That’s really a bad thing because it will delay your plans further. So what happened?

I started 2 more blogs! One is the Blogger version of this site, which I want to experiment with to talk more about what’s happening around here. So there is going to be some linking back and forth. Thus, what you’re getting is a summary version of all the posts I will publish here and then some.

I’ve made it look like a twin without all the fancy plugins.

This was made possible in part to their new Template Designer Wizard which was quite impressive. I’ll say that it is something which newbies might like as well if they’re totally at a loss for installing and/or coding. So on the FREE side, this new feature isn’t really that bad.

Moreover, I did start off with Blogger as a beginner. I think we all have. If you didn’t, well, good for you. It’s just been a long time that I’ve forgotten what’s it like to blog simple. I won’t lie, the service can be very easy and you don’t have to tinker with anything technical. That’s a change because the only thing I started missing was the SEO part.

I cannot find adjustments for permalinks, categories and their tags are called labels which you can add onto the sidebar just like our swirl of keywords. So the only way I can optimize my content is through the title and scattering the keywords within the article.

This is something interesting.

Blogger then is definitely for bloggers who aren’t interested in all things technical. They make it so easy that all you have to do is blog! You don’t have to think about search engine rankings for that part. And if you search onto their gadgets, the closest you’ll find to SEO is tips and services such as quotes and blogroll.

Thus, what we call here on WordPress widgets, they call gadgets. When you want to add one, just searching through the gadget list you can insert whatever you like from their list of 1300+. Furthermore, within the design portion of the Blogger dashboard, you can drag and drop the gadgets anywhere you want.

This is very much like what we see inside our widget section under Appearance. Furthermore, if have a theme like Headway, everything in WordPress may seem like point and click like above. Overall, Blogger really makes it easy to blog.

However, once you go WordPress, you don’t want to go back.

It’s almost like dumbing yourself down. Really. Nonetheless, it’s nice to leverage both platforms to see more ways on how blogging is effective as a whole and I’m all for research to help any blogger get closer to their goal!

Now the next site I created is actually self-hosted.

It’s called Already Used Info. I’ve had this domain for awhile because I wanted to make it something about weddings or clothes. Sort of like a niche site. In the end, I couldn’t find myself go deep into the topic nor did I had the time, so it’s been converted to my personal blog where I randomly talk and let loose on all things creative.

I’m thinking of repurposing content to make videos. What do you think?

Furthermore, I decided to carry my SEO education over. Especially with setting permalinks, keyword tagging, picture tagging and all that good stuff. It’s a nice change from what’s happening here. Hence, I find it more appealing just to talk about what I’ve written.

Watch out! It’s news anchor time!

For this site, I installed On the Go theme from Elegant Themes. I thought it was beautiful, simple and just gets straight to the point. What’s also fantastic is the dashboard configuration which they call ePanel is where you set your specific needs on how the areas will be seen.

So basically everything is set for you. Just adjust and save!

And you know what. All of this blogging elsewhere has really helped a lot with making the e-course. I actually went back in time to remember what it’s like to not have a blog and started from scratch. So while it’s actually taking much longer than I expected, I rather do it slowly rather than rush into making something I’ll keep modifying.

Hence, it’s enough for me to give it a thumbs up to go soon. And that’s a hard thing about seeing your ideas in action. The deadline is actually delayed now and if this was a real-world situation, I’m losing lots of money. Really bad. However, nothing done in excess is regarded as a waste. A couple of product ideas were also conceived.

So now I have about 3 more projects in the works.

Here’s are the ideas behind them:

• Extended Premium Lessons – that’s an extra 7 more weeks of blog unleashing
• Article Marketing Challenge Part Deux – a revamp of the 1000 Articles Challenge
• How to Make Your Own E-course – lessons or ebook, kind of unsure

So I’m curious, would you be interested in extended lessons for another 7 weeks after the first 7 lessons I give out? These would be not be free. Instead, it will be something premium. In addition, I figured that by the time someone completes these 14 lessons and perhaps surprisingly more, which I find that there’s always room for improvement, they would be well into their 5th month. This is enough to make a decision to carry on with blogging or dump it.

The premium 7 lessons will go more into depth on:

• recommended plugins and their usage
• site design and basic SEO
• tracking and analyzing your progress
• finding FREE ways to grow your blogging experience
• article marketing and how to spread your influence
• intro to product development and creating a continuity plan
• building a mailing list – everything you know VIP style

Keep in mind, you should finish the whole course in 14 weeks or more. A blogger who can withstand blogging that long can do anything! However, if you choose to not continue, the article marketing challenge will be something to look forward to. It’s an alternative route which I find will help us grow to communicate on a community level.

What do you think?

Finally, the e-course product is something which came out of the blue. I thought, hey, you might want to know how to create your own e-course as well. I’ve already put together a resource sheet on whom I’ve studied from, what they provided and how they worked their list. I’m sure as time carries on, e-courses will be making a comeback into the blogosphere too.

The sweet thing about it is, it’s absolutely catered to your style and no one else’s.

Furthermore, the sheet I’ve created was very insightful. I’ve learned so many things which I didn’t use for my own e-course, and it sure would go to waste if I don’t put into the hands of those who are interested in it. Thus, these ideas can really help a new blogger who is focused on providing awesome value in building their mailing list down the line.

Some of the topics include:

• How to see the big picture to teach
• Doing the research and tools to help you aggregate the information
• How to understand your process and create structure
• Deciding on monetization
• How to promote the course
• Learning from your actions to extend more lessons (or not)

Once again, what do you think?

Thanks to everyone who has voted and has supported the blog so far in it’s slow launch. I will be seeing you on the 200th post and official launch of the mailing list with the new e-course!

Related posts:

1. 7 Tips For Starting Your Own Mailing List
2. 50 Things I Didn’t Know About Starting A Mailing List (But Do Now After Studying Others)
3. Make Money Online Work with ListZEN – Do MORE For Your Mailing List to Keep Your Subscribers Happy

So how can Alexa help you brainstorm your new blog if you’re just starting out?

If you have a site, Alexa is a free service that provides a great way for you to participate with a large audience who too are sharing their statistics in traffic, rank and keywords with you. In addition, you are provided with a means to track, aggregate and organize incoming as well as outgoing traffic from your blog.

What does that mean?

Think of it as many individuals and organizations voluntarily allowing themselves to compete with you. Any site’s stats can be seen. Now don’t let that scare you. Once you go live online, understanding who else is out there can do a lot for you in terms of competition, trends and creatively unlocking unique means to stand out in a market that may or may not be saturated.

Thus, if you have the knack for researching how you can better influence your audience or readers on your particular chosen topic, Alexa is one of those sites to keep under your wings. They are trusted by top blogs online as a way to engage with potential advertisers. That leads me into my next reason.

Alexa is so powerful because advertisers flock to see who’s the best of the best, who’s trending and whatnot so they can do business with you. Hence, there are opportunities here when you participate in a nice, global source where website owners who actually view and analyze their traffic streams interact.

As a registered user of Alexa, they make it easy to see what it is you need to know to make your next move. Now, let’s take a look at what the service gives you, the benefits in joining it’s community and even how you can go about connecting with other bloggers who can be your potential business partners.

Looking Through the Top Sites

Alexa sorts all the sites that have registered with them into three choices – global, by country and category. This is helpful to narrow down sites which you can peak into and research for any incoming ideas on how to start your own.

Since the stats are all there, you just have to decide on what name to call your blog, valuable keywords you can target it with and choose the services to register them on. Alexa provides all this, minus the services to purchase your blog, as you see it through each individual site stats you visit.

So once you figure out what it is you want, go on over to a domain registrar such as Namecheap to see if the name is available and buy it. Then purchase a hosting service like BlueHost to store your blog’s content on. I suggest these services because they provide reliability and quality service at an affordable price.

Now you can see that the process here is quite simple. The hard work can be done for you just from browsing through the top sites on Alexa. You see exactly who is dominating the market, what keywords they are ranking for and how you can get a part of that traffic.

Thus, niche or mini sites can be created this way. That’s why Alexa makes it very handy for make money online enthusiasts to target exactly who it is they want to work with, and seeing the top sites are helpful because knowing more about other blogs stats can help you decide on the little things they are not utilizing.

I must say though, that it takes an eye to look for these concepts, much like searching for discounts at your nearest local market. So imagine what you can do with the information that is already given to you.

If you have some idea of what you want to do but aren’t really sure yet of where to target it to, browsing through the Top Sites on Alexa can give you plenty of ideas to start. Nonetheless, you can’t be wrong when all the data is given to you.

Site Information Advantages

Looking more in-depth at the information of a site, one can see the:

• traffic stats
• search analytics
• audience
• available contact info
• reviews
• related links
• clickstreams

These are all information which Alexa provides for you to look through and see specifically. Thus, as a site owner, you get a lot of details with which you can take away to improve or give to potential advertisers who would want to work with you.

Personally, my favorite sections are the traffic stats, audience, clickstreams and definitely the reviews. As a registered member, reviewing other sites can give you potential exposure. Another reason why is because there are barely any reviews done.

Check out my writing an Alexa review article where I show you how you can do that.

Basically, I see reviews as potential for growth especially for beginners who are just breaking out online. When you share your opinion of your favorite sites, much like commenting, you will enable the site owners to connect with you directly, and what’s awesome about that is there’s really not much competition to fight over.

So you’re practically hitting it straight into the blogger’s radar, and unlike comments, you get to be seen every time they check their stats!

Seeing What’s Hot

Much like Google trending topics and other search engine trends, knowing what’s hot around the Alexa neighborhood can also be advantageous to you. This is more so for niche site builders or bloggers who are in the market to target the individual articles they write.

For personal bloggers, this might not appeal much. Unless you are in the thrill for market research, there can be interesting keywords to watch. Site owners who are aware, can easily find something trending and perhaps create an article that may pick up steam to become viral.

Point is, you want to keep your mind on timeless topics. Trends will come and go but if you find something that is repetitious, it can quite possibly be a potential income stream.

With a little implementation on search engine optimization combined with article marketing as well as list building tactics, products from affiliate marketplaces like the popular ClickBank, Commission Junction, PayDotCom and even Amazon can make part-time income a reality.

Keep in mind, you are only seeing trends and not really their searches. In that case, utilizing Google’s Keyword Research Tool can help you narrow down your target keyword further. After all, if making money online is your motive, competition must be within reach.

Moe does a great job at explaining how you can use Google’s Keyword Tool.

Utilizing the Alexa Toolbar

Contrary to checking out Alexa‘s Top Sites and seeing What’s Hot, you can also install their toolbar which allows you to see if a site is part of the network. In addition I also recommend the WebRank Stats toolbar which lets you see the numbers of indexed pages and backlinks found in the search engines as well as Quirk’s SearchStatus too. With all three, you can have an in-depth view at how a site performs. At the moment, the first two are only for users of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. The third is also available for Google Chrome.

Now this doesn’t mean you ignore sites that aren’t part of Alexa’s network, it just means, if you interact with one, you’ll both gain. Thus, this is great for networking with other bloggers who are within the same interest as yourself. You’ll find out that it will be essential as you go deep to share a bit of your link juice.

Hence, we’re treading into SEO territory here. Just know that enabling your links to be dofollow will benefit your site to rank well when you comment often. What’s more, for each user who installs the Alexa toolbar and are a registered member of the community, their site will constantly rank well. So it’s a win/win on both sides.

Remember, your blog is your flagship once it’s live. How you want to go about it online, even to compete with other bloggers might not be in your best interest to start. But somewhere down the line, you want to know how you can make your site better. Alexa can help you with that and what’s more, it shares your growth with other competitors to make you within reach.

I’ll say that’s a nice kick in the rear and worth the insight to improve your blogging to become a valuable member of the blogosphere. What are you waiting for, check out Alexa and register your site if you have one already. Join the majority who are finding each other online each and every day.

What are your thoughts on using Alexa as a research tool?

Related posts:

1. How to Get Your Blog Ranked Under 100k on Alexa
2. Have You Written An Alexa Review Yet? Here’s How.
3. WebCEO: This Could Quite Possibly Be the Best FREE SEO Tool to Optimize Your Site

Thanks Adam, you so rock! Now I have to get my rear over to writing yours. So what about you, are you ready to give this blog your two cents on Alexa?

Get featured in the next review!

1) It’s a great way to build your Alexa profile and ranking.

2) It’s a great way for others to further connect with you.

Overall, this month’s content posting is the lowest ever coming in at only 10 articles altogether! This validates the point that you don’t need a lot of content to receive comments. However, the downside here is if you don’t mind a suffering in Alexa ranking, post less. That says a lot about the relationship of your content and comments.

If you rather have lots of comments, write less.

If you rather have a good Alexa ranking, write more.

Plain and simple, you can see that content is the currency of the internet. Comments give your blog interaction and makes it homely, personal and engaging. Even though I’m receiving more comments than ever with less content out, that shows me that I can put more efforts elsewhere to market the blog further like this mailing list I’ve been working on.

Only 3 more posts until launch! Whooo!

Keep in mind, that even though I didn’t post much, I still engaged outside of the blog whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, blogging communities like Blog Engage, Blokube, TGIF Links, and so on. The social aspect is what keeps your blog alive. And now you know.

Moreover, I was amazed at what happened during my hiatus in launching this upcoming mailing list. Fabulous folks who have mentioned or featured me this month deserves my utmost thanks and appreciation below:

• Patricia Millman with Lavenders: Small Niche, Big Ideas – This gal is rocking the blogosphere just jumping in already. With her latest Etsy shop, I always shake my head because she says she’s a technophobe, but here she is zipping right pass all of us beginning bloggers. Haha. Great news. Learn more about this niche.
• Ajay Chavda with 3 Types of Visitors Extended, Beginning of a Social Media Experiment – Part of a what is to be a 100 day social experiment, Ajay dissects one of my post and rewrites it completely with his analysis and relevant data. This is an awesome read for those who want to see another version of the 3 types of visitors.
• Lye Kuek Hin with Inspirational Bloggers Sharing Their Most Important Blogging Tips and again with How They Maintain Their Inspiration – I have already voiced myself within this two posts. Lye has generously compiled them together to give you a taste of many bloggers’ variations of their tips and strategy for blogging.
• Michele Welch with the Big THANK YOU Post! – Wow, I didn’t expect this but Michele is one rockin’ blogger whom I respect and really enjoy the posts of. While we haven’t known each other long, the connection was instantaneous. Glad to be apart of great company!
• Ingrid Abboud with her 1 Year Blogoversary – Happy, happy, joy, joy to my friend Ingrid with her blog Nitty Griddy and it’s Anniversary. Thus, she shares her thanks, lessons learned and more. Here’s what I call writing it up! See what she has to say.
• Kristi Hines with Women in Blogging: 125 Fearless Female Bloggers – Oh my, this list is one powerhouse. Every one I’ve listed above, ladies that is, is included. So you’re looking at a lot of awesome influence and professionals here. Open up your bookmark accounts and start taking note of these awesome women!

Now, let’s get on with the program! Here are the stats this month:

What stood out?

• Ranking only fell 2-3 thousand this month. Boo hoo! Must post more.
• Reach increased because of the awesome folks who’ve mentioned me. Yay!
• Pageviews/Pageviews per user/Time on site/Search decreased but jumped in the last week. Again because of the mentions.

Lesson learned: content is everything but building relationships is where you get traffic.

Below is what Google Analytics saw which was far superior than last month, October’s stats. Thanks again to the awesome mentions, I was able to keep this blog in the radar of new visitors. If you see, the bounce absolutely dropped as there was more targeted traffic rather than stumbles.

Click to see in full.

Referring sites which made this blog within reach:

Click to see in full.

Here are the individual blogs I want to thank this month:

1. Jonathan Volk
2. Adam Paudyal at Endeavor-Online
3. Leslie the Freebie Guy
4. Lye at Find My Blog Way
5. Murray from Murlu.com

Top Content and views this month:

Posts with the most interactions:

• 50 Things I Didn’t Know About Starting A Mailing List (44)
• Where This Blog Has Been Oct 31 to Nov 6, 2010 (39)
• Your Feedback and Help is Needed! (35)
• 7 Tips For Starting Your Own Mailing List (32)
• Have You Raided the Nearest Blog Lately? (19)

Let’s look at the world rank, audience and searches now. This area is always interesting as it fluctuates each month. Just glancing through this section alone, it let’s you see a lot about your international presence and influence.

As you can see, I’m getting some traffic in from the East.

What I haven’t noticed before but will take note of more on is the keyword searches done to find this blog. Take a look at the high-impact searches which are competitively ranking with other sites and those keywords which I might have the opportunity to rank high in the search engines for with less competition.

Let’s hop on over to websitegrader and see how things have fair.

Click to see in full.

Alright! We’ve gone up a point in grade and the blog grade is really the one which I’m amazed at. It used to be in the 30′s a few months ago, now it’s at 61. Not bad! We’re rising.

As for link data, about 120% increase in indexed pages and 350+ more backlinks build on the www side and a slight drop on the non-www side.

Click to see in full.

Finally, the value is where the motivation for monetization will prevail. Because Alexa didn’t drop that much, I only went up a few hundreds. Imagine it dropping like hot cakes, what then?

Plans for the month of December:

• mailing list launch
• guest posting
• article writing through Ezine
• product development
• business training 101

The last bit is part of Pawel over at Self-Employed Cafe’s Startup Business Support Group! It’s open to individuals FREE who are interested in starting their own business. The invitation is open until the end of the year. Until then, you have to pay a fee to get in. This is a win for you. Come join us!

Next, your best blog post submissions to Michele Welch’s NewBizBlogger’s new ebook is open until December 13. I’m going to see what I can dig up, so exciting times are coming up ahead. Won’t you think of one to contribute too?

Until then, this is Thu Nguyen coming at you from Blogging For!

What are your thoughts on this month’s traffic report? Share your comments!

Related posts:

1. Blogging For’s October 2010 Month in Review
2. Blogging For’s September Month in Review
3. August Month in Review PLUS Great Graphic Tools

These gems were uncovered from my ongoing endeavor as of recent in research. As you know, I’m doing everything myself for this upcoming mailing list launch. The 7 tips I’ve shared earlier are only a summary of what’s below. You’ll definitely see the meat of the whole process today. So take note because as I took action on them, I realize I have quite an arsenal to give back. Only 4 more posts until launch!

Now I want to share my discovery with you in hopes that you too shall gain some insights on what launching your mailing list might take you into. Refer to this article down the line as you get yourself into the habit of building your own list. The best way to see the idea in full is to work it’s magic by taking action. I could have called it the step-by-step approach as well, but hey, now you know how I’ve done it. Away with the thoughts then.

Here’s hoping you’ll learn something about building your mailing list. Let’s see them happen soon. Oh, by the way, Happy Thanksgiving! Thanks to all who have been friends and supporters of Blogging For! Hugs! Hugs! Hugs! Ok, here are those findings.

Source: Right From the Heart

50 Things I Didn’t Know About Starting A Mailing List (But Do Now)

1. If you don’t know, ask your readers. Start a poll and get some feedback.
2. From what they’ve given you, what do you know for sure? Take that as a starting point.
3. What do they like? Plan to put a lot of that in. Don’t leave out your voice.
4. What don’t they like? This will help you focus better and you will steer clear of it.
5. Decide your type of incentive – ebook, ecourse, interview, PLR, etc.
6. Instill a deadline to light a fire under your behind. This will give you a kick in the rear!
7. What are the formats you’ll send the info in – text, audio, video? Let your readers know.
8. Spend relevant costs for ecovers or make your own ecover? You decide.
9. Determine how you want to distribute the information – by e-mail or onsite?
10. Will there be a squeeze page too? You might have to write copy afterward.
11. You now have an impression of your audience. Create a rough draft of the giveaway.
12. Think about relevant products you can promote too. Ones which you already use.
13. Try mind mapping. There’s Freemind or on site with Mindmeister or Bubbl.us. FREE.
14. From what you’ve see, where do you need more research? List some keywords.
15. Search for your specific keywords and relevant long tail phrases.
16. Organize those finds in an manager like Evernote. Here’s a research template.
17. Also use Google’s Wonder Wheel for more awesome, relevant searches.
18. Get a new e-mail like Gmail for opt-ins. Saves you time so you can tag and label.
19. Sign up for your competitors info. Study their delivery and effectiveness.
20. Look at the thank you page. Did they send you elsewhere or to a freebie/bonus?
21. Do you want to send your readers an upsell too and with what relevant product?
22. Look for patterns in your subscriptions as you receive them. What are you sold on?
23. What don’t you like? Think like a subscriber. What won’t you do?
24. Look at the ratio of the e-mails in value and promos. Too much or too little?
25. Decide on how you’ll send your material. Weekly, daily, what’s your frequency?
26. Look at the tools they are using, free or premium? They will promote them often.
27. What autoresponder delivers the goods? Who uses it that you know and trusts it too?
28. If signing up, consider their affiliate program to promote to your list as well.
29. FREE and reliable autoresponders are also available – MailChimp and Listwire.
30. For creatives, take note of email template designs. How will you design yours?
31. In time crunch, stick to simplicity for results. Design is second to actual work.
32. As you receive content, look at how it is distributed. What type of audience reads it?
33. What are the formats sent – text, audio, video? Take note on how to format yours.
34. See possible templates for your material or consider hiring a freelancer to design.
35. You can do it yourself with Open Office and searches for FREE ebook templates.
36. OK, do a second draft of your information. What will you take away or add on now?
37. Put yourself in product creation mode and think in layers.
38. Who are your audience again? Refer to mailing list notes you’ve taken for approaches.
39. If you can, keep everything organized so you can find your information when needed.
40. Refer to your mindmap, notes and blog archive for ideas when you lose direction.
41. Consider openers/prompts, freewriting on 750 words, article templates for continuity.
42. Set aside time slots to focus on specific writing jobs. Chunk tasks together.
43. Don’t try to do everything all at once, you’ll overwhelm yourself and lose motivation.
44. Don’t fall trap to new ideas. Finish the ones you have to do first!
45. When finding yourself overdoing tasks, take a break! Come back later.
46. Don’t throw away any drafts. These can be possible guest posts later for marketing.
47. Don’t be afraid to make new charts, new designs, see new visions or processes.
48. Be careful as over-editing can erase your original intention. It might change everything.
49. Feel free to test your material on your family members, get their opinion and reactions.
50. Remind yourself this mailing list is another extension of you, a deeper you!

Alright, so you have seen now how I have done my process. From getting the feedback and into the act of market research, anything you do online, when you know your competitors, you get an idea of where you can step up. Now that can be different for someone else, but with the discovery above, I clearly see that the path is doable.

That gives me motivation to keep going.

The rest is just an injection of the knowledge.

What about you, what do you know about starting a mailing list?

Share your thoughts.

Related posts:

1. 7 Tips For Starting Your Own Mailing List
2. What I Have Been Doing During My Mailing List Haitus
3. Make Money Online Work with ListZEN – Do MORE For Your Mailing List to Keep Your Subscribers Happy

Until that time, here are some tips on starting your own mailing list and things you might want to think about when you do attempt the process. This is from my own recent experience, so if you see that I’m missing out on something, feel free to let me know in the comments. Appreciate it!

Alright, let’s see what these tips are.

1 – Determine Your Audience

Who do you want to cater to? Eventually, you need to define for yourself whom you’re going to speak to. This way, the information will be much more targeted. I was confused on this even though I knew that the blog is speaking to beginners and intermediates, what I didn’t quite know was if it was really true.

To validate this thought, I set up a poll and thanks to the bloggers and drifters who graciously replied, the new mailing list is going to gear more towards the beginners as well as intermediates.

So if in doubt, ask your readers. They will clearly show you the way.

2 – Determine Your Incentive

Will you be giving away something? There are different incentives to think about – ebook, e-course, interview, report, bundles. I chose an e-course because I don’t see a lot of bloggers doing that. So it’s a challenge but at the same time, I get the freedom to be creative.

Rather than compile everything into one book which you’ll download and might not ever read, I’m taking a jab at a giving you the utmost value continuously. That’s just my take.

Do what you feel would be best suited for your time/efforts/energy.

3 – Determine Your Frequency

How often will you be e-mailing your readers and friends updates, news and promotions? For myself, the e-course will start off weekly and after that, I will also be doing a weekly or twice a week update to readers on the mailing list.

The blog already will be published on a daily basis once the launch is done. Regular readers already know that, but for those who don’t have the opportunity to visit often, it will be compiled at the end of the week and then there’s some.

More than that, the list should engage your readers without overloading them with too much junk. If they’re reading your blog as well as are subscribed, how can you integrate both together seamlessly without putting on too much?

My rule of thumb? A little variety can make a lot of difference. A little bit of this and that but make it interactive. Keep the engagement alive. That’s why they subscribed in the first place. They want to know what you got. What can you provide?

4 – Determine Your Delivery Platform

What service will you use to deliver your goods and updates? I will be using Aweber, an autoresponder service, since it is fast, easy and convenient. It also provides me with sign-up forms. Basically, it is a premium 3^rd party e-mail tracking software and among it, other popular services include MailChimp, GetResponse and InfusionSoft.

Check out MailChimp which was the first to be featured in the Autoresponder Insights Series here. In the next couple of days, Aweber will be up as well. This is part of the ongoing investigation for beginners where I will explore, walk you through and even create a campaign to show you how it is done so you too can create your own mailing list when time comes.

5 – Determine Your Funnel

How will your readers receive the goods? Will it be through e-mail then on the blog? Through a download link or on-site landing page with the link? You want to think about a system or continuity process through which your readers will continue to click through.

This is the reason why I chose to provide an e-course instead of an ebook. Readers will be sent an e-mail letting them know that their e-course is ready with a link. They will go to the course on site and also receive a link to download further the corresponding workbook that comes with each lesson.

Sounds like a lot of work but really, instead of jamming everything together, readers who follow through this funnel let’s me know that it’s effective. If not, I might have to eliminate some step somewhere to make it more better. Only time will tell.

6 – Determine What Works

After you have everything set up, what performed well? Your autoresponder should be able to track the click-throughs for any link you send out in the e-mails. If you’re getting a decent amount of click-thrus, this will tell you that your campaign was effective.

However, let’s be realistic, nothing is perfect. Conversion is a process through trial and error. When you monitor what e-mails get the most clicks to see what converts well, those are the areas you want to concentrate on. This can also go another way, if you’re not getting click-thrus, how can you improve it?

So when I send out the lessons, I want to see if the readers will follow through and also download the workbooks on site for each lesson. This goes back to testing the funnel. After all, this is for my readers. I want to know what converts best for those on the list.

Thus, you want to think about conversion here. How can you retain your readers so that they can stay on your list as well as site longer? What are you providing and do they even read it? Using the reports from Aweber, I will be able to determine how I can improve my mailing list.

7 – Determine How You Will Market Your List

What will you do further to promote your list? The E-course is the main attraction to which I can encourage new readers to subscribe. So after the mailing list launch, I will be doing some guest posts around the blogosphere.

That may mean I have to create a landing page to target new readers who doesn’t know anything about the blog. Another thing is article marketing with Ezine Articles just so that I can get more inbound traffic from an audience that’s not aware of Blogging For. Also thinking about the site, I may have to install a plugin that will pop-up after a few seconds to remind readers that, ‘Hey, let’s keep in touch! Here’s my gift!’

What are other tips that you might have to start a mailing list?

Share your thoughts.

Related posts:

1. 50 Things I Didn’t Know About Starting A Mailing List (But Do Now After Studying Others)
2. What I Have Been Doing During My Mailing List Haitus
3. Make Money Online Work with ListZEN – Do MORE For Your Mailing List to Keep Your Subscribers Happy

What do you expect, it’s my very first mailing list!

More than that, I really miss you guys so first things first, I’m really impressed with the way the polls were answered so far. I was hoping for more but hey, you can’t always get what you want.

If you’re just reading this now, why not share your thoughts on your help is needed!

Overall, about 15 comments and tweets were distributed. Hurray!

Thanks to everyone who has helped out and supported the endeavor so far:

1. Patricia from Lavender Uses – Appreciate the vote! In this edition of Where This Blog Has Been, you will find her very first guest post. Not only is she on her way to great things, but check out her new Lavender Etsy Store!
2. Ileane from Basic Blog Tips – Yay! Thanks for visiting the blog for the very first time Ileane and also for your rocking support! I’m honored to have your presence and thoughts on this one.
3. Tuan from Tek3D – Another respected blogger here, I always appreciate your opinion especially on all things technical. So thanks for your vote ban (that’s Vietnamese for friend!).
4. Murray from Murlu – And yet, another awesome blogger support! Appreciate all that you have given in regards to time and the conversations we’ve had so far. Your advice has helped me moved some mountains.
5. Richard from Riches Corner – Thanks for all the support and in the short amount of time so far, you are rocking it my awesome blogger friend. Appreciate the vote!
6. Steve from Steve Scott’s Site – Always a pleasure to hear your thoughts on list-building, even from the list builder himself. Thanks for the awesome vote and support!
7. Barry Wells from The Barry Wells – Even before the 100 Blog Comments, Barry has continued to give me support. Once again, he comes through! Thanks my friend.
8. Rick LaPoint from LaPoint Marketing – Nice to meet an awesome new blogger, thanks to Patricia of course, who also has provided some great advice and support! Thanks for the vote.
9. Adam Paudyal from Endeavor-Online – Another great Mastermind friend who’s supporting the effort as well. Thanks so much for your vote!
10. John McNally from The John McNally – And another 100 Blog Challenge friend who has continued to keep in touch! Great to hear your say John! Thanks for the vote.
11. Terry Conti from Terry Conti – Finally, I want to also thank Terry for your vote. I’m glad to hear that you’re looking forward to this e-course as much as myself!

I also want to thank those who have voted but did not comment. There seems to be a couple of you out there. You know who you are. Thanks so much!!!

Late to the table and didn’t know that there was a poll? Have your say about what’s going to come up soon for the new mailing list in your feedback and help is needed! I really appreciate the awesome power of the community here.

Thus, this week’s blog hopping video is reminiscent of the recent rapture so enjoy!

Now, before we kick-off this week’s Where This Blog Has Been, I found an awesome post which can give you an idea of your blog status, celebrity-style!

It’s more or less shows you how much influence you have online. So check it out!

I’m on the D-List. Besides, if you’ve registered your site on Technorati, it might be more effective so are you an A-List Blogelibrity? Enjoy it and please, take it with a grain of salt. Unless you want to dominate the world, it ain’t gonna happen in one day honey.

Here’s Where This Blog Has Been with a total of 18 posts for you to give love to.

Sunday, November 7 (3 Posts)

• Steve Scott’s Sunday Selections: Hey, hey, hey, it’s another roundup from Steve and he covers everything from social media, reading facts, personal development, blogging and finally some shakes and stirs. You won’t be let down. Promise.
• Sunday Synopsis #6: Oh no, Adam lets us in on some very sad news as this will be his last synopsis, but don’t be down so long, what’s gone is meant to brought in greater ventures. I just can’t do it with this roundup yet! Therefore, check out what you can as usual, he won’t disappoint you.
• SuperPost Sundays Weekly Roundup #3: I’ve been following Ingrid for awhile now, as I include a new addition on Sundays, Adam’s won’t be around! So show some love for this gal as she got some great reads for you all. What you won’t find from the above, you will definitely find here.

Monday, November 8 (1 Post)

• Three Types of Visitors Extended – Analysing the Visitor Pattern: Welcome new commentator to Blogging For, Ajay has surprised me by sharing his point of view on the post which received a lot of attention a few weeks back, the 3 Types of Blog Visitors. This is also part of the new social challenge. So check it out!

Tuesday, November 9 (7 Posts)

• What Your Traffic Numbers Really Mean: John takes you behind the scenes with hits, pageviews, visits and unique visits. This way you can always look at a traffic report and see what really matters for that site. Hint, hint, this one as well.
• The Social Phenomenon – Covering 100 Bloggers in 100 Days: Here’s the challenge post from Ajay which asks you to join him on the quest to cover topics which you have interacted with or would like to take on in your perspective. Challenges are always fun, but this will have to wait until the mailing list launch.
• 9 FREE Ebooks on Social Media: Ingrid has got some awesome finds here for you. I mean these are top-notch reads which can help you delve into the process of marketing your presence better. I don’t know how she does it but she’s proving again and again, she’s an effective socialite!
• A Newbie Begins a Blog – And A Business: Yay! Show some love folks because when a fellow blogger starts guest posting those are some precious times to learn from. Here is Patricia’s very first guest post on Rick’s blog. She shares her secrets to how she has build her business online in such a short time with her blog!
• Holy Crap! Cook’s Source: When copyright goes out of hand, what you’ll notice is the community will respond. The moral of the story is, if you don’t have permission, don’t publish. Here, Gini, highlights a recent nightmare which can give us all a lesson on publishing content.
• My One Bit of Advice For Success As An Entrepreneur: Gideon, the video blogger, does it again with some great tips to help you succeed no matter it’s online, in the real world or anything you’ll undertake. I’m a big fan of the guy who breaks down his concepts into simple, easy digestible bits. See how you can too!
• IM Faceplate is An Online Business Owner’s Dream Tool: Deborah introduces us to a tool which can integrate many features of Web 2.0 right now all into one place. Not only that, for the article marketer with an opt-in list, you can insert them as well into your faceplate!

Wednesday, November 10 (2 Posts)

• Over 75 FREE Rapid E-Learning Resources: Tom blogs a lot about E-Learning development so in the midst of my research for the new ecourse, this was one of the monster post I found with valuable information. Not only can it be applied to creators of ecourse but anything blog-related from design, media, social and more!
• Business Blogging Advice – Content Creation Topics: Matt gives you some great advice for thinking about your content in terms of a small business. After all, if you want conversions, leads or even be seen on the search engines, you have to have a strategy of some sort.

Thursday, November 11 (NONE – Happy Veteran’s Day!)

Friday, November 12 (1 Post)

• The Online Marketing Funnel: Here’s a short and sweet article with a great pictorial on how conversion goes from research to revenue by NitinK. Back in 2008, this process is still relevant to now. What do you think?

Saturday, November 13 (NONE)

Honorable Mentions (4 Posts)

• I’m Full Time Online Just Quit My Offline Job! – I love hearing good news especially when someone I admire like Sally Neill says, ‘I just quit my job!’ Now with the new mailing list, I want to too. With enough effort and even some of her magic touch, I just might!
• Review of Cloud Living – Ali is one of those rare writers you have to follow online. Her review of Glen Allsopp’s ebook Cloud Living is a great take on what you can expect to make a living on the internet from one of the most talked about blogger.
• Income Blogging Guide Course Review – The infamous Kristi Hines reviews the Income Blogging Guide which is a competitive package to the Blog Mastermind course. Her take and review shows that the course is really a rich interactive experience and worth trying. A great post as I ponder on the new e-course.
• Interview with Six-Figure Problogger – Yaro Starak – Young Rob Rammuny interviews Yaro and does a great job of it. Not only that, he’s only 16! A-maz-ing! The best part, the transcript can also be downloaded for offline viewing later. Great for bedtime reading.

Build a relationship with this blog and be featured in the next edition!

Related posts:

1. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 10 to 16, 2010
2. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 17 to 23, 2010
3. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 24 to 30, 2010

Please help!

The post on the 3 types of blog visitors really has opened up my eyes to see that those who are really going to make sense of this blog are the visitors who have NOT yet reached out. Thus, if you are a regular commentator here or are even just passing through, can I have a moment of your time and ask if the questions below would interest you.

• What is your direction with blogging?
• How have you build your community around it?
• How did you find your unique selling point?
• How did you go about creating content?
• How about a marketing plan?
• Did you utilize a time management plan as well?
• Finally, how did you put it all together to build your blog strategy?

What you’re seeing here are my plans to create an e-course on blogging soon. So yes, I’m revealing the steps but more than that, the content interest is where I also need your help with. Why should I even continue if there is no expressed like in the direction.

I have my point of view but I realize that without yours, it’s more or less an opinionated course. So I have everything outlined already and am ready to lock and load, but then here comes another question which is making me plan and then replan, and back to planning again.

That’s because my target audience started off as the beginner, then it came out to be a mix between the intermediate who already know what blogging is as well. And for the advance, they can also refresh because after all, we don’t want to forget where we were at some point. However, that seems to be trying to appeal to everyone.

It’s driving me out of my mind!

Now my final question would be, and this I would kindly ask you to respond in the comments as it doesn’t matter what level of blogging you are:

How would this e-course appeal to you? Share your thoughts.

Thank you so much for your support!

I will be taking a few days off from blogging to read through the feedback and focus my time on finalizing the lessons. So before the 200th post, which is the launch of this new mailing list, you will be hearing me talk about this a lot.

Once again, I appreciate any help or time if you can to contribute! Thank you for making this blogging community an ongoing developmental process which is pleasant, kind and interactive.

Here’s to kicking off this blog’s new journey.

Related posts:

1. Your Feedback is Needed For This New FREE Report
2. 7 Tips For Starting Your Own Mailing List

And as we approach the beginning of the month, it’s always an exciting time around the blogosphere because reports on traffic, earnings and even progresses are shared. These are inspirational! More than that, they help you see for yourself how you can improve your efforts online.

I found myself really in awe though as I visited new blogs and even familiar ones to see how they have been. I haven’t been as active on Twitter as I could be, but that’s OK. It’s just nice to see progress, but more than that profits through all the hard work done last month, and that’s what you’ll find below for some posts today.

So here’s this week’s video to blog hop to:

And here’s Where This Blog Has Been this week with a total of 32 posts!

Sunday, October 31 (2 Posts – Boo!)

• Steve Scott’s Scary Edition – Halloween Selections: Yes, Steve has a compendium of interesting scary posts to ease you into the holiday, even after it has passed! This would make for a great niche site to put together as well. Hint, hint, seasonal niches.
• Sunday Synopsis #5: Another collection of great articles for you to check out from all over the blogosphere. My recommended Sunday readings besides mine of course. This week, Adam shares with you a poem and also many posts on self-development as well as online success.

Monday, November 1 (5 Posts)

• 5 Tips For Integrating E-mail With Your Blog: If you haven’t thought about how e-mail should be included in your blogging efforts, Tink explains why. Through these simple tips, understand that value is what you’re aiming for. After all, your readers are giving you permission to contact them.
• Promote Your Blog By Promoting Others: Without comments, your blog will not attract the traffic that is needed. Oftentimes, that is because most bloggers won’t comment if sites aren’t dofollow and that is a fallacy. Here Daniel explains why commenting is quickly reaching grounds as the non-paying way to traffic.
• 8 Character Drawing Art Tutorials: I’d like to introduce more art and design sites to the roundup besides the blogging how-tos. For the creatives, here are some drawing tutorials found by Khizar which gears you up for hands, feet, eyes, faces, action movements that are more on the anime spectrum.
• Get MORE From Networked Blogs on Facebook: If you’re on Facebook, this is one application you should also apply to update your readers on the latest posts from your blog. Fiona shares her strategy to how you can enable your blog to be seen more with this service.
• 5 Social Bookmarking Sites For Blogging Blogs: I use one of the social bookmarking sites mentioned in this article to promote this blog, however there are a few more which I haven’t yet implemented. Jamie though will clue you into the networks where you can further promote your blog to.

Tuesday, November 2 (5 Posts)

• Awesomeness of Co-Working Communities: Nunzio gives us a look at a growing trend going on around office space communities and I have to say, it sounds like something which might enable us to build our business when working at home doesn’t work out.
• From 0-45 Visits A Day, My Experiments and Mistakes: Ajay has blogged up to 7 times already and funny, he hasn’t given up! So instead, he shares what he has learned about traffic and what visitors really want in terms of content.
• Lavenders – Small Niche, Big Ideas: Lovely Patricia is the lavender queen! Shhhh, she thinks she isn’t though. However, she shares her thoughts on who on the blogosphere she has build connections with and guess who’s in it? Check out how you can integrate lavender into your life.
• Writing Tips For Non-English Speaking Bloggers: Tuan doesn’t speak English as his first language, so he explains how he has shifted from his native tongue to writing fluently in what you’re reading now. Thus, I was so surprised I could have been fooled. Find out what helped him.
• Link Luv – Weekly Roundup #2: Ingrid has done it again. She shares with you her second set of posts to give love to and this time, she asks, what should she call her Sunday roundups? Go take a look and give your honest opinion, any is helpful. Along the way, check out some great gems she found.

Wednesday, November 3 (2 Posts)

• 5 Financial & SEO Excel Templates That Turns Your Blogging Hobby Into Cash!: Mike knows how put together great posts with resources that will blog you away. With this one in particular, make good use of your blogging efforts and track your expenses and earnings!
• Findmyblogway Monthly Traffic Report For October: Lye shares with you the stats on his October traffic. He has been blogging since July, however for the numbers he has reached, it is not your ordinary hits. Very impressive. Furthermore, he also lets you know what his true goals will be from now on.

Thursday, November 4 (2 Posts)

• Blog and Income Report – October 2010: Murray shows us what has brought in some money for his efforts online and surprisingly, there’s a gem here you want to take away – article marketing at it’s best can bring in residual. More than that, his traffic is awesomely high, I’m kind of jealous.
• How to Use CommentLuv Enabled Sites For Backlinks: Kimi has a video that shows you what to look at when you’re commenting on sites that has CommentLuv enabled. From utilizing what posts to share to how to see it on your browser, make sure you are making the most out of your commenting.

Friday, November 5 (11 Posts)

• Funny Marketing Lesson: It’s quite amazing to find out how you really talk at times, especially when you don’t know what you’re talking about and think about marketing in such a way that it’s about the sell. Here, in this funny video, Cathy teaches us a lesson on redefining your target audience.
• 1k Articles in 100 Days – The Conclusion: The challenge has ended but I found something which will keep me going. Murray presented to the blogosphere a great idea and a few participated, here is the final results. Check it out and also sign up to try your hand at article marketing today! Don’t wait.
• Chuck Norris Guide to Proficient Protecting of Your Site From Rabid Varmits: OK, this is actually an interview between Barbara and Chuck Norris. He reveals how you can restore your site’s password and even how to determine the strength of the password so that it won’t be easily hacked.
• 7 FREE Ways to Internet Market with Yahoo Answers: Caleb provides you with some stunning insights on how you can utilize Yahoo Answers to market yourself and even create backlinks. There are some rules though and if you don’t abide by it, consider yourself banned for life!
• Get Ready For Top Level .Free Domains Which Will Be Totally Free: This is something you should hop on the bandwagon and you’re only allowed to get one FREE. So if you think about monetization that might be something helpful. However, I went and secure my name.
• Niche Site Challenge Part 001 – The Method in My Madness: Alex and Moon are cr-a-zy! They have taken something that has spawn the blogosphere by storm and brought it to us small bloggers. Now you can follow along and see for yourself a new process in how to build your own niche site.
• I Will Take Your Challenge Alex, For $100 Please: Here’s Moon take on the duel. Quite a fantastic challenge this will be and what’s more, she already has two sites she had started on so with the release of her new ebook soon, you’re going to find out more how she’s going to bring it.
• Top SEO WordPress Plugins: Dan shares with us some of the plugins that are making a splash online and they range from premium to free. Thus, if you haven’t heard about it yet, he’s also the creator of Keyword Winner. Way to go Dan!
• Twitter Strategies That Works, No Instant Followers Please!: Suresh has experimented with some services that promises you followers but unfortunately, they fail to live up to their promise and so here’s the real truth to utilizing Twitter to make it work for you which has the tools for you to make use of too.
• AZBlogTips October Revenue: Tinh shares with us another awesome month with his earnings online. Now, he has made more than this as he calls it a boring month. I said, ‘What?!’ Well, take a look for yourself, I’m sure you’ll say the same thing too. It’s really kicking you in the rear.
• Big List of 60 Web 2.0 Sites For Link Building, PR4-9: Satrap has collated together a long list of 60 for you to take a look at and think about where you want to practice building your links offsite. This is a great way to build a reputation online, however it can be tedious so do what you can.

Saturday, November 6 (2 Posts)

• Doubling My Passive Income Earnings with Bukisa: Here’s another gem by Murray as he shows you a way to double your earnings online. Now don’t underestimate the 1k Challenge because he’s read through the terms and actually understand that once you retain the rights, anything is possible. Find out why!
• Get 10x Traffic By Content Distribution Method: An old post but nonetheless timeless in that when it comes to expanding your thoughts on content and marketing them, here’s a blitz by Typhoon to get you going. The ideas presented are very useful for repurposing and republishing if you so choose.

Honorable Mentions (3 Posts)

• How to Change Your Digital Destiny the Minimalist Way: Mars Dorian does it again as he gives you some tasks to conquer your preferred online environment and succeed.
• 5 Steps To Impressing a Long-Time Jaded Blogger: Quite a post by Donna on how you can still make your thoughts count even to a blogger who’s been doing it for a long time.
• Write 10 Articles A Day, Market Yourself and Avoid Burnout!: Murray shares with us his strategy for writing 10 articles a day which is a feat most online writers can only dream of.

Build a relationship with this blog and be featured in the next edition!

Related posts:

1. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 17 to 23, 2010
2. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 10 to 16, 2010
3. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 24 to 30, 2010

Here’s why.

One of the things all bloggers love is traffic to their site. When you can stay longer and browse around the pages, well, the stats will show up on their Analytics that the time spent will be more than the average visitor. So you’re a golden nugget here.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re a commentator, social networker or drifter. Out of the 3 types of blog visitors, the drifter will stay around the longest. Why is that?

Well, you can’t comment on every blog post. While you would love to go through them all, there’s just not enough time. There are other blogs to visit as well.

The next reason is you’re not ready to give out your e-mail yet or even be seen in the blog’s community. Strange but trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve hoovered around hundreds of articles, comments, banners and whatnot and found that that Casper-like behavior only makes me want to reach out more.

It looks like I’m building up my arsenal and infantry but at the same time, I don’t want to be bothered with spam from commenting! So I’m on the defensive here and really, I just want to watch my back.

So what the heck am I blog drifting for then?

Research. You see, blog drifting, in it’s truest nomadic form is the most experienced visitor of them all. This may now seem like an addendum to the types of visitors I’ve written a few weeks back, but it’s really about the benefits of knowing your community better.

So why should you even raid your nearest blog?

For Content Direction

You want to know what topics your blogging friend is interested in. Right off the bat, just as you’re talking to a stranger, in the first few minutes through the archives, you can tell if you’ll be hitting the right notes. Basically, will you both be talking the same language?

No? Well, then get some reading done. Browse the About page, read the comments, see who the top commentators are and what they have to say about the articles written. I really appreciate it when my visitors leave me warm comments and actually take some time and effort into conversing with me, especially in wishing me well and whatnot.

Because we’re all busy.

And hey, I’m human too. Just because I blog about topics that may be technical at times, it doesn’t mean I’m cold. I love quirky humor, cheesy comments and even dorkiness. There I’ve said it and now you know.

Another thing is, if there is a sense of reciprocity given to the visitors on the blog. If yes, I would strongly urge you to network, because there is potential for you to learn, grow and even develop in whichever direction you’re pursuing online.

No, no, no! It’s not taking advantage of them. It’s facing your fears. So reach out and connect!

It’s web 2.0 here folks. Stalking is overrated. We may all be writing about different topics but one of the things besides politeness that gets us across online is direct conversations. So tell me what do you really want?

Just like real life, we all approach the beginnings with a little finesse but as that block is turned, it seems we go cr-a-zy! I know I do. It’s here, there and everywhere. But what’s evident is I’m hungry. I know you are too.

When we can feed that hunger and the blogger who sees it tends to us, once we’re full, we can really focus on the nitty gritty – business. Thus, I believe that frenzy is something to understand.

Psychologically, that’s our actions telling us that it’s curious. So why not feed the cat?

No Hype, Just Truth

I don’t know how many times I’ve been excited and carrying that elsewhere to another blog, I get disappointed when they’re not as excited as I am. Truth is, there is more misery than successes in the blogosphere. However, that doesn’t mean my parade has been rained on, it just means there are now fellow bloggers to revive and inject with hope.

Yeah, superhero time.

But that wasn’t always the case. You see, I don’t think this strength was obvious until I had confidence, and that was mainly backed by a strong army of friends and a network which I enjoy interacting with. It makes life beautiful on the net. But you have to understand, not everything is Pleasantville.

There are problems everywhere and solutions are not found. So when you see solutions fanatically in one place and self-fulfilling prophecies in another, they aren’t listening to each other. And the thing is they’re two languages mimicking one another in so many levels deep, that sometimes I think we are at war.

However, that’s farthest away from the truth. And the truth is we’re all trying to figure out how to make money online. That’s what I thought too but now that’s going to change.

So what is the truth and is all this networking and online hugging real?

This is what I have to say – when it’s love, it’s love. You can’t explain it. That’s passion. That’s something science can’t measure and that’s why I keep blogging. The moment I start to doubt myself, that’s when I’m getting away from my target, the goal.

I don’t know how many times you’ve drowned yourself in misery as well, but that cycle pulls you down, down, down. So I rather lie to myself and raise back up the dead by passionately doing what it is I have to do to get there.

What’s evident is when you realize this, it becomes personal. You can see through the lies and hype. That’s why when you too put in the effort towards seeing what your passion is, only time will reveal the truth.

For me, it’s raiding other blogs to learn that I have something in common with them, connect and linger longer. That may be a weird way to reach out, but really, I’m giving you my time to honestly want to get to know you. And whether I’m valuable to you or not, depends on how you receive me.

Can you do the same?

Go out there and raid the nearest blog around you. What can you learn?

Related posts:

1. Gems of the 100 Blog Comments Challenge (Part 1)
2. Gems of the 100 Blog Comments Challenge (Part 2)
3. Gems of the 100 Blog Comments Challenge (Part 3)

I actually made money! Yay!

You see, the first month was only a taste and it showed me what I needed to do to earn more. And this is important in participating in something new. You have to give it your all!

Furthermore, this was evident in the number of posts that were written up-front, which means you were the first 5 to contribute to. Here’s proof of it.

Remember this was only within my first month with over 35 articles. Blogging already was a habit which helped transitioned the process of article writing into something easy. So as I looked around I noticed that there were contests. Thus, I found another stream which could boost the earnings up higher.

So there’s now two advantage to writing on Helium:

• up-front earnings
• potential winnings from contests

The contests alone already gave you up-front articles to contribute to so there you have it. And what’s better? This can help skyrocket your earnings to double or triple it. Hence, with some effort and time management, you can be making more than hundreds per month.

That’s not potential. It’s proof!

Check out Murray’s October earnings report. Not only did he rocked the challenge but he owned it as much as he proposed it. So he’s walking the talk!

What to Work On

The one thing which we all didn’t work on a lot of was the social marketing part of it. This would have pulled in more traffic and even turned the pennies into dollars which I’ve seen a couple of the articles convert to.

These were evident through stumbleupon, twitter, digg and even facebook. Other times, it’s a matter of the topic at hand because it takes off on it’s own. And these are normally subjects by popular demand like social media, gadgets, writing and technology.

There were also seasonal topics which brought in quite a stir when you can be the first to be seen. So it’s a matter of investing your time wisely to do the research and then getting it out there. When it’s published, once it reaches the front pages of the Helium, which I’ve noticed is random, all those cents can really add up.

That’s why, when Murray, proposed the challenge early on, it was to let you see the potential and for you to make it happen.

I saw potential and not only that, I saw optimization as well.

What’s exciting is there are more networks to combine with these efforts as we own the rights to the articles, so I do believe I’m in good hands here as not only is Murray a professional at what he does, he’s passing on the opportunity and sharing it with us who are hungry to try.

Will update you guys on those efforts as I branch more towards article marketing soon.

Group Effort and Respect

Surprisingly, I’ve met a few writers whom I’ve come to respect. It’s really about the collaborative effort and camaraderie in challenging one another to be all that we can be much like a mastermind group. And I have to say, hat’s off to Gene Patterson, which if you didn’t know it yet, is Steve Scott’s older brother.

Way to go my friend! You’ve really crush it as Murray has said. Not only does great writing runs in the family but together, you guys better watch out now, Gene’s going to be blogging soon. Can’t wait!

So be afraid, be very afraid.

Now, when I got on the bandwagon, I was really on it. I’ve documented the challenge on my 1000 Articles page and I’m going to keep at it because it’s something I will continue. That’s the point of the challenge – to enable you to not stop.

Well, as time went on, especially for the month of October, I fell off the radar with more than I can handle and when you’re busy, that means good things are happening. And that’s why I found myself pausing. I didn’t stop.

With a new mailing list about to be launched soon, I’m focusing on giving you a kick-a@@ e-course on blogging. So I had to shut off the internet and limit my writing down to one focus – list writing.

But here is good news, look forward to a report in the coming new year about article marketing which I’ll release as well. Could be a collaborative. Who knows? So before it happens, let me walk the walk first.

Report and Earnings

So what happened throughout 100 days in this 1k challenge?

Contests won:

• 2nd place Show Me the Money – $30
• 2nd place SEO Tips – $30

Total articles:

• 72 with 68 in profitable categories

Total earnings:

• $126.93

So you can see that about half the earnings are from up-front payments and Adsense earnings from traffic. All in only two months time! The last month saw a lack in participation so that doesn’t really count. What does is what you see above.

It’s proof that you can make money online and without much effort but write!

Here are some screenshots from my account of the final earnings:

Final Thoughts

Article marketing definitely works. With a group collaborative you’ll get farther and be more motivated. Furthermore, challenges are happening left and right around you. Just grab a hold of it and participate! Because if you’re just reading this and are doubting yourself, you’ll never make money.

Just do it. The results are there. You just have to take action. Thanks to Murray, I did and now I can’t stop. It’s a process which once you understand, quitting just doesn’t make sense. It’s about hitting it out of the ballpark from thereon. So you have to work it.

If you’ll like to try your hand at Helium, comment below and I’ll send you an invite. Really, I want you to try for yourself and see the difference. The 1000 Articles page also has more walk-throughs and information on how to start plus more if you’re curious.

What are your thoughts on article marketing? Share your thoughts.

IMAGE: From Pair and Group Writing Activity

Related posts:

1. New Challenge PLUS Find Productive Ideas For Generating Articles
2. Helium and It’s Playground, How to Make Money Writing Articles
3. What to Consider When You’re Writing Your Helium Articles

I’m actually quite excited about what he’s going to reveal to you, and as the professional that he is over at Financially Digital, he has supported this blog’s growth from a measly tumbleweed to a large meadow!

So I’m all for gratitude, but more than that, connections with meaningful contribution towards the blogging community here. That’s why when he asked for an exchange in guest posts, I happily accepted.

This is more evident because of his giving nature. You see, Nunzio is a big supporter of financial literacy. He also writes a few columns for news outlets such as the Boston Globe and currently, the Executive Forum Magazine. Therefore, he is quite busy.

However, my interest came in part from the newest addition to his schedule – teaching at Bay Path College. As the professor of economics there, he is spreading his influence through manifesting his goal of informing and impacting students on how they can better think about finances.

He does this on his blog Financially Digital as well. So I asked Nunzio to tell me more about his teaching experience and today, you’ll find out what goes on inside a class with Professor Bruno as well.

Without further ado, enjoy and take it away Nunzio!

== > STARTING GUEST POST

It was my first day as a new college professor for the first week of September and until then, all I really knew was blogging, managing a social media presence, consulting and coaching at Financially Digital. None of them on the surface has really prepared me to lecture to 18-20 somethings for an hour and fifteen minutes every day. The topic was about macroeconomic theory and the amazing thing was I did just fine.

So I started thinking about why I wasn’t nervous or even scared at the white-board. I realized that all that teaching I’ve been doing daily came in different shapes and sizes. Now to set that to the precedent, I have the academics to teach the material to college students and even a PhD in the works. Furthermore, all that schooling was to apply the lessons to the professional world, even though I have never been formally trained to be a teacher.

Again, so I thought.

The few experiences of one-on-one consultations I have had helped presented the topics to my new audience all within a time limit and from blogging alone, I learned how to prepare and keep the class interesting as well. This went on for an entire semester. So if you have a blog and a passion to share an expertise such as Thu here, than I would argue that you are a teacher too!

What I want to do now is take what I’ve learned at Financially Digital and break down their strengths, so that you can see how I have drawn and applied the concepts to my classes.

Blogging

Every post I, and all of you, write has to have a little bit of research to it right? I prepare the same way for a class. I read through the chapters, do the homework and Google interesting topics/issues related to the material on that day. Then I figure out how to craft it so that the delivery is original, insightful, and creates an impact.

For me, blogging is more than just an outlet. It’s an opportunity for me to share what I know and have come to know, in an attempt to make people better consumers of information with the products/services they’ll use. That’s why I approach teaching the same way.

Even though macro is a requirement I teach, not all of my students are going to be economists – in fact I’m sure none of them are. So, my goal for them is to make them better consumers with hopes that they’ll realize that what I’m giving to them is really happening out there in the real world.

Social Media

This one is fun!

Between Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, blog comments, LinkedIn, and any other social platform you use, you could be engaging with thousands of people a day. That’s thousands of personalities, professionals, point of views, and moods.

You’re trying to interact in a positive way and juggle all the traits and preferences of your audience, so that your message reaches the greatest amount of those you connect with. That’s teaching! Also, my students are from all walks of life and are in different times and places in their lives right now, so it’s actually kind of fun for me to get them all on the same page.

One thing they will all agree on though – I tell dorky/nerdy jokes (at my own expense mostly), and I’m pretty sure they are laughing at me and not with me. But after the laughter and snickering, all those barriers that makes them different start to melt away, and we can all focus on the material at hand instantly.

Consulting / Coaching

This one is probably my favorite and what I draw on the most, for my teaching inspiration. My undergrad degree is in economics and finance, my master’s in financial planning and soon, the PhD to come will be in behavioral finance (I hope). However, all that schooling didn’t prepare me to interact with people though.

It was the time after school, working in almost every wrung of the financial planning career ladder that put me through jumping ladders to be a bigger resource to entrepreneurs and small businesses. And being in a field where your interpersonal skills are as important (if not more so) as the information you present, puts a tremendous amount of pressure on learning.

So learning how to interact and communicate effectively with any audience became a passion. My home library has more books on behavior, communicating effectively, emotional intelligence, and trust than it does on finance and econ texts. It’s almost easier coaching because clients will seek you out and ask you specifically for advice.

With teaching, as in my case, they are required to be there. So being on my “game” is important. Body language, eye contact, how I move, what I say and how I say it all, deeply impact whether I can keep my class with me through how tariffs work and NAFTA for the whole class period.

Putting What Was Learned Into Practice

Every week, I’m excited that I have the opportunity to get up and teach about how one can be a better consumer. I love that someday I’ll be a part of the story told by a reminiscing college student as the young, nerdy prof that made them laugh and got them through a text book that read like IKEA instructions.

I can attribute the ease of transitioning to the classroom and the success I’ve found to the experiences I’ve had with blogging, social media, and my own practice. So I urge everyone who is looking to make an impact on the web to take an attitude of teaching by offering value and being compassionate towards your subject.

You’ll never know if you might end up in front of your own class someday.

Nunzio Bruno is the owner of Financially Digital, a Springfield based business consulting firm in MA. He also blogs over at FinanciallyDigital.com where he provides resources offering information on relevant financial issues, personal finance, the latest in tech and social media. The goal is to make people better consumers of goods, services, and information in real life and on the web. Feel free to contact him at nunz.bruno (at) gmail (dot) com.

Connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

What are your thoughts on Nunzio’s experiences towards action?

Share your view.

Related posts:

1. A Chronicle of My Guest Posting Ventures
2. What Filesharing Can Teach Us About Marketing
3. What Your Personal Relationship Can Teach You About Building Your Online Blog Subscription List

And one of the ways which you can write content to your advantage, is to think about them in terms of your newsletter.

For example, how are you going to refer this article to your audience when you’ve finally have it finished? When you question yourself that, eventually you’re going to go out there and market yourself that way, and part of the process in getting your material seen is to build a following. And that will come in the form of a mailing list.

You see, they will be the most responsive audience out of all your networks online.

These are the guys and gals who have given you permission to e-mail them whenever you have new material out. Now, don’t take that the wrong way and define that as spamming. No, no, no. These are your awesome people who actually like and want to hear from you, so why not think of it as killing two birds with one stone when you’re writing content?

The Realization

Building a list has always been seen on blogs and it doesn’t have to be with e-mail. Look at the first obvious area, the RSS reader or products which are being promoted. So wherever you go, there’s this notion of the numbers hitting you with THIS much readers right now or THAT much amount sold.

How the heck does one get to stand out the same way?

Simple, the preach for content is king is resonated for many reasons:

• It is something that interests or entertains the reader.
• It is something that helps the reader in some way as a reference or practical advice.
• It is something that allows the reader to contribute, voice their opinion to or rant on.
• It is something which gives the reader a great experience – i.e. challenges, contests.

Overall, I’ve seen a lot of content in the past few months becoming more obvious in the way that quality will be more stressed for an audience who isn’t looking for it and for those that are, it better be one heck of a killer article. That’s where judgments against quality verses quantity comes in.

Thus, writing content is dependent on the blogger. You don’t have to write killer technical articles, sometimes just being yourself is all that matters. As I mentioned this in my whitepaper writing post, it’s definitely about your blogging voice. More than that, it’s consistency.

Take a look at the archive.

What you’ll notice is that I try to put out at least one article per day and I do it often. Even consistently. However, now that I’ve added off-site article and newsletter writing to the mix, the time spent for content creation is diminished.

So how could I better leverage the three and even stand out?

Integrate all the Processes Together

There’s no rule against article marketing in your own list, so why not think of that when you’re writing content. This definitely will give your personal audience a chance to get to know you better, which means referring them to your classic posts that reveals where your experience has grown.

I don’t believe there is a reader that has read every post you put out. Heck, I haven’t had that advantage but with a mailing list, you can enable that to leverage your focus and make your point without repeating yourself.

And when that happens, you got yourself a strategy.

You see, you’re not only writing for your visitors but for your faithful list friends. Thus, let’s look at a few examples which I have taken on with the categories that have been utilized for this blog so far.

What you’ll notice is there are definitely a lot of ideas, specific ones which can be instilled in a possible mailing list and even into an e-book if I wanted to.

• Performance: Technical documentation of services, programs, walk-through.
• Self-Development: Creating vision, focus, stories which helps you develop as a blogger.
• Understanding: My personal experiences through dips and overcoming them.
• Relationships: Connections with other bloggers by gratitude posts.
• Inspiration: Bloggers who influence, roundups, biographies, ebook reviews.
• Amusement: Humor, fun and creative tangents away from technicalities.
• Humanity: Society, economy and cultural influences to cognitive development.

To help my audience see all this, I use plugins to unlock a sitemap and archive to the site.

This is beneficial when you have specific categories as you see above. This gives it a concentration which is simple to follow. To implement that, I use the Google XML Sitemaps and Dagon Design SiteMap Generator to help me organize the posts.

I’ve also incorporated the Clean Archives Reloaded plugin which helps visitors see how often articles are posted. Overall, with these additions instilled, as a blogger, you can look for ideas at the click of a mouse and think of how far you want your direction to go.

Thus, a simple prediction can be made for your next post.

Now Get Ready to Write!

As I mentioned above, when you go through your archives, ideas begin to form so to help you kick-start what was said into gear, you have to get right into the meat of the action.

Here are some references to content creation which you can utilize and that I personally use:

• Different Types of Pillar Content
• Strategy For Best Time to Write
• Tips For Article Writing
• Establishing A Process For Your Blogging
• Integrating Relative Conversations into Posts
• Rewriting Content and Ideas
• Openers/Prompts to Break the Block

Now, the next time you write, I want you to think about your mailing list whether it’ll be in the form of a newsletter, updates to the blog or even a promotion. That way, you’ll always be writing content. There is no excuse then to give it your all.

I wish someone had told me that when I first started. Well, guess what, now you know.

Wishing you all the best with your content creation efforts! Talk soon.

What are your thoughts on creating articles in terms of list-building?

IMAGES: Mail and Men by Francesco Marino and Network Workflow by Renjith Krishnan

Related posts:

1. What Your Personal Relationship Can Teach You About Building Your Online Blog Subscription List
2. 7 Tips For Starting Your Own Mailing List
3. How to Find Backdoor Sites That Are Great For Building High Ranking Backlinks to YOUR Site

Stay tuned for a guest post by Nunzio soon.

Here’s what he said:

Thus, if you haven’t written an Alexa review yet, it’s another way to boost your rankings online. Why not share your point of view of what you think about this blog? Would be happy to include it in my next Monthly review!

October Recap

October in and of itself broke out as the month with the most traffic ever. Despite being the month with the least posting at only 19 articles, with over 1,500+ unique visits and over 3,700+ pageviews, it seems that didn’t impair the blog’s influence. Thus, we’re heading towards a positive trend here (click for a larger view).

Here’s a look at a 5 month average as it wasn’t until June that this blog was first analyzed.

What is also prominent was how effective social marketing has been. So posts which were stumbled in the beginning didn’t pick up ground until towards the end of the month. This brought in a lot of bounces, but nonetheless some traffic. Therefore, there are rewards with patience.

Here are the top 10 referring traffic sources to this blog (click to see clearer):

These are the individual blogs with the top referring traffic:

• Adam from Endeavor-Online (144)
• John McNally (28)
• Sally Neill (27)
• Jacinta Dean from Creating My Online Business (22)

Thanks also goes to the Murlu Mastermind group which has enabled the social networking process early on in September. So thanks to Murray, Adam, Steve, Jennifer, Tammi, James, and so on. If it weren’t for you guys, the social process wouldn’t have been instilled in my marketing efforts.

Furthermore, if you’re not leveraging social networks to your advantage, it’s never too late. Remember, just choose your hub and sprinkle your influence a little bit by bit each day. Particularly, if you have a team, this makes the endeavor much more easier. So take part by reaching out and in that one minute, it will make the difference later.

Here is an in-depth look at the traffic visits in the last 30 days according to SiteMeter.

Overall, no guest posts this month and that’s because the start of a mailing list which will give you a free e-course is in the works. So you may have noticed it teasing you on the side, but I haven’t yet introduced it formally. That’s why I’m planning a 200th post celebration and introduction.

Stay tuned!

Another series introduced was the Autoresponder Insights with MailChimp being the first to be reviewed. The service has quality tools and up to 1000 subscribers FREE, so you can’t beat that. Find out how you can start a mailing list without spending a dime today!

More coming soon so hang tight.

Posts with the Most Interactions

1. The 3 Types of Blog Visitors (39 Comments)
2. Best Commentators of Blogging For dot INFO (31 Comments)
3. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 3 to 9, 2010 BIG THANK YOU POST (29 Comments)

Posts with the Most Views

OK, I’ve said enough already. Here are this month’s charts and stats:

What is seen was the last week dropped all across the charts. So I could have pushed things but I didn’t. A lot more posts would have helped. However, it is what it is. Can’t really complain though.

There’s also a change in the world traffic and it seems the competition over in the UK and India has risen. Interesting, as I’ve dropped in rank since September’s Month in Review in international Alexa ranking. The audience has also gotten younger as the age range changed towards to 18-24 yrs old females in some college.

There are also no visible movement in the clickstreams as they remain unchanged.

Now there were some work done to the blog as I got rid of a lot of self-pings and internal linking referencing to one another. Very bad idea. Little did I know that that caused my Google backlinks to decrease and thus, what you’ll notice is I have a lot in Yahoo and barely any in Google. About 200 was gone.

Not only that, the website grade has dropped as well. So folks, don’t delete your self-pings!

Finally, my favorite part always comes from the value. Yay!

We’ve went up and should be beyond 10k soon by the next month in review. Oh yeah!

For the upcoming month, there’s going to be minor monetization going on. Of course, the mailing list will be fully launched and also some changes in banners will be seen on the side. So don’t be surprise by the addition of new graphics as it will be an ongoing testing ground here folks. And you know I will definitely clue you into what’s going on around with this blog.

As always, thanks for viewing this month in review and here’s hoping your traffic goes well!

What are your thoughts on this month’s traffic report? Share your view.

Related posts:

1. Blogging For’s November 2010 Month in REVIEW
2. Blogging For’s September Month in Review
3. August Month in Review PLUS Great Graphic Tools

I went around a lot in the first couple of days. As the week ended, well the holiday took on more of the schedule as you have to take a break. It’s part of the fun. However, the love never stops. For this week’s Where This Blog Has Been, I want to also give you a cool tool to transform yourself into the zombie that you ought to be!

With Zombie Me (I found the final page where you don’t have to register), all you have to do is upload a picture and wait. The result is a zombiefied you! Check out Thubie, the zombie me. Yeah, I was scared stiff myself. However it doesn’t beat the scariness of not posting today! LOL.

Also here’s this week’s video to check out! Enjoy!

Now here’s Where This Blog Has Been with a total of 34 posts to give love to!

Sunday, October 24 (2 Posts)

• Steve Scotts Sunday Selections 24 Oct 2010: Blogging is not an easy feat if you don’t have a plan. This week’s selections focus around the theme of organizing your blogging strategy so that you won’t have to suffer the repercussions. Always a pleasure to be apart of Mr. Scott’s community!
• Endeavor Online’s Sunday Synopsis #4: Don’t you just love roundups when they start spinning a web of their own and well, you just can’t stop reading them? Here’s another from Adam that every week I recommend along with Steve’s as you’ll get the best of what’s out there. Enjoy!

Monday, October 25 (11 Posts)

• How to Come Up With 100 Blog Post Ideas in 30 Minutes: Srini shares his process on how he goes about an A-list blogger’s archives and gets ideas to write his post. With a short video, he’ll walk you through real-time on getting those topics and mindmapping them as well.
• Blogging Groups – Are They Effective? Let’s See.: Mark is thinking about forming a group because, well all the best bloggers out there have their own coaching program, but on the less expensive side, you have like-minded bloggers getting together just for the sake of growth. What do you think about this?
• It Takes Longer Than You Think: By the Caffeinated Elf, a very cool name indeed, she talks about your mindset on leveraging your work. How the type of ‘Boss’ you are can change the way you go about doing things and even effectively grow, but it does take longer than you think.
• How to Utilize Your Categories and Tags More Effectively: Here’s a guest post on Famous Bloggers by Niles where she shares her observations on the best way to go about presenting your site through the categories you’ll use and even how the tags are utilized. Straight from a website designer with 8+ years of experience!
• Jamie Northrup’s Daily Twitter Tasks Checklist: What are effective ways to market yourself on Twitter? Jamie shares her daily tasks with you in a downloadable PDF as well, so that you too can try for yourself how to go about social networking on Twitter in many different ways.
• 25 Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Monetization Strategy: When should you start making money with your blog? Some of the burning questions you have inside can be answered here through bloggers and their experiences in going about ‘making money online’.
• Top 9 Ways of Forcing Google to Crawl Your Site Faster: Here’s a guest post on StrictlyBizNews by James Adams and it is so detailed with actionable steps you might want to take a look and get your site out crawled soon! If you have already, consider looking through the ways to see if you might have missed something.
• Handy List of 9 Blog Toolbars to Increase Your Reader Engagement: Mike does it again with another awesome share on toolbars you can put on your blog and increase visitors networking choices to spread your influence online. Really helpful if you have less space on your site but don’t mind leaving choices somewhere on the top or bottom for readers to click through on.
• 10 Amazing SEO Infographics to Educate Your Staff and Clients: Here’s another guest post by James sharing a great list of infographics online on SEO! This is the go-to if you need to explain to someone the process without so much words. Just print, show and they’ll see!
• NittyGritty’s Link Luv – Weekly Roundup #1: Yay! Ingrid has her first roundup out and these are great reads since it’s always good to see what fellow bloggers are reading too to find inspirations from. Check out what’s in line from last week and share your love.
• It’s Been A Long Time Coming, But It’s Finally Here!: Well, my mentor, Miss Sally Neill has finally got herself a new place. Here in this post, she shares the excitement and even updates as being part of Alex Jeffrey’s A-Team! You go Miss Sally!

Tuesday, October 26 (10 Posts)

• Does Google Stop Pagerank Updates?: Tuan shares with us some news on the recent updates with Google’s PageRank as it determines what some of the elite sites on the web are. For the moment, there seems to be a delay as we don’t know when the next calculation will happen.
• The Killer Guest Posting Opportunity You Won’t Find Anywhere Else: Ann Smarty of MyBlogGuest reveals news on great sites which you can contribute guest posts too, thus more exposure if you need. In order to take advantage of this opportunity, you have to be a member of the FREE community which has a forum.
• 20 WordPress Plugins For Successful Internet Marketers: Michael shares with you over 20 plugins to monetize your blog with. He also explains what you can do with them and how effective they are in implementing them in your business, when you do get around to it.
• SEO – The Act of Mingling Two Opposite Worlds: Here’s a guest post by Suresh but it’s more than about SEO. It’s about passion and even finding yourself through the search engine frenzy madness online. So how do you write content that ranks well online but at the same time appeal to your readers?
• Keyword Research – First Step to a Successful Website: Aakash walks you three a simple 1-2-3 format on researching your keywords before starting out a site. This is particularly useful for niches which you want to tap into and make a profit from.
• Getting Serious About Humor Writing: A nice little piece for you to think about. Especially when it comes to voice, humor should be relevant. It’s what makes us human and at the Random Chick Blog, she gives you some pointers on seriously being funny with advice from Dave Barry of the Miami Herald.
• My 10 Favorite WordPress Plugins: Jessica shares with us some of her favorites and there are some here you might want to consider. As a WordPress user, you cannot get enough. Furthermore, it’s good to know what choices you have so that if the occasion arises.
• 3 Stages Every Website Owner Must Go Through: We all grow when we blog but seeing your path in full bloom, you might not be aware that there are obstacles you’ll face. Here’s an article by Roman who takes it apart for you so that you’ll understand the roads which will happen as you go deep.
• Your Own Product – How Much Value Do You Need to Deliver?: We’ll all get into the process of creating a report, a product to sell, even give away and in this hibernating mode, the writer at SocialMouths explains why value must be essential and in his discovery, I’ve learned that it’s more or less about you as well.
• How to Create A Personal Developmental Plan: Steve gives you some thoughts and insights on thinking about yourself. Not only that, it’s about your plan for the future and even though, professionally it holds it’s rewards, what about you?
• 6 Reasons Not to Work So Hard: Besides all the work you’re doing, you need to sometimes spare a little time to think about your ethic and that is what Jennifer shares with us here. Don’t go towards these reasons which will eventually turn itself against you. Make yourself a beast but a enjoy it too.

Wednesday, October 27 (6 Posts)

• Color Psychology – How to Use It On Your Blog: Here’s a guest post by Kate Kutny who shares with us the different impressions we give to our visitors when they come to our blog. Very insightful and if you’re considering what color would be next, this is worth a read!
• E-mail Deliverability Tips: Tom, CEO of Aweber has some tips on how you can properly abide to the laws, policies and even format your e-mails so that they get to where they should go without looking like they’re SPAM. Thanks to Kate, this post was made possible.
• How to Start Fresh From This Moment in Time: Fatherhood is a great place for Adam at the moment. He’s transitioning himself into that which will uphold goodness that will come and he shares some tips on how to go about it with change.
• How Launching A FREE Product Doubled My Income: Leslie, the Freebie Guy, is someone whom I have been following way back since I got into freebies. Now here he is coming out with his own product, I’ll be darn! There’s something to learn here though. He found a need and took action on it. Found out what!
• Jobs Are Filthy Habits That You Should Kick As Soon As Possible: This is a VERY long post and I mean long. If you have time, please do read it as it really kicks you into focus about reality and the conditions in which we affix ourselves. Unless you see change, it won’t happen unless you think for yourself.
• Exploitation – The Dirty Secret to Win the Web: Murray will not stop and that’s because he can’t and he won’t. The blogosphere is revealing before him a pattern and he’s sharing it with you in this post. While this may not have occurred to before, you’ll be shocked to see that it will.

Thursday, October 28 (5 Posts)

• You Can Now Change the Name of Facebook Page: Tuan shares with you the latest update for Facebook users on how they can change their ugly long name pages to their site. This is good for branding, however it’s only for those under 100 friends.
• How Effective is Your Elevator Pitch?: Trish is going to show you where you can find a tool to see what you elevator pitch is right now! Direct from the Harvard Business School, it’ll help you refine and improve how you present yourself to business prospects.
• Social Bookmarking For Internet Marketers: Here, Steve explains for you the benefits of leveraging your presence on social networks. As there are so many, you don’t know where to start. Furthermore, it’s taking one place at a time and mastering it.
• Google Analytics and Web Traffic: John shares with you how he has went about installing the Google script onto his niche sites and what he did to bring traffic to them. These simple steps should not be taken lightly, as they pack that powerful punch that rakes in the numbers to give a better picture of demand.
• It’s Time to Kick Ass! I Landed My First Client: Murray is on his way to greater things and it’s no surprise that all the hard work is now coming into action. He has new work in the works and it’s exciting times. Not only is he ready, he’s ready to rock!

Friday, October 29 (NONE)

Saturday, October 30 (NONE)

No honorable mentions this week as I don’t want to overload you with too much information. Have fun and once again Happy Halloween!

Build a relationship with this blog and be featured in the next edition!

Related posts:

1. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 10 to 16, 2010
2. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 17 to 23, 2010
3. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 31 to Nov 6, 2010

If there is a product that is out there on the market, I can get it for FREE.

How?

Through forums, the filesharing community, torrents and peer networks.

Remember Limewire?

Yeah, just as easily as you can download movies onto your hard drive, information products can be found the same way and it’s not funny.

You want to know what I have found so far?

Here’s a little taste.

31 Days to Build A Better Blog, Thesis Themes, Headway Themes, How to Promote the S*** Out of Your Ebook, Product Launch Formula, Niche Profit Classroom, Squeeze Theme, Small Reports Fortune, Blog Mastermind

and so on …

And that’s from the online marketing niche alone. There’s tons more!

Can you imagine all the premium stuff that you’re buying is actually being given away for FREE? And I thought about this because I was wondering how in the world could these information be leaked and the owner don’t do anything about them? What about the hosts which lets them?

So then I thought about it more.

Piracy can turn itself around. Even if you do launch a product, there will be hardcore fans who won’t spend a dime but search the net high and low for a pirated copy. I call these the ghost hunters. Just like the blog drifter from the 3 types of visitors. The invisible exists in all actions. Only they don’t want any bit to be seen by you.

So when they finally get it, browsed through and implement the information inside, your name might be credited. Then again you might not. If you’re lucky, your brand value will certainly increase, at least in the search engines. But you won’t get linked for it. Their site will.

Now let’s take the worse case scenario, which is more realistic. We’re surrounded by a lot of haters. I can’t stop the noise but you know, when information is manipulated, repackaged and made into something similar which goes back out into the market, that bad energy which goes to take the people’s money, actually succeeds!

And when you have a legit product, the generic striped down version and repackaged product – who’s going to believe which belongs to whom? Despite all the copyright and infringements that comes with such downloads, have we actually ever heard of any major information shakedown?

Besides the Salty Droid which attacks the gurus for us, what about those scammers that aren’t gurus, but are regular joes like you and I? I have a feeling that they don’t have a chance, but … pirates are smart too.

They can cover their tracks. In turn, we end up asking the market to be aware of what’s happening and voice our bitter concerns. Because someone has got to pay! There has got to be a change.

So another product comes out. A problem to solve.

What is happening here?

Niche markets are now forming on these matters. The tiny concerns will start to rise.

Ka-ching!

Another cycle starts over again. When you hear that ka-ching, consider more ears listening.

Now, let’s talk about how I was able to find your products for FREE!

The secret comes from adding some keywords to the searches done online:

Ex: keyword + rapidshare, keyword + mediafire, “keyword” download

Adding quotes help give you a direct search. What you’re adding after the keyword, which is normally the product’s name, is the file sharing service. I covered this awhile back when I was reviewing some of the common file sharing sites on the web.

At that time, they seem to be around the many forums I have been visiting and are a huge hit with making money online enthusiasts as well.

So there, I’ve spilled one of secrets to finding premium content online.

Why, I could have used all those wonderful information but the blog itself already is keeping me busy. Content creation and article marketing is one heck of a power punch to your time online so, no thanks! I have enough on this platter. I don’t have time to be a busy bee.

Besides, something about the way I have viewed information has also changed.

It’s not going to matter to me unless it can help with my business. And that’s where the information overload has stopped. All that was glorified won’t mean much unless it can provide value in some way and that goes back to that small sector which has grown online. I need for it to solve my problem.

Ka-ching!

So do you think I’m going to need all those extra premium goodies when my main focus is on blogging at the moment? Soon with the implementation of a mailing list and newsletter writing, testing conversions will be on my mind.

The excess in all it’s holy goodness are going to have to sit on the backburner.

What am I going to do even if I possess the product? I can’t test it out now.

I hope you do take away something from what I just shared with you. Because if you’re still craving for a sense of direction at the moment with your efforts online, it goes back towards exploitation.

Murray said it best when he revealed the dirty secret to win the web. However, I must add that timing is needed as well. With purpose, the timing will bring with it demand. But unless there is no need to get involved, might as well call it a pile of useless crap.

To one it’s value, another junk.

After all, you can get it for FREE. So call it whatever because right now, if it’s not important to your current path. It’s a big distraction. But that’s something that will come back and it’s like a big ‘I told you so!’

Who’s going to go dig through history anyway? The Wayback Machine?

So if you have an idea. Get it out! Even if you are late.

That’s why I think aggregators of information are in one of the most luckiest sectors of marketing online. They have more opportunities and in so many ways unimaginable. Their work can be distributed without their knowing and virally become a hit through blogs, videos, social networks, etc. It can happen now or later.

But the downside is, if you’re in it for the profits, you might not see any … for a very long time.

Worse, your brand, can be contorted and rebranded to a commercially packaged design and become a foreign entity, just to revive the idea. We see that happen all the time with big name brands in the real world. Ideas try to make a come back through a new image.

Makes me wonder, if the next product coming out will also be pirated too?

That’s a thought to consider. However, if you think about the value that comes from respected individuals who are also your friends. They would have given you their testimonials.

And to those that don’t respond.

Who cares! So I say, if your product is leaked, make sure it is the best there is.

It’s a loss of money in sales but in the long run it’s a gain in experience. That’s where I think you really need to sell the heck out of yourself, whether you make money or not.

That’s marketing baby!

Be the pink panther. Sparkle and shine.

What are your thoughts on information products that gets leaked?

Related posts:

1. July Month in Review PLUS Tools You Can Use to Track Your Site
2. August Month in Review PLUS Great Graphic Tools

Why is it that there will be those looking for the best and those who don’t get involved together?

You then have a story immerse with the elements of a mystery in crime, circumstance and humor, just to see that the value of the pink panther is nothing more than a diamond.

The world’s largest one too!

And it is these same elements in blogging that I find we, ourselves are searching for again and again all over the blogosphere on what value truly means.

We think that because someone has a blog with a large following it has more value.

So the larger the value, the bigger the crimes that comes with it too!

And the blogs that normally have traffic hoovering over them might no longer instill a voice of reason. At least one which is evident to new readers.

When there is no sense of filtering involved, you’ll begin to see a lot of greed, lust and even the presence of honorable bloggers whom we’d like to connect with, have lamps rubbed the wrong way.

And so the wishes come.

The consequences? Control.

Here is where the mystery begins.

The pink panther is now lost and the value that is held behind the glass box is stolen.

Where could it be?

The story of blogging takes on the same tracks and following the steps of the clues left behind for us, we try to piece together the blog puzzle. Just as detective Clouseau ponders, ‘Where do those footprints lead to?‘

Taking into account of what we do know, what we’ve heard, seen and have experienced, the motive behind blogging unravels.

What is a blog?

What is the best way to go about blogging?

What must you say on your blog?

Who are you blogging for?

The simple concept of writing and publishing content is now elevated into a system of yes/no checklists and the audience through which it filters through has become more prejudiced.

Dofollow? High Alexa? High PR? Mailing list? SEOed?

It seems there is a concern going on for those who writes the best content, provides the fastest, best way to do something, makes the most money … buzz, buzz, buzz.

For readers who don’t know any better, this is the chaos through which we give them.

It is any wonder how their minds have suddenly become loaded with so much information?

And when we’re not considerate of what’s going on really, we’re only contributing more to the problem. So, OK, I want a say too. I want a part of the pink panther as well but I won’t commit the crime. I’m not going to steal it away from someone else, I’m going to find out through looking back at what has worked.

I’m going to ask you – what is the pink panther for this blog?

Before you answer that though, let’s continue further because I’m not finished!

The system which has defined for us some of the values online isn’t always what we want. Nor is it always good for you either.

I guess that’s how you think outside the box. It’s questioning the context even if proof is given because it doesn’t apply to you. Nor to me. Then where do you apply it?

Consider the birth of another drive – the need for competition.

Without actively involving ourselves in the process of blogging, we won’t know what is the pink panther.

How in the world will you know what is value if you don’t provide it?

What is value anyway?

Look deep. What do you see? No, it’s not a diamond.

It’s the elements that makes a diamond retain it’s sparkle, the carbon inside that gives it life and the chemical structure which makes it strong.

We are the diamond.

The pieces which will hold us together makes the network which will continue to bind us valuable. Not only is our blog but the blogs which connects with us has value.

Value is in numbers. Not alone. Web 2.0 has made that possible with the social networks we’ll leverage. So do you understand now why a blog is only as awesome as the community that builds it?

I understand now.

It’s a never-ending connection of like-minded individuals which gives life to information not of one but many. And doesn’t it touch your heart to know that someone at least cares about what you’re doing, contributing and even trying to do online?

That only makes you better and creates the value in the network you belong to stronger.

It only takes one to motivate you to jump to 10. Really. That’s how I felt with my first comment. Because from that day forth, I knew that more was coming and all I had to do was continue to give and soon, I shall receive.

OK, let’s do a prediction now.

In about, let’s say a few months or a year down the line, your value can grow to be profitable. Monetary. You’re going to have power at that point and that requires a bit of responsibility through planning. Structure. With that, you might have an ethical side that will tug at you and might change the way you market. Refinement. Finally, with the successes you’ve gotten, it’s back to giving to the community again. Charity.

Who knew that there were so many ways you can grow to give value? I definitely see why monetization is important now. It’s the first step to starting the cycle of value.

Again, think of that diamond, how is it held together?

Through the network which internally connects the atoms, how is it strong?

What is the element that connects the whole piece eventually?

What gives it that shine?

Taking the same concept over to blogging, you can apply the experience the same way.

So as you narrow down those tidbits, you’ll begin to find that the audience which you’re talking to now knows you best, because you’re going to share things about yourself with them. It’s just like first impressions. They want to know who you are.

Like friends in real life, it’s reciprocal.

That’s why there are top commentators so that you show who are some of the active participants around your blog. If you’re allowing guest posts, that too will endow you with value as well as the writer which will contribute. (coming soon!)

Most importantly, you have to keep doing what it is you’re doing. Don’t stop! That’s your branding strategy. To keep going through rain and storm. Inspire. Influence.

Surprisingly, value is always closer than you think.

Just look at the mystery of solving the pink panther. It’s from the network in front of you. However, you’re going to run into circles before you can see it. You’ll be digging and digging and even though you’re falling off track some days, you’re getting closer and closer.

It all comes back to where it came from. You.

What is your pink panther? How about answering that previous question as well – what do you think is the pink panther for this blog? Share your thoughts.

Related posts:

1. The Best Commentators of Blogging For dot INFO

My ultimate hub however, is Twitter. Follow Me!

With the help of TweetDeck, which organizes the way I view my tweet streams, everyday, I find myself amazed at the valuable content that is shared from my fellow friends whom I first followed and then found that those that they follow retweets content and so on.

It’s a neverending cycle of great reads!

To some this may come across as a time-consuming task and it is. I’m not kidding! You’ll find yourself clicking through link after link and reading post after post, commenting, social bookmarking and so on.

After awhile, I’ll look at my clock. It’s 2 and a half hours. Geez, that’s marketing for you!

But I enjoy the process. It enables me to connect with my friends, read their content, share their content through with my network and even pass it on to other social networks outside of Twitter like Facebook, TGIF Links, Blog Engage, Red Gage, etc.

You’re probably thinking, yeah right. But it’s true. Every blogger has to learn how to effectively market their blog and social networks are the way to go!

And that’s how I found some of the Where This Blog Has Been content online which is featured each Sunday. So now you know.

At first, I really did not understood how Twitter was because the hype was more on the number of followers you have versus the content you provide. Soon enough, I started reading links shared about complaints on the way Twitter has been abused and how it has become too much of a spam hose to how to gain a certain number of followers to branding yourself with the tweets you send out.

So you see there’s two sides of the coin.

You have to learn how to filter out the content you receive as well. It’s all about choice. Don’t just follow anyone who follows you back. And hey there’s even tools that can help you follow, unfollow, etc.

I normally use Friend or Follow to see who’s following me and who’s not following me.

However, I like to keep it simple. I don’t send out ‘Thank you’ messages even though I know it’s nice. It’s bad enough that you get tweets from me so I don’t want to bomb you with more thoughts already. It’s already good that we’re friends!

Furthermore, there’s so many additional ways for you to network online.

And part of networking gives you the opportunity to market your knowledge, but more than that, talk about what you love and that for me is blogging, marketing, branding, self-development and online performance.

Now you may think that social networks carry with them their spammy neighbors and it’s true. Wherever there’s traffic, there’s spammers.

But along with that, you’re going to have regulators as well.

They’re going to show you how you can own the message you put out and have it seen by your followers, friends or even network – the right way! And you will find yourself connecting with them because there’s some reason behind all the rants.

Thus, before you get into any social network, you have to understand that it won’t work for you unless you go out there and make it an effort to build relationships online. I know you’ve heard of that time and time again but consider this – why even bother blogging, sharing content with other fellow bloggers if you’re not going to share with them some of your thoughts.

And sometimes blog commenting is not enough.

That’s where social networks come in. To create more buzz, you need to gain more influence whether it’s your own to share or others which will benefit you in some way.

Think of it as finding a place to further communicate your message in a short and effective way. That’s what Twitter does for me.

But I didn’t go about it the right way to begin with.

I went about it head on thinking that the numbers was going to give me my awesomeness.

Wrong!

That’s why you see so many going about it with full force because they get this notion that it’s the right way to network.

You just don’t know what you know.

Now, it’s best if you know someone who’s already gotten on the bandwagon and even if you don’t see the use for the process, let me explain that the blog is going to be the platform you want to base your connection on.

It’s true. It’s what I base mine on and I’m not ashamed to market that.

That’s my flagship, baby!

And it’s all about bringing the conversations back to the blog, the content and ultimately to influence.

That’s going to take a little effort and no guide is ever going to show you how to do it effectively, only you will know.

That’s why the best social networking guide is going to be written by you.

You can’t find it anywhere else but through experience. It’s why I’m not going to give you any strategies, but the idea is to try it, be creative, learn from it and refine it.

I’m definite about this.

The next time around, when you read a post about the best way to go about a certain network, keep in mind, that the ideas are only those which can help spark yours. And I love ideas but what worth are they if you don’t take action on them?

So please test them out and see what is right for you.

Don’t assume that because someone else said you have to do a certain thing so, that it’s written in stone.

It’s not. It’s folks like you and I that makes our tweets, shares, likes and messages count.

One last thought on social networking

If you’ve read my article on the 3 Types of Blog Visitors, you’ll know that when you can include the social bookmarking aspect, you are merging more than one communication stream.

This looks good for the networker and even impresses the blogger.

So you’ll get double the kudo points! Easy social networking advice.

As for those of you who are still practicing the craft of connecting with another because I know, I myself am still shy at times, remember that it’s just the beginning.

You need to break through the ice and connect and that’s one way of facing your fears.

Easy said than done I know, but you’ll never know unless you try.

After all, we’re going to share links with one another, might as well be something that I will click through and put effort in reading. That’s the first thing you can think about.

The final close – recommended readings by Mars Dorian, the creative genius on online influence, with a guide on expanding your digital network. As well as a social bookmarking explanation by Alex Whalley, the ultimate keyword blogger.

Why do you think social networks should be leveraged online to spread influence?

Related posts:

1. The Beginnings of Prominent Social Networks Online (Part 1)
2. The Beginnings of Prominent Social Networks Online (Part 2)
3. 69 Years in the Making, Wonder Woman Reaches the 600th Issue, PLUS My Women of Influence Online

Life gets you busy!

I hope you all have had a wonderful week though and are enjoying what is the last of it before the new week starts. As always, it’s a pleasure to share with you what I’ve ran across.

This week’s music video to get you blog hopping:

And here is Where This Blog Has Been with a total of 17 posts to give love to!

Sunday, October 17 (2 Posts)

• Steve’s Sunday Selections Oct 17, 2010: I have never heard of Blog Action Day, but there’s a first for everything. There’s a monetary aspect and well, the other spectrum, feedback. So if you’re just like myself, find out the many ways in which Steve captures the essence through these great posts to act on.
• Sunday, Synopsis #3: As if that wasn’t enough, there’s over 8 more posts here with a focus on time, visitors and why challenges are good. So if you have a little time, why not go through Adam’s short synopsis?

Monday, October 18 (2 Posts)

• Mastermind Group Benefits: Here’s another gem by Adam as well with a more personal take on how a mastermind group can benefit you. I, too, am part of this group. I’ve lent my two cents in growth, why don’t you tell Adam yours and if you have benefit any from your own experience.
• How to Kill Information Overload: Terry definitely has been through the load of dreams out there aimed at getting money in someone else’s pocket. No more! He shares why it’s essential that you stop and think about how you can kill the overload now before you turn into Swiss cheese!

Tuesday, October 19 (2 Posts)

• Lifestyle of a Part-Time Blogger: Richard shares his story of how he has evolved online through blogging, and even his strategy for growing efficiently while working at a full-time job, taking care of a family and even now in the blogosphere. Awesome post for those wondering what’s life is like on the blog fast lane.
• Hoover Effect Comment Avatar WordPress: Kimi is someone who shares her WordPress secrets with you in the most simplest way possible and not only that, she follows up with you on your site to see if it works! If not, just ask and she’ll guide you.

Wednesday, October 20 (3 Posts)

• Are Your Blogging Priorities Straight?: Phil is getting pass his first month online. Yay! Now, he’s thinking about setting new goals, but what I see here is commitment and it’s absolutely wonderful. Find out how he has structured his blogging schedule and get an idea of how you too can prioritize your blogging.
• Entrepreneurial Wisdom, Insight and Inspiration From Some of the Best: Cori of Big Girl Branding has put together this monster post asking many of the well-known bloggers online from Darren Rowse to even Willie Crawford 3 simple questions. These aren’t your ordinary ‘How’d you get into business?’ questions. It gets deeps as we all fall into reflections and need to get through roadblocks. Read the responses and get inspired!
• Help Call – Help Me Name My First eBook: So Moon is going to be releasing her new ebook soon. You can help her brainstorm a title to which she can name it! Firstly, check out some of the other comments as so far, there are some great recommendations, however, if you got one that rocks, shoot it! Who knows, that could it.

Thursday, October 21 (NONE)

Friday, October 22 (NONE)

Saturday, October 23 (1 Post)

• My ‘State of the Blog’ Address: Steve shares with you new changes that will be coming soon to his blog. Not only that, he reveals a product of which he’ll take down the ‘lite’ version of. I couldn’t believe it so I had to make sure that everything he has mentioned wasn’t going to totally waste. Find out what and make sure you take notes!

Honorable Mentions (7 Posts) - Here is where you’ll find the backup list. While this week has been short, it can get that way sometimes. And that’s why the reserves are here for you to take a sneak peek back on the posts that has been visited by this blog. Don’t worry, they have not been featured yet, so there aren’t duplicates if you’re wondering.

Enjoy!

• Headway Theme Review: Create and Design Your Site With Ease – Adam designs websites as well and here he gives you the lowdown on a blogging framework which is popular alongside Thesis. If you haven’t heard of Headway before, this will be insightful.
• So You Want To Venture Into Problogging, Here’s What Not To Do – Prasenjit shares some of his ideas on why blogging isn’t about getting rich quick. It’s more about development and he explains why.
• Backlinks and Backchat: The Bloggers Guide To Social Bookmarking – Alex Whalley writes really great posts on his subjects and this is no exception as he goes into what is social bookmarking, backlinks and the sites that they come from.
• How to Improve Your Alexa Ranking – Devesh shares some of his strategies from jumping 2,000,000 to under 100k in a few months. Much may be what you’re already doing now but then here are more.
• Hell NO I Won’t Censor My Blog – Marian Schembari is absolutely one of my favorite voices online when it comes to blogging. You won’t find yourself bored because this article will make you want to react.
• Do You Recognize These Common Excuses? – Karen Ruby tackles everything under the sun so that you won’t have to. Feeling uninspired? Well whip this list out and get it going. Don’t just sit there.
• How to Write An eBook, Are You Asking the Right Questions? – Before Alex’s ebook came out, he was swimming in the waters of motivation and questioning the final segments into completion. This article nicely explored his journey and is one of my favorites in terms of influence.

Build a relationship with this blog too and you could be featured in the next edition!

Related posts:

1. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 10 to 16, 2010
2. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 24 to 30, 2010
3. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 31 to Nov 6, 2010

I’m going to pass over another Biography Fridays and it’s for good reasons.

There are more important matters in terms of facing and today’s topic is something very real.

After our last conversation about overcoming blogger’s crisis, I thought about the path with great emphasis on the actions that I will soon be making online, and I am afraid.

I am so afraid that I’ve even convinced myself, I need to have fear in order to succeed. However, another fear appears – the thought of never getting around to seeing success.

And I think it is this cycle that we can viciously run around in until the very last breath of air ceases to exist. So how many levels of fear are there?

Now that’s quite a thought.

What I want to do is look at it constructively.

What then can we do if we’re in such a state of mind?

Well, if you’re tired, your decisions will not be clear. Furthermore, fear drains you of the energy and the motivation you need to ignite the passion that is inside of you.

Taking a look back at the months I’ve graciously volunteered to research, gather and document information which I have no doubt readers will enjoy from this blog, I have continued to stick to that process and have not failed in that endeavor since.

That’s something that I’m proud of.

But fear can rid you of that pride.

It’s burning my insides as well and I’m frustrated. And I’m really pushing myself to get out of the rut, because I know that I’m three feet away from seeing gold. I feel my limbs telling me that it wants to give up. However, I’m not like that.

I’m going to be stubborn and the contradiction is, I foresee good things coming.

Somehow, when you invite fear in and let it mutate itself into your thinking, you’re in for a challenge. One which might be the best of your life. However, you won’t see it that way.

You’ll think that it’s a sign to stop, to quit, to run, to cease action.

I have felt all that and confided in my network of friends.

And I am still feeling it.

At times it puts me in a state of paralysis.

And there will be much more greater challenges that will ask me to be strong.

If I am not taking care of the health of the process now, I will honestly never know.

And that is a thought I want to share with you.

We will all fall into the side effects of fear – uncertainty, paralysis, mind-warped thinking.

So you have to be honest with what you’re doing, who you’re working with and what you’ll do.

And you need a plan. Construct a point of reference through which you will follow and stick to it. It’s going to require discipline and that’s where the progression will be seen.

I will be honest with you, it’ll take more than a couple of tries but that’s the process.

This is why I believe there should be some standard to what you do online, a strict discrimination to the type of information you might read. At first I thought about this and I am against actions which puts me in a corner which I have to choose. However, you cannot please everyone.

You must make a choice whether you are ready or not.

The worse that can happen is you’ll fail.

However, if you haven’t accepted it yet, mistakes will make you the expert.

And because perfection is ideal, it’s not the reality which we live in. If that was the case, we’ll all be achieving our goals right now. However, we’re human and in order to understand ourselves, our strengths and finally, opportunities, weaknesses must be overcome.

So for you to get to point B, consider filtering out some grounds which you’ll like to communicate on, and it can be shocking what you’ll see.

Focus and you won’t drain yourself away from getting to your goal.

Furthermore, I am grateful for being around a community which allows me to reveal my weaknesses. Because I am no superwoman. I’m just like you. I have a dream which I want to put into action and through a plan I can make it successful.

And I believe that’s going to happen.

I believe you will achieve that level of success too.

Together, we  can.

And nothing beats an environment through which you can grow gracefully.

So thank you for letting me be me with you. I’m thankful for the support I have now with the new connections I have online.

That is something money will never buy.

I want you to think about the support you have as well. The energy they have given to you to help you no matter how long it took for you to get to the point you desire.

And because they have patiently been there for you, it’s something to honor.

Because it all comes down to compassion.

Let that overshadow your fear and put a smile on your face – your child, your significant other, your family. They all matter. Remember, no matter how many books, information and people you may surround yourself with, if you don’t get the message that awakes YOU to overcome your fear, perhaps you might not ever.

You might not achieve that vision you saw and furthermore, you’ll regret ever trying.

What do you think about fear? How has it turned you inside out?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

IMAGE: Scared Facial Expression by Madartists and Goal by jscreations

Related posts:

1. Zombies Make Your Fear Looks Like Child’s Play
2. 100th Post and Giveaway! So How Do You Overcome Blogger’s Shyness?
3. Do Less Whitepaper Style Writing, Say More on Your Blogging Voice and Overcome Blogger’s Crisis

And what I’ve noticed looking back at the posts I’ve written, I thought, great pieces but only if I’m trying to get into an Ivy League school.

Over the last few months, I’ve become friends with bloggers that are not ivy league graduates and yet I’m speaking to them like they should be, isn’t that contradictory?

Moreover, this questioning of writing style aligns more with voice, is that how I really speak?

Yes.

You say professional, formal, I’m on it. You say casual, laid-back, OK cool.

But I’m passionate about deep conversations. I like to probe the innards that reveals for me the process and that’s why I go by the slogan, Relax, It’s Only Process.

Once you understand what is behind the scenes, everything else is easy-peasy.

And that’s me. It doesn’t work for everybody though.

You can call the enlightenment of a blogger is now something that is happening. That’s just that part of me that likes to categorize the new process at the moment. It’s also the nerd in me coming through, thinking deep to try to grasp a newfound reality.

This also happened when I tried to change the way I was blogging a few months back.

And I think it is time to fine-tune the direction of the posts on this blog too.

Many of you already know that I tend to write long posts. Even on a daily basis!

Why?

Because I want to. Not because I have to.

Before I even knew what SEO was, I made the blog my platform to practice penning articles.

So over the following months writing became more of an art, a process which began to develop and somehow, the main ingredient was left out – the conversation.

The pieces are great but it’s kinda stale.

Instead, it’s a report on informing you, my dear friend, on where I’ve been, how to do it and behind the scenes of it. I’ve given you manuals after manuals and whitepapers too!

So are you writing whitepaper-style posts on your blog as well?

If so, maybe it’s time to ask yourself these questions:

• Who are your readers and are they interacting with you?
• Where are you in the process of giving?
• Are you speaking to yourself or as a friend?

Blogging has become a job for me over the first few months because I had no idea what I was doing! I think business and I jumped into the blogosphere because I wanted a nice space for my own … just like everyone else.

I knew that there were going to be topics about marketing, branding, self-development and online performance. The catch to them all was I was going to make it my mission to put them into digestible bytes for you!

I believe I have accomplished that goal so far.

But as I kept flexing my fingers at the keyboard, I eventually found out that making money online is more about personality. You are selling yourself. Not your soul per se.

You are the brand through which your actions will be filtered through.

How you promote the things you do, teach it and even convey information is important.

Here’s where I thought ‘Shucks! What is my personality? Do I even have one?‘

I went into a blogger crisis and yesterday was one of those days . It was dark for me.

No sunshine, no rainbows. But I know that’s not going to be the last of it too.

It’s going to happen again.

When you have an uncertain voice, no real identity online yet and even your direction is unclear, you start to panic!

Furthermore:

I didn’t know that I’ll connect with great blogging friends.

I didn’t know that I’ll have a mentor.

I didn’t even know that the blog would have a mailing list!

This is part of every blogger’s rite of passage.

Network. Join a mastermind group. Get yourself kicked in the rear!

It has to be done. Otherwise, you’ll never know.

And that’s where I want to ask clearly:

• What do you know?
• What have you’ve done?
• What is useful?

And is all that information valuable to someone who might possibly need it and you, yourself have credibility to explain it? Moreover, would you describe it as a whitepaper or invoke a conversation?

This is where we all fall prey to the blogging voice my friends.

I myself am guilty of it too because I’m just telling you to do things and like a mindless drone, leave no room for comments. Just do this and that will you?

What I’ve come to realize is that the articles are written for you to agree to.

Do I want your honest feedback?

Yes, but if I’m always writing like that I will never know.

I would want you to keep agreeing with me and then I myself will keep writing that way.

So I’m going to make an effort and modify that process around a bit.

Deep conversations on some days, more personality on others. Random surprises.

Evolve.

So that has been on my mind lately.

And I’m going to unleash it.

Now what’s on yours? I want to know.

IMAGE: Microphone (Blue) by Marc Dietrich and Notebook Stack by Barbara Helgason

Related posts:

1. 100th Post and Giveaway! So How Do You Overcome Blogger’s Shyness?
2. How to Overcome Fear and Turn It Inside Out
3. Top 10 Tips For Writing An Article

Been missing my blog scheduling but I think that’s a good thing. The comments have doubled, tripled since then and I’ve been having more time to think about the content which are meant to be interactive instead of inform. So your feedback is helping me a lot!

I want to thank you all who have been supporting this blog so far. Every week, this day is to give back and normally it’s Sunday with Where This Blog Has Been. However, I’ve missed the day and for good reasons. Yesterday was my niece, Ariel’s birthday celebration. She’ll be turning 2 on the 30th! My sister had it at Kinsch’s Village Florist which included an Autumn Fun Fest! Yay! Monster, Goblins and Ghouls! Oh my!

Now some of my comments are falling into your SPAM folder. I believe some sites haven’t approved them yet and I have contacted Akismet for this. So just check your comments please!

OK, are you ready for the compendium of all the sites that were visited last week?

Before we start, it was the first time I shared a video with you after the sites that were listed on the last issue. This time, I want to continue with that and flip it! Video first.

Background music!

Direction: Play it and scroll down below, now blog hop.

Let your blog commenting loose and enjoy!

Here’s this week’s video to blog hop to:

As usual, here are recommended roundups each week and in no particular order:

• Steve Scott’s Sunday Selections Oct 10, 2010
• Adam’s Sunday Synopsis #2

Now, here’s Where This Blog Has Been this week with 31 posts for you to give love to:

Sunday, October 10 (1 Post)

• What is Lifestyle Design?: Here’s one from Steve Scott’s archive because I wanted to learn more about how he has been able to travel and earn passive income at the same time. Very interesting as the term has become something worth adding to your online vocabulary.

Monday, October 11 (4 Posts)

• Enjoying Retirement: Melissa shares with you how come she’s enjoying her life at the moment and what she’s retiring from. A great read and nonetheless inspiring to personal development.
• Let Me Google That For You!: Jessica shows you a neat trick to help those who are confused about going about their searches to share how it should be done with this neat trick! Love it!
• Daily Facebook and Twitter Social Media Workouts To Help You Grow Your Connections Online in Under 1 Hour A Day: I’ve been following Mana for awhile as she is from a local business, LightSpan Digital. Here she gives you a blueprint on how to dominate social media. Amazingly, there’s now an updated version for the Social Media Workout.
• How to Improve Your Writing Skills: Steve offers some valuable tips on how you can hone your writing skills. More than that, he even shows you how to develop a blog writing strategy and finally create an information product!

Tuesday, October 12 (3 Posts)

• Famous Theory About Dunbar’s Number: Interesting theory and because I went on a Twitter diet recently, the number of connections through which I can retain was at question. This article by Anton follows with a video will give you some idea of what is manageable.
• The Passive Income Escape Plan – Article Marketing: This is an epic post done by Murray Lunn. He has a monthly gig on the site now and before you start anywhere else with article marketing, this is one you should digest and burn into your mind!
• 3 E-mail List Building Mistakes You Want to Avoid: Because I will be getting into list-building soon, this article by Vance who has been building his list for awhile will be very helpful for those just starting out as well. Know what to do before jumping into the bandwagon.

Wednesday, October 13 (11 Posts)

• 11 Ways to Make Your WordPress Site Faster and Leaner: Over 11 tips by Sarah, each easy to follow with tips and tricks you might not have heard of before.
• Need For Site Speed – Practical Guide For the Average Blogger: Ana gives you 6 tips on how to boost the speed of your site’s loading time. I was horrified at how slow my site is and that is something to work with in the coming months.
• A Beginner’s Guide to Successful E-mail Marketing: Here’s an epic guest post by Nathan Hangen on Kissmetrics explaining to you the phases of which e-mail marketing goes through and how to make it successful for your endeavor online.
• What Does Value Mean To You?: Moon is onto something big. As she ponders on value and what it means to her, she’s also asking her readers what her blog means to them. In the process of releasing an ebook soon, she is gathering momentum as she learns what value must provide.
• 8 Reasons to Add An E-Course To Your Blog: A guest post by Kelly Kingman on Problogger, she explains why it’s necessary to add an e-course to your blog. With the new mailing list launch soon, this article is dear to me as I will too release an e-course along with it.
• The One Thing Keeping You From Being a Blogging Master: Karl shares with you his system for writing and the 5 why’s is a tactic which I think is useful. Moreover that’s not the only thing he shares. He explains what you need to get going as well to overcome your obstacles.
• How to Conduct A Kick-A#$ Interview With Another Blogger: Srinirao owns a couple of sites and the one I frequent most is BlogcastFM where he interviews inspirational bloggers and how they have successfully influence those around them. Here he shares his strategy with conducting a great interview.
• From Zero to Hero in the Blogosphere: Peter, young, yet wise and it’s the young ones that keeps you energized about the tasks and even through the process of blogging. Here he explains his theory and closes with the laws of power which influenced the article.
• How to Keep Going When You Feel Overwhelmed: Tai is a business coach and in this article she shares you some ways which will keep you going without losing your streak. Interesting as these points are simple but they also condone something that I don’t see elsewhere – teamwork.
• The Unconventional Guide To Expanding Your Digital Network: 5 levels of making new connections online and effectively too! Mars gives you a walk-through and a structured regiment to making the routine count.
• Supercharge Your Blog Traffic and Income with These 9 Underrated WordPress Plugins: Wow! I didn’t know that there were so many SEO plugins to utilize. That just shows that I’m a bit slow on the plugin side. Mike helped boosted my knowledge here with some FREE gems.

Thursday, October 14 (1 Post)

• 34 Things I’ve Learned About Blogging: Kiesha just turned 34 but in terms of blogging, here are the lessons she wants to share with us so that we too can digest what she has learned.

Friday, October 15 (1 Post)

• MailChimp Forever Free Plan: Boost Your E-mail Marketing For FREE: Tinh just joined MailChimp recently and amazingly, he gathered over 1000+ subscribers. I’m inspired as he is documenting what works and not only showing you how but doing it.

Saturday, October 16 (6 Posts)

• 5 Excellent Tips For Breaking Through Writer’s Block: I found this short but sweet article on how to break through your stagnant points. Ana makes it simple yet doable.
• How the Number of Comments on My Blog Skyrocketed in 1 Week: Ryan explains how his comments has skyrocketed and even how the frequency of your posts matter!
• The Importance of Free Time Alone: How effective is me-time? A lot. I think even if you go for a walk it’s worth it. John explains 3 ways why it’s also beneficial to you.
• A List of 34 Dofollow Article Directories – Page Rank 1 to 6: A great list of article sites to write to and it’s current too so if you’re thinking about article marketing, this could be helpful.
• Procrastination – Why We Procrastinate and How To Fight This Behavior: Ah, this article by Adam really got me into the groove of thinking about my streak with procrastination. It can become a deadly disease. However, check out some of the ways you can overcome this barrier NOW.
• Revealing Your Unique Selling Proposition: We all need to ask ourselves, what is it that makes us unique. Michele’s article shows how she found out her position to sell and how you can too.

Honorable Mentions (5 Posts)

• I’m Not Popular: Sarah is an awesome web designer and she also blogs! Here she goes back in the 9 years she has started and recalls her stats along with blogging positives and negatives. Furthermore, she asks what your opinion is of blogging nowadays.
• Don’t Turn Off Your Dreams – Kiesha of We Blog Better wrote this post and it really hit home as sometimes you have to remember what it is you’re working on and to stick to it. Great inspirational read to keep going.
• How to Avoid Stunted Growth During Writer’s Block – Anything about writing effectively and getting back on track is worth reading about. This article by Christopher Rice on Fuel Your Writing gives some interesting ways to get back on track.
• Candy, RPGs and Pokemon: What I Learned About Business – Murray goes back into history and shows how he did. Then comes back to see where he is now. Worth exploring to see trends into action.
• Why You Should Blog Often – Charles has not been posting as much as he wanted to but he has a strategy. Check out this article to know what.

Build a relationship with this blog too and you could be featured in the next edition!

Related posts:

1. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 17 to 23, 2010
2. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 31 to Nov 6, 2010
3. Where This Blog Has Been Nov 7 to 13, 2010

That’s incredible.

Moreover, it’s also the inspiration to today’s post as I want to touch more about the visitors to your blog – commentators. Because I have seen who these folks are, I have a few more blogs to visit!

And because I missed Biography Fridays yesterday, I want to let you see that not only are commentators effective with building relationships with your blog but soon enough, you will look forward to hearing from them when you have a new post out.

Rain or shine, you will crave for their input. Really.

So today, here are the commentators I want to highlight the best comments of to let you see why these visitors are important to me. Consider it two posts in one, you’ve waited for it.

With the help of the new Twitter, each profile will be displayed, if they have one. So while you may think this is a thank you article for them, it’s much more than that. From a blogging standpoint they have a blog that I can go back to and converse on a regular basis.

Thus, the communication is open here folks. The streams through which we utilize ourselves online must be open in many ways possible and for myself it’s all about the blog. If you have a blog, I’m on it. So say something will you? If I’m not building a relationship with following your content now, I will later.

What has continued to happen is I have networked with these individuals further on Twitter, Facebook, TGIF Links and Blog Engage. So the possibilities are now endless.

Let’s roll on with the comments then. I want to introduce you to the best commentators. Go ahead, build a connection with them as they have build one with me. I’m sure they will become some of your greatest commentators as well.

Stick to your guns and say hello and be friendly when you tweet. I like it when people take time to say hello.

I tackle shyness by finding out what I can discover about people before I jump in with both feet. I notice how they respond to comments and even if they respond to comments. I gravitate towards nice people. Why bother bumping heads with people who are only going to annoy me?

I also think you should have ridiculous fun, never censor the sunshine of your style, and always ask yourself: How can I blow my readers awaaay ?

It doesn’t always work out, but if you never try, then you’ll never know.

Nice to know another Vietnamese person blogging on the internet. We are at the same age and both married but living a half of the planet away. Anyways, be connected and I am eager to learn something special from you!

I love the idea of sharing info for free and feel that it helps build relationships and trust. A prime example of this is the fact that you visited my blog and shared some info with myself and my readers. I have taken your advice and acted on it, i’m very pleased with the results and as a return gesture i’m here learning from your post.

To beat the shyness you just have to get over it. Think about it, it’s the internet. The worst thing that could happen is someone says “no” but with millions of other bloggers you can seek out others.

Like the old adage about asking someone out on a date – someone will say yes but you’ll never know unless you try.

So try, try, try. Stop being shy and join in on the fun!

i always love to go through your lengthy and interesting topics. At lest one post per day is very necessary for SEO and as well readers. Keep up good work. i would love to see your daily posts.

It doesn’t happen every day or very often but while writing a post or a response to a comment or commenting on someone’s blog what comes out can be surprising.

In addition to the great way a blog can serve as a communication tool and a gathering place of people from all over the world where they can voice their views and interact freely, it is the small surprising things that pop up unexpectedly that make it so exciting to be a blogger.

It can be very creative or it can reveal a talent or a flaw which would have otherwise remained hidden to me and to the world.

You are ever the optimist and I love it! Not only that but you have the wisdom to see my post for what it was – an honest look at what I experienced through the challenge. I agree that overall it was fantastic, and ironically – the post that I wrote centering around the negatives drew more comments and pageviews than the post I initially entered did for the course of the ENTIRE challenge!

I usually talk too much, blog gives me an another place to let out my thought that helps me and hopefully others at the same time.

I do value my readers a lot more now that I know I actually have readers and thanks to a few positive comments I also introduced a motivational series.

Blogging is a growing journey. It has taken a lot of time that my hubby often questions me on, however he is still very supportive of what I am doing and I think he can see the bigger picture with all of this.

Truthfully I think the whole concept is about relationship building, sharing knowledge and community spirit. And yes I would agree you can relate it to marriage.

I would never have got so far online and with my blog without the support of my friends on and offline, and the kind people who take time out of their own busy schedule to visit my blog and leave a comment.

Get personal too, I try to be as personal as I can on my blog, let people see another side to me, I think this helps build up relationships with your readers.

And humour, I just love humour, who says it has to be all serious all of the time!

We are all different and as a result all blogs are different and the way we react is different for each and every particular blog we encounter. The result to all this is that we will develop our favorite blogs and continue to build more and more. It’s all about building a community of relationships, helping each other out and learning.

Agreed on the 80/20 rule. It’s why I meditate once during the morning and once in the evening. Meditation helps you to dissolve blockages, allowing the flow of creative ideas to head your way.

You couldn’t have said it better: documenting what you do is the best way to see where you are heading. That is exactly what I try to implement in my blog as well. But I know I have a long ways to go and I need to push myself out of my comfort zone even more…

You just gave me a good ‘kick in the rear’ to take my blogging endeavor more seriously. My blog is my business….That is the kind of mindset I need to carry on in order to be a successful blogger…

It is your ultimate blogging network and few others like you that made me write this post, by seeing your example. You do follow almost all the commandments I thought a great blogging network deserves.

I am impressed with your hard work, focus, and around the clock work to create recognition in the blogospere.

Working under pressure makes you way more productive. If you can channel that pressure correctly. If you are not really under pressure and have something to do then you just think “Yeah I will get that sorted later”

Now if you are working to a deadline you will do everything to get that task done. I have learnt from my mentor and he learnt from his mentor, is to have everything planned out.

Have your most important tasks to do first and work to a deadline or timer.

eg. Write 2 articles 60min
blog hoping 60 min
check emails 30 min etc…..

You can become way more productive and can channel that pressure to use correctly.

I’m a positive person like you Thu, however I think “fear of failure” is my main problem. I’m happy working towards a goal, but just as the finishing line is in sight, I start to have doubts because the project is going to be put to the test, and it might not work.

I always have at least one other project on the go, so I can concentrate on making that work, and then just before it’s finished I’m working on something else, and so on. Basically I’m just making sure I “don’t put all my eggs in one basket”.

I’m constantly running out of time. I don’t think that it’s an illusion I think there isn’t enough of it. Actually what I really think is that we as social animals gravitate towards the activities that provide the greatest amount of utility. That means that sometimes we tend to skip the tedious, monotonous, and required to get to the next fun or stimulating activity. By the time you get your fill of “utils” (that’s right I consult for Financially Digital and carry over my cheesy econ words that I say in front of my college students) and get back to what you needed to…well look at the time – or rather the lack of it.

Wow, I think If I get one more place to write my head will literally explode. I must admit it does sound a little interesting. I am actually not as interested about what it tells me about how I “feel” but how it goes about doing it. If I WERE to spend time I would have to try to write “pretending” certain emotions and try to see if I could pick up on what it was “hitting” on with the diagnostic part of it’s software.

It is pretty amazing what they can get programs to do these days.

You sound like you are a real techie geek.

I am so not and really think people who are come under the title of genius. I love writing and leave the techie stuff to you guys and gals who are good at it.

Nicely done, Thu. You are always blowing me away with the depth of your research and insight, and you certainly raised the bar high with this review of Dan Lew. I can’t see how he could refuse you a complimentary copy knowing the attention you will give it in review.

You inspire all of us to push ourselves higher.

My own numbers have been going up, probably due to the relationship building you talk about. I am working on another web project right now which is sucking up a lot of time, but my next big push will be doing more guest posts. I actually was asked to write one a couple of weeks ago, and I did, but the website is suspended by WordPress! (This is why you need your own domain like you have).

Have you build a relationship with your best commentators? Share your thoughts.

Related posts:

1. Extracting Your Commentators E-mails in WordPress
2. What is the Pink Panther of Blogging?
3. Blogging For’s November 2010 Month in REVIEW

However, it’s not that deadly. We’re not talking about black magic here folks, it’s about building relationships and sometimes the efforts can range from a lot to barely there. Moreover, every little bit helps. I think we should all acknowledge that at least there is some traffic coming to our blogs. So let’s take a look at each of the visitor in depth.

The Commentator

The commentator is a socialite by heart. You’ll see them with the most meaningful comments. They know that it’s all about building relationships and not just ‘Thanks, great post!’

There’s a lot to learn from these folks because they are master networkers (thanks Fran for the term ). They’re aware of building backlinks both dofollow and nofollow by the bunch. So what you’re seeing here are open conversations which greets the blogger with his/her name, instills a thoughtful relative comment and ends with a cheery goodbye.

These are the comments which I normally check out the blogs from.

On the other hand, you do find the short, less conversing commentators and there’s nothing wrong with that. They don’t have a lot to say, so they keep it simple and this does add value to your posts. However, when you have over a dozen of these visitors, you wish at least someone would challenge you in some way and say something that goes against the grain.

Thus, having a balance of both great and supporting commentators make any blog shine.

The Social Networker

Have you ever been to a blog where the social shares are over the roof but hardly any comment at all?

Either these folks are lazy or they just don’t have the time to read an article in it’s entirety, so they just click on the share button and hop on to the next. I’ve seen a lot of stumblers, tweets and diggs this way.

I’m guilty of it myself too but hey, I come back and comment! Don’t mistaken them as irrelevant visits though. You can get yourself awesome viral traffic by the bunch just from these visitors alone. I found that on a certain day, a post can average at least 100+ visits or more. That is if you’re lucky.

While the majority of these visitors tend to be bounces, they will boost your Alexa ranking as well. So there are good reasons you want to have social bookmarking/network buttons on your site. You’ll never know when you’ll hit someone who has a large network waiting to share one another’s content of which yours is among them.

The Blog Drifter

Unless you have a script that records the IP of the visitors who comes to your site, you’re not going to see the blog drifters. They’re just like the social networkers, only they don’t share your content. Instead, they’re here one second and gone the next.

In the beginning months of blogging, I’ve had a lot of these. I know I have visitors because inside my WordPress dashboard, I see the numbers jump but there are no actions present. No link sharing, no commenting, just bounces.

Thus, don’t be alarmed though. Sometimes it takes more than first impressions to familiarize a visitor with who you are. That may also mean a change in the way you provide your content. Thus, I kind of like to think of it as an infomercial.

At first, if a blog looks too good to be true, I’ll question what is the purpose of it. What is it’s USP? If I can’t find the answer right away, I won’t stay any longer. From there, as the blogs I visit has the blogger commenting on them, I’ll reach out and share a bit of my two cents on their content.

However, it all starts with visibility. I need to know that you are someone whom I can trust. Either that or I will less than likely reach out to connect. That’s just what it all comes down to – are you reachable?

Moreover, I don’t just comment on every blog. I only comment when I feel there are interesting information and I want to instill my thoughts to them. I do that ‘Thanks, great share!’ too sometimes because that’s all I can say.

Hey the posts may be too good that there isn’t that much else to say but ‘Good job!’

The Take Away

Now that you know what the 3 types of blog visitors are, which one are you?

For myself, I’m a little bit of all. I drift, I share and I comment. Having a little variety in the mix enables me to leverage my marketing strategy and not get bored off of the process. Thus, I can keep on truckin’ without quitting.

I’ve learned though that you can’t always get what you want. So if you’ve left the best comment ever, don’t be surprise that you got a mediocre reply. Put yourself into the shoes of the visitors, are you impressing them or are they impressing you?

Kind of confusing at times but you, my friend are very valuable so go out there and rock it! That’s all that counts and furthermore, at the end of the day, a kind ‘Thanks!’ makes all the difference in the blogging world.

What did you think about the 3 types of blog visitors? Share your thoughts below.

Related posts:

1. Have You Raided the Nearest Blog Lately?
2. Gems of the 100 Blog Comments Challenge (Part 2)
3. Gems of the 100 Blog Comments Challenge (Part 3)

Let’s get right into the process now. You might want to refer to the previous post on creating a list to familiarize yourself with the first part of the process in setting up MailChimp. Learn how I created the signup form which is where readers will decide if they want to opt in or not. As mentioned yesterday, there were two mock signups which were made – signup with copy and simple signup. Which one do you think would convert best?

From there we’ll start the second part today.

Creating a Campaign

You’re going to start off with the Campaign Builder. Here you have 4 choices:

• regular o’l campaign (HTML e-mails with alternative plain text version)
• plain-text campaign (no pictures or formatting)
• A/B split campaign (best titles, time of day, from, etc.)
• RSS-drive campaign (pull posts from your RSS feed)

Depending on what you’ve chosen, there will be 5 steps taken which will finalize your settings. I went ahead with the regular campaign as I want the best of both worlds – HTML and text.

The first step starts with choosing which list you want to send the campaign to. I chose the Unleash the Blogger in You E-Course list for this exercise. You can either send to segment or send to entire list.

Next, you’re going to fill out the required information which will include the:

• name of your campaign
• message subject (required)
• from name (required)
• reply-to e-mail (required)
• personalize the ‘To’ field with merge tags

Then over on the tracking end of the page, you have the option to:

• track opens
• add Google Analytics to track all URLs
• authenticate the campaign (to prove it’s not a forgery)
• send to Twitter, share on Facebook or even allow comments
• add Ecommerce360 tracking for Ecommerce Store owners

Because I have a FREE account for now, the option to NOT monitor the clicks and plain-text clicks are not available. It’s only provided to premium customers. That’s the only difference you’ll see here.

Designing the Newsletter

Just like creating a list, there’s two parts to creating a campaign. Thus, you’re going to design your newsletter next. With over 50+ templates spread out to over 15 categories, there is likely to be one that will fit your blog or site. Just going through the sections slowly, I found one that fitted my need eventually.

Entitled the ZEN template, I tinkered and modified it to compliment Blogging For’s theme. Because I wanted to write an introduction newsletter to my readers before taking them to the first lesson, I had that written, pasted and formatted appropriately. Thus, when you’re formatting your newsletter, make sure it also relevant.

The final result was a working template that will continue to be the one readers will see upon every newsletter that goes out. Here’s a visual of the final design.

Now, you don’t have to go through all these options. There are other ways as well. Through the design genius which allows you to pick a header or upload one yourself, you can remix the templates so that you have two of your favorites. Then just choose an e-mail layout of your choice.

I didn’t feel the need to use this section but it might be something attractive for those who are more artistic and creative to give it a try. There’s also the software you can download separately onto your computer’s hard drive to design within Windows.

Called High Impact eMail, with the latest version of 5.0, the file is about 95M, so that’s about a 15-20 minute download depending on the speed of your internet connection. The complementing file, holiday-themed e-mail templates, are also available for download from MailChimp‘s site FREE. Altogether you’re looking at about a 400M worth of downloads. So set some time aside to let the files finish.

You can get the software from the banner below. Just scroll down to the middle of the page.

Adding Mail to the Autoresponder

I found this part quite easy as all you have to do is choose which list you want to send your follow-up e-mails to, how long after the subscriber joins a campaign and add a name to the email if any.

Thus, what e-mails you have will be seen from your autoresponder’s list as below. From here you’ll create the e-mail you want to add to your newsletter. Notice that I already have lesson 2 waiting for readers who are interested in the e-course.

Moreover, the whole process is not hard. Writing content for it is very similar to blogging – just more flexible. That’s because readers really want to know what you’re sending out. Thus, you have more power but you don’t want to overload them with so much junk information you’ve already said before. More on the less side as they have a lot to read already.

From a blogging perspective, I think it would be nice to promote older articles and also suggest relevant products down the line, but if you’re starting out, it’s all about giving readers value through good advice, tips and useful freebies. This may mean giving twice as much even if you’re not going to make a sale to start. So you kind of have to think about that as list building is not about spamming your readers but retaining them.

Thus, if you think MailChimp is something you might like to try, set aside some time to explore your options and play with the many features. Most importantly, you need to have fun while you’re doing all this. It can get tedious as the point and clicking can become overwhelmingly time-consuming to learn. When that does happen, take a break when you can.

Viewing Reports

At the moment, there isn’t much activity in my report section. However, I want to show you what is inside so that you can get a clearer picture of what statistics you can gather. Users of Google Analytics will find that the reporting page is quite similar as you can track the open, bounced, unopened and click rate.

Thus, if conversion-tracking is something you’ll be doing down the line, this section is really helpful. Especially as you test new campaigns and whatnot. More specifics on deliveries, forwarding, unsubscriptions and even social network shares can be seen.

My favorite part is the section on the upper left top corner called click map which will be particularly useful down the line to monitor where your readers click around. This can help you better format your later newsletters. So you always want to test, test, test.

MailChimp WordPress Plugins

Before we end today’s post, I want to also mention that MailChimp has plugins for WordPress users as well. There are about 3 mentioned and all makes use of the autoresponder’s framework by implementing it’s API.

You can find them in WordPress’s depository or go to the following pages below:

• MailChimp Archives – use your old newsletters and turn them into posts
• MailChimp WordPress Plugin – add one of your signup forms as a widget
• AutoChimp – add, remove, update users on a list, make campaigns from posts

The API number can be found in MailChimp under:

Account -> API Keys & Info

If you don’t have one, just add a key and you should have a valid key to work with.

Whew! We’ve finally made it. I hope you’re much more aware of what you can do with MailChimp now. Not only is it easy to use, you need to take a little time to play around with the features. I’m sure there’s more I haven’t yet tried.

However, with both walk-throughs on creating a list and this on creating a campaign, you should have the basics to get yourself starting with building a mailing list on your blog in no time.

Until then, I’ll see you on the next autoresponder series.

What are your thoughts on MailChimp? Share your thoughts below.

Related posts:

1. Autoresponder Series Insight #1: MailChimp – FREE to Start and How to Set Up Your First Signup Form
2. SeededBuzz in the Spotlight, A Program Which Can Help You Create Content with Many Benefits
3. Create Maxims For Better Results in Anything You Want

For one, I’ll be taking a jab at working on my very first newsletter. It will be called Unleash the Blogger in You! A FREE 7-Day E-Course. I would love your feedback on this! Check out a draft of the cover to the left.

Furthermore, what’s different about the newsletter is I’ll get to be more personal, less technical, so you’ll see a lighter side and even a bit of the deeper aspect of building relationships online, basically from a conversational standpoint.

Now, if you haven’t yet decided. Hopefully this series will be beneficial for you when you do get around to starting a newsletter. I’ll try to clue you in behind the scenes as much as possible. Therefore to feed that frenzy, in the next coming weeks as well as into the new month, there will be various reviews on autoresponder services. Along with that, I will also walk you through creating your first list inside each and this will be ongoing until I run out of autoresponders to review.

So to start this autoresponder series, let’s start with style. This is where Mailchimp comes in.

That monkey has been hanging around my shoulder for awhile and I finally got around to utilizing it’s service. That’s why today, I’m going to share with you how I went about setting up a new e-mail list and tomorrow, create a campaign for it. Sounds confusing at first but bear with me, it’s really simple!

This service practically numbers everything for you in a 1-2-3 format so you kind of have to go through each section slowly and work your way through. Thus, you begin by creating a list. Then create a campaign to support it and finally when you have subscribers, track your progress.

Let’s start by going over to MailChimp. What is it really?

MailChimp is an autoresponder. If you have not heard of it before, that’s because it’s normally used by over 450,000+ users from the web design and graphics community. On a marketing level, it is great for designing good-looking pieces of HTML e-mails.

Thus, the concentration here is more on the visual eye for newsletter readers who enjoy snazzy HTML e-mails, which if you are like myself find it pleasing, by all means take it for a spin. On the other hand, if you prefer text, that’s also available too. No autoresponder should function without the plain text equivalent.

With the latest version of MailChimp 5.3 released, a lot of new features were added for the FREE user. While I haven’t tried them all yet, the most notable ones are an increase in subscribers from 500 to 1000. The quota for sending has also increased from 3,000 to 6,000.

This is good news for anyone who has a small mailing list or is just starting out in the process. Thus, the pricing will rise to $30/mo if you go beyond the 1,000 subscriber mark and that includes unlimited sending. I believe this is about a couple dollars more than Aweber and GetResponse as well.

So if design and professional looking HTML e-mails are your thing, MailChimp would fit right in the ball park for you as it has a large collection of templates for you to tinker with. Furthermore, the resource guides are some of the most awesome-looking collection of ebooks I’ve ever seen. They make e-mail marketing so cool and what’s better, they’re FREE!

Now, let’s dive right into the process of creating your first list. I’ve already registered, confirmed and activated my account. So I won’t cover that. I know that’s normally what you’ll see, but let’s fast forward to the dashboard where you’ll be once you first log in.

Starting from number 1, you’ll create your list. Just click on GO> and from there, fill out the fields which are required. This includes a:

• list name (required)
• default from name (who’s it from? – required)
• default reply-to e-mail (required)
• default subject (optional)
• remind people how they got on your list (required)
• check to see if your address is correct (it must be real! – see the CAN SPAM rules)
• let people pick the format (HTML, text or mobile – optional)
• activate SocialPro (let’s you share content among social networks, new in v5.3 for 6 mos)

These are the essentials to jump start MailChimp and clue it into what it is you’re going to send out to your opted in readers. At the same time, you must abide to the 2008 CAN SPAM laws. You’ll see below that I created two lists. One for the new e-course and one for the blog at the moment. Thus, it’s always good to have several spots where you can test your subscription opt in rate.

That goes to say you have the opportunity to split test your list through an A/B Split Test campaign as well.

The next step after you’ve created your list is to design your signup form. This was a very time-consuming task for me because I had no clue what I was doing. I didn’t know if writing a copy was worthwhile to explain why readers should join my list or if I should keep it simple and say ‘Hey, subscribe!’

MailChimp made it pretty simple though, just click on your desired modified area and edit through a paint-like environment. You’ll have the option to choose a fancy or default form style, which I didn’t see much difference in besides how the page could be shadowed or wrapped around.

Through tweak and refine, I made way and finally created something worth saying ‘Oh Yeah, Subscribe!’ This goes to say, once you’ve designed your signup form, the rest is easy peasy. Everything you’ve done from there is adopted to the rest of the other forms. So you’ll see the same design through the:

• Signup ‘Thank You’ Page
• Opt-in Confirmation E-mail
• Confirmation ‘Thank You’ Page
• Final ‘Welcome’ E-mail
• Unsubscribe and Unsubscribe Success Page
• and so on …

Two mock signup forms can now be seen – signup with copy and simple signup. Mailchimp gives you a link which you can redirect users to or insert a script on your page so that they can sign up. (Don’t sign up through these though! Remember, this is only a test.) Which one do you think would convert best? Take a look at each and VOTE BELOW!

Now, we’re not quite done yet. We’ll stop here and continue tomorrow on creating a campaign, which is the second part of the process and a very important one.

What are your thoughts on MailChimp? Use it? Share your thoughts below.

Related posts:

1. MailChimp – How to Create a Campaign and Your First Newsletter
2. You Can Rock These FREE Services and Increase Your Visibility Online
3. Cat Got Your Tongue? Here Are Some Openers/Prompts For You To Start With

Furthermore, it has been a great week so thank you so much to everyone for the belated birthday wishes and participation on the posts within the blog this week! You all deserve a round of applause. (clap! clap!)

Here’s Where This Blog Has Been this week with a TOTAL of 24 Posts to give love to.

Sunday October 3 (5 Posts)

1. Steve Scott Sunday Selections Oct 3: The great Mr. Steve Scott shares with us another Sunday Selections featuring vampires! Yes, he really vants your vlood! Fueled with awesome gratitude, this is also an epic post on sharing his thanks with his current readers online.
2. A Meaningful Existence Friday Links: Didn’t I tell you this post is filled with roundups as here’s another one from Ms. Karen Ruby as well. I can’t forget who gave me my first guest post appearance, thus with this Follow Friday links, she shares some new personal development reads from Hulbert’s leaving, Ayo’s latest magazine release and even Mr. Scott’s awesome week with over 2 guest posts!
3. Endeavor Online’s Sunday Synopsis #1: Adam’s very first roundup. YAY! This isn’t your usual compilation of posts though. What you have are an eclectic mix of blogs, whom you should check out with a personal visual twist! (hint, hint – moi included) I’ve really come to admire Adam’s taste in blogging.
4. The Blogger’s Journal Follow Friday Oct 3: Wow, the guest post on TechnShare entitled Ninja Blog Writing Blueprint fantastically made it’s roundup on Mark Bell’s list. Woohoo! Along with more bloggers I respect as well with Twitter names you can follow. There are recommended readings by Dan Lew, John Paul and more!
5. 26 Things You Wish You Wouldn’t Know About Me: Guess who else did an About Me post on his birthday – Mars Dorian. I couldn’t believe it but if you have been following him, this will make you follow him more closely.

Monday October 4 (3 Posts)

1. The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need to Guest Posting: Readers be warned, you will be disturbed but for your own good, you should proceed. Murray lays it down and tells you what works from the beginning to end and even suggests what not to do. Venture into guest posting with a good kick.
2. How I Produce Up to 45 Pieces of Captivating Content Each Day: Ryan continues to amaze me with his networking ability. He makes great comments and contributes to each conversation with valuable insights. But more than that, he creates stellar content too. Learn how.
3. What’s New on TechnShare?: Devesh recently changed his site around. Myself, personally, the subtle differences really are great because you can actually see the bio on top of the post instead of the bottom and familiarize yourself with whom’s content you’re reading. Take a look!

Tuesday, October 5 (NONE)

Wednesday October 6 (2 Posts)

1. Boomerang Kids: OK, this one hits home but more than that, I’ve been educated on the international trend of younger folks still living at home with there parents and how it can affect the economy’s shift of living. Worth the read and a new term to instill into your lexicon of awesome vocabulary.
2. Headline or the Content: Which Should You Write First?: Adam will guide you through why headlines are an integral aspect through writing content online. It’s the first impression you get. More than that, it can mean a new reader and he explains for you why.

Thursday October 7 (2 Posts)

1. Giving Away 10 SEO Revenge Ebooks: I decided to participate in Dan Lew’s latest ebook giveaway – SEO Revenge! It’s hard to resist because I love myself a great review and also a freebie. Can’t beat that! Maybe you can get one too. Find out how.
2. Pausing to Read: Site Design: James has also changed his theme around, this time with more emphasis on how you can read the content. Check out the new design and leave your two cents about what you think.

Friday October 8 (1 Post)

1. Read Dan Lew’s Biography Friday, my entry for the new SEO Revenge 2.0 giveaway!

Saturday October 9 (11 Posts)

1. 5 Ways to Improve Your Ego By Using Backlinks: Dan explains why link love is not about inflating your head with only your links, it’s about everyone else’s as well. When you can improve that process, you not only get great traffic but also backlinks.
2. Fun Friday Roundup – Free Guides Edition: Here’s another roundup by Moon. I’m a fan as she provides a few compelling posts from Crobett’s new free guide, Karol’s yes post and a surprise revelation on what’s to come FREE on her site.
3. Double link love! – Lazy Man’s Guide to Creating Captivating Blog Posts and Am I the Rookie Blogger of the Year?: Yes, this guy deserves the Rookie of the Year award. If you haven’t voted yet, VOTE NOW! Along with that is the ultimate lazy guide to where you can get inspirations for your next post.
4. Live Richly Roundup 6: Great time for some Halloween costume ideas, finance advice, traveling scenarios, mindset rendering and even content creation!
5. What is Zero-Based Thinking and How it Can Completely Change Your Life: Adam has clued me into how you can live your life without constraints. Zero-Based thinking is something which I have been naturally doing but didn’t know it’s called such. Thus, find out how you can implement it into your life.
6. Let Zero-Based Thinking Improve Your Life: Here’s the original article that sparked the post from Adam above. Read how Steve passed on this wonderful thinking based upon his personal experience and what he plans to do when he gets back from his travels.
7. Online Networking and Your Personal Network to Blog Sites: Fran is awesome in educating you on content, writing articles and mastering your network. She explains how in this article so that you can grow your connections online.
8. The Victim Myth – Part 2: My Personal Story: Karen shares her personal story in part 2 of ‘The Victim Myth’. Through clarifying something which was commented, she reveals that it’s about choice.
9. Do-follow. No-follow. Do You Even Know Where You’re Going?: Alex gives you the low-down on the basics of dofollow. Are you aware that the sites you’re building links with must have that in order for you to reap? Find out more in this article.
10. Sick with Books: Tammi has a lot of books! Wow. In this article she asks you, can you get sick having so much? Why, never! It’s never enough for me. Just give me more storage please.

Since there are so many posts this week and with a lot of link love for you to take advantage of (yes they are dofollow too!), I’m not mentioning any honorables as that can be too much. In fact, here’s a music video that has been on my mind as of late. Enjoy!

Placebo – Every Me, Every You

Thanks to everyone who has supported this blog … here’s a roll!

Cheryl Ragsdale, Alex Monroe, Mars Dorian, Robin and Judy, Monique Wade Sno,
Marek Policha, Benoit Lavigne,  Murray Lunn, Nunzio Bruno, Michael Pedzotti, Barry Wells,
Aaron Lee, Jorgen Sundberg, Marian Schembari, Louis Selvon, John Soares, Lee Ha Koong,
Kimi, Anna Hellar, Alex Whalley, Tinh, Jacinta Dean, Kevin of DD, Preeti, Devesh,
Steve Scott, Gina Newberry, 100 Blog Comments Friends, Sally Neill, John McNally,
Craig Sowersby, Fran Aslam, Jessica Benton, Jennifer Barry, Adam Paudyal,
Ryan Biddulph, Justin Dupre, Ana Hoffman, Tammi Kibler, Karen Ruby, Dan Lew,
Jacob of OMW, Brian of BE, Patricia, Eileen Ludwig, Sathish, Jeff Caceres

<3 YOU GUYS ROCK! <3

Build a relationship with this blog too and you could be featured in the next edition!

Related posts:

1. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 17 to 23, 2010
2. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 31 to Nov 6, 2010
3. Where This Blog Has Been Oct 10 to 16, 2010

I’ve been seeing the buttons for them all over blogs I’ve visited and because he has plastered himself everywhere, it’s hard not to follow. Thus, I don’t know how he has reached such a vast audience in such a short amount of time. Furthermore, there’s still a lot in marketing I need to learn about.

However,  I have some idea of the process behind the actions and it’s been pretty much exciting seeing something within reaching distance to actually talk about it. That’s why he’s the focus of today’s Biography Fridays. More specifically, I really want to know how he was able to spread his influence so far!

Therefore in order to win a copy of his latest ebook, the requirement specifies that you have to write at least 200 words minimum, a post that includes one link to his site and one link to his new ebook site SEO Revenge, which is new around the blogosphere. You know that’s not going to happen around here. 200 words is not enough!

Each Friday is about finding inspiration from the individual. Thus, there’s going to be a bit of a promotion here. Furthermore, this is perfect timing for this weekend’s biography. So let’s follow through as I review who Dan Lew is and why he blogs so much about SEO.

First Impression

The first thing you might notice going to Dan’s sight is he is comfortable in his chair. I thought that was quite nice. Surrounded by the blue accents of his blog’s theme, you kind of get a royal feeling going on. A cool dude.

Next to him is the phrase ‘All the Answers Free on How To ...’ on content about:

• Internet Marketing
• SEO
• Affiliate Marketing
• Benefits of making money with a blog
• Making money anywhere in the world

However, is he making money about these topics? Looking over his About My Success page. He has operated several internet companies since the age of 25. How old is he now? Can’t really tell but that’s quite an accomplishment and these ventures were pretty much in Thailand where he founded Thailand-Search.com. Soon it quickly reached 1 million viewers a day back in 2006.

About 2 years later, partnered with an angel investor, which is a term I’ve been seeing a lot lately that practically means support from an investor in exchange for ownership or a plan to repay back some time later, he launched Globe Search Ltd.

At the moment, he’s currently working on GSEO Pty Ltd. which is centered around Australia’s market. So Dan really knows his business! Thus, I went ahead and visited the business’ website at GSEO.Net and found that there are familiar faces like Hesham from Famous Bloggers, Mark Bell and Antonio Coleman consulting with clients all over the world on SEO.

Now I haven’t known Dan long. It was his post entitled Don’t Talk to Me Unless Your Alexa Ranking is 50k or Lower from Blog Engage that I found him. Perhaps it was the title that got me. It was powerful and I thought, ‘Who in the world has the guts to say that!’

Thus, I later found out that Dan has this type of writing which throws senses at you, especially from his TechnShare guest post, How to Eat Your SEO Competition For Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. What do you say to that? Nonetheless, there were great reasons behind the complementary title.

Overall, I had to opted in to see what the SEO Cheat Sheet was about.

Inside the Mailing List

After signing up to the mailing list, you’re not only going to get the SEO Cheat Sheet but a few other suggested tools which can enhance your pay-per-click or SEO efforts. These you may have heard of before so they aren’t your sleazy recommendations, it’s the good stuff. i.e. – Market Samurai and SENuke. Both are affiliated links.

Furthermore, Dan was not lying when he said he was giving you a cheat sheet. With over 6 pages, you need to print out the resource in order to utilize the information within. Overall, you got two distinct sections – the Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet and the Value of Keywords and Density SEO Cheat Sheet.

You don’t have to worry about information overload though as Dan sends out his material at least once a week. I didn’t find excessive advertising much. Thus, what you’re going to get are plain text e-mails with SEO-related content weekly.

SEO Revenge

Now let’s head on over to Dan’s recent product page SEO Revenge. The first thing you’ll notice is Dan has a video up where he talks about the product and it’s development.

While I don’t know much about Dan, I’m impressed at this point. I recently read a review of SEO Revenge from Mark Bell who surprisingly gave a testimonial here too. Thus, going back to GSEO.net, he also is a consultant there as well.

So is Dan the professional he says he is on SEO? At this point, I had to go over to the post he shares about making $2,000 just for 30 minutes of blogging online. He references to bloggers who has made great use of affiliate marketing like John Chow, Zac Johnson, Shoemoney and Yaro Starak.

In a nutshell, the system is all about spreading out your income streams so that you had one coming in from a specific website another from another site and another somewhere else without putting all your eggs into one basket. Thus, through the implementation of optimizing keywords in the search engines, that’s something many blogging enthusiasts need to learn eventually as they venture into niche marketing.

But what is SEO Revenge?

That really depends on your purpose for manipulating specific words or even terms in the search engines. Whether it’s for niche websites or even for presence, the tactics inside pertains to interested users of keyword research and optimizing it to rank high. Thus, the benefits of achieving such a feat can be plenty.

From a marketing viewpoint, you will be seen for the very keyword you optimized for. From a monetizing aspect, you can rake in a nice chunk of spending money just for sales pertaining to a particular targeted search.

Other than that, bloggers who find the technicalities of analysis and link-building strategies overwhelming might want to leave it to the professionals such as Dan who is passionate about the process.

SEO Revenge overall can be a gem in the right hands and it takes practice to master the art of ranking in the search engines well. Can Dan’s book help you with that?

At only $27, it’s a steal. Dan actually lives and breathes SEO on his blog so imagine what type of content is inside.

Final Thoughts on Dan Lew

I thought Dan sounded really nervous on the video however, he seems like a really likable guy. That’s because below his blog there are pictures of  him in t-shirts, vacation spots, various artworks and appearances by ShoeMoney as well. A more laid back version which shows more personality.

This should actually be at the top where visitors like myself are more willing to stay longer just because we’re curious about who Dan Lew is. In fact, here is the chosen picture I’ll put up.

Overall, in my short time around the blogosphere, SEO has grown tremendously. Because it has become such a common term, the meaning has lost it’s value at times when writer’s who aren’t actual practitioners of it make rules about it.

Moreover, it’s bloggers like Dan that really kicks it back into gear and bring about the actual processing of such a practice. Another blogger I know which is doing the same is Alex Whalley. Both have genuine passion for search engine optimization tactics, strategies and even rankings. With that much love for the topic on every single post, you kind of want to listen to them.

Check out Dan’s latest ebook SEO Revenge and see how you can own SEO too!

Related posts:

1. Biography Fridays: Scott Berkun, From Innovation to Speaking Out About Them
2. New –> Biography Fridays: Eric Gruber of Article Marketing Experts
3. Biography Fridays: Michael Nobbs Keeping Art Sustainably Creative

I have not been doing guest posts long but one of the criteria I put emphasis on is the topics which I enjoy writing about. Moreover, it’s about the experiences as well. The very first place I’ve ever reached out and made a connection with was over at Karen Ruby’s A Meaningful Existence.

It was from learning about the 7 Links Challenge which became a popular post topic at the time endowed by Darren Rowse of Problogger, that the blogosphere became an exchange ground of sharing ideas by storm.

Understanding My Chances

I continued to visit Karen’s blog because of that post she shared and read through the entire list. Hey, it was only 7! And one day over the weekend, I had a topic which didn’t quite fit here. I was debating on thoughts of gambling with your life and the negative or positive decisions you’re going to make because of it.

Thus, I wrote it up one night, had it sitting on the hard drive and don’t know why but I build up the courage to ask if I could guest post on Karen’s blog. Shrugging my shoulders and already accepting rejection, I sent the e-mail not really expecting to hear a reply. Really, I was venturing out of my blog’s niche.

However, Karen responded and was interested in what I had to say. Furthermore she suggested some fixtures but that was no biggie. It was expected as I didn’t know how to go about the process. It was my first time! I was already excited that my very first asking was granted. Yay!

Thanks Karen! You’ve opened up doors for me I would have never knew existed. Thus, my efforts has grown stronger since that beginning and my chances are now more grand.

Now what did I write on A Meaningful Existence? Understanding Your Chances in Life.

Giving Away Something Can Have Benefits

Thereafter, Kevin from Designer’s Digest started sending Diggs my way from my version of the 7 Links Challenge. Soon after, he was tweeting content from my blog everyday. That really caught my attention and from there I checked out his blog.

At that moment, I was also promoting the 100 Post Giveaway. I decided to write a review about the book I was going to give out to one lucky winner. Kevin was already giving away a lot of things on his site. Thus, I found an opportunity to promote the giveaway further.

Thereon, I wrote a review of Making Ideas Happen, which is a book by Scott Belsky about organizing your creative thoughts and taking action on them efficiently as possible.

Culture Has Open Doors Too

Somehow, once you get your first guest post rolling, the second came easy. The third was also thought about one day out of the blue and it was specifically for Tinh’s eBlogTip when he still owned it. From the language barrier which I knew existed between bloggers yet their writing don’t really reveal that much unless you pay close attention, I wanted to branch off towards translation.

That’s how Tools to Build Links With Any Blogs Online was conceived.

Even When You Need To Refuel Your Purpose

By that time, I was beginning to feel overwhelmed with balancing blog writing and figuring out who to guest post to next. That’s when I got my head straight and wrote Get Back to the Basics and Refuel Your Purpose. That was the first time I’ve posted on TechnShare. I will continue to guest post on the site thereafter in the future.

The streak seems to be two guest posts per month so far and it has worked out fine. I believe any beginning blogger will find that number a good amount to commit to. After all, it’s about building your relationships first. Even then, you might find yourself juggling more than one blog to promote.

Then Comes Personal Branding

Right around this time, branding started to become a keyword in my vocabulary for reasons unknown. I felt that it was time to really build a presence, a voice and say it the way it should be said. Thus, branding was an appropriate term to call it. Particularly for bloggers who are into the market of promoting themselves and often through many different streams.

Over the Labor Day weekend, I thought about this and a great supporter of Blogging For dot INFO was Nunzio Bruno who blogs over at Financially Digital. He requested a guest post on his blog. So How to Build Your Personal Brand Online Through Blogs was written and shared. I felt that it was one of my best guest post yet!

I still read it again at times and say ‘Man, did I write that?’ It’s just one of those pieces.

New Challenges Follow

Another visitor I had coming to my blog at the same moment was Jacinta Dean from Creating My Business Online, who came through and commented on one of my posts. In reciprocal to her comments, I found out about the 100 Blog Comments Challenge through visiting her blog.

It was a lovely idea and so I hopped on the bandwagon because I was willing to learn more about 100 new blogs that I haven’t visited. Furthermore, I needed to learn how to blog hop better. This was an opportunity to spread my wings and fly further from the circle of blogs I was viciously cycling around.

After the challenge ended a lot of things happened. The 100 Blog Comments Gems was written and because that wasn’t really about the efforts of everyone involved, Remembering the 100 Blog Comments Challenge was written too to celebrate the bloggers who participated in the short but eventful idea.

I’m really glad I was a part of something of that caliber. It opened up my eyes to a network which gave me the courage to ask for help and even pursue ongoing challenges later. Thus, the 1000 Articles in 100 Days was undertaken and it’s still going!

I’ll have to set aside some time this month and start cranking those articles out like a beast! Can’t … get … left … be … hind. I’m just loving every moment of my busy blogging life now though. Furthermore, there is a rich and targeted network I’m working with now, particularly with the Murlu Mastermind. I get more specific answers rather than the general, ‘Hey, great article!’ This really boosts your writing.

Not only that, I’m working with the great Miss Sally Neill as her assistant. So you can’t say good things don’t happen without persistence and hard work. Put that together with good timing and readiness, you got yourself a lot of productive work coming up.

Learning How to Strike Appropriately

You can say that there’s a little ego inside of me now. So I wanted to stroke it. I definitely wanted the big head to sit somewhere and make a loud THUD! That’s when I wrote the Ninja Blog Writing Blueprint.

The first place I wanted to send that to was Site Sketch 101. I had bought the paperback version of Blogging to the Third Power so it would have been good to give a little bit back. Thus, I submitted the post and never heard from Nicholas.

After a month, I figured he was busy. So I went back to TechnShare. That’s when I realize, you can’t always get what you want. I could have waited longer but even then, the timeliness of the article would have waned and not be interesting anymore.

Therefore, plan B ensued. Always have a back up plan folks. It’ll save you when you have no where else to go. Overall, is this chronicle over yet? Definitely not. As long as there are blogs open to guest posting, the journey never ends.

I’ll see you in another chronicle sometime in the future.

What have you learned from your guest posting ventures? Share your thoughts!

IMAGES: Looking at Book, Broken Pencil by Chris Sharp and Punch by Salvatore Vuono

Related posts:

1. Guest Post: Nunzio Bruno – Learn How to Teach What You’re Already Doing

However, you know what you’re trying to say isn’t like that. It isn’t like that at all. So how then do you state your point without the ‘ums and ahs?

If you’ve gotten to such a state at times, you can see that writing is pretty much like talking. Sometimes you need to warm up in order to see the finer points to the conversation. Moreover, it takes a little effort to try to do two things at once – think and write.

Now believe me, thinking can be flying freely but when you catch it and try to let it develop on paper, it’s much more time-consuming than you think. It’s a practice to build upon and the more one can find their voice through reason and sometimes even through irrationality, the better the expression. In turn it spreads to your motivation and you yourself can really be progressive in thinking.

Well don’t fret though. This article is going to give you some openers and/or prompts to get you writing again and more so to make your point at least on some comprehensive level.

Oftentimes, it is through the usage of supporting thoughts you can insert actions that will unleash something out of you. Thus, what will you write about today?

Here are some phrases I find which normally gets me typing:

• One of the most …
• Don’t even think …
• A lot of … don’t know …
• The best way to see …
• Those who say …
• Once upon a time …
• I often find …
• … said something and …
• The worst … ever is …
• How I … and …
• Today it’s been …
• At some point, there is a …

That’s over a dozen for you from me. However, if you’re still interested in something more, here are extra resources which you might find interesting, at least to steer away from all the technical writing for awhile, which I often tend to do and just unwind to find inspiration again.

Six Word Stories – Can you describe life in six words? A challenge but nonetheless an exercise in simplicity. Read others, get some ideas for your own prompts, have a laugh and write your own six word story. You can do it!

Don’t Click It! – This exercise will totally make you concentrate. If you’re finding yourself distracted, get ready to focus. Relax, you won’t be needing that mouse button though. Just observe. What do you see?

Writing Fix’s Daily Prompt Generator – There’s is a lot of information on this site, but if you scroll down, there’s a prompt generator for you. It’ll get your brain zooming and furthermore, give you an idea of how to crank out some of your first words or last words, whichever it is you need.

Mad Lib Generator – If you haven’t tried one of these exercises before in your life, now is a great time to flex some of your knowledge implementing various parts of speech and just insert the best word for the many stories available. You’re going to have fun. But don’t get carried away though. Get back to writing your blog post. Really.

Teacher’s Corner: A Prompt For Every Day of the Year – Well, if you think that there should be more holidays, here’s a corner for you to get inspired. Know what’s so special about today, write about it and make it personal. Trust me, these are real teachers giving you some food for thought.

Writing Exercise to Increase Awareness and Your Description Skill – Basically, this is a neuro-linguistic programming exercise, but I thought it would be nice to share it with you. It’s a classic. Furthermore, you’ll be filled up with words that you’ll can’t wait to write already. Try it!

Word Spy – Sometimes you need to change your vocabulary. Here’s a great site to insert some new meaning to what you already know and implement it in your next piece.

Feeling Words – Maybe you want to provoke some emotions. Here’s a long list of feeling words to state something. While a lot of them may be descriptive though, I found myself combining some here and there. Great for a push!

Finally, read through your comments. Answering questions readers may have or even stated through conversations is a great topic starter. Even on other sites or blogs, that should get some thoughts running for you.

Got any more ideas to get the writer’s flow moving? Share your thoughts below.

IMAGE: Pen and Pad by Paul

Related posts:

1. Autoresponder Series Insight #1: MailChimp – FREE to Start and How to Set Up Your First Signup Form

While I know you probably have had enough with commenting in the last few posts I’ve given you, there’s probably some benefits to be seen here as the point of entry is low. I mean loooooowwwwwww!

Some examples:

• Problogger – 5 reviews
• Entrepreneur’s-Journey – 0 reviews
• John Chow – 6 reviews
• Zen Habits – 1 review
• Famous Bloggers – 13 reviews
• Huffington Post – 15 reviews
• EnGadget – 10 reviews
• Technorati – 7 reviews
• Google – 429 reviews

Now I’ve varied the list so you can see the different types of sites that are being reviewed on Alexa. While the point of entry is low for sites that are blogs, I know I’ve said that already but the more you trend towards commercial sites, news sites, networks and technology, the numbers go higher. So today’s post will walk you through how you can leave your two cents about a blog and have it seen forever!

Furthermore, the more you review, you’ll see the portfolio of sites under your public profile. While this page is where most would like to include their site’s URL as a backlink, there is no such thing here on Alexa. Instead what I did was wrote the site address next to my name.

When you do this, if anyone glances at my public profile, they’ll not only see my name but also my site as well. As mentioned, there is no backlink provided here, however the turnaround is the space to market yourself. That’s good enough. The more sites you review, the more you’ll be seen and the more your Alexa will also improve.

On a side note, this may be great for site owners who wish to monetize their sites down the line. Otherwise, if you’re just building a site for fun and not for profit, all this information probably don’t mean much as ranking may not be something that pertains to you. However, read on as it might be something new to learn.

With that, let’s get into the process of reviewing a site on Alexa.

Registering For An Alexa Account

If you haven’t already done so yet, register for a FREE account on Alexa either through signing up with your e-mail or through Facebook. Once you’re in, input in the site of your choice to see the Alexa ranking under the Site Info tab. Then scroll on down below and find the Reviews tab and click on Write Review.

Most of the time I’m in a hurry and just want to see what’s going on with my Alexa ranking, so I found the fastest way, which is basically a quick hack to skim the surface of my blog is to input in :

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ + sitename.com (or .net)

This is  great way to pull up the site you want to review immediately. If you take a look below at the reviews for the site, you’ll see that there are Facebook and Twitter buttons to share the review on your social network. This is great for when you want to point out something somebody said about you. Also great for controversial debates to prove your point if necessary.

Writing the Review

I decided to review Entrepreneur’s Journey because it has no reviews at the moment.

To start, I clicked on the Write Review button which lead me to a page where I’ll be able to write the headline of the review, select the star rating (1-5 at 5 being best) and any optional information about the site.

This includes:

• How do you use the site?
• What do you like?
• What do you dislike?
• How often do you visit?

Then you’re free to comment how you like. Alexa suggests:

• A description of your experience with the site
• What you like or dislike most about the site
• Any tips or recommendations you have for other people who visit the site

Finally, if you recommend this site to a friend. Afterward, you can preview before submitting. Then Alexa will take a look at it before it is published.

Enabling Readers To Review

Alexa provides users with widgets to put on their site to further asks readers to notice. While this trend is often neglected, it should be something we can all contribute to one another when we can.

If you are a site owner, you’ll find that there are traffic and review widgets for you to customize and use. All you have to do is insert your site’s URL and copy the code onto your site. Thus, I ask that you review my site on Alexa. In turn, upon receipt and seeing it, I will review yours. We can start a Alexa-Follow trend.

To help bloggers or web surfers who want to build up their review portfolio, installing the toolbar onto your Firefox web browser will allow you to immediately see any site’s ranking. Furthermore, it helps you rank better as well. (Thanks Steve Scott!)

From there, you can review as much as you want when you’re on someone’s blog. Not only that, you’ll get to see the latest, hottest trends on Alexa as well. This is great for niche studying later on, especially if you want to dive into niche sites.

So just hoover over Toolbar and click on Install Alexa Toolbar to power up your browser for keyword research. Follow the directions on screen and restart your browser if you have to when prompted.

If you haven’t saved anything you’re doing online, now is the time to do so. Otherwise, you’ll see the toolbar the next time around with a lot of cool features. Just have fun and explore the buttons!

More Information About Alexa

Interested readers who want to advance their usage of Alexa might want to consider reading the Alexa Blog. They provide updates on what’s new and walk-throughs. Content there is rarely updated, but that leaves you time to read more. So do take a look at what Alexa offers and read up on how effective it may be to utilize it’s other features besides taking advantage of it’s ranking ability.

What’s on your mind about this post? Share your thoughts below.

Related posts:

1. Using Alexa As A Tool To Research Your Blog Idea
2. How to Get Your Blog Ranked Under 100k on Alexa
3. July Month in Review PLUS Tools You Can Use to Track Your Site