that group of people with a product or service that might serve them around the issue.

Okay... got that out of my system. ;-)

I was reading an ebook about building Squidoo lenses and it was talking about getting your lens indexed in search engines. According to this 'expert' it is better to leave links off of your squidoo lens for the first 3 or so days and simply focus on content that uses your keywords. That way, you'll get the best indexing.

Now...I have no idea if this is true or not but I decided that I'd give it a day or two before I included any direct links. Today I did add more content AND one link to my Cards Build Business lens. I will confess to have some doubts about the veracity of this information because I believe it was the same source that suggested simply writing your intro and adding a couple of 'Text modules' to start your lens out.

The thing is... it may simply be outdated information because Squidoo now requires a minimum of 4 modules before even they will add your lens to their files. That was set up in order to discourage those people who were simply using up space over at Squidoo by slapping up a quick, minimal lens simply to ride on the coattails of the highly ranking squidoo pages. That kind of stuff just hurts everybody so I'm very pleased Squidoo responded by setting up some parameter that might help lenses be a synonym for 'quality content'!

What I ended up doing when I started the lens on January 1 was writing the Intro, the two text modules AND I simply added a Guestbook. If you drop by a lens that offers a guest book please take a moment to leave a message... giving feedback is always a valuable exchange and if you happen to be logged in to Squidoo at the time it provides you with a link back to your name and your lenses so it's really a win-win to sign guestbooks!

Yesterday I went in to edit the lens by adding a fun little widget called "Did you Know?" It allows you to rotate through a series of random facts and I really like things that are interactive plus it was a nice fit for my subject matter.

I also added a poll and a couple of new tags. I have learned that the search engines, Google and Yahoo for instance, seem to like a site that is frequently updated. To add something new a few times a week is actually frequent enough... and this can be as small and simple as adding a new tag or two. But when I'm still in the active building phase of a lens I'll usually add at least one section daily.

Today I added another text module which resulted in me having some new tags to add to the lens also. Feel free to hop over there and check out my progress... and hey, while you're there you could leave a note in my guestbook and/or give me a star rating... I haven't yet promoted this lense but I intend to do some of that... tomorrow!

C'ya then...

--Mary K

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Finding Hot Niche Ideas

2008-01-03T11:03:00.000-06:00

Finding hot niche ideas is one of the ways Mary K mentioned to go about deciding on what to build your lens on. In the past I have made lenses on things I was interested in and have not had all that much monetary success. I've decided to be a little more deliberate and methodical in my choosing of a niche for this experiment, just so I can see how that goes!

This is going to be a process. If you want to follow along, feel free. Understand that you have to do each step and then move on to the next without jumping ahead for the process to unfold into an amazing campaign. Don't stress if you don't know what to do next, just do what you need to do for the day. :) I learned this process from Travis Sago(THE Bum Marketer). I learned all of this over at Wealthy Affiliate (in the first few days), if you'd like to learn from the masters, you can too.

The basic premise of marketing involves three steps:

Find a "starving" market (with disposable income)
Find out what they need
Give it to them

So how do you go about finding your starving market. It really is easier than you might think. Ideas are everywhere. In fact I just posted 15 places to look for Hot Niche Ideas on my other blog today.

I am going to suggest you go out and find 10 hot niche ideas. Don't judge them at this point, just get 10 ideas from the suggested places (you can use one or all of them), or your own ideas. You can certainly bring your own ideas to the table and run them through this process to see if they are likely to be a profitable niche for you.

Remember, at this point we are NOT thinking about products to sell to this market, keywords, adsense none of that we are just coming up with some hot niche ideas.

I am going to come up with 10 hot niche ideas today too. Then tomorrow we can work on them from there.

No judging ~ just ideas. :)

Happy Hunting.

Jackie Lee :)

Building Lenses ~ Building Business

2008-01-02T23:53:00.000-06:00

Jackie Lee is so right!!! I LOVE the lens creation process. The only *wish* I have when it comes to Squidoo.com is that we could choose different templates so we could rid ourselves of that 'squid-orange' if we wanted to. (can you tell I want too?!? :-)) I have to admit it was brilliant branding... I rarely see orange anymore without thinking of squidoo! ;-)

Now don't get me wrong... I certainly appreciate that it was brilliantly set up to shake-hands well with the search engines and I'm keenly aware of the value of placing good 'keywords' in your title and URL. But for me that's just the icing on the cake compared to the satisfaction of building an attractive lens that's interesting, interactive and filled with valuable content in such a way that others can easily digest it!

When it comes to monetizing with Squidoo... there are a few schools of thought and, like humans who are thinking these thoughts, they vary greatly! Seth Godin, the creator of Squidoo and a Marketing genius himself, urges people to explore their passions with a lens... to dive in and dig deep sharing everything you know about a subject that captivates you. Sounds a bit like, "If you build it they will come." For me... THAT'S attractive!

Others will suggest you find something people are clamoring about and provide information and resources (for free and for sale). There's certainly nothing wrong with that... it makes sense.

I say the best thing would be elements of BOTH! Keep your ear to the ground about things people are clamoring for and select those things where YOU are one of the clamoring people! ;-)

So let's do a brief walk-through of the basics of starting a lens...

When you first click 'start a lens' from virtually any page over at Squidoo you will be shown the following:

Step 1: So, what's your lens about?

People are making lenses on everything from "How to Roast Your Own Coffee Beans" to "Why You Should Hire Me" to "Top 10 Books That Changed My Life." And LOTS more. What's your topic?

Here there will be a little box for you to fill in your topic. Thing of a word or a brief sentence that someone may use over at Google if they were looking for information about your topic...

After you finish you go to:

Step 2: What do you want to do with your lens?

A few real examples: There's Damon, a teacher who makes learning lenses with his students. And Jane Goodall, supporting her nonprofit organization. And Kimberly, an author promoting her books. And Raj, who wants traffic back to his blog. These are just 4 ways people use Squidoo. How will you?

I want to get the word out about xyz (easiest option)

I'm gonna sell xyz stuff and earn $$, for me or for charity (money maker!)

I want to make a list of my favorite things about xyz (most popular)

I just want to do my own thing.

I ALWAYS select "I just want to do my own thing" though any of these choices are fine. Some will simply come preloaded with specific modules that you may find yourself deleting. By selecting the fourth option you have to go in and select your own module but that gives you an opportunity to only work with the modules that serve your purpose.

Now we find ourselves going to Step 3:

Step 3: Title and URL

Tip #1: Clever lens titles can make great first impressions. Have fun!
Tip #2: When picking your Squidoo URL, just fill in the blank where it says www.squidoo.com/_______. (So, if your lens is about daschunds, try adding the word dashchund to the box. If your lens is about making paper airplanes, add paperairplanes to the box. Sorry, no spaces or weird characters).

Lens Title:

Pick your URL, the link where your lens will live.
(This can't be changed, so choose wisely).
www.squidoo.com/

And pick a category for your lens:

Please rate your lens:

If you're not sure, read up on our Ratings policy.

My lens contains:

Here you want to give some thought to both your TITLE and your choice for the URL. They do not have to be identical and it would be very wise to use your main keyword in both. In other words, use words people are likely to search on when they want more information about your subject!

Today, for instance, I started a new lens that will be focusing on effective ways to use greeting cards in building your business. I don't really know if or how many people might be actually searching for ways to build their business specifically with greeting cards but I DO know that people ARE searching for ways to BUILD THEIR BUSINESS and because I happen to have a greeting card business I also know that people search on the words 'greeting cards' so...

I wanted to be sure to incorporate the long-tail keywords (they are 'long-tail' because they are more than a single word...and/or they refine a single word... for instance, 'cards' could be business cards or baseball cards or any kind of card but I'm looking to attract people searching for Greeting Cards) 'business building' and 'greeting cards' in both my title and my URL. I prefer a URL that's short and memorable but I'm willing to take liberties with my title so I used

Powerful Business Building with Greeting Cards

as my TITLE. The URL that is embedded above reads, www.squidoo.com/cards-build-business

So before you find yourself on Step 3 give some thought to your title and URL and remember, it may already be chosen so you may want to have a slightly different alternate handy.

Another choice you'll notice required with this step is selecting the 'Category' where you'd like your lens to appear. Many subjects can make sense in more than one category. Just go with the one that makes most sense to you. Follow your intuition and select the category you would be most likely to go to if searching on your topic.

This leads you to the fourth and final step:

Step 4: Help people find your lens

Keywords (or "tags") are really important in helping people find your lens. Think about the search words someone might put into Google when he's looking for info on your topic. Those would be your lens tags.

The best keyword for my lens is:

And 3 more good ones are:
(Optional)

You're going to be choosing keywords. Don't sweat over this as you will be able to add more keywords later. You'll notice that the system has already assumed you selected the best keyword for your title (and of course you did already know that because Jackie and I have both told you so! LOL) so it preloaded that one for you. Just select three more that make sense, type in that goofy word you see in the box which proves you are, indeed, a real live, if goofy, person, and then click DONE! You'll be ready to start building your lens!!!

Whew! And we'll save more on that for another day!
Happy squidoooooing!!!! ;-)

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Woo Hoo Squidoo!

2008-01-02T09:25:00.000-06:00

Ok Ok, I did NOT Fall off the planet!!

I must say I have found some resources in the last week that have completely captivated me and shaken up my thinking leaving me fumbling around trying to figure out exactly what I want to do and say!

Me, who is usually not at a loss for words, I guess it's a good thing to get flamboozled once in a while. Keeps life interesting.

OK, now on to the experiment.

I just have to tell you I LOVE squidoo. It is simple, effective and fun. You can get 8 out of 10 of your lenses on the front page of google driving you fabulously targeted traffic which you can convert to sales and all for free.

I think this is going to be an interesting month because the things Mary K and I love about Squidoo are completely different. I'm a little concerned that our different interests may make for a less cohesive blog this month, but I think you all will be able to figure it out.

Where Mary K, likes actually DOING the lens, building, using the modules and explaining as she goes ~ I LOVE to do the market research. Figuring out which niche to choose, who are the people in my niche, what they want, are they willing to spend money, what are the best keywords, how to get my page to page 1 of google ~ THOSE are my loves.

I am continually learning more and more about how to do all of those things and I am excited to show you as I learn.

My intentions for this month:

Each week do the research necessary to build a profitable lens
Build the lens
Update regularly for the love of google
Teach you everything I know and learn along the way

Please ~ I am going to be very up front with all of you. Showing you exactly what I'm doing all the way, so please please please, follow along, come up with your own ideas, but don't steal my stuff. :) thanks.

Jackie Lee

Marketing with SQUIDOO.com

2008-01-01T21:29:00.000-06:00

YES! We touched on squidoo.com when first starting the 30 Day Marketing Experiment as it is a part of the Bum Marketing Method. And because SQUIDOO.com is such a valuable resource it's well worth taking a deeper look at all that is offered here at NO COST to you!

Squidoo is a fabulous place for you to define a niche that YOU feel passionate about while providing a platform that helps drive traffic your way.

My intentions this month are:

To share tips and tricks that make setting up a squidoo lens easy and effective for you

To create at least two new lenses of my own and to expand on current lenses

To demonstrate how squidoo can help brand your business on the 'net

To give you step-by-step instructions on how to set up Search Engine Optimized pages within Squidoo at absolutely no cost to you

And to continue to sharing what I learn as I learn it!

2008 Promises to be a very HAPPY and VERY PROFITABLE NEW YEAR!!!
Give us some feedback and let us know what YOU would like to know and what you would like us to try. The whole point of experimenting is to try something different... so don't hold back!!!

Thanks! I appreciate you,

--Mary K

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YES! To MySpace Marketing!

2007-12-31T23:39:00.000-06:00

WOW! Wrapping up another 30 Day Marketing Experiment segment at the same time we're wrapping up a whole year feels GREAT!!!

I was reading Jackie's reference to word that MySpace marketing was 'dead' and it made me chuckle. It simply could never happen! When you have a place where millions are gathered... you have 'marketing' going on in one form or another.

Human beings are a creative bunch and even when it seems that the 'tools' for interaction at a given community are finite in number... people by their very nature will come up with an infinite number of ways to creatively use those tools.

So keep exploring and take the time to nurture the relationships you begin online... your time and effort will be rewarded in ways you haven't yet imagined!

The one thing that stands out the most clearly as we wrap up another 30 Days... when you take consistent action toward your intention you see results in that direction...when your actions are not in alignment with those intentions you see few results in that direction.

So Happy 2008 -- It's a wrap... BUBBLE WRAP!!! ;-)

Here's to Prosperity and FUN!!!

--Mary K

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It's a Wrap

2007-12-31T11:01:00.000-06:00

Well here we are at the end of the month, and the end of this year.

I have had a lot of fun with myspace marketing this month. I have learned quite a bit and enjoyed sharing it with you all.

There are many who say myspace marketing is dead. I beg to differ. If done correctly ~ read creating relationships and offering quality content ~ it works wonders.

I set the intention to connect with one new business partner each week during this experiment. The first three weeks this intention was met. The last week of the month, I received some fun and interesting business inquiries but did not get a new business partner. This is NOT because myspace marketing doesn't work ~ it's because I didn't work. lol

The last week of the month I fell off the horse, and did not complete my specific daily actions. Although this did not allow me to manifest my intention, it did push home the learning that if you do nothing you get nothing.

I set up this experiment, for myself, so I could continue to work on other projects and spend time with my daughter. If a person wanted to they could spend a lot more time on their marketing efforts you could increase the number of business partners exponentially. In fact you could outsource the building of pages and acquiring of friends and leave yourself the main focus of relationshipping.

It comes down to what you put in is what you get out. If you spend 30 minutes a day, inviting friends and interacting with them, and you followed the steps we've laid out for you you can easily create new business partners regularly.

You can further increase your profits by providing your friends with quality content in your blog, help them solve problems, and then lead them to more information ~ (affiliate products).

In my opinion Myspace Marketing is far from dead. Most people are just going about it in the completely wrong way. If you follow the steps we've provided this month you will find Myspace marketing is alive and well and working for you. :)

Stay tuned for next month's experiment! It's gonna be fun. See ya then.

Jackie Lee :)

Growing Relationships with Bulletins

2007-12-29T08:40:00.000-06:00

I know Mary K has already talked with you about bulletins, and I just wanted to add a couple things.

Today I was over at Myspace, and I had some time so I decided to look at bulletins. I must admit, I'm not much of a bulletin reader, however, I think that will be changing. I read quite a few bulletins, and the ones I found interesting, or inspiring in some way I just hit "reply to poster" and sent the person a note.

This makes it really easy to connect with new people in my friends group.

If you have started from the beginning with a concrete idea of who your market is ~ you will probably find a couple things in the bulletins they are sending out.

1. Questions your market has ~ an opportunity to answer that question in your blog and post your own bulletin.

2. Another opportunity to engage your market ~ Many times people will write a bulletin when they need help or support. What better way to engage your friends in a positive way.

3. Interesting Info you can pass on ~ Most people welcome their bulletins being passed on. Just make sure you hit reply to poster and then copy and paste the whole thing so you give credit to the person who originally posted (and keep their links in tact)

If you have forwarded someone's bulletin they are more likely to take a look and maybe even forward one of yours. When they do this, you have reached a whole new network of people.
I must admit I have seriously not been using the bulletin feature to its fullest potential. Don't make the same mistake. Myspace makes it easy to connect with others ~ that's their main goal~ so read your bulletins, and then send a quick note to say hi, thanks, show appreciation or whatever is appropriate.

Happy Bulletin Reading!

Jackie Lee :)

More Marketing Resources

2007-12-28T10:14:00.000-06:00

Since we are winding up our 30 Day Marketing Experiment with Myspace I thought I would find some interesting resources to share with you so you can continue your learning.

It was more difficult than I anticipated finding resources solely related to Myspace, so I found some interesting marketing, social networking, and internet marketing blogs and podcasts to share with you.

Here are 5 blogs that I suggest you subscribe to their RSS feed.

Britopian.com ~ Conversational Marketing Blog
Duct Tape Marketing Blog ~ Simple, Effective and Affordable Small Business Marketing
Seth Godin's Blog ~ Need I say more? If you don't know Seth Godin, Check it out!
Friday Traffic Report ~ Latest in Web 2.0 Marketing and Traffic Generation
Social Marketing Journal ~ The World of Social Marketing

Podcasts ~

** I haven't listened to all these podcasts, but they looked pretty interesting and will give you another place to find more information. **

Enjoy, and I'll be back Monday to work on wrapping this up!

Jackie Lee :)

MySpace IM

2007-12-27T23:43:00.000-06:00

We have a few days left in our 30 Day Marketing Experiment around MySpace and so I thought I drop by (weaving in and out of the holiday festivities is a bit of a challenge these days! ;-)) share with you some of the things I've discovered about the MySpace Instant Messenger tool.

In all fairness I have to share that I only downloaded this tool a couple of weeks ago and I've been away from my computer for more days than usual so I don't have a lot of experience sending messages with this tool. I have yet to find any close friends who are using it and that's okay... it will give me a great excuse to connect with one of my friends I'd like to know better by searching for someone who has already downloaded this tool!

Even without experiencing many conversations using this IM tool, I have discovered there are a couple of features that I wasn't expecting and I'm finding them very useful.

Certainly it provides the basic instant messaging to other MySpace users and has customizable emoticons and Zaps (a combination of a sound bite, picture, and words.) that are found in many instant messengers but what I'm appreciating is that it also provides shortcuts to MySpace.com features and profiles AND sends instant alerts for all requests, messages and comments. (Even blog post comments!)

As you can see on the left, it shows up on my desktop just like any other IM tool.
I'm sure I'll discover many more bells and whistles as I play around with it and as we roll into a new year I intend to fill up my contact list with friends. If you're inspired to download it yourself please add me and give me a holler sometime! ;-)

Until then... I'm off to message somebody.
Thanks! I appreciate you,

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

MySpace - My Story - My Thanks!

2007-12-21T23:06:00.000-06:00

We haven't quite reached the end of our 30 Days around MySpace and yet with Christmas right around the corner it's time to lay low for a few days so today I wanted to wish you a very Happy Holiday and recap what we've covered in this particular 30 Day Marketing Experiment.

We've covered:

What MySpace.com is all about and how you benefit from getting and using an account there.

Showed you exactly how to go in and set up an account.

What you need to know to create and attractive MySpace Profile.

Defined and described placing 'My Story' on your profile page.

The value of adding Friends to your list at MySpace.

Who to look for and how to add them quickly using FriendBlasterPro.

Described through word and video how, when and why to use the tools available at MySpace.

With the last few days of the year 2007 I intend to give thanks and express appreciation for ALL of my wonderful friends both on the 'net and off!!!

I appreciate YOU -- Regardless of how or if you celebrate the holidays and holy days... may yours be wonder-filled and merry indeed!

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Great advice for the new year

2007-12-21T17:49:00.001-06:00

This is not myspace advice, but wonderful business advice to end the new year.

I received this email from Travis ~ of November's Bum Marketing Experiment. I really appreciated what he had to say and thought I would share it with all of you.

I will be going out of town, so I won't be back until after Christmas.

Here's Travis' letter:

********************
WARNING: Rated NC-17
********************

Hey What Up You Bum?

Ever been stuck in a traffic jam on a
broiling Summer day?

Have you seen that dude dressed up in
a suit and tie pounding the steering
wheel like a gorilla...screaming obscenities
like a sailor and practically sitting on the
horn?

(Hope it wasn't ME you saw!)

Ya' know I am all sure we have done that
or something close at some point.

But ya know what we DID NOT do?

We didn't get out of the car and say
SCREW IT!

No!

We stayed in the car because we knew
EVENTUALLY traffic would clear up and
we would get where we are a goin'.

Same thing with red lights...right?

We don't plan a trip to the mall and say...

"Hey, if I hit a red light I am going back home!"

Now, that all seems like some common sense...

BUT...BUT...

This is what an overwhelming majority of folks
do when it comes to starting a business.

And rings true for new Bum Marketers as well.

"Ah...CRAP...my article got declined...I quit!"

"The last two articles I wrote didn't get on Google...forget it!"

"I wrote 10 articles and no sales...Google can SUCK MY BUTT forever!"

"What? Ezinearticles won't allow links to UsFreeAds anymore? I give up!"

..NOW LET ME SAY...folks, these are just red lights! YEAH...IT BLOWS!

NO DOUBT ABOUT IT!

But what you don't do is get out of the car...right? You go somewhere
(in private is best)...you blow off any steam...cuss...rant...rave...

But stay in the car dude!

Let's take an example:

Ezinearticles stopped letting you link to UsFreeAds...OK!

Whatever!!!!

So you figure out another route...which there are many:

You can put up

A free blog at http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=Il9lF&m=9diHPbe5CNCFP&b=gPAa0EQ_a7w8STquZqoGEg or http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=Il9lF&m=9diHPbe5CNCFP&b=IgFzDjN0qAINHpuFlsoc6g

A free lens at Squidoo.com

Those are JUST three ideas. Three different routes. I have tested
them all and they all work great.

Here's a free blog I put up at wordpress

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=Il9lF&m=9diHPbe5CNCFP&b=JpSYvoctmSo83QNxLmBrKA

You can do a ton...you can add video, audio, opt-in forms...the
fella I put up on that blog that gets his rear smeared on the bike
was free...I just linked to youtube...

And that page converts so well...I am using it for my landing page
for Adwords.

There are a few limitations...like you can't change the font size
after you start the blog (on wordpress.com hosted on their site)...

But hey...it's free...and it works...

My point is that there are always work arounds...you just GOTTA
THINK LIKE A BUM...and STAY IN THE CAR...

You know, maybe you are making some profit now...this may be the
catalyst that spurs you to invest in YOUR OWN WEBSITE...

Which is a HUGE positive step in your business.

Now...I don't want to come off as a smarty pants or know it
all...

I do NOT know it all...

But in my 39 years on this Earth (it's my Bday on the day I wrote this),
and over 20 years of business experience...

Here is something very important that I have learned:

YOU DO NOT NEED MONEY TO START A BUSINESS AND BE SUCCESSFUL!

What do you need?

1. BIG BRASS CAJONES or if you are a lady GUTS!

2. DETERMINATION and PERSISTENCE OF A BULL DOG!

3. and what will multiply your success rate?...INGENUITY! If
you can't go over...you go under!...or to the side! or through
any obstacle that dares stand in your way.

So...for you math freaks...

take...

BIG BRASS CAJONES + DETERMINATION X INGENUITY = How much you get of ANYTHING you want!

I live and breathe this everyday...

Who the hell am I to submit an article to Entrepreneur Magazine?

Who do I think I am to submit an article to Entrepreneur Magazine
not once...but SIX TIMES!

Hell...I don't even know if they are getting it...so next time, I
am going to FED EX it...in the strangest darn container I can find!

Maybe a 4 foot long cylindrical tube.

If that doesn't get me a response...I might just have it delivered
in the G-Strings of a couple hot strippers.

Yeah...I am just a redneck from Arkansas...I don't give a damn! One day
I am going to get my article in Entrepreneur Magazine, even if it
means I have to buy the darn publication to do it!

*******************************************************
THE MINDSET!

Ever see a Mother lose track of her youngster? Maybe
it has happened to you?

I don't care how meek that Mom is...when she can't
find her youngin' she will ask the biggest
burliest man...she will have it announced over the
PA at Walmart...she will ask anyone and everyone
she sees to help!

Will she stop at the 5th stranger she asks...hell no
she is not going to stop until she finds her baby!

THAT IS THE MINDSET you need to have to break free an
UNLEASH HELL ON ANY OBSTACLE OR PERSON THAT DARE TO STAND
IN YOUR WAY!
********************************************************

So my message to you is THIS:

Stay in the car...the light will change green...or you can find
a different route...or get out of the car, climb up the pole and
MAKE the light change green.

Don't let a few "red lights" derail your dreams!

Here's to a kick butt New Year!

Keep On Bummin,
Travis
www.BumMarketingMethod.com

**** me again****

Have a wonderful and safe holiday, filled with love, joy and fun!! See ya after Christmas :)

Jackie Lee :)

Specific Myspace Daily Actions

2007-12-20T18:47:00.000-06:00

Have you decided on your specific daily actions?

Success on the internet often comes down to consistency. This is definitely true when it comes to marketing at myspace. If you set up your page and then never return or only return once a month you will not likely see the results you are hoping for.

During this Experiment I have set some specific Myspace Daily Actions. It's nice to be clear what I need to do, because then I'm also clear when I'm done. Then I can walk away from the computer knowing I got done what I needed to do and feel good about focusing on other things in life!

It doesn't really matter what your daily specific actions are, as long as you can carry them out without feeling overwhelmed. My specific daily action was to send out 50 friend requests to new people, and to send out 50 comments to current friends. Then of course I respond to incoming messages etc. Whether you do 50 or 100 or 10 doesn't really matter, the important thing is to be consistent.

If you find you aren't getting the results you were hoping for, try increasing your daily activities, or put more focus on result producing activities. If you just go in and tweak your profile you can't really expect people to find you.

So go for it, figure out your specific Myspace Daily Actions, and do them . . . consistently.
Come back and let us know how it's going!!!

Until tomorrow, have a wonderful day!

Jackie Lee :)

More MySpace Profile

2007-12-19T23:43:00.000-06:00

I found a tool today that might serve you... (and if not that's perfectly okay too! ;-))

Camtix - This is one of the tools that allows you to convert all videos into a format that you can put on your MySpace profile. This is especially valuable if you have a flash movie created for your specific product or service. It's a free download so help yourself!

There is something else I want to address.

As I was spending time over at MySpace today visiting pages of friends (and potential friends) I ran into a couple of profile pages that were so crisp, so clean, easily readable and interesting that it dawned on me that so many profiles are NOT THAT!

It was wonderful to be able to drop a message to these people and express my appreciation for their profile and it prompts me to remind you of a few things when creating or updating your profile if you want your profile to stand out:

Don't overdo with videos and steer clear of animated backgrounds because they tend to make your site slow to load and too busy once they do load.

I AM a proponent of writing your 'story' on your profile however, you don't want it to go on and on and on or people will find they don't have the time to check out your whole profile. If there is a lot of anecdotal material you'd like to share why not highlight it on your profile then provide a link to a blog page where you expound on it a bit? It will bring attention to your blog and still allow you to share more of your story and move into deeper relationship with people.

Do remember to make sure the arrangements of information represents a logical succession of thought. In other words, don't assume everyone knows the basics of what you share... start at the beginning and don't jump all over the place.

By all means post photos... and please make them as current as possible. The most interesting photo montages are the ones that show you and those you spend time with, doing the things you love to do. Sure, you might want to include one where you're all dressed up and standing posed and I'm telling you... the more you're willing to share the real, every day YOU, the more interesting you are! ;-)

Watch the color scheme you select. Some color combinations that work well in one place don't always work well in another. It might work on shoes but NOT on your profile page. You may really like bright neon colors but on a computer screen eye fatigue sets in quickly with those shades. Not a great way to make friends! And remember... people have to be able to READ the words so avoid those extremely dark backgrounds if you'd like people to stay on your site for more than a couple of seconds.

Here's my suggestion... go browse profiles and get a 'feel' for the energy just based on the visuals... without reading any words. It's a fun way to learn more about your preferences and you'll probably make a new friend in the process!

Have FUN!

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Birthday Wishes at Myspace

2007-12-19T07:57:00.000-06:00

Today's post is going to be short ~ ha ha. I have a Christmas Luncheon to go to, and some shopping to get done. I did want to pop in see you all today though.

We have been talking about creating and deepening relationships with our myspace friends. We've mentioned a number of ways you can do this, but one we have yet to mention and a really FUN one is Birthdays!

In your back office you will notice, within the "mail" area there is a notice of "new Birthdays". Each of your friends with an upcoming birthday will be listed if you click on that link.

What a great way to connect with someone! Send them a birthday message or birthday comment. If you want to send a nice "picture" comment you can go to photobucket and search on "happy birthday" or something like it. Just copy the code and then go to your friend's page and "leave a comment" down in the comment section. :)

What fun, you can also google myspace birthday comments or even go to my Myspace squidoo lens to find great places to look for birthday comments.

That's it for today, go check and see if today is any of your friend's birthday, and send them some birthday love!

Jackie Lee :)

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My Space ;-)

2007-12-18T23:54:00.000-06:00

Again I took the day off... to do ALL of my Christmas shopping and to clean my SPACE! ;-)

Back tomorrow with something far more enlightening to post! ;-)

Ho ho ho......

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

p.s. If you're in the mood to simply play go follow the link found on my Tuesday blog post at Ambassador of Play! ;-)

Providing Real Value on Your Myspace Blog

2007-12-18T12:53:00.001-06:00

Mary K's post yesterday on passion leads perfectly into what I want to talk about today. Which is sharing yourself in your blog.

This is a method I have been using in MY blog, but not at my myspace blog. duh! Once you find some friends, some people who are similar to you, who like the things you like you have built a kind of "opt in" list for yourself. People work really hard to build "opt in" lists and you already have one. Whether you have 5 friends or 5000 friends, you have a list.

Now a lot of internet marketers just shoot off messages to their list about the latest and greatest product they are trying to sell. I don't know about you, but those are the lists I unsubscribe from! The lists where I get some good quality information, sprinkled with links to where I can find more information ~ and that may include a product I can buy ~ I keep those. In fact I make seperate little folders in my email program and save them!!!

This is exactly what we are going to do at myspace. Instead of sending out emails, we are going to write in our blog.

What you want to do is come up with an informative, valuable article that gives some information to your friends. At the end of your post you can point them in the direction of more information, whether that is your website, an affiliate site, your coaching page, wherever you think they may find more information or something that will allow them to take what you are showing them further.

This is where having a clear picture of who you want for friends comes in handy, as you can invite people to be your friends who you know will be looking for the information you are going to share.

Your articles don't have to be books, they can, in fact, be a short list, something you've learned, anything at all that is valuable to your friends. Once you have your posts written and published in your myspace blog you want to let your friends know you have provided them with some information.

This is where they myspace bulletin feature comes in handy. It will allow you to notify ALL of your friends about your new blog post. This bulletin doesn't have to be fancy, you're talking to your friends after all. Just let them know you have posted a new article with some information about such and such that you think they may enjoy!

Your friends will read your bulletin, and will stop by your blog. You may even get a few subscribers. The first time you may not get much don't worry, it takes some time to build up trust. Just continue to do this 2 to 3 times a week. In fact, I wouldn't do it more than 3 times a week. Provide quality blog posts and let your friends know about them. Over time, and probably not much time, you will develop a trust with your readers. They will come to look forward to your posts and will eventually feel very comfortable clicking your links and buying from you.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments section. :) We love to talk with our readers.

Good luck and have fun.

MySpace for YOUR Passion!

2007-12-17T23:36:00.000-06:00

There was a time when I was trying to get the hang of this marketing online stuff that I got a bit confused and started thinking that the only thing marketed online was information about marketing online. Silly me! *blush*

Social Communities like MySpace have been SUCH a GIFT because they provide... at no cost to you... a platform where you can share your PASSIONS with others.

You may attract people who feel passionately about the same things you do and you may also attract those merely intrigued who want to learn more.

You may have noticed from our previous posts that MySpace is a community with a plethora of tools that make sharing your opinions very easy and provides you with multiple options for doing so which allows you to connect with more people.

And as you have realized if you watched Jackie's latest video... Browsing for friends allows you to define and refine the parameters defining the people YOU would most like to meet.

As I cruise around the net and spend some time in a variety of communities (and believe me...there are many, with more appearing every week!) it seems to me that the most successful communities, the ones most likely to experience longevity, are the ones who's members are the most passionate!

The point I'm trying to make here is to encourage you to let loose and let yourself SHINE!

You don't really have to know a darn thing about 'marketing on MySpace' to be that -- and THAT is worth remembering! ;-) (And ultimately...that's the piece that makes YOU most attractive!)

Oh... I passionately appreciate you,

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Using the Browse Feature to find Perfect Customers/Clients

2007-12-17T15:23:00.000-06:00

I mentioned yesterday about the "browse" feature on myspace.

If that isn't a law of attraction believers best friend. Like I said, you want to be very clear about who is your "perfect"customer or partner and then the browse feature allows you to go out there and attract them!!

Here's a quick tutorial video on using the Myspace Browse feature.

Enjoy!

Have an amazing day!!

Jackie Lee :)

A New Look at Gathering Friends at Myspace

2007-12-16T16:01:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I found an interview done by Yaro Starak, one of my favorite bloggers. This interview was done with Steve Iser, a 21 year old guy who has been working online since he was 9. He is currently making his money on Myspace.

He recently put out a new product about myspace marketing and laid out some of the basics during the interview. I was pleasantly surprised to see the majority of what we are doing lines up directly with what this very successful myspace marketer is doing.

I did find a couple differences and I see how they can be the KEY to making more money at myspace. I'm going to cover the basics in this post and then go over them in more detail over the next couple days.

This has gotten me really excited, and I hope you all will see the potential of adding just a few tweaks to what we are already doing.

Choose your niche

I know we've talked about choosing your niche and now I see how being very clear about your niche and exactly who the people are in your niche can add up to much more targeted leads.

Think about exactly who you want to target your product and services toward. Male/female? How old? Smoker/non? Married/single/swinger? Skinny/overweight?

The more specific you can be about who you are looking for the more specific you can get in looking for exactly that person on myspace.

Choose the best affiliate product(s)

Choose the best products or services you have available to you to market to the people in this niche. Whether you are using affiliate marketing, networking marketing or marketing services you provide, always choose the best products you have available to you.

Develop a Profile:

We have done a good job of teaching you how to create a profile during this experiment. The one thing I would reiterate is discussing in your profile how you are like the people in your target market. So if you are marketing weight loss products make sure you talk about how weight loss products have helped your weight, or your health.

Establish Interaction

We have discussed this piece and I want to add a couple things.

Using the BROWSE tab in your tool bar. If you click on the browse button and then click on the advanced tab you will see you can look for people selecting out very specific things about the person. You can choose if you want male of female, how old, whether they are parents, and I like this point, whether they are new to myspace, active at myspace, when they last logged in!!! Pretty cool Huh? I can't believe I didn't know about the browse function before this.

Of course sending a message with your friend request is KEY!!! You are developing an interaction, a relationship. You want to let them know who you are, how you (or your profile) are similar to them, why you are asking for friendship and what you will be offering for friendship.

***this is the part I'm excited about and it's different than what we've been teaching thus far***

You will be using your BLOG as another means to provide quality and benefit to your friends. You will use your blog for articles based on your niche. At the bottom of your article you will include a link to your product/service/program, whatever you are offering.

You will build rapport with your friends because you will be offering continued value to your friends.

Once you have written a blog post you are going to send out a BULLETIN giving your friends the heads up that you have this new article posted. Don't tell too much about the article, just let them know you've posted an article on such and such and they may find it interesting. :) They are your friends, and you are providing value they will want to see.

I tried this myself today.

I wrote an article about entertaining your toddler. I happen to have written for last month's bum marketing challenge. I rewrote the introduction so it was in more familiar language, these are my friends afterall, and provided a link to the 101 Ways to Entertain Your Toddler ebook.

I had multiple comments and received numerous messages thanking me for the information and a few people said they will look at the book. Can you see how powerful this will be once people come to expect this type of information and value from my blog?

They will begin to subscribe and look forward to not only my posts, but my bulletins. They will click on my bulletins and eventually when I've built trust with people they will click my affiliate/program links.

This was a quick overview. I will do some videos and take the major parts one by one through the week to give you a deeper understanding of how powerful I think this is going to be.

My advice for today would be to think about who is Your Perfect Customer? Think about all the details of this person. Then set out to find them. :)

Talk to you tomorrow!!

Jackie Lee :)

Bulletins at MySpace

2007-12-16T01:32:00.000-06:00

Have I mentioned that one of the delightful things about working from home, for yourself, is that you can easily take a day or two off when the unexpected erupts?! It's so true (to a point ;-) and Friday was one of those days for me... Thank God for Internetwork Marketing!!!

Anyway... what I want to share today is about posting bulletins over at MySpace.

The only way I see for sending out a bit of information to all of the friends on your friends list is via a feature called 'Bulletins'. These are only seen from your space behind the scenes and when you post a bulletin it stays up for 10 days. Be aware that only the 10 most current bulletin headlines appear on your list... in order to see more you would have to click the link that says 'View all Bulletins'. I'm not sure how many people bother.

Depending on the number of friends you have and how active they are about posting bulletins, your post can be buried quite quickly but don't let that discourage you from posting them.

A couple of things of things you might want to remember:

Don't overdo when it comes to posting bulletins! People will not respond favorably if you post the same thing multiple times in a day... I personally wouldn't even post the same message multiple times in the same week.

Understand that a 'bulletin', by definition is a 'brief, public message' and social communities online define it pretty much the same way. Yours will be most effective if they are truly sharing something interesting... even better if they share something remarkable. Things worth remarking about can be as varied as a certain restaurant, a great band, a car or a dry cleaner but if it doesn't spark an irrepressible enthusiasm in you and from you then don't bother posting it!

The value of posting bulletins on a regular basis is that it keeps you (and hopefully the content of your posts) on the minds of others and they will learn to trust that you are around, active and available.

The risk of posting is that doing it poorly or inappropriately will find you wishing you weren't on their minds at all!

Be authentic, sincere and passionate and you are REMARKABLE!

Have fun,

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Staying Connected with Myspace Friends

2007-12-14T16:43:00.000-06:00

On my Abundance Revolution page I have over 1300 friends. I find it difficult to keep in touch with everyone, and have generally only interacted with people who have messaged me or sent a message in response to something I have sent them.

I have been trying to figure out a way to stay in touch with more of my friends. Today while I was in my "inbox" I noticed there are now photo boxes of my friends who are currently online. How fun. There's a little "send message" link right there on the box.

This makes it easy to take a quick look at their page and familiarize myself with who they are, and then send them a quick hello. Nothing big or fancy, just a quick note saying hello and letting them know I am trying to connect with my friends.

The people who reply I can continue the conversation with. The people who don't reply I may consider deleting from my friends, especially if I have never had a conversation with them. I am debating on whether having so many friends is a positive or a negative. (right now the scales are kind of balanced in my mind)

That's it for today, just one more way to connect with your myspace friends.

Jackie Lee :)

I'm Not Getting Business Inquiries at Myspace

2007-12-13T14:27:00.000-06:00

Today I want to talk about a problem you may encounter during your myspace marketing endeavors.

Not getting Business Inquiries.

You may be receiving responses to your messages, but no one is asking about your business.

This problem can be the result of a couple different variables.

Your page copy
Keywords your using to choose who to send friend requests to

These variables need to be tested one at a time. (ah visions of Psych Methods are coming to my head). What that means is don't change both things at the same time.

I suggest you try to tweak your keywords first ~ it's easiest and you should notice a difference rather quickly.

I have been experiencing this problem myself on my new page. I thought about the keywords I have been using and decided that is probably where my problem lies.

I have been using keywords like "spiritual journey" "joy" etc. These are all things I want in people I would like to work with. I have received many messages in response to the message I send with the friend request. However, all the responses I have gotten so far have been in relation to the spiritual element of my page. No one is asking about the business.

It really is no surprise when you think about it. People who are focused on spiritualism are most likely to respond to that aspect of my page.

What I need to do is think about keywords I might use to find people who are actually looking to work from home or make some extra money.

Use those keywords you might say. ~ I'd say no. Most people who are currently not involved in working online are not going to have those keywords on their page. So what do people who would like to make some extra money talk about? Who are they?

Mary K's discussion of groups may come in handy here. I think the groups would be a great place to do some keyword searching. Check in the group description for words you may want to use, even better, if you think the people in that group may be interested pull some IDs from the group page.

If you try a few different methods of gathering IDs to send friend requests to and you continue to run into the same problem, then go ahead and take a look at your page copy.

Have a wonderful day!

Jackie Lee :)

MySpace Forums vs. Groups

2007-12-13T00:22:00.000-06:00

Can you tell I'm feeling FESTIVE today?!?? And where oh where does the time go... I thought I would get this post up before midnight... ah, but no such luck. (or discipline?) ;-)

I know that yesterday (okay, my idea of yesterday...do not look at the dates behind the curtain!) I talked about your ability to start searching for friends via MySpace Groups. Today I want to talk a bit about what I've come to see as some distinctions between the Groups and the Forums over at MySpace. This confuses many people... especially if you're just starting to interact in social communities.

There are similarities between the two and I'm not exactly sure why the creators of this community decided to have both. Each Group at MySpace (and as you noticed in my earlier post there are tens of thousands) essentially has a forum. A forum is simply a place where people gather to express their throughts, views and opinions. Some forums are very general and some forums are quite specific. The forums or groups that designate a specific topic typically have 'rules' or guidelines that state you are expected to stay on topic! Please respect that when you join a group and participate in any kind of forum.

You will have to go check out both Forums and Groups over at MySpace for yourself because this really is an energy thing. In other words, you will find place where you will more... or less... feel comfortable sharing your thoughts. And naturally, the ones that benefit you the most will be the ones you are most comfortable and jazzed about.

One of the things I've noticed, personally, is that following the link on the toolbar called FORUMS leads you to a page listing many categories of forums. And a LOT of people are having conversations in these forums. As a rule (and from my very limited personal experience) the FORUMS are a bit broader in category and topic than the conversations you will find going on in the GROUPS. While one is not particularly better than the other, looking for friends within GROUPS might make it easier to target a more specific group of people who are more likely to be a perfect fit for you and your product or service.

I know people in business, especially newbies, think they want to expose the whole wide world to what they have to offer. I can promise you, based on personal experience as well as the feedback from many very, very successful business owners... the smaller and more concisely you're willing to define and describe YOUR ideal customer/client... the easier and more successful your marketing will be!

And that is why I favor searching for new friends by going to GROUPS over at MySpace. It vastly increases my efficiency in connecting with the people I most want to connect with!

By the way... as you spend time over at MySpace you might have questions or discover a neat trick yourself. If so... I sure hope you'll come back here and post a comment so we can all benefit from it. For instance... I have a question that I meant to ask Jackie today and simply forgot -- what code do we need in order for an image to appear as the image when sending messages to people as we use FriendBlasterPro to request friends?!? I have a funny feeling that people might simply be seeing the link rather than the image so please let us know. Thanks Jackie!

And thank you!
--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

More Ways to Add Friends at Myspace

2007-12-12T13:13:00.000-06:00

Mary K made a great point yesterday about using groups to find your friends. I wanted to tell you another way I frequently find friends.

If you are using your friend blaster pro software and search on a topic you are given a list of pages matching that keyword. As you saw on yesterday's video frequently the first page is blogs. Blogs are connected to a person's page at Myspace (that means you have one too). If you click on the the link to get to the blog you can then click on the person's profile. Scroll down and take a look at their friends.

If this person's page looks like someone you would like to hang out with, chances are so are their friends! Take a look through their friends by clicking on the "all" link in their friends area and make sure they look like people who are similar to the page you are on, and like people you would like to know! If they are then just click the start button in your friend blaster pro software. It will gather all the IDs from this person's friends.

This is a very quick and easy way to find a lot of friends to easily send friend requests to.

That's it for today ~ tomorrow I'm going to tackle the topic of what to do when you are getting responses to your friend requests, but people aren't inquiring about your business. :) (I still have to work out a couple details in my head) :)

Have an amazing day!

Jackie Lee :)

MySpace Groups

2007-12-11T20:51:00.000-06:00

I'm going to hope you're holding the visual from Jackie's wonderful videos demonstrating how to use FriendBlasterPro because I want to share with you another place to add friends to your profile over at MySpace.

You have already seen how you can click the word 'search' on the toolbar at MySpace, enter a keyword and connect with people who mention that word on their page. There is another very good place to go to find others who value the things you value... that is by going to 'GROUPS'.

There are thousands of groups over at MySpace about many different things so you're bound to find a group or two where you will meet interesting people who share an interest with you. Here's a list of the Group categories that I lifted from MySpace --

Activities (136442 groups)
Automotive (53116 groups)
Business & Entrepreneurs (21910 groups)
Cities & Neighborhoods (42503 groups)
Companies / Co-workers (38888 groups)
Computers & Internet (18291 groups)
Countries & Regional (15051 groups)
Cultures & Community (87344 groups)
Enterta inment (383958 groups)
Family & Home (48513 groups)
Fan Clubs (260520 groups)
Fashion & Style (79186 groups)
Film & Television (49486 groups)
Food, Drink & Wine (43352 groups)
Games (68242 groups)
Gay, Lesbian & Bi (39347 groups)
Government & Politics (32812 groups)

Health, Wellness, Fitness (27172 groups)
Hobbies & Crafts (35955 groups)
Literature & Arts (32904 groups)
Money & Investing (13485 groups)
Music (324844 groups)
Nightlife & Clubs (62008 groups)
Non-Profit & Philanthropic (20857 groups)
Other (1448285 groups)
Pets & Animals (38152 groups)
Places & Travel (19689 groups)
Professional Organizations (46780 groups)
Recreation & Sports (140988 groups)
Religion & Beliefs (109032 groups)
Romance & Relationships (70805 groups)
Schools & Alumni (183439 groups)
Science & History (9678 groups)
Sorority/Fraternities (31835 groups)

Get the picture... as I said THOUSANDS of groups you can join filled with many thousands of potential FRIENDS!

When you click 'Groups' from the toolbar along the top of any profile page you will be taken to a page that lists all of these categories. And to make things a bit easier and more efficient, MySpace offers a 'Search' function for Groups just like it does for members. Just click 'search groups', enter some terms that might define the kind of group you're looking for and you will find a listing of all groups that fall within the keyword parameter you chose!

One of the advantages of this is that you may have interests that aren't explicitly mentioned on your profile page... and that holds true for others too. After all, we can hardly mention every single interest we have in life all on one profile page and it doesn't mean we don't want to meet others that share our interest. For instance you may enjoy a hobby that you didn't mention on your page... and I'll bet you'll find a group full of people who share your interest... whether it's knitting, horseback riding, tattoos or Lake Louise Photography!

So if you open up your friendblaster and search groups until you find one that looks active you'll be able to add another group of amazing friends! ;-) And as you can see from my picture above... it all becomes a little

more clear when you see the whole 'group' over there <===. LOL

Have a Wonderful Wednesday!!!

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Using Comments to Build Myspace Relationships

2007-12-11T08:07:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone!

Wow, Mary K, great post yesterday! Thank you.

I was thinking this morning as I was doing the video and sending friend requests about when I first started doing this, and how it felt for me. I remember feeling almost smarmy using software to find and request friends.

I felt it was somehow inconsistent with the whole idea of "relationshipping". To no surprise the people I sent friend requests to during that period weren't all that glad to hear from me, nor were they people I really wanted to be friends with.

It's the same software now, and here's a couple of the messages I get from people in response to my friend requests:

HI, thanks for getting with me. It's interesting, you are into so much of what I'm into. I'm trying to make a huge dream come true. I'd love to chat with you about the Law of Attraction, and your program. Please get back with me if you can.

*****

Hi Jackie,

I'm so happy to meet you, really. I hope we can be good friends, the energy of you/you're profile, resonates.

Thanks for finding me

******

First of all, I think your daughter, Hannah, is absolutely adorable!! Second, you just might be the answer to my prayers, believe it or not!!!

What's the difference between now and then you ask? Intention!

Of course when you are feeling badly about something the results you get are an exact vibrational match. I had to figure out how to feel absolutely wonderful about using this software. To that end I decided to make it a law of attraction game.

Before I gather IDs I set an intention to find the perfect people who are fun, interesting, open to new ideas and need to meet me right now.

Before I send comments with the software I set an intention that my comment will go to just the "right" people who need to hear it today.

This one little change has set about an avalanche of wonderful messages and even more wonderful relationships.

If you are having some not so comfortable feelings about using the software, try to look at it in another way, and know that the law of attraction works, no matter what! Whether you are using software or doing it by hand you will attract just the "right" people who need to meet you today!

With that said, today's video is on sending comments to deepen your relationship with your existing myspace friends. I receive so many messages related to comments, and how they have shown up at just the right time, or were exactly what they needed to see that day. You can really deepen your relationship with comments, as well as leave your link for everyone to see ;)

Here's today's video. As always, if you have any questions or need more information, just leave us a comment down below. (it's also another great way to get a backlink to your site)

Have an amazing day!

Jackie Lee :)

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MySpace - Looking for the 'fit' with others!

2007-12-10T21:43:00.000-06:00

I spent some time over at MySpace this weekend just looking for new friends.

I've been playing over at the MS community off and on for the past year and yet it continues to amaze me how I find new things to check out along WITH new people to check out! LOL

One of the things that occurred to me today was that it might be valuable to go a bit deeper in sharing with you what may be obvious but often eludes us.

'Marketing' is always and all ways about saying the 'right' thing to the 'right' people at the 'right' time! And I'm not talking about 'right' as any kind of value-based judgment. Yet I think it's really important to recognize that getting into relationship with people and moving those relationships into FRIENDSHIPS happens when we share values with others. And we are more likely to make a sale to someone who feels they know, like and trust us... you know, like a friend.

In other words, a really good marketer knows they don't have a product or service for 'EVERYBODY' and knows that it's not necessary (dare I say possible) to become 'friends' with EVERYBODY they meet! And that's not a problem because all any of us need do is offer our brilliant solution (product/service) to the person looking for it when they most want it!

Keep in mind that we will greatly increase our odds of knowing who those people are if/when we take the time to get to know people. This does NOT have to take a great deal of time, as Jackie shows you with the nifty tools available to add new friends and it does mean you want to give some thought to jump-starting things by selecting people who share some of your values. Makes sense that those people may value the same products and services as you...yes?

Understand that one of the things that will reveal a persons values to you is the activities they engage in. We do the things we do because those things support our values. That's not to say we don't all spend a certain amount of energy deluding ourselves about ourselves from time to time so don't get upset with those situations where you believe you've made a good connection with someone only to find out later that we really share very little in common with them.

As an example, you may tell yourself that you truly value reading... yet you rarely read purely for pleasure or personal growth. While you may in fact value 'knowing how to read' you probably don't really value reading in that case. So searching for others who value 'reading' may not lead you to people who have a lot in common with you.

So give some thought to those 'keywords' you enter when doing a search through profiles over at MySpace. With a bit of honest, authentic soul-searching it will really add to your fun in making friends when you make of point of looking for people who value the same things you value. And MySpace offers so many things that make it a really rich community for making some genuine connections!

Have FUN my friends,
I appreciate you!

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Add more friends with Friend Blaster Pro

2007-12-10T14:07:00.000-06:00

IF you spent some time over the weekend adding friends you can see it can be time consuming. A great way to automate the process is to use a friend adder software. Mary K and I both use Friend Blaster Pro

Here's a few reasons why I like it.

It adds friends
sends messages
sends comments
sends timed bulletins
sends a message with your friend request
FREE version

You can get all of these functions through the free version. The only limitation is you can only send 50 of each of these things each day. IF you choose to upgrade and get the full version you have unlimited access to each of these functions.

* Don't send more than 300 friend requests a day or you risk having your account deleted.

It's a great piece of software, and is very intuitive. I thought I would just run you through the basics of getting your account added to the software and then how to find friends and send them a message and a friend request.

Here ya go. (I'm experimenting with the software, and today's video came out a little weird, sorry)

That's it for today. Tomorrow we will be looking at some of the additional features of Friend Blaster Pro. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comment section!

Have a great day!

Jackie Lee :)

30 Day Marketing Experiment

How to Start a Niche Business

Day 20, Some interesting observations and learnings

Holy Moly ~ What a thirty day challenge

We're back with a 30 Day Challenge!!

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

Instant Message Marketing and 'Relationshipping'

Using Instant Messenger to Make Money Online

Beliefs - An Idea and a Lens

A MAP ~ Affiliate Marketing Action Plan ~ Part 2

Creating an Affiliate Marketing Action Plan ~ A MAP

Testing SYSTEMS - 1, 2, 3, 4

Blog for Traffic and Traffic for Blogs

There's SO much more than make money online

Make Life Easy with Must Have Wordpress Plugins

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

Hosted Wordpress Blog without Hosting

Can Blog Content turn into Articles?

Hosting your own blog ~ do it ASAP

A Professional Looking Blog - inexpensively!

Make Money Blogging ~ 7 Great Ways to Monetize Your Blog

Google's Blog Search Function

Blogging ~ Hot to pick a HOT topic for YOU!

Become a Blogger

Blogging ~ It's about Consistency!

30 Day Marketing Experiment - BLOGGING!

SQUIDOO ~ A Winner!

Squidoo Resources

Some Squidoo Freebies

Groups on Squidoo

8 Great New Modules

Get More Link Love with TaggZilla

Another Squidoo Utility

Make a button for your lens

The encyclopedia called Squidoo

More readers with Lensroll

Everyone Is An Expert

What the heck is Plexo?

What is Plexo, really?

Money Making Modules at Squidoo

How to Get Your Squidoo Lens on Page 1 of Google

more Effective Promoting ON your Lens

Promoting Affiliate Products on Your Squidoo Lens

Promoting ON your Squidoo Lens

Choosing Tags for Your Squidoo Lens

Building a Squidoo Lens?

Choosing Long Tail Keywords

NIche knack...

What's your niche starving for?

Squidoo Modules

Amazon

Duel

Flickr Photos

Google Blog Search

Guestbook

Link List

Poll Module

Text / Write module

Yelp

Amazon

Washington Post

Washington Post Issue Tracker

Watch The Olympics

Weather

Weather Widget

Wikipedia

Wine.com

Wired News

Wonkette

Analyzing your niche with google analytics

Comparing Products at Squidoo

Did you find an Active Niche?

A 'finding hot niches' p.s.

Finding Hot Niche Ideas

Building Lenses ~ Building Business

Step 1: So, what's your lens about?

Step 2: What do you want to do with your lens?

Step 3: Title and URL

Please rate your lens:

Step 4: Help people find your lens