New Bloggers Center

Stop Scrapers and Spammers Fast

2009-10-20T12:13:00.001-07:00

One of the challenges that bloggers face is what to do when others want to use your blog for their own gain by either taking your content or spamming your comments section. The more I talk to bloggers about how they deal with these issues the more I realize how many different approaches there are to the problems. Today Seth Waite from Blogussion shares his approach. I’d love to hear your approach (whether it be different or the same in comments below).
Every blogger quickly learns the reality of hard work in blogging. After the “make money fast” hype has wore off and the reality that blogging is a great way to earn an income if you work for it has set in, you are left with a choice?
The choice is whether to stay in blogging or not. Many bloggers decide to stay but are again left with another extremely important decision. Should I put the effort into become a great blogger or just try to still do things the easy way and hope things will be different for me?
Those choosing to work hard begin the process of learning and eventually find success by learning, networking and earning their way to better blogging. Bloggers who are unwilling to face reality either quite or eventually become spammers, scrappers, or beggars.
I am not going to address the problem of bloggers who beg for help without working for it, but I do want to talk about spammers and scrappers. Most importantly, I want every hard working blogger to know how to stop selfish bloggers trying to use your work disrespectfully to help them.

Stopping Spam

The easiest way to stop spammers who are trying to get you to link to their blog/site is by controlling your comments and trackbacks. Although essential to building a great blog community, comments must be moderated to ensure your actual readers feel comfortable with the discussions on your blog.
Captcha
Commenting at first was easily controlled by forcing commentators to put their email address into the comment form. Spammers quickly got around this and now a very easy way to stop spammers is by adding a captcha feature to your blog comments.
Captcha is already used by Blogger and easily adds to Wordpress and other blogging platforms with plugins. The way it works is that you put in a series of numbers or letters from a visual image in order to post your comment. Other systems require you to add the numbers or fill in the form based on another easy question. Using captcha is a quick and easy way to minimize your blog’s spam, but it may also be annoying to regular readers.
Plug-ins
For many blog platforms, like Wordpress, a simple plug-in will solve many of the spam problems. The most common spam blocker is Akismet, which is now available for over 20 other blogging platforms besides Wordpress. Using this plug-in on your blog is simple and requires you to only check to make sure occasional comments are not being counted as spam. In addition to the normal comment protection it provides, it goes above and beyond captchas by protecting your blog against unwanted trackbacks.

Stopping Scrappers

Scrappers are bloggers who steal content you produced and put the entire work on their own blogs and websites. The practice sadly is common and creates reproductions of your content around the web. Luckily most search engines are good at recognizing the original content, but scrapping is illegal and damaging to the blogger and blogging.

Identify: The first step to stopping scrappers is by identifying your content and checking for copies. An easy way to do this is by using the sites CopyGator or Copyscape to check for the originality of your content and any potential duplicates.
Ask: Once you have found scrappers who have copied your material [note: the content duplication should be significant and their reasons should be to represent your content as their own, not to promote yours] email the owner or comment on the blog/site where the duplicate is found. In most cases the scrapper will take it down and apologize for misrepresenting the work. Always try this first so that the blogosphere can stay friendly and young bloggers who might be making an innocent mistake will learn without being accosted.
Block: The next step if they are unresponsive or belligerent to your requests is to use .htaccess to block the scrappers from your blog. This can be a little bit tricky for anyone who has never done this before, but here is a great link to learn how to stop scrappers [item #9]. Basically you are blocking the access of the scrappers from receiving your blog and rss feed.
Take Action: At this point you have been nice, notified them of their misdeed, blocked their access and still the content is ripped off and on their site. The next way to get your content off of their site is by contacting the site’s ISP or hosting. The easiest way to find that out is by using Who.is and just inputting the site’s web address into their search bar. The hosting information will then show up with the rest of the site’s information. Once you have the host information contact them with a formal letter or email specifically claiming what and where the content originated and where it has been reproduced. The host will then quickly take down the content and offer the site owner a chance to explain themselves. Warning, this is serious for everyone involved so do not use this lightly. If this does not work there is yet one more option. This is legal action. Filed suits can be taken up depending on the scrapper’s home country and legal system.

Stopping scrappers and spammers will not only protect your work but also encourage the internet to be a better place. Every time a spammer is thwarted, other bloggers win too. So be an internet community builder by taking the proper steps to stop content thieves.
Seth Waite is Editor at Blogussion.com and enjoys helping every blogger reach their blogging goals. to contact Seth directly, just find him on Twitter @Seth1492

What’s Your Approach

From Darren: as mentioned in the introduction to this post - there are many stances that bloggers take on these issues, particularly when it comes to scrapers. Many take a similar line to Seth while others are more lenient and take the approach that as long as someone’s reading their content somewhere that it doesn’t worry them. What do you do? What tools do you use?
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Stop Scrapers and Spammers Fast

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Posted: 19 Oct 2009 12:13 PM PDT

ProBlogger: How to Use Apture

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 05:17 AM PDT

ProBlogger: How to Use Apture

How to Use Apture

Posted: 18 Oct 2009 08:17 AM PDT

By Mary Jaksch of Goodlife Zen.
Do you want to create posts that sparkle, dance, enthral, touch the heart, and inform? Do you want your blog to stand out, and subscribers to scramble in at the door? Then I suggest you check out what the New York Times, Reuters, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the World Wildlife Fund, the blog of Tim Ferris, and Goodlife ZEN all have got in common: they use Apture.
Apture is a plugin that transforms an ordinary blog posts into an extraordinary media experience.
Here’s what Jim Brady, the Executive Editor of the Washington Post says about Apture:

Apture adds a new dimension - a web of information - inside washingtonpost.com stories, and continues our mission of bringing readers the most comprehensive and in-depth news coverage.

The most important feature of this award-winning plugin is that readers can access additional information - without having to leave your page. Whether it’s a Wikipedia article, a related blog post, or a video - all can be integrated seamlessly into a post. And Apture is free for blogs with less than 5 million visitors per month.
So are bloggers thronging to use Apture?
No - not yet. Typical responses I get are “It seems like advertising and it makes a site look too busy.” I don’t agree. I think Apture rocks!
10 reasons why I love Apture:

It’s free.
It saves time.
It keeps my readers onsite for longer.
I can create a multimedia experience for my readers.
I can offer a greater depth of content through layers of information.
I can shape and control the ambience of my blog.
I can use high resolution images and videos without bandwidth headaches.
I can draw readers deep into my blog through using attractive links to related posts.
Apture is stylish.
It’s creative, and it’s fun.

I think there are two reasons why bloggers are slow to embrace Apture. Firstly, bloggers don’t know how to use Apture. Which is hardly surprising, seeing that Apture lacks a user guide and tutorials. Not only does Apture lack information on how to use it, the team manages to hide some of the best features - which is an interesting kind of reverse-marketing. Secondly, Apture works with popups, and popups are seen as spammy advertising gadgets.

Are all pop-ups spammy?

A criticism frequently leveled at Apture is that it ‘looks like ads’. That’s because we associate pop-ups with nasty advertising. ‘In-text advertising’ or ‘contextual advertising’ means that links in the text lead to adverts, and not to further information. Some of the worst offenders are Vibrant Media, and Kontera. Personally, I hate contextual ads. They seem to me a betrayal of our readers. After all, readers come to a blog for information or entertainment - and not because they want to be shopped by the blogger.
Contextual advertising has created enhanced hyperlinks, called ‘blooms’. This means that a link can ‘bloom up’ into an image, a video, an article, a flash advert, and so on. There are other products on the market that are easily confused with Apture, for example Snap - which also ‘blooms up’ contextual links. Snap is primarily an advertising tool and gives bloggers and readers little or no control over their online experience. Snap uses pesky auto links, i.e., it automatically creates links in a post.
In contrast, Apture places control firmly in the hands of the blogger and the reader. A blogger can choose what she or he would like to link to, and the reader can determine how they want to use Apture. And they can even disable it. A new player on the market is Zemanta. You can read a review of Apture vs. Zemanta.
I’m sure you can see why Apture is treated with suspicion by many bloggers. I mean, who wants a spammy gadget on their blog!
But forget about ads for a moment. You see, the Apture guys had a brilliant idea: they decided to use the latest in-text advertising technology in order to create layers of information, so that the reader can understand the wider context of a particular topic, or drill down into more detail.
Apture is the art of adding layers of information to your blog posts, and wrapping multimedia around your readers.
You can see why the big newspapers have rushed to embrace Apture for their online resources. After all, their mission is to drive more and better information to the readers. Bloggers have yet to discover how Apture can transform their work. In this post you can learn how to use Apture, and get a taste of what it can do.
First up are step by step instructions on how to use Apture (including links to 5 training videos), followed by a section on Apture for minimalists. Next, I confront the Apture team with some challenging questions. And finally, you can find out how to wow your readers with Apture. In this section I discuss a post by blogger Arvind Devalia whose inspired use of Apture demonstrates that this plugin can transform a good post into a brilliant one. (If you’re short on time, head directly to Arvind’s 6 Key Lessons in Life From a 140 Year Old Man in order to get a sense of what Apture can accomplish. Make sure you click on all the links to get the full juice. There are some surprises…)

1. How to download Apture

Apture is configured for a variety of different blogging platforms, such as WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, Ning, Tumblr, and Drupal. You can can download Apture here. (If you use Blogger, Typepad, of Tumblr, you’ll need the Apture Firefox plugin.) In this post with its accompanying training videos, the focus is on using Apture in WordPress. If you’re not familiar with how to upload a WP plugin, watch Episode 1 of my screencast series Apture Made Easy.

2. How to install Apture

Installing a plugin is normally an easy process, but Apture is a little different, because there is an additional activation process. You can watch Episode 2 of my Apture Made Easy series.
Here is a short summary of action for more experienced bloggers: Once you’ve uploaded the plugin, activate it like any other plugin. When you then write a new post for the first time, a popup offers to install a short piece of code automatically into your site. You will also need to register with Apture at this point. If the code hasn’t installed, copy it and paste it before the last body tag in the footer code.
Apture has two widgets, the Link Widget and the Embed Widget. Together they make up the Media Hub. The Link Widget creates an in-text link - whether it’s an internal link which opens directly on your page, or an external link which transports the reader to another website. The Embed Widget takes objects, such as images, videos, etc, and embeds then into the post.

3. How to use the Apture Link Widget.

Apture links work just like plain links. For example the blog you link to gets ‘link juice’ - even through your readers dodn’t need to leave your page in order to follow the link. Watch Apture Made Easy Episode 3 for detailed information on how to use the Link Widget.
In brief, when you highlight words and click on the Link Widget ( the one of the right-hand side), a window opens that allows you to choose what to link to.Here is what you can do with the Link Widget:

Link to Wikipedia or other information sources. Scroll bars in the popups allow the readers to read a complete Wikipedia article. You can also choose Wikipedia articles different languages. You can also link to a particular section in Wikipedia.
Link to other websites. The links function like plain links,i.e. the blog you link to with Apture gets link juice - without the reader having to leave your site. You can also find links you previously made with Apture.
Internal links Apture links are a great way to entice readers deep into your blog. I use the Embed Widget in order to link to previous posts. Each Apture popups contain a post image and a snippet of text and looks very attractive. Here’s how to link to a previous post: click on the Embed Widget, and then choose ‘Enter a Specific URL’ . The Preview will show you what the link will look like. If you have more than one image in your post, you can select which one - if any - should appear with your post.
External links: You can choose to use Apture for plain external links that open in a separate window.
Customizing your sources: you add additional sources from Apture to pull from.
How to add links: check out the short article from the Apture team that explains how to add multiple links.
Twitter links: The Apture team has come up with some great options for embedding Twitter. You can link to a single Tweet, or show Twitter search trends. You can even embed your Friendfeed in your blog. Check out a YouTube video that shows some of the cool Apture tricks for Twitter. I think that Twitter fans will be all aflutter over these options.

4. How to use the Apture Embed Widget

Sourcing and embedding media is a snap with Apture. You can find step-by-step intructions in Episode 4 of my Apture Made Easy video series. Here is what you can do with the Embed Widget:

Embed images: Using Apture saves me a lot of time. For example when I use an image from Flickr, the shortest time it takes me to source, resize, embed, and credit an image is 06:48 minutes. The same process with Apture takes me just 44 seconds. Check out how to use Creative Commons images in Apture. If you use stock images, you can upload the images from your computer quickly resize them with Apture, using the ‘Upload File’ function. Check out how to resize images.
Embed audio: Apture embeds an elegant audio player. At present, music can only be sourced from Imeem and NPR. It would be good to see greater range audio sources, including radio stations outside of the US, such as BBC, etc. In order to upload audio podcasts, I suggest you upload the audio to Amazon S3, and then link to the file using the Apture Embed Widget.
Embed video: At present Apture supports videos by YouTube, Reuters, Truveo, Dailymotion, Imeem Video. If you want to embed your own flash videos, you may run into problems. Apture works with a fixed size of 320px wide and 250px high. In other words, Apture only supports videos that have the Standard Definition aspect ratio of 4:3 , and not ones with the High Definition aspect ratio of 10:9. (I have been assured by the Apture team that this flaw will be fixed very soon.)
Embed YouTube. With Apture you can control start and stop times of YouTube videos. This means that you can choose a clip from a YouTube video to support your post.
Use captions: You can use captions on all your embeds.
Add Additional content: You can add up to 6 pieces of additional content to your main link. The additional content is visible in thumbnails beneath the main embedded item. Watch this excellent video by the Apture team on the effect of adding additional content to one link: Why Include 1 Piece of Content When You Can Include 7

5. How to update a published post with one click

Let’s say you’ve published a post and some new information has come to light. Maybe a commenter has suggested a link, or you’ve found a new image that you want to include in your post. The old way of updating your post is laborious: you need to go into your WP dashboard, bring up the post, make changes, and save them.
With Apture, all you need is to go to your published post and bring up your Apture Dashboard by clicking ‘e’. (This is a widget that hovers on top of your published post. Then you can make changes to the published post by highlighting text and adding new links or images. Watch Episode 5 of my series Apture Made Easy for step by step instructions on how to use the Apture Dashboard.

6. Reader control

The reader is in control of her or his reading experience. A small question-mark in the bottom right-hand corner of each Apture ‘bloom’ leads to a popup where readers can customize their Apture experience. They can disable Apture completely, or choose whether Apture links open through a hover, or through a click.

7. Apture for minimalists

Hard-core minimalists may think that Apture look too busy on a page. I think it depends very much on how you use it. I recently ran a Virtual Zen Retreat and used Apture in order to create the daily retreat posts. I used images that supported the calm retreat ambience. I also embedded a couple of videos in order to sharpen the focus of particular posts. My aim was to create a calm retreat ambience that allows participants to deepen their experience. The feedback showed that it worked: most participants mentioned how much they loved the calming images and inspiring videos.
My suggestion to minimalists is to use Apture in a - well - minimal way. For example minimalists could use Apture just for fast selection of images, or for attractive internal links.

8. Apture secrets revealed

Apture hides many of its top features. (Note to the Apture team: how about installing a search function on your site?). Here are some features even die-hard users may not know about:

Apture uses Amazon S3 to store all media it provides links for, without passing the storage cost on to users.
Google Street View is supported by Apture. Watch this fascinating demo on what this could do for your blog.
Apture provides support for Linkedin profiles
Bing web and image search is integrated into Apture.
Apture supports super-search engine Lijit.
Apture integrates into URL shortener Kiw.is.
Apture supports Wikinvest. You can insert stock charts within their apturized embeds and links.
Apture has partnered with SlideShare, a community for sharing presentations where individuals or organizations can upload and share PowerPoint, PDF, or OpenOffice presentations. Check out how Apture integrates with Slideshare.

9. How to monetize your blog with Apture

As you can imagine, Apture has great potential for monetization, especially for blogs selling products. I use Amazon Affiliate links on Goodlife Zen and I’ve notice that since using Apture, my Amazon affiliate income has increased by 28%.
I am sure that there are many ways to monetize your blog with Apture. Here are two tips: if your blog is focused on Real Estate, read how Apture can help the Real Estate community make more sales.If you write about the Stock Marked try embedding real-time stock charts on their site.

10. Confronting the Apture team: questions and answers

Transparency is important. If we as bloggers want to engage with Apture and learn to use it, we need to be able to trust the company and know that it isn’t going to change the rules on us. So I asked Andrew Machado
When we invest our energy into learning how to use a major plugin, such as Apture, it’s important to be sure that we’re not going to encounter problems further down the track. So I asked Andrew Machado from the Apture team some searching questions (Andrew is the Community Manager at Apture and runs the Apture Blog.)
Question #1 Is Apture safe?
Answer: Apture was vetted by the technical and security diligence of the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, and Reuters tech teams. We’ve also tested to make sure Apture is compatible with other WordPress plugins.
Question: If I decided to deactivate the plugin, would I lose all the images, videos and links created with Apture?
Answer: All baked Apture links will turn into regular hyperlinks pointing to their primary destination (Reference, Maps, Videos, Images, ….). All embedded images will remain while Videos turn into screenshots of the video which link to the video when clicked. Documents and Reference Viewers will turn into an image representing document or reference content that links to the document in question.
Question: When a new version of WordPress appears, how fast can you update the plugin? Will there be down times until you’ve adapted the plugin to a new WP version?
Answer: The plugin code responsible for inserting our JavaScript (which enables the viewing experience) is extremely small (10-20 lines) and interacts with a part of WordPress that is extremely stable over time. Very major changes to WordPress might cause problems with the editing aspect of Apture. Because of this (and for general compatibility) we test with pre-release versions of WordPress so the update is always ready in time for new WordPress releases.
Question: Can you confirm that for bloggers (below 5 mill visitors a month) Apture will remain free?
Answer: Yes, we will not be charging for the (current) basic version of Apture.
Question: What’s the long-term viability of the Apture project?
Answer: We raised our Series A round about a year ago and are very happy with our current financial situation and are very actively hiring and growing the team. We are absolutely in it for the long haul and all believe in the vision behind the company. The company was incorporated in July of 2007, we received our Angel financing at the same time, launched a beta in April of 2008, launched fully in July of 2008, and raised our Series A in the fourth quarter of 2008. We have, however, been working on Apture in some form since January of 2006.

11. How to wow your readers with Apture

So far we’ve looked at Apture as a tool for adding levels of information. But for bloggers, the secret of creating outstanding posts is to turn turn a read into an experience. I asked one of the new breed of up-and-thriving bloggers -Avind Devalia of Make it Happen - to test Apture. He was reluctant and wrote: “I’ve previously tried Snap on my blog but found it distracting and irritating as the boxes seemed to open up all too frequently by just hovering over a linked phrase.”
Finally Arvind decided to rework one of his popular posts with the help of Apture! The post is about Gandhi’s enduring legacy. Against this serious background, Arvind created a counterpoint with Apture links that are playful, emotional, rousing, fascinating, and surprising. Arvind’s post leaves the reader inspired, smiling, and with a tear or two. Check out 6 Lessons in Life from a 140 year Old Man. (Make sure you click on all the links to get the full experience!)
I think Arvind’s inspired use of Apture has turned what was a good post - into a brilliant one.

12. Conclusion

I think blogging is at at crossroads between old-style blogging, and new-style blogging. Old-style blogging replicates print media. In other words, the reader’s experience is focused on a page of text, which may contain images. In this scenario, the reader follows outward-bound links in order to access more information. New-style blogging creates a multimedia experience for the reader. Bloggers are waking up to the fact that Broadband allows us to deliver not only text, but simultaneously images, videos, music, and other media to our readers. Apture is a perfect tool for new-style blogging because we can add depth and focus to a post, as well as enhance mood and message - all by using easy one-click actions.
Quite simply - if you’re not using Apture yet, you’re missing out on the hottest tool for bloggers.
You can read more by Mary Jaksch on her blog GoodlifeZen or on Write to Done where she is the Editor. Join Mary on Twitter.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Use Apture

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John Chow dot Com

2009-10-20T05:31:00.001-07:00

John Chow dot Com

A Step-By-Step Guide To Launching a Membership Site

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 12:48 AM PDT

Talk about perfect timing. Right after I posted how Tim makes over $60,000 per month with his membership site, my friend Yaro Starak has written one of the best FREE reports I’ve ever read on launching a profitable online membership site.

Yaro’s a great teacher and writer, and whenever he releases a report people always eagerly await what he has to say. His gift is the ability to take complex subjects and make them very easy to understand. As you will see in this report, Yaro makes the process of setting up and profiting from a membership site so easy, anyone can do it, including you.

The Masterplan doesn’t disappoint, and once again Yaro has not held anything back. This is a report that is full of CONTENT, it’s not some hype-filled document just designed to sell a product and not really teach you anything.

In the Masterplan Yaro explains how he was able to make $250,000 from just one membership site and then goes on to lay out a plan so you can launch your own membership site and earn at least $100,000 within the next 12 months. In the report Yaro takes you through the following process:

How to find topics for a membership site
How to develop preeminence, which means people choose to join your membership site over all the other options
What sources of traffic Yaro uses to bring members to his site and build his list
What technology Yaro uses to deliver content (this is so simple, anyone can do it)
How to make money from a membership site BEFORE you create the content for it
How to fill your membership site with hundreds of new members in a matter of days by conducting a powerful, yet simple, launch campaign
and much more…

Download the Membership Site Masterplan

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

How To Make Over $60,000 Per Month with a Membership Site

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 12:36 PM PDT

The last session I attended at the 2009 Blogworld Expo was by my good friend Timothy Sykes. Tim is a short seller who happens to make more money off his blog than his stock trading. Tim’s biggest blogging related income steam is his TIMalerts membership site. Over 1,500 pay $49.95 per month to receive Tim’s real-time stock alerts.

In the following video, Tim and his partner Adrash share their secrets on setting up and running a million dollar membership site. The video is an hour long so you might as well grab a bite to eat and pull up a chair. Also, I hope you enjoy watching Tim’s face because I zoomed in on it for the entire hour.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

2009-10-19T13:16:00.001-07:00

Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

SEOmoz Pro Review – Coupon Voucher Promo Discount Codes?

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 04:55 AM PDT

Would ranking for these terms bring SEOmoz additional traffic and take traffic away from affiliates? Would that be a benefit to the long-term SEOmoz brand?

Tom Critchlow of Distilled has quite a disturbing post today for affiliates on the SEOmoz blog, encouraging brands to rank for their own coupon codes.

The suggestion is that brands should try to rank for their own voucher codes and take that traffic away from affiliate coupon sites. Unfortunately in some cases that might be biting the hand that feeds you.

Many of the sites that offer various forms of vouchers & coupons are brand evangelists, and the page on their site which offers regular updated coupons to their audience also acts as a conduit to product reviews, in much the same way as product reviews would link to the most recent coupon codes.
If affiliates are smart, they also have access to coupons from competing products and brands.

Whilst you can stamp out the traffic pure coupon sites receive by ranking for your own brand… and that could quite easily make a visible “net gain” to justify SEO jobs, the negative effect is hard to quantify.

Lets take Tom’s example to extremes and rank for as many terms used by affiliates as possible.

[brand] review

[brand] sucks/scam/

[brand] vs

[brand] compared

[brand] cheap

[brand] coupon/discount/bonus/rebate/voucher/promo

These are all bread and butter terms for affiliates, but if you cut off all the terms affiliates can rank for, many affiliates will just write about your competitors instead.

This also happens frequently in reverse when vendors don’t supply affiliates with coupons, affiliates will rank for your “[brand] coupon” and offer an alternative product instead.

By promoting the existence of coupons to your primary user base, that increases the traffic for the search term, which makes it more lucrative for affiliates to rank for the term.
Also a higher percentage of your existing client base will search for coupon codes for every transaction. It is much easier to do this on the internet than brick & mortar stores where the coupons might have ended up with the junk mail, or simply forgotten.

Many online brands have been created or significantly enhanced by strong affiliate partners, and coupons often are provided to ensure affiliates get the sale and to add urgency/increase conversion rate.

There is a danger that some advice that might seem obvious could backfire and be very difficult to repair.

In his article Tom mentioned Argos, who I found ranking much higher than stated with their current “voucher” page, however they were also targeting the term via PPC.
UK search for Argos Voucher Personalization off
The problem with their PPC listing? It doesn’t link to a vouchers page.
Argos are however a store that makes vouchers extremely prominent, displaying them in a section on their home page “This Week’s Highlights”

Of course SEOMoz itself doesn’t rank highly for any of the terms highlighted, maybe that is a “Headsmacking Tip” too (they have an affiliate program)

Tags: affiliate marketing, coupon codes, discount codes, seomoz

Quick Online Tips

2009-10-19T11:12:00.001-07:00

Quick Online Tips

5 Out-of-the-Box Keyword List Strategies That Work

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 04:33 AM PDT

Guest Article by Edward Khoo
There are dozens of keyword selection “strategies.” All you have to do is Google keyword strategies to get 50,100,000 search results the day of this writing. That is over 50 million hits on a very narrow, industry-specific subject, but it makes a good point.

Anybody – everybody – working in the web space, from site owners to W3 marketing gurus, has a theory about keyword selection. The diversity of opinions offers up another point: there is no one way to select the perfect set of keywords.

The fact is, keyword optimization is more art than science. However, by using several helpful tools you can gather empirical data, test the results for your site and tweak your keyword list to increase site traffic and, simultaneously, deliver a more highly-qualified buyer – knowledgeable, motivated to find a solution and willing to pay for that solution.

The solution you sell.

Image via davidkjelkerud

1. Start with your own industry / business knowledge.

First, trust your instincts. What keywords would you enter into a search box? You know the insider jargon, you know your target market, you know your products or services so start with a list of the search words you’d use.

But don’t stop there. Remember, you bring a bias to the search. You already know the lingo. So, your intuitive keyword list brings with it a bias. Same with lists developed by other knowledgeable executives in your company. Even so, these keyword lists provide a foundation for finessing a keyword list over time.

2. Test your list of intuitive keywords.

I like Google’s keyword generator for a couple of reasons.

First, Google controls the largest share of the search market so why not go with the 600-lb gorilla. Second, Google’s keyword generator delivers empirical data – the actual usage figures of Google users over the past 30 days.

Enter your URL and intuitive keywords into Google’s keyword tool and click check. One of three results will be immediately evident:

- Your intuition is correct. Keywords you selected are popular search words.

- Your intuition is incorrect. Your search terms are too sector- or B2B-specific and, as a result, the search terms don’t drive much traffic.

- Or, the most likely result – the affirmation that some of your keywords are on target with SE users, some aren’t and, happily, you’ll discover additional keywords used by searchers. Happy surprises that you might not have considered.

3. Test the strength of each keyword.

If you operate in a commercial sector that crosses numerous business and industries, Google will hand you a list of a few thousand keywords used by its patrons. Narrowing the list down is a crucial part of the development of an effective list of 10-15 keywords.

There are a couple of ways I test the strength of a keyword to deliver good SERPs for my client. First, I use a term extractor, available for use (free) on SEOmoz.org. This tool identifies strong keywords on an existing site that’s been indexed properly by search engines. A quick examination of the results of term extraction always reveals some interesting data.

Example: I had a client that provides hearing aid advice online. The site offered a free consumer download, articles, product reviews and other helpful information for people conducting research on an upcoming hearing aid purchase.

The site owner, intuitively, selected hearing aids as his primary keyword but couldn’t understand why his bounce rate was over 80%. Well, hearing aids, when extracted, proved to be a strong keyword. The problem was, the site didn’t sell hearing aids – the objective of a SE user querying “hearing aids.” No hearing aids for sale? Bounce to the next site.

A simple adjustment to this client’s keyword list in the site’s meta, alt and title tags and playing down the keyword hearing aids in the site’s corpus did the trick. The client’s bounce rate dropped to 40% in a matter of weeks.

Use a term extraction tool to identify which keywords and phrases are strong with search engines. You’re almost certain to be surprised at the results.

4. Calculate the “pull” of a given keyword.

I use SpyFu, a very useful tool in determining the effectiveness of any keyword.

The software is actually an AdWords metrics tool that identifies bidding ranges of given keywords for AdWords placement. Of course, I use SpyFu to help my clients get a bigger bang for their AdWords buck, but it’s also a great tool for determining the effectiveness of a keyword – even if you don’t use PPC advertising.

AdWords functions much like a stock market with investors bidding up the price of keywords, just as investors bid up the price of stocks. SpyFu shows me the range of bids for a keyword. And if AdWords users keep that keyword at $1.27 a click, well, I know that’s a keyword that pulls and more than pays for itself at $1.27 per click.

Conversely, when SpyFu identifies a low cost AdWords keyword – six cents per click (see chart), for instance, I know it’s not popular, I know it doesn’t pull but I don’t necessarily cross it off the list. Here’s why.

5. Use lower-ranking keywords to beat higher ranking competition.

If you’re just launching a new site, if you’ve just added several sub-domains that don’t show up on SERPs, or if you’ve made significant changes to your business or revenue model, you can often upend deep pockets competitors by using lower-ranking keywords.

Let’s say you own a small site that sells digital cameras and accessories. You’re in a highly-competitive market sector up against the likes of Amazon, Best Buy, J&R and other well-known, branded names. So, a search of “digital cameras” reveals that your little site is on page 34 of SERPs, and when was the last time you drilled down 34 pages searching for anything?

Using the identical keywords that deep-pockets, well-known competitors use will bury you. BUT, if you deploy lesser-used keywords, for example “digital cameras real cheap,” you won’t see as many SE users entering those particular keywords, but those who do will see your site at the top of page one of Google’s SERPs. Why? Because the heavy hitters aren’t using those long-tail keywords. Once again, before you opt for a long-tail, test it on all major search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Inktomi.

Also, run that long-tail through an AdWords metrics generator. This will enable you to uncover strong terms that aren’t being used, even by stronger sites. Look for keywords that haven’t been bid up in price but still pull a good quantity of traffic each day. This eliminates the stronger competitors.

Check out the spread sheet showing keywords and prices for digital cameras. I’ve highlighted popular search terms that haven’t been “discovered” by the competition because the AdWords bid price is comparatively low. Consider :

1. Using these less popular keywords as your primary search terms or

2. Add the most promising candidates to your existing list and incorporate them in your site’s meta data, description tag, alt tags and title tags where appropriate.

One last piece of advice: keyword list refinement is an ongoing process. It’s not something you do once and forget about it. Use tools like Google’s keyword generator, SpyFu and other AdWords metrics analyzers to determine the best list for your site – a list of keywords that pulls, but also isn’t used by more powerful competitors.

Then, as your business grows, you can add more of the most-used keywords and go head-to-head with the cost-cutting big box stores. That day will come a lot sooner if you select the strongest keywords for your site.

This guest article was written by Edward Khoo, a full time blogger from Malaysia. You can also write a guest article and share your tips and tricks with our readers.

Must Read Related Articles

Original article: 5 Out-of-the-Box Keyword List Strategies That Work
Copyright 2009. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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John Chow dot Com

2009-10-19T05:43:00.001-07:00

John Chow dot Com

Create Instant SEO Friendly Landing Pages with InstantLP

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 12:00 AM PDT

One of the most important elements in affiliate marketing is the landing page. This is the page the reader “lands on” after clicking on a Google ads or link from any other site. A good landing page can mean the difference between making a lot of money online or losing your shirt.

In the past, creating a landing page was a time consuming and expensive affair. Often times, the work needs to be subbed out to a professional designer because the Internet marketer lacked the skills to create them. Even after getting the design, you would need to bring in others to help with the SEO work. InstantLP is designed to change all that.

What Is InstantLP?

InstantLP is a program that allows you to quickly and profitably create landing pages for your affiliate offers. The program was created by Internet marketers for Internet marketers and is extremely easy to use – you can latterly create a new landing page from scratch within minutes of installing the program. Watch the video to see how easy it is to use.

In addition to the speed, InstantLP offers many other benefits, including:

Create landing pages and multiple-page websites very quickly using pre-defined style templates (Templates included FREE).
Your sites are automatically created with the latest SEO friendly code – This means your website/business will get better rankings and get more traffic.
Create affiliate sites and landing pages from any affiliate network simply by dragging and dropping the codes.
Have a solution for non-technical marketers to make landing pages in a matter of minutes, without dealing with outsourcing or wasting precious valuable time.
Each website you create will automatically have correct structuring and formatting, ensuring a higher Quality Score.

By far the most exciting feature for affiliate marketers is InstantLP’s ability to create a landing page from any affiliate network by simply dragging and dropping the codes. In the screen shot below, you can see codes from the hydra network that’s about to be copy and paste.

Once the codes are copied and pasted, InstantLP creates an instantl landing page.

For the Internet Marketer who doesn’t have the resources to hire design and SEO staff, InstantLP offers a cost effective solution to quickly create money making landing pages and sites. The program creates clean HTML design, has a nice selection of built in templates. The pages it generates are SEO friendly with meta tags included, functional contact form, site maps (human readable and XML), etc. You also have the ability to import HTML codes for YouTube videos, add Aweber opt in form and much more.

Three Bonus Offers and Grand Opening Price

InstantLP launches with a grand opening price of $197 and includes three additional bonuses.

Free Access To Instant LP Monthly
Free InstantLP Get Started Webinar for the first 100 customers
Free Adwords Reinvented course

The program is covered by a full 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee. Try out InstantLP for a month, and if you’re not happy with, you’ll get your money back. Internet marketers looking for a quality tools to create landing pages quickly and cost effectively should take a serious look at InstantLP.

Download Your Copy of InstantLP

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

2009-10-18T12:10:00.001-07:00

Posted: 18 Oct 2009 12:07 PM PDT

ProBlogger: The Holy Grail to Writing Great Content - Rhetoric

Posted: 18 Oct 2009 05:09 AM PDT

ProBlogger: The Holy Grail to Writing Great Content - Rhetoric

The Holy Grail to Writing Great Content - Rhetoric

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 08:24 AM PDT

A Guest Post by Patrick Riddel from Must Know Investing.

Darren has debunked the myth that great content markets itself. There are countless blogs that produce quality content that don’t get read. Why is that? Because no one knows about them.

He followed up with a post on 9 things you can do so that your next blog post is read by more than your mom. In other words, 9 things you can do to promote your content … or as he says, “seed” rather than “force” your content.

But, what if you’re stuck at square one … writing great content.

You hear it all the time …

“Content is king! If you want to attract a massive loyal following to your blog, there is no substitute for great content.”

Well, if that’s the case, what makes certain content great? How does one go about writing great content?

This may surprise you but it’s not as much about what you write but how it’s written. Sooooo, it’s the context of your content that makes the difference. Forget “content is king” … “context is king!”

To illustrate this point, let’s take a look at one of Leo Babauta’s recent guest posts here at Problogger.

You see, Leo’s someone who can teach us a thing or two about writing great content … the kind of content that piques a readers interest quickly and effectively, the kind of content that becomes like a virus and spreads over the Internet like wildfire, the kind of content that inspires a reader to take action, the kind of content that creates a loyal following. That’s what great content is all about!

Leo wrote his first blog post in February of 2007. And today, his blog, Zen Habits, has over 130,000 subscribers and is ranked 66 in Technorati’s top 100 blogs. AND he’s in an extremely competitive niche … personal development.

So what is it that makes Leo’s content so great?

Just a few months ago, I wouldn’t have even noticed … but my quest to become a better blogger led me to the seemingly forgotten lost art of rhetoric. And rhetoric is, simply put, the effective use of language … the art of writing or speaking persuasively.

It’s obvious Leo knows about rhetoric … as you’ll see in a moment.

There are many rhetoric techniques, or rhetorical devices, that can be used to make your reader pay more attention, give a greater understanding, make your content more memorable, in an interesting and entertaining way. These techniques, these rhetorical devices are the context of your content. That’s what turns “average run of the mill content” into “exceptional I can’t put this down content”!

Let’s analyze Leo’s most recent guest post, How Passion Can Transform Your Blog, to see how he uses rhetorical devices to make his content irresistible …

“Many of the problems that many bloggers face — not drawing enough readers, not knowing what to write about, not writing well enough, not finding the time to blog — can all be solved with one solution.”

Here, Leo uses anaphora, a rhetorical device, which is the repetition of the same word(s) … as in “not drawing”, “not knowing”, “not writing”, “not finding”.

“Passion is the exact opposite: it will infuse your writing with excitement, make it more interesting, compel people to read.”

Asyndeton, or what I like to call “don’t-use-a-conjunction-ton”, he omits the use of conjunctions.

“It's not the answer to all problems — you still need to be a decent writer, and share really useful information, and help people solve problems, and write great headlines.”

Leo uses the opposite of asyndeton … polysyndeton, or what I call “over-use-of-conjunction-ton”. He says, “and share”, “and help”, “and write”.

How does Leo write such great content?

One major reason is because he uses simple rhetorical devices to enhance and improve the effectiveness of his writing. The same rhetorical devices that you can use to write great content.

Here’s a killer free resource that lists 60 rhetorical devices. Check it out at http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm

Now for your homework: Commit to studying rhetoric and making it a part of your writing. Pick 3 rhetorical devices that you WILL use in your next blog post and put them in the comment area below.

Cheers to Writing Great Content!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Holy Grail to Writing Great Content - Rhetoric

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Posted: 17 Oct 2009 12:10 PM PDT

ProBlogger: Learn From My Mistake - Don’t Leave Money on the Table!

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 05:16 AM PDT

ProBlogger: Learn From My Mistake - Don’t Leave Money on the Table!

Learn From My Mistake - Don’t Leave Money on the Table!

Posted: 16 Oct 2009 08:08 AM PDT

Have you ever found that you’ve been leaving money on the table? It’s a frustrating feeling and one that many of us can relate to. I discovered that I’ve been doing it for the last few months - here’s my story.

I run Chitika Premium ad units on some parts of my blogs - particularly at my photography site on single pages. One ad unit that I’d had running for a while now was one that appeared above posts whenever anyone from the US arrives at my site from a search engine.

I like these ads because they don’t appear to regular readers arriving from RSS feeds, newsletters or other sites - just those people coming in from Google - PLUS the ads that show are contextual ads to the search that the person has just performed.

I’ve always found that the ads convert pretty well - but this week I realised that for months now they could have been converted ALOT better.

I made this realisation by making one simple change to one ad unit - here’s what happened to my earnings on that ad unit when I made the change.

Yep - the ad unit had been averaging around $37 a day - but in the few since making the change it’s earned around $108 a day on average - around 3 times as much!

Considering I’ve had the ad running for quite a few months now - I’ve been leaving money on the table.

OK before I tell you what change I made (and it’s so simple that I’ve been kicking myself for a week now) I want to really emphasise the take home message here - even though it is so very obviously - test your ad units!

Here’s the thing - the chitika ad that I did have in this ad position used to perform to the best of its ability. I’d previously tested it and made sure it was working well. However Chitika added a new option to their premium ads - an option that I ignored. In actual fact someone from Chitika told me to make this change months back - I got distracted (life’s busy) and never got around to doing it.

While I feel pretty stupid and am completely aware that I’ve cost myself thousands by not making this change earlier - I know I’m not alone.

Many bloggers are in the same boat. We put ads on our blogs, get them to a point where we think they’re well optimised and then move on to work on other aspects of our blog without ever coming back to make sure things are still performing at their highest potential. Ad networks change their offerings, add features and sometimes blogs just change and things that used to work well no longer do.

The lesson here is to revisit your ad units and to test if there might be someway to increase their performance. You might not see the tweaks you make bring in $70 a day like my one did - but over time the small tweaks add up!

What was the change I made?

The change was so simple - I just made the Chitika ad unit bigger. The ad unit I used to have on there was a 468×180 pixel sized ad. The new one is a 550×250 pixel ad unit. It’s considerably wider (it now takes up almost the whole width of my content area) and a little deeper.

It does push the content down the page a little but as it’s only impacting search refferal traffic and the content is still above the fold user experience isn’t impacted that much - but the ad performance is so much better (with 3-4 times the click through rate depending upon the day).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Learn From My Mistake - Don’t Leave Money on the Table!

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reBlog from Bangambiki: The Debt Killer

2009-10-18T07:32:00.001-07:00

I found this fascinating quote today:

Clickbank is a well-known, well run company that allows anyone to sell digital products online. All the products sold on Clickbank must provide instant access to purchases, so people can get their purchase within seconds of making the purchase. Their business model has allowed some well known personalities to become wealthy online, simply by selling a product on Clickbank.But did you know that Clickbank is home to one of the biggest running scams of all time? The biggest scam on Clickbank works using a bait and switch method.Here's how it works: Someone comes up with a way to make money online, but for one reason or another, they don't keep it to themselves and continue making money. What they do instead is create an information product that describes (hopefully) the method they used to make money online, and they list their product online using Clickbank, where thousands of affiliates can promote it for them.Then thousands of people buy the money making guide, try the method, and get some limited success. Usually, they don't make the money they had hoped for, and may wonder if they did something wrong.Sound familiar? What went wrong? Was the money making guide all a scam? In reality, it's a two-fold problem. First, the money making method probably wasn't really designed to make millions of dollars , but most likely does have some sort of ability to make some money.Second, no method of making money continues to work the same way once a million people know about it - the results get diluted.So, the ideas are not infinitly scalable, and the market for the money making scheme has a limit - a ceiling on the profits that can be made. When too many people are doing the same thing, this upper limit is reached quicker.So, why did this person who found a way to make money online decide to release his secrets, rather than just make money?It's because he could make a ton more money selling an information product, with a lot less work, than with any other type of make money systems.You see, the guy that releases a make money product on Clickbank is following the only reliable, proven money making system that is used by every online millionaire.If you wanted to make money, wouldn't you want to do what every online millionaire does? Did you know that there are sites that will show you the easy way to follow this proven system, even if you have no technical skills, and even if you have little money to get started? Look around, and you too can get started making consistent money online.Bangambiki, The Debt Killer, Oct 2009

You should read the whole article.

John Chow dot Com

2009-10-18T05:28:00.001-07:00

John Chow dot Com

Blogworld Expo 2009 – Ask The Experts
Blog World Expo – Internet Marketing for Smart People
Blogworld Expo 2009 – Taking Over IZEA
Blogworld Expo 2009 – Getting Buzzed by BuzzVoice
Blog World Expo 2009 – Where Is Market Leverage?

Blogworld Expo 2009 – Ask The Experts

Posted: 18 Oct 2009 12:35 AM PDT

Since I had so much fun taking over another company’s booth, Zac Johnson and I decided it would be a good idea to create our own “Ask The Experts” booth at Blogworld Expo Las Vegas. We found an empty table in the middle of the Blogworld show floor and took it over. The idea of our Ask The Experts booth was to answer any questions attendees may have about how to make money by blogging, or anything else for that matter.

Things started off kinda slow but really picked up once word got out that me and Zac were running an extremely profitable Ask The Expert booth. Here are some video highlights. Enjoy!

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Blog World Expo – Internet Marketing for Smart People

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 04:00 PM PDT

Here’s the video from the session call Internet Marketing for Smart People, which featured Darren Rowse, Brian Clark and Chris Brogan. I would have posted this two days ago but had uploading issues because of the size of the files. I first uploaded it to YouTube but it was rejected because the video was an hour long. It took two upload attempts before I got it on Vimeo.

Internet Marketing for Smart People is just that. The three panelist discuss Internet marketing methods they’ve employed to help build their business and how a smart person can take advantage of them. The video is an hour long so I recommend you grab a drink, bite to eat and pull up a chair. You’re going to be here for a while.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Blogworld Expo 2009 – Taking Over IZEA

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 12:57 PM PDT

I got to the Blogworld Expo show floor early today and discovered the IZEA booth completely empty. Turns out that Ted and Ashley thought the show floor opened at 11 on the last day. That was of course, not the case and as result, there was nobody manning their booth.

Not wanting IZEA to lose any potential business (and because it would make for a funny video), Joe Tech and I decided to take over their booth until Ted and Ashley showed up. I think we did a pretty good job convincing show attendees to join IZEA services like Sponsored Tweets. However, the booth next to us didn’t seem very happy about me stealing their customers by throwing IZEA t-shirts at people they were talking to.

Hopefully, IZEA appreciate what Joe and I did. Our bill to them is in the mail!

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Blogworld Expo 2009 – Getting Buzzed by BuzzVoice

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 12:00 PM PDT

Question – how do you get attention at Blogworld Expo if you’re a bootstrap start up and can’t afford the money and resources it takes to buy a Blogworld booth? Answer – you come to the show as an attendee and corner every big name blogger you can find and hope they will listen to your pitch. One attendee who did just that was BuzzVoice and their new iPhone app is sure to cause a lot of buzz in the blogsphere.

BuzzVoice will read out loud, the contents of your favorite blogs. The service automatically collects the news and blogs you wish you had time to read – and converts them to audio in real time – so you can listen to them on-the-go while you do other things. BuzzVoice works on your iPhone, iPod touch, regular iPods/MP3 players, and your computer. However, the iPhone app is definitely the coolest feature.

In addition to listening, you can view text, pictures and video, and share talking stories with friends via email, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social sites. Coming up next – a BuzzVoice widget for bloggers to install on their blogs that will read your contents to your readers.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Blog World Expo 2009 – Where Is Market Leverage?

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 08:00 AM PDT

In today’s Blogworld video episode, I try to find the Market Leverage booth. Market Leverage is a Blogworld sponsor and also a sponsor of my blog so I figure the least I can do is give them some press. However, finding the Market Leverage booth proved a lot harder than I thought. This wasn’t because the show floor at Blogworld Expo was huge like CES. It’s actually quite small and can be toured within 15 minutes.

Follow me now on my video journey to find that illusive Market Leverage booth. This video also allowed me to try out the “speed up” feature of iMovie 09. It’s pretty cool. I’ll have to use it more often.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

2009-10-17T12:09:00.001-07:00

Posted: 16 Oct 2009 12:07 PM PDT

ProBlogger: Usefulness - Principles of Successful Blogging #3

Posted: 16 Oct 2009 05:35 AM PDT

ProBlogger: Usefulness - Principles of Successful Blogging #3

Usefulness - Principles of Successful Blogging #3

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 06:02 AM PDT

Today we continue my series in principles of successful blogging by looking at something that is at the heart of my own philosophy of blogging (and business) - usefulness.

I’ve said it many times on ProBlogger but if your blog is not solving a problem or fulfilling a need or desire among your readers then you’re unlikely to see them return.

The needs, desires and problems you can be meeting need not be large ones - but if you’re connecting with people on these levels you’re being useful and this goes a long way towards making the type of impression on someone that draws them into a loyal relationship.

Better still - if you’re useful to someone they’re often going to tell others about it which is a big part of the growth of many successful blogs.

Examples of Useful Blogs

Being useful can take on many different forms. Lets looks at some examples of fairly well known blogs:

Mashable - gives people the latest news on Social Media but also teaches them how to use it.
Boing Boing - a blog that gives a laugh and looks at curious trends in technology
Lifehacker - helps people become more productive and be better at different technological pursuits
TMZ - feeds people’s desire to know the latest gossip and celeb news
Seth Godin - teaches on the topic of Marketing
I Can Has Cheezburger - gives people something to giggle about
Treehugger - resources people to live green
Seeking Alpha - gives financial news and advice
Zen Habits - helps people be more productive
CopyBlogger - helps bloggers write better

Now you might not read all of these blogs (and there are many thousands more that we could use as examples) - but they all have many thousands of devoted fans and daily readers, because they’re producing content that meets some kind of need, fulfils some kind of desire or solves some kind of problem.

The ways a blog can be useful are many - but here are some of the basics (taken partly from ProBlogger the Book):

Entertaining - increasingly blogs are being used as entertainment. People are going to them for laughs, for gossip and for fun conversation.
Educational - many successful blogs teach people to do or be something
Informational/News - these blogs might teach you any practical skills but they keep you up with the latest on a particular topic, location or trend
Thoughtful - some readers want a place where they can have their minds open to viewpoints.
Debate - some blogs serve as places for people to come together to have dialogue and debate around a topic.
Community - many blogs are build more on people having a sense of belonging and feeling that they’re a part of a community than the actual content.

Of course this list could go on and on and will vary from blog to blog with some meeting multiple needs and others just targeting one.

How is Your Blog Useful?

This is a question that I think bloggers would do well ponder before they start blogging as well as during the blogging process (in fact it’s probably a question to ask every day before you publish anything). Strive to meet a need and enhance people’s lives in some way and you’ll be taking a step closer to connecting with people in a way that will hopefully be part of a lasting relationship.

John Chow dot Com

2009-10-17T05:09:00.001-07:00

John Chow dot Com

Blogworld Expo – 2010 Lincoln MKT Test Drive
Blogworld Expo Boxing Match
My Blogworld Expo Interview with Yubby

Blogworld Expo – 2010 Lincoln MKT Test Drive

Posted: 16 Oct 2009 11:32 PM PDT

Not every company exhibiting at Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas is blogging related. As a matter of fact, the 2009 Blogworld featured an extremely diverse group of companies. They range from half hour meals to the Ford Motor Company. What’s an auto maker doing at a blogging show? For the same reason as every other exhibitor. Bloggers have money and Ford wants a piece.

Ford brought along a nice sampling of their vehicles for the attendees at Blogworld to test drive, including a Mustang GT and the new 2010 Lincoln MKT. This is a cross over based on the Ford Flex. The MKT features lots of high tech gadgets, like pedal shifters, push button engine start, voice command, automatic self parking and a 3.5L EcoBoost engine that produces 355 horsepower and 350 lb.-ft. of torque. That’s a lot of power for a cross over. Watch the video to see if we brought the car back in one piece.

Blogworld Expo Boxing Match

Posted: 16 Oct 2009 12:57 PM PDT

During our walk of the Blogworld Expo show floor, Zac Johnson and I came upon the eBay booth. This was a very big display with lots of old age arcade games. At first, I thought the games were free to play. Turns out you have to put in a quarter. All money raised from the games goes to charity.

In addition to the arcade, eBay had a bunch of Rock ‘Em, Sock “Em fighting robots. Those who are old enough to remember this game should have fond memories of it. I decided to challenge Zac to a Rock “Em, Sock ‘Em Super Affiliate boxing match. Watch to the video to see who won.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

My Blogworld Expo Interview with Yubby

Posted: 16 Oct 2009 10:07 AM PDT

Here’s a quick interview I did with Vincent Everts of Yubby on the first day of Blogworld Expo 2009. Yubby is a free service that lets you search video from 30 popular sites (like youtube, vimeo, etc.), easily collect them and publish them anywhere.

Yubby is a media partner of Blogworld Expo and help Blogworld manage all the different videos which are published on and around the event. One of the things they did for Blogworld is aggregate thousands of videos into channels for the speakers. This results in a monster Yubby widget which you can find on the Blogworld Expo homepage. Just click on a speaker’s photo and you can view all his videos.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

2009-10-16T12:04:00.001-07:00

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 12:07 PM PDT

ProBlogger: The #1 Reason My Blogging Grew Into a Business

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 05:23 AM PDT

ProBlogger: The #1 Reason My Blogging Grew Into a Business

The #1 Reason My Blogging Grew Into a Business

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 06:02 AM PDT

Have you ever had a moment in your life where everything changed?

You might not have known it at the time - but the moment was defining, it changed the course of some area of your life in a way that turned things upside down.

I had one of those course changing moments early in my blogging. It was a moment that resulted in my blogging moving from being a hobby that generated a nice bit of secondary income into a full time business.

It was a moment that at the time didn’t feel life changing - but it was.

The funny thing about this moment is that it wasn’t a discovery of some secret way to make money blogging, it wasn’t the day I stated one of my blogs… in fact it was a moment that didn’t immediately lead to any particular change on my blogs - because it was largely something that happened in my mind - a paradigm shifting moment.

It all started with 9 words from my wife (V)

‘You’ve got 6 months to make blogging full time.’

She then told me that if I didn’t get it to this kind of level I’d have to get a ‘real job’.

Up until this point I’d been talking about how blogging could one day provide us with a full time income. I’d been showing her the growth of the earnings from the blogs so far and projecting forward to what they might be in the future if things kept going.

I’d been on about it for months and things were going OK - the earnings graphs I kept showing her were trending up - I could see the possibility of one day being a full time blogger.

But I’d been talking a lot…. dreaming a lot…. creating a lot of pretty graphs…. and not really DOING a lot.

I didn’t really see it (I was too close and too caught up in my dreams) but V knew it and so she set me an ultimatum - a deadline that changed my thinking and more importantly led to me changing the way I went about my blogging.

In the moments after V’s ultimatum I had a realization that while I dreamed that one day my blogging would become a business that I’d been treating my blogging like a hobby.

I knew that if I were to succeed in going full time in the next six months that that had to change. I needed to start looking at my blogging as a business now - even though it was only earning a day or two a week’s income.

That moment changed everything.

That was the day I….

started putting serious time aside for blogging
became more focused upon my core tasks of creating content
wasted less time on distractions
became more strategic in my thinking and set myself goals to work towards
began to look for new income streams - beyond AdSense
started hustling for advertisers - ringing up businesses in my niche and pitching my blog to them
began to seek out guest writing opportunities on other blogs and even in main stream media
started setting myself deadlines for posting a certain number of posts a day and developed an editorial calendar
I started networking more with other bloggers
began to invest more time and even money into my learning of different aspects of blogging
started to look for a business coach who could teach me how to look at what I do as a business instead of a hobby

That day began the process for me of looking at what I do as a business.

While not a lot changed on my blogs that day - the impact over the last 4-5 years has been significant. I’ve not looked back and many of the things I changed back then have become patterns and a natural part of my blogging work flow.

The #1 reason my blogging grew into a business was that I began to treat it as one.

Tomorrow I want to share a free opportunity with you that I think will help many of us as bloggers to make this mind shift. You see many of us are stuck in the mindset of looking at what we do as a ‘hobby’ and need to make a shift into looking at things more as a business person.

Update: due to unforeseen circumstances I’ve pulled tomorrow’s post. I was going to promote something that I thought fit the bill but on further investigation - it doesn’t. My sincere apologies but I don’t want to promote something that doesn’t fit with my ethos.

However I do recommend people take this idea of learning how to build a successful business seriously. I did this through finding a business coach, reading books and networking with business owners (offline and online).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The #1 Reason My Blogging Grew Into a Business

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Quick Online Tips

2009-10-16T11:04:00.001-07:00

Quick Online Tips

Amazon Launches Same Day Delivery in Seven US Cities

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 11:40 AM PDT

Amazon.com has launched "Local Express Delivery," a new shipping option that provides same-day delivery in seven US cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Seattle and Washington D.C. This is really exciting news as this will speed up delivery times and people might actually like to buy online rather than go and buy the products from the shopping mall or local shops.

Same day local delivery cut-off times are now on each product's detail page. Here is a overview of how late you can order for same day delivery:

New York City – Order as late as 10 a.m.
Philadelphia – Order as late as 10 a.m.
Boston – Order as late as 10:30 a.m.
Washington D.C. – Order as late as 10:30 a.m.
Baltimore – Order as late as 10:30 a.m.
Las Vegas – Order as late as 11 a.m.
Seattle – Order as late as 1 p.m.

Of course Local Express Delivery does not work on weekends and no P.O. boxes or APO, FPO, or DPO allowed. Items may be delivered up until 8PM local time and are also eligible for Guaranteed Accelerated Delivery and charged extra. They say the service will be extended to Chicago, Indianapolis and Phoenix in the coming months.

Original article: Amazon Launches Same Day Delivery in Seven US Cities
Copyright 2009. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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How to Transfer Domain Name to New Registrar

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 11:17 AM PDT

Guest Article By S.Pradeep Kumar
In this article I’m going to explain the steps involved to transfer domain name from one registrar to another. If you have couple of domain names, it is better to keep all of them in a single registrar. Below mentioned steps are common and can be applied to all the top domain registrars.

1. Purchase Domain Transfer At The Your New Registrar
Normally if you purchase a domain transfer, your new registrar will let you to keep all the time remaining on your existing registration and provide One-Year free extension. After the purchase of domain transfer, your domain at the new registrar will require an Authorization Code. Your new registrar will send an email to you which contains “Transaction ID” and “Security Code”.

2. Request Authorization Code At Current Registrar
Login to your current registrar account and request for Authorization Code. But remember you should have turned off the domain protection or your domain should be unlocked before requesting the authorization code from the current registrar.

3. Authorization Code Received From Current Registrar
You will receive an email from current registrar with “Authorization Code”. Now you can begin the domain transfer from the new registrar using the authorization code. Login to your new registrar and begin the transfer process. Then the new registrar will display the status as "Authorization Required" and choose " Begin Transfer Authorization"(Recommended).

Now enter the authorization code that you received from the current registrar through mail and complete the process. After completing this step, the status will be displayed as "Pending Current Registrar approval" and choose "Accept transfer at current registrar" (Recommended).

4. Email Notification From Current Registrar
After completing all these steps, you will receive an email from your current registrar confirming your transfer request. You don't need to take any action if you want to accept the transfer. If you wish to cancel the transfer, follow the link provided in the email.

You will receive an email like this :

We received notification on November, 2006 5:11:27 PM EDT that you have requested to transfer to another domain name registrar. If you would like to proceed with this transfer you do not need to respond to this message…..

…..If we do not hear from you by November 10, 2008 5:11:27 PM EDT, this transfer will proceed. We are committed to providing you with the solutions, services, and support to help you succeed online. We hope to continue serving you in the future.

5. Domain Transfer Completed To New Registrar
You will get a confirmation email from your new registrar received approximately four days after initiating the transfer at the current registrar. Remember that the current registrar has up to 5 days to release the transfer of the domain.

Have you ever transferred a domain name to a new registrar? If so, please share your experience here.

This guest article was written by S.Pradeep Kumar, a technical blogger and writer specializing in blogging tips, product reviews and tutorials. You can also write a guest article and share your tips and tricks.

Original article: How to Transfer Domain Name to New Registrar
Copyright 2009. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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John Chow dot Com

2009-10-16T05:08:00.001-07:00

John Chow dot Com

Blogworld Expo 2009 – Day 1 Video

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 11:43 PM PDT

Blogworld Expo opened today in Las Vegas with tons of keynotes and conference sessions. With over 300 speakers, attendees had a ton of choices on who and what session they want to sit in on. I attended the Internet Marketing for Smart People session with Darren Rowse, Brain Clark and Chris Brogan. I videoed the entire session and will be uploading it to Vimeo so you can check it out.

The below video gives you a taste of the first day of Blogworld. Things will really pick up tomorrow as the show floor will open. If you see me on the show floor, make sure to say hi. My blogworld session with Darren Rowse and Zac Johnson is on Saturday at 3PM, room 233. I hope to see you there!

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

How To Start a Money Making Membership Site – Part 4

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 09:18 AM PDT

Did you read lesson 1, lesson 2 and lesson 3 completely and downloaded the free membership software (SiteManPro) and installed your FTM site yet? If not, then go back and do that first. There is no point in continuing if you have not acted on the previous lessons yet. So, please go back and read and act on those lessons first.

Still here? OK, I assume that you have done everything that I asked you to do so far in this coaching. Let's dive into our next important lesson…

Creating a Stream of Content

As the owner of an FTM site, content is your bread and butter. So long as you keep offering valuable information to your subscribers, they will happily keep handing over their hard-earned cash to you, month after month. But as the quality of your work starts to drop, so, too, will your earnings.

Creating a steady, ongoing stream of content for your site is no small task – but this is the one thing that you absolutely need to get 100% right or you can forget all about that dream of residual income.

The Importance of Planning

At the very beginning of this series, in the first lesson, I likened FTM sites to an online university degree, in that they teach you a complete content package over a defined period of time.

And as any graduate of a decent university will tell you, the key to progressing through your studies is to have a planned curriculum that gradually progresses from introductory-level courses all the way to expert classes and steadily builds and expands upon the content of previous courses.

In this respect, FTM sites are very similar – a good FTM site will cover beginner-level material first and gradually advance to more challenging topics, culminating in a complete package at the end of the course.

This makes content planning an element of paramount importance. You don't want to jump the gun and skip right ahead to advanced stuff – after all, you have to account for all the beginners in your audience. But at the same time, you cannot afford to be seen milling about in the same place for too long and covering the same content over and over in different words – doing so will instantly convince your subscribers that you've run out of content and that now you're simply regurgitating what you already know in a last-ditch effort to stop them from unsubscribing.

Creating an Effective Content Plan

The first step to planning your content is to define the duration of your course. Put the "fixed" into "fixed-term membership" – will your site last 12 months, 6 months or 3?

Next, you need to define your mission statement – at the end of the course, what do you want your subscribers to know and be able to do? Normally, this question should already be answered somewhere in your sales letter (after all, if you don't know what you're selling, you're in serious trouble.

For example, if I had to write a mission statement for this coaching series, it would be something like this:

"To provide new marketers with all the required tools and knowledge to set up, market, monetize and manage their FTM site."

The mission statement already tells us quite a few things:

This coaching is aimed at beginner marketers who have never built an FTM site before
This coaching seeks to cover the following topics:

Technical set-up
Marketing and promotion
Monetization techniques
Customer management methodologies

Once you have defined your mission statement, you will already have an outline of content that you need to cover, as exemplified by the bullet points above. For example, if you run an FTM site on underwater basket weaving (yes, I love this crazy example), here are some of the areas you might want to cover:

Basket weaving techniques
Tools for weaving a basket
Underwater survival techniques (you don't want your customers to drown and stop paying you, do you?)

As soon as you've defined the sub-topics that you need to discuss – think of them as core classes that constitute mandatory elements of your curriculum – you then need to define the order of precedence. Remember, ideally your lessons should build upon each other, which means that you need to provide a solid foundation first and then gradually elaborate upon it.

Once again, let's take this course as an example. The first lesson discusses the basics of FTM sites – because if you've never worked with one before, then it's probably the first thing you'll want to know. The next lesson discusses the science of picking the right niche – because you can't really set anything up until you've chosen a market for it.

The next lesson discusses the technical set-up – because once you've picked the market, what you'll probably want to know is how to set everything up. The course then elaborates on creating content for the site (because once the technical side has been taken care of, you'll want to have some content before you market it).

Can you see the logic behind it? When your content delivery is spread over a 12-month period, it is vitally important that it is structured in a way that subscribers can easily follow. After all, what are the odds that your customers will want to know how to monetize their site when they haven't got the foggiest idea how to set the whole thing up in the first place?

Finally, once you have decided upon a delivery plan for your content, then – and only then, it's time to get writing. When crafting your content, keep the following in mind – you want to have a steady stream of content on a weekly basis, as opposed to spikes that happen once a month. 12 pages of lessons delivered every week creates a lot more perceived value than a 48-page mammoth class sent out at the end of each month.

As such, do not hesitate to break your content down into easily digestible chunks. Aim for small weekly morsels of information rather than a mammoth meal every thirty days. Not only will you create additional perceived value, but you will also keep your customers engaged by giving them something new to do every week.

This, in fact, is one of the dangers of monthly delivery plans – all the excitement and enthusiasm will start to wane after the first few days. Before too long, your customers will start giving up on what they want to accomplish through their membership – and that means lost profits for you. A weekly stream of content creates the perception of activity and does not give your subscribers time to lose that spark of enthusiasm they get after each content delivery.

Writing Compelling Lessons

Lessons lie at the heart of your FTM site – they are the form in which you deliver value to your subscribers. So if there's only one thing you were to get right about your FTM site, make sure that well-written, compelling, effective lessons is it!

The good news is – you can create interesting content, even if you are not a professional writer (I will cover a number of outsourcing strategies later in this chapter). Bottom line is, people are paying you money for information, not the quality of your writing – nobody cares that you're not Charles Dickens so long as you can get the point across.

The single most important thing to remember about FTM lessons is that they need to be action-oriented. Every new weekly update you provide must give your readers steps that they need to take over the course of the week. Theoretical material is fine, but it should never constitute the majority of a lesson's content (if you desperately feel the need to cover the theoretical basics, you'd be better served by offering it as separate bonus material – more on that later).

Here's a simple litmus test to determine whether your lesson is action-oriented or not – after you've written it, ask yourself: upon reading this information, will the subscriber discover what steps they need to take next? Or will they understand why they should do things in a certain way? If the answer is the latter, then your lesson is not action-oriented enough and it's time to get back to the drawing board.

There is a very simple reason for this seemingly undue emphasis on action – if you're seeking to retain your members for the entire duration of the course, it is vitally important to keep them as engaged as possible. Your customers are far less likely to unsubscribe if every single week they have new steps to take, new techniques to implement and new strategies to follow. Giving concrete, solid, actionable information to your subscribers increases perceived value, improves customer engagement and lowers unsubscribe rates.

Since each of your lessons is unlikely to be longer than 10-15 pages, it is vitally important that you get to the point as quickly as possible and don't waste time beating around the bush. For this reason, I suggest you always start your lesson with a page-long introductory section, where you explain to your readers what they're about to learn.

On this note, let me add the following – keep the content of your lesson laser-focused on one topic. Do not make the mistake of covering additional content simply because you feel it is relevant – even if it is, you're better off using this idea for future lessons rather than trying to cram all of it into one.

Developing Supplementary Content

Everyone loves free stuff. No, really – if you're paying for something and you get something else on top of that for free, you will usually appreciate the gesture – even if the bonus material is little more than a 10-page handout covering major IM theories or a quick progress checklist related to the material provided during the course.

While some may think of supplementary content as optional, I strongly encourage you to make it a mandatory element of your FTM site. The reason – bonus material often massively increases the perceived value of your service, without major investments or expenses on your part. It's a great way to show your subscribers that you care – and that you're willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to overdeliver whenever possible.

Better still, you don't have to do it regularly (since no one expects you to hand out free bonuses in the first place) – but writing up a quick free report once a month can do wonders for customer relations.

Here are some ideas on the type of bonus content you can provide:

PLR Articles

By far, this is the easiest method. If you've got it in you to write a whole 12-month course on a specific topic, then you certainly have the knowledge and the writing skill to bang out 10 quick, effective articles for your members (see the section on Article Marketing for more information on crafting winning articles that sell).

Most of your members are bound to appreciate the gesture, since it saves them the trouble of writing these articles yourself. Better still, they're unlikely to take you more than a few hours to write – and if you really don't feel inclined to do it yourself, you can easily hire a writer to get them done for you for only $5 a piece (check the Warrior Forum – the place is brimming with aspiring writers who will happily create quality content at very affordable rates).

Theoretical Frameworks

As mentioned earlier in this series, your lessons should be action-oriented. While theories certainly have their place in your course, they should never account for the majority of your lesson content.

This, as suggested previously, makes them a fantastic topic to discuss at length in your bonus content. Since bonus material is, by definition, optional, no one will fault you for spending too much time on theoretical information and not enough on hands-on material. Better still, you can easily relate it to the materials covered so far!

Checklists

For some strange reason, everyone loves checklists – and while I personally have never seen much value in them, I can understand how someone would find them helpful for organizing their thoughts and keeping track of their progress.

Since you are offering a lesson-based FTM, relevant checklists can be remarkably easy to create. Simply take the content of last month's lessons, consider what steps subscribers are expected to take to implement it, write them down in MS Word, put it into PDF and voila – you've created a valuable bonus for your readers in about 20 minutes!

PLR Reports

PLR reports are a great tool for encouraging opt-ins to a mailing list. However, speaking from experience, I often find writing them to be even more frustrating that the main book.

This makes PLR reports a great offer for your subscribers. As usual, you can either outsource them or write them yourself. A report shouldn't be more than 7-15 pages long (and if you're feeling particularly generous, you can even hire someone to design an attractive e-cover for it). Such reports provide great value to your subscribers at relatively low cost to you.

SIDENOTE: Let me give you a nice resource where you can pick such plr products. In fact, this is the new marketplace that I started in collaboration with top authors and developers.

Go to http://www.NicheRat.com. Here, we're building a marketplace of writers, authors, developers and coders who will create top quality content and products for people like you. You can take these products and use them to create your own products or you can simply use them as is and sell. The biggest advantage of this niche products marketplace is that every product is 100% original and is not going to be available elsewhere. And that means top quality product.

Currently, there is only handful of products, so if you do not find what you are looking for, just enter your email address on the home page and bookmark that site. We inform all subscribers every time we publish a new product.

Outsourcing Strategies

Let's face it – sooner or later, you will find yourself with better things to do than write content on a weekly basis. Maybe you want to spend some time in the Caribbean enjoying the hard-earned profits from your FTM site, or maybe you're just feeling burnt out after months and months of non-stop writing.

Luckily, I don't think you need me to tell you that the Internet is full of inexpensive outsourcing options. Here are some to get you started:

E-Lance
Rent a Coder
Warrior Forum
SitePoint Marketplace
Digital Point Forums

E-Lance and Rent a Coder are great for finding remarkably inexpensive writers. Because these sites operate on a bidding system where independent contractors bid on a project you post, a race to the bottom is inevitable. As a buyer, you will realize enormous savings simply by allowing interested contractors to outbid each other and offer the lowest price possible just to get your project.

Unfortunately, the old saying that you get what you pay for is all too relevant in these situations. Very often, you will find writers willing to produce 500 word articles for $1-2 each; in most cases, however, the quality of the end result will be horrific. It is not uncommon to receive work that is either not original and/or contains an overwhelming amount of grammar mistakes. In a lot of cases, these articles will be written by non-native speakers of English – and while I haven't got a problem with that as such, it does become an issue when their limited command of English impacts the quality of the final product.

In contrast, Warrior Forum, SitePoint Marketplace and Digital Point all offer better quality writers – but at premium prices. Of these three, Digital Point offers the cheapest options (although quality often suffers as well).

Warrior Forum is, by far, the best place to look for writers and service providers – while you will pay premium price, you can't beat the quality that comes with it. Considering how much money your site earns you every month, investing an extra $50 in a quality writer can be well worth it (remember, this content will be read by your paying customers!)

One other thing you need to keep in mind – never outsource urgent content (for example, if you haven't got anything written for next week's mailing, which is due in a few days). Things happen – writers disappear, submit low-quality content or produce work that's different from what you expected. But the simple truth is, your members don't care that you're having outsourcing issues – they paid for weekly content, and weekly content they expect, by hook or by crook. So if you find yourself with a looming deadline, grab a mug of coffee and get writing – it's better to spend a night creating winning content for your customers than invent excuses for not delivering information that your clients have paid for.

Furthermore, if you decide to play the outsourcing game, there is one thing you absolutely need to invest into – Copyscape.com. You never know when your writer decides to take a few shortcuts here and there – until, that is, you find yourself reading a cease & desist letter and facing a potential lawsuit for copyright infringement. Always use Copyscape to ensure that the content your ghostwriter submits is original – it's pretty affordable, especially considering how much headache and legal fees it can save you in the long run.

Hiring a Ghostwriter

When hiring a ghostwriter, it is vitally important that they have the right experience for the job. Simply because they call themselves a writer doesn't mean that they have what it takes to write, say, an e-book. If you need an article writer, ask them if they have any article writing experience and ask for references and testimonials; if you need a report writer, do the same.

For instance, I once hired a ghostwriter for a 40-page e-book. The person in question had works published in the offline world, was a poet and generally seemed like a wise investment.

Or so I thought. The final product was a book that was suited for offline publication, but not online distribution. It consisted of elaborate flowery prose, paragraphs that spanned pages and a multitude of ideas that, while briefly touched upon, were never properly discussed. In short, it was a disaster of monumental proportions – which is how I learned the painful lesson that just because someone can write doesn't necessarily mean that they can produce quality online content.

Finally, when working with a ghostwriter, I find it helpful to be as specific as possible in terms of what I want the final project to look like. When I hire a ghostwriter, I usually provide them with a PDF file specifying the desired outline, formatting, typeface, font size and page count. Never make the mistake of simply asking for X number of pages – for all you know, you'll end up with 40 pages in Verdana 14pt double-spaced (and with enormous margins as well!) If you want to control the length of the final product, ask for a specific word count instead.

With that said, if you're working with a quality ghostwriter, it sometimes pays to let them have a bit of creative freedom. In fact, whenever I provide an outline to one of my writers, I always do it with the caveat that this is simply the content I would like to see included and that they are free to add their own research to it, so long as they cover everything specified in the outline.

Leveraging Feedback

As you will discover later in this coaching, providing too many avenues for two-way communication with your customers can actually be detrimental both to your profits and to your long-term customer relationship management efforts.

With that said, whenever you find yourself hard-pressed for new content, your existing subscribers are often one of the best sources of inspiration and ideas you will ever find.

In the final analysis, your site is all about creating value for your subscribers. Speaking from experience, however, I can tell you that, very often, it's very difficult to step back and spot gaping holes in your content. Sometimes, you need an extra pair of eyes to take a good, hard look at what you're offering and see where your content falls short.

And what better pair of eyes can you think of than people who have paid to access this information in the first place? Potentially, they're your fiercest critics – and also your single biggest source of new ideas.

This is why I strongly recommend actively soliciting feedback from your existing subscribers. The simplest way to do it is to create a straightforward web form on your site and ask subscribers to use it if they have any suggestions on what they would like you to cover throughout the course.

Alternatively, if you don't want to handle all the technicalities of setting up HTML-based pages, you can simply ask your subscribers to e-mail you with their suggestions. This, however, has the disadvantage of creating expectations of two-way communication (we will cover this in the "Coaching" section later in this course).

Furthermore, if you decide to offer a coaching service – as you most definitely should! – a great way to come up with new content ideas is to simply see what problems your customers are having and what questions they're asking you. If you spot an issue that keeps coming up repeatedly, or a question that's so out of the box that you had never thought of addressing it until you were confronted with it, then you pretty much have your content idea there and then.

Better still, since you're providing a coaching service, you've probably already offered a solution to this problem. In other words, you've done all the research and created all the content you need to turn to produce a full-fledged lesson – now all you have to do is package it as a PDF file and list it for your subscribers to download!

This concludes this week's lesson.

Again, if you haven't read lesson 1, lesson 2 and lesson 3 , downloaded the SiteManPro and installed your FTM site yet, then go back and do that first. There is no point in continuing if you have not acted on the previous lessons yet. So, please go back and read them and act on those lessons.

SIDENOTE: Do not be a lazy person. Membership sites are lot of fun, plus lot of money. I have just launched my new membership site (but this time, not a FTM) at SiteJerk where I am providing written and video tutorials for web masters and small business owners. Since I have an extensive experience in using web based software, developing them, coding, programming, etc I am enjoying writing for SiteJerk. In other words, I am a living proof of everything I am teaching this coaching series. I just love membership sites.

As a launch special, first 500 members can sign up for just $4.99/mo. Go check it out. You will never want to cancel your subscription, and you will learn so many new technicalities in setting up a website.

Next Week – Marketing Your FTM Site

As an Internet Marketer, there is one simple truth that I am sure you already know – no matter how expertly written your copy is, how attractive your graphics are and how incredibly valuable your content is, none of this matters if you aren't putting it in front of the right eyeballs.

This lesson, then, seeks to address this very issue. By the time you are done reading it, you will know all there is it to know about driving targeted traffic to your site and getting your first few subscribers.

And, better still, we are going to break with tradition here and start our examination of traffic methods by discussing a method that most beginner marketers are loathe to use…

Stay tuned!!

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Re; I have medical lists

2009-10-16T00:16:00.000-07:00

Currently Practicing Medical Doctors in the US

788,280 in total <> 17,461 emails

Many popular specialties like Emergency Medicine, Plastic Surgery, OBGYN, Oncology, Pediatrics and more

Can easily be sorted by 16 different fields

This week only you pay only: $399

### Take all 4 items below for F REE when you order ###

+ Contact List of US Pharma Companies
47,000 names and emails of the major positions

+ Complete Database of Hospitals in the US
complete contact information for CEO's, CFO's, Directors and more - over 23,000 listings in total for more than 7,000 hospitals in the USA

+ Extensive Contact List of Dentists in the US
Practically every dentist in the US is listed here

+ Database of US Chiropractors
Complete data for all chiropractors in the US (a $250 value)

email to: Harvey@freshandnewdata.info

Offer ENDS TODAY

By emailing exit@freshandnewdata.info you will have your email taken off

John Chow dot Com

2009-10-15T05:08:00.001-07:00

John Chow dot Com

8 KILLER Tips on Getting The Most Out of a Conference

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 06:18 PM PDT

If you're like me, you attend 15-20 conferences a year. That's a lot of money and time invested, even if the conference pass is comped because you're speaking. So here's how to make sure you're growing your knowledge, your network, and your business while there:

Carry PLENTY of business cards: Bring at least 100 with you.—pre-packed in your luggage. Your objective is not to randomly hand them out, but give them out to people who ask for your card. I like to keep my cards in my left pocket and other people's cards in my right pocket—that way I don't get them mixed up.

Keep a pen always with you: The pen you'll have to write down notes on the backs of business cards. When you get back to the hotel at night, you're not going to remember what you talked about with each person, so write down a few words about them on the backs of each business card WHILE you're still talking to them. If anything, that will show the other person respect—that you care what they have to say. That will help you write your follow-up email later that night.

Keep a mini-notebook with you: The tiny 3 inch size ones that fit in your pocket do just fine. You're not going to remember all those awesome tips that you learned. I am amazed at how many attendees aren't taking notes during sessions. You're paying money, so pay attention! Well, all the more advantage for us folks who are paying attention and writing things down.

Don't just hang out with friends: Not saying to be anti-social—just make sure that you're spending time meeting new people. Perhaps you can ask friends to introduce you to other people in their network. How many times have you seen 6 people from the same company hang out together—doing everything together? Perhaps they're too shy to reach out. Sit at different tables, attend different sessions—then get back together at night to compare notes.

Have a clear mission: Can you state in 10 seconds or less what you're good at and also what you are looking for? No, then you're an amoeba floating aimlessly in the pond—or a jellyfish, for folks who didn't remember anything from high school biology. If you're clear about what you have skills in, then people will seek you out for that skill. Likewise, when you can clearly tell them what you want, they can introduce you to other people who have that skill or can hook you up. Don't just say you're an affiliate or some vague term. Worse, don't say that you do it all. For BlitzLocal, I tell folks that we do Facebook advertising and Local advertising, since both overlap nicely. Being clear on what we're about makes it easier to stand out.

Make a FEW strong connections: Don't be the networking idiot that desperately passes their cards around to as many people as possible—only to find them go in the garbage when nobody is looking. At each conference, try to make one or two strong connections with folks who you see as valuable long-term business partners. It's okay to meet a lot of people, but if you can focus on a couple key folks—maybe even just ONE good connection, that will make your time worth it. That's also a sign of respect.

Carry some schwag: Do you have some stickers, pens, T-shirts, or other things you can share? I like to carry around a bunch of stuff in my backpack and pull it out for folks who I think are important enough to deserve it. For $100 you can get 100 pens or 500 stickers. Careful not to be overly self-promotional.

1) Follow up that same day: That's the most important tip, yet so few people actually do it. You're tired at the end of the day, you've got emails to respond to, you've got to get up early the next morning, yadda, yadda, yadda—the excuses go on and on. Don't pretend that you'll get around to it tomorrow. You'll be even busier the next day, since a whole bunch of new things and follow-up items will now be in your list. Do it that night while things are still fresh in your head.

This post was guest blog by Dennis Yu.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

See You At Blog World Expo 2009!

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 01:00 PM PDT

Hey everyone! I’m off to Las Vegas for Blog World Expo. I’m looking forward to meeting up with old friends and new ones. If you see me on the show floor (or anywhere in Las Vegas) make sure you say hi! I would love to meet you.

Blog World Expo features over 300 conference speakers and five big parties. I didn’t RSVP to a single party because I want to see if I can get in just by saying, “I’m John Chow, damn it!” It nothing else, it should make for a funny video.

I will be speaking on a super panel with Darren Rowse and Zac Johnson. We’ll be do live site reviews. If you have a blog and want us to help you improve it, then you’ll want to swing by room 233 on Saturday, Oct. 17 from 3PM to 4PM. The session is open to full access and weekend pass holders. If last year’s super panel was any indication, we’re going to have a packed house.

Blog World doesn’t officially start until tomorrow. If you’re in Vegas already and want to hook up, give me a shout on Twitter. I’m staying at the Renaissance, right next to the Blog World convention center.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

2009-10-14T13:06:00.001-07:00

Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

Technorati Changes From A Users Perspective
Technorati Changes From An Expert Perspective
What Is Quansite?

Technorati Changes From A Users Perspective

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 05:57 AM PDT

You didn’t think I would leave it at just my expert perspective on the Technorati changes did you?

As with my previous post I want to make clear that it is somewhat of a dilemma writing about Technorati, as I provide some infrequent consultation to Blogcatalog in some ways one of their competitors.

However as well as providing an expert’s overview of Technorati I have always been an avid user, so this is Technorati from a purely user’s perspective.

Technorati Favorites Are Gone

The Technorati Top 100 by number of favorites has gone, along with all the interfaces for managing and reading favorites.

Technorati Blog Reactions Are Gone

You used to be able to use Technorati to monitor a story, following links to related posts.

Technorati no longer has a page containing a large snippet of your content along with the related links to that content.

As a user of Technorati that is a major loss, and it was this relationship between posts that used to make technorati a core component of the WordPress interface.

This is a feature competition with Google has finally killed, but Google’s Blogsearch currently sucks, picking up comments even with nofollow, sidebar links etc. Monitoring links through Google is time consuming because of the noise.

Technorati Comments

You can now leave friendly comments on the profiles of the blogs you love, all through JS Kit (which means the blog owner has no way to moderate, just link Google Sidewiki)

Here is one I left on the Techcrunch profile pointing this out earlier

Technorati Articles

You can now write full articles to post on Technorati such as this one (chosen at random)

I think you are meant to reach these articles through the Technorati “People” navigation which isn’t currently working, but there are links to related articles at the bottom of Directory pages.

Technorati Directory

Top blogs in a small collection of topics plus the global “headline” Technorati top 1000

Humans are going to have difficulty navigating through more than a few pages, let alone search engines

You are really going to have to use blog based tags to find blogs similar to your own. Make sure you set them correctly for your own blogs.

Overall

Many of the features that were broken no longer exist, and the idea of reactions going away forever is sad. Hopefully it is a feature that will return.
I am not sure whether commenting will enhance the site – I know that contact systems on Mybloglog and Blogcatalog are prone to spam which a site owner can moderate. I can’t understand why they use JS-Kit.

Update

Technorati have now posted a list of changes from their perspective highlighting things like the ranked directories (though they have always had ranked tags)

There are even some slightly more technical features I didn’t spot as missing, but will eventually come back

What's gone for now?
With six years of history behind us, we have also discovered what's important and not important in our offerings. As such, some things will go away permanently, and others will return later with enhanced utility that reflects the new features of the site. Here's what's coming back shortly after launch:
* Technorati Charts and API: both will be returning later
* Widgets – For those sites with widgets on their sites, there's no need to worry. Some widgets will continue to serve as they have in the past, and some that utilized legacy Technorati technology will either change slightly or temporarily disappear without any affect on web pages. Technorati will be developing some exciting new widgets that match the new features in the site.
* s.technorati.com is still there, but it's moved to the main site at Technorati.com/search
* Watchlists are gone
* Some (but not all) RSS feeds.

They really should remove the noindex/nofollow from their blog header

Tags: technorati, Technorati Favorites

Technorati Changes From An Expert Perspective

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 04:26 AM PDT

I am always in 2 minds to write anything about Technorati but ultimately the changes to the site today are extremely significant, and I had to balance that against my ability to offer suitable commentary.

This post covers the more technical changes to Technorati – I have also now posted about the changes to Technorati from a users perspective

Since I started advising Blogcatalog a little in private, writing about Technorati, Mybloglog or any other blog directory or search engine in some ways would be like writing about the competition. Celebrating the great things a competitor does would probably be acceptable, whereas writing something negative would be “dissing the competition”
This blog has always had in-depth coverage of blog search, blog social networks and blog related SEO, especially in regards to things like the benefits of semantic markup and tagging. Not writing something would leave a huge whole in my content and a disservice to my audience.

My choice is to write something, but understand that some might look on what I write as being a little biased. In my own mind I am a Technorati fan, so hopefully that will temper my reactions to some features.

I need to qualify the title of this post – I have spent countless days over the last 2-3 years studying changes the user interface, plus the internal and external SEO factors of all the large blogging platforms, social networks and search engines. Whilst my email exchanges with Blogcatalog are extremely infrequent, I am constantly monitoring for changes.

Technorati Relaunched Site

I first read about the upcoming Technorati changes on Venture Beat in an interview with Richard Jalichandra 10 days ago, and Richard also made the announcement on his blog.
There is an announcement on the Technorati blog as well – by the date of the post (8th Oct) they might have been almost ready to go live a week ago, but pulled the plug due to a hitch.

Techcrunch have coverage today and Technorati have also received an additional round of funding (well technically an extension of a previous round).

New Technorati Home Page

Technorati Rankings Changed

Technorati have a new ratings system which is based on factors I haven’t worked out yet – I am sure there is a lot of Twitter data in there as people don’t link very often these days in many niches, especially the SEO community (hint)
They are probably also pulling in 3rd party traffic data.

Techcrunch mention:-

Now they are focusing much more on recent data within the last month and giving blogs an authority rank between 1 – 1,000. Scoring factors include posting frequency, context, linking behavior and "other inputs."

It will be interesting how ranking tables such as Adage Power 150 or the Top IM Blogs include this data going forward.

Technorati Tag Pages

This is now approaching the nuts and bolts of Technorati

Lets first of all take a look at the tag page for SEO

The first immediate impression is that this is only a single page of results, there is no pagination and there is a comment box at the bottom of the page provided by JS Kit. That has just bumped the JS Kit installed based by several million pages. Technorati last had around 30 million indexed pages, though I am sure that will soon change.

If you look at your Google toolbar, Search Status or other SEO plugin, you might notice a TBPR (Toolbar Page Rank) for this page of 2. You would think with all the millions of times Technorati have no doubt been linked to for this term by people using Technorati as a default tag space (rel=”tag”) that it would be more than that – Google does seem to be discounting those links and has been for some time.

Almost all of the results are around 150 in the new Technorati Authority scale, and there are no recent SEO posts listed such as Powazek slamming SEO in general, and Danny Sullivan responding… twice.
For those wondering, I nofollowed Powazek because I don’t trust the source. Ranking for stuff due to the benefits of WordPress theme publishing really doesn’t count as SEO.

There is a short article at the top of the page from Blog Critics that has some great links for Michael Grey and SEOmoz.

The least obvious factor is that the tag pages no longer seem to be made up of editorially assigned tags from blog publishers, but is based upon a content search and possible relevance based upon keyword density. I suspect technorati are now using something like Sphinx to power their tag pages. They won’t be the first, and I am not saying this is the wrong approach, but it is a significant change that Technorati, effectively the king of rel=”tag” doesn’t really use it much any more.

As evidence there was a listing to this page virtualdownload.net/?p=59834 – it was not specifically tagged SEO, just used the term a lot promoting what seems to be a warez download.

No SEO tag used (click for more)

Technorati Search

If you just type in a search for a particular topic in Technorati now, it defaults to a search of Blogs on the topic, not recent content.

Rankings Based Upon Old technorati Authority?

I have a funny feeling these rankings are based upon the old Technorati scales in some way as can be seen in the numbers on the left hand side – it is not exactly the same, but there is a lot of similarity in the results.

The default blog post search again seems to to be keyword density based, so if you want to rank for SEO on Technorati, just mention SEO a lot.

If you then refine your search based upon high authority, the results actually seem pretty good, lots of web designers saying SEO is a load of crock, plus Danny defending SEO.

Then you delve into the results and discover:-

Just a snippet from the lead developer of Tumblr – a crap result
A paid post on Venture Beat that doesn’t use nofollows – a smart SEO company would actually want those links nofollowed, so I don’t feel like I am snitching.
Regurgitated Powazek
More regurgitated Powazek on Boing Boing

I don’t trust those results either, all nofollowed

What is wrong with SEO is search engine reliance on website authority to give meanings to results – these results are in my opinion crap, but search engines have to somehow unravel how bad quality all those referring sites are, as they are not topical authorities and just joining in on a web designer circle jerk. It will take a little time for Google to work that out, and I doubt the “fresh” result for Derek’s post will remain long on the front page of Google.

It should be noted that a large chunk of Derek Powazek’s “good code” has probably just been scrapped by Technorati.

I think the new Technorati shows some promise in its scaled down capacity – it is pretty and fairly functional though a number of the new components need a little work. I hope a chunk of Technorati’s new funding will be invested in hiring an SEO expert.

Disclaimer: I am not an SEO consultant – you can’t hire me on an hourly rate and those I advise almost always benefited from free advise long before there was any kind material compensation. I just study things intensely and rip them apart. I certainly couldn’t create many of the great web applications I write about without a lot of help from great web developers.

Tags: SEO Blog, tagging, technorati

What Is Quansite?

Posted: 13 Oct 2009 05:06 PM PDT

This is in many ways one of the most painful blog posts I could write, because it is about a service that is the closest anyone has come in 4 years to the “software as a service platform” I would like to create.

The business model is totally different but the front end seems to have many of the features and attention to detail that I would require, and to be honest much of what I want to achieve on the backend & network effect isn’t necessary for many business users.

If what I want to create is a lion, Quansite is a tiger – different animals, different prey – both killers and could probably co-exist.

Quansite is a WordPress based blogging platform for business, but calling it that is really doing it a bit of a disservice.

It is the kind of system that will take a huge bite out of the business of high-priced website development shops targeting small business, because so much is done for you.

Quansite Marketing Pro

There are a couple of WordPress themes I know of which can claim drag and drop, but they are not designed for creating sales pages & one-time offers, or “touch of a button” squeeze page creation.

Quansite Optimization

A lot of these features many might claim “I know a plugin that does that” but they are buggy or unsupported. Or you would have to pay for them, and purchased plugins you have to update by ftp etc.
If you like tinkering with things, fair enough, but it isn’t efficient use of your time as a business owner.

Quansite New Media

Quansite is by @coachdeb and @jpmicek – they know social media backwards – the real thing, and can teach it.

When everyone else anything to do with social media consulting was on a mass “follow everyone” drive, Coach Deb just kept on doing what she had always done, maintaining relationships.
Here is me, writing a blog post possibly about my most serious competitor, and I am doing it because of the relationship I have built with Coach Deb over the last year.

I don’t know the specifics of the modules, in some ways the video and audio “blasters” seem very similar to Traffic Geyser and could be some kind of white label – they are limited by credits for all but the highest level packages.

Quansite Backend

Trying to translate from “marketing speak” into more geeky terms, it seems like they might have a CDN integrated… looking at their own site this is through SimpleCDN, though I don’t know if it is their S3Plus service, or as a Highwinds reseller.
I can’t quite work out “server ring” – some kind of clustering maybe using memcached but don’t count on that.

Solid backups and security – I know geeks can do this stuff, but webdev shops charge small businesses $X’000 for this stuff.

I am not going to spy on my ~~competitors~~ friend’s proprietary stuff, though to be honest it is so tempting just to abandon goals and get on with just using technology to make money – I could make a lot of money just using Quansite.

Take a look, they have for a limited time an introductory offer for all the main packages of just $9.97 for the first month

It is still shared hosting, even on their most expensive plans, but I doubt the servers will be oversold and all sites are using a CDN which makes a huge difference, especially if they are also doing some decent caching.

I am not going to review it in-depth for a number of reasons

I haven’t seen anything that would stop me spending less than $10 to check it out for myself
It wouldn’t be right for me to pay the $10 just to snoop with no intention of staying around – I still have my unfulfilled plans (who knows they may never happen)
They have been running this platform for a while now under the brand i360 and I have never seen any critical reviews
How could anyone say anything bad about @coachdeb? The training is probably worth more than she is charging for the whole package.

I have no idea if every aspect is as optimized as I might want it to be, but I am sure it fulfils the 80:20 rule

I am not sure what additional limitations that places on things like design.

Warning: This is a NO TECH solution – you don’t even get FTP access, they say there is no need.

For anyone who isn’t a geek, that is actually a good thing, they can concentrate on marketing and making money.

Disclosure: I should just tell you to read my disclosure policy but I have included affiliate links in this post.

Tags: Quansite, wordpress

How 12 Experts Make Money Through Their Blogs (And How You Can Learn Their Secrets)

2009-10-14T12:12:00.001-07:00

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 12:12 PM PDT

ProBlogger: How 12 Experts Make Money Through Their Blogs (And How You Can Learn Their Secrets)

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 05:13 AM PDT

How 12 Experts Make Money Through Their Blogs (And How You Can Learn Their Secrets)

Posted: 13 Oct 2009 06:22 AM PDT

A guest post by Jade Craven

I review a lot of information products. Rarely, does one impress me as much as More Buyers Mastermind. Rather than provide a pitch, I thought I’d explain why I believe so strongly in this product.

For the busy people, here’s the rundown:

It is becoming hard to directly monetize your blog
Dave Navarro has released a seminar, featuring 12 people who are making a LOT from selling products.
This is one of the best valued products available online.
He has released a LOT of content as part of his pre-launch - including an awesome twitter contest. Read the ‘P.S’ to find out.

Why its getting harder to monetize your own blog.

It is getting harder to monetize your blog via direct methods. There are more people publishing content online and more competition for the advertisers. Additionally, the global financial crisis has also slashed the revenue of many who relied solely on few methods.

Many people are now transitioning and offering more products and services. Just look at Darren - he recently launched a paid forum and an ebook.

Solution: A teleseminar from 12 people who are making A LOT online

David found a solution: 12 people who are making a LOT from selling products and services. The More Buyers Mastermind is a seminar featuring 12 awesome bloggers. Dave interviews top talent including:

Chris Garrett
Michael Martine
Chris Guillebeau
Naomi Dunford
Brian Clark
Laura Roeder

Every person on that list makes their income based on their blog. Lets re-examine that list:

Laura Roeder sells information products and consulting services
Brian Clark creates and recommends products at Copyblogger
Chris Guillebeau makes the majority of his income from his Unconventional Guides
Michael Martine sells a SEO ebook and consults at Remarkablogger
Chris Garrett offers his freelance services and sells an e-course
Naomi sells multiple online products and brainstorming consults

Now, they still make a decent income from advertising banners and affiliate income. The bulk, however, is from the indirect methods.

You need to act fast…

After this Friday, Dave is raising the price to $197. After 30 days, it will almost triple in price.

Some people avoid buying because they assume the product will come on sale eventually. Dave doesn’t offer discounted products. I agree: his products are awesome value as it is. That’s why you should take advantage of the entry level price now - its very rare you get a seminar this valuable.

Who is Dave Navarro?

Dave Navarro is the highly successful blogger behind Rock Your Day and The Launch Coach.

He has become a good friend of mine. Ever since I reviewed ‘How to Launch the **** Out Of Your Ebook‘ here on Problogger, he has gone out of his way to help me. At first I thought he was trying to suck up but I quickly learned that he naturally loves helping people.

I am not kidding about this. Anytime I tweet about my posting commitments, he reminds me not to burn myself out. He’s THAT awesome.

Why it is so valuable:

Its less than $10 a call

I’ve bought a lot of products. Anything less than $30 a call is a bargain. Dave is offering you 12 calls for $97. You also get the additional coaching calls and workbooks. Most of these people charge over $100 for an hour of their time. Their information products are often just as high.

Dave will ask the right questions

I’ve listened to other audio products by Dave and he has the skills to get the exact information you need. You wont be paying for a product targeted to the beginners.

My final Opinion.

I’ve bought a lot of information products. Dave is one of the few people that consistently delivers.

I doubt that there will be another seminar this valuable in this price range. As Dave often says - ’Price is what you pay. Value is what you get’

Bonus 1: Competition and Content

Dave has released 3 free workbooks as part of his launch cycle. They are accompanied by three of the best blog posts I have read.

Additionally, he has launched a twitter contest with over $2000 worth of prizes.

Call to action: Click here to check out the awesome workbooks and

Bonus 2: An extra goody

Dave knows that you guys may struggle with the cost of the course. He is willing to provide you with extra value by offering one of two Problogger resource. You can choose from:

6 months free membership to the Problogger.com community
A free copy of the 31DBBB workbook

Just contact Dave after you’ve purchased. He’ll send you your product after the launch has died down.

Call to action: Click here to take advantage of this limited bonus.

Disclosure: Dave Navarro is a good friend of mine. I have received review copies of his products. This does not affect my endorsement of this product.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How 12 Experts Make Money Through Their Blogs (And How You Can Learn Their Secrets)

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Posted: 13 Oct 2009 12:10 PM PDT

ProBlogger: Win Dinner with ProBlogger and Special Guests at Blog World Expo 2009

Posted: 13 Oct 2009 05:33 AM PDT

ProBlogger: Win Dinner with ProBlogger and Special Guests at Blog World Expo 2009

Win Dinner with ProBlogger and Special Guests at Blog World Expo 2009

Posted: 12 Oct 2009 07:03 AM PDT

OK - this is a competition that is only for those attending Blog World Expo (please don’t comment below if you’re not attending). I know that excludes most readers but I hope we can include everyone a little by posting some pictures of the event.

The prize is a free dinner with me and some of my blogging buddies at BWE at the lovely Fiamma Trattoria and Bar** in Vegas.

I’m still confirming which other guests are coming but we have 3 spots open to ProBlogger readers - hence this competition.

Contest Rules

1. You must be attending Blog World Expo 2009 in Las Vegas, NV.
2. You must be available for dinner on Wednesday night, October 14th at 6pm. We cannot change the scheduled time or modify to suit anyone’s schedules.
3. You must provide your own transportation to and from the event.
4. Since we will need to place your name on a guest list, you will need to provide identification at the door upon arrival.
5. To enter, simply leave a comment below - make sure to use your REAL name and your most often checked email address in the name and email fields. Lara will do the draw using random.org on Tuesday at 4pm Eastern Time (NY, USA) and will contact the (3) winners privately via email. Please then confirm receipt of the email before 8pm ET.

*Please don’t leave a comment if you’re NOT available to attend the dinner. Because we’re running on very short notice, we need to keep this process as streamlined as possible, and weeding through comments wouldn’t help! Thanks for understanding!

** Dinner graciously provided by Fiamma Trattoria and Bar at MGM Grand @TasteMGMGrand.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Win Dinner with ProBlogger and Special Guests at Blog World Expo 2009

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Quick Online Tips

2009-10-14T11:15:00.001-07:00

Quick Online Tips

Have You Seen the 4 Billionth Photo on Flickr?

Posted: 13 Oct 2009 11:34 AM PDT

Flickr, the popular social image sharing service today crossed a new milestone of 4 billion photos! Punimoe had the honour of uploading our 4 billionth photo.

This is what the 4 billionth photo looks like -

You can also check out what the 2 billionth and 3 billionth photos look like.

Lots of free publicity for these pics… how lucky is that!

Use promo code QUICK20 for 20% discount on new ads

Download Free Blackberry Dictionary App

Posted: 13 Oct 2009 11:16 AM PDT

Now download the free Blackberry Dictionary app and get a pocket English dictionary and thesaurus live on your Blackberry mobile phone. It is one of the most useful applications to download for your Blackberry smartphone.

Released today, this app claims to be the only free dictionary app for BlackBerry. The trusted content is provided by Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com and includes more than 500,000 terms, definitions, and synonyms. Some key features are -

Dictionary.com – Access 325,000 word definitions and spelling suggestions
Thesaurus.com – Search Roget’s Thesaurus with 275,000 synonyms
Phonetic & Audio Pronunciations – Hear pronunciations of words
Word of the Day – Learn a new word every day with definitions
Recent History - editable list of recently searched words
Social Networking Function - Email or SMS text any word and its definition
Email Integration - access synonyms, definitions while reading /drafting emails

Download Dictionary /Thesaurus App from the Blackberry App Store and enhance your Blackberry. Students and English enthusiasts would find it particularly useful. Get it now.

Dictionary.com iPhone App is also a Top 30 favorite app in the iTunes App Store and is named by US News & World Report as the #1 iPhone app for college students, and has been downloaded more than three million times since launching in April 2009.

Use promo code QUICK20 for 20% discount on new ads

John Chow dot Com

2009-10-14T05:49:00.001-07:00

John Chow dot Com

Restaurant Hopping At The Taste of Yaletown

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 01:24 AM PDT

Vancouver food and wine enthusiasts are invited to discover and enjoy the fantastic offerings of Yaletown's premier restaurants during the 5th Annual Taste of Yaletown event. The Taste of Yaletown is very much like Dine Out Vancouver but all the participating restaurants are from the Yaletown area.

Taste of Yaletown 2009 will include 22 of Yaletown's fabulous restaurants offering special three-course tasting menus for set prices of $25, $35 and $45. A portion of proceeds raised from each participating restaurant will be donated to The Greater Vancouver Food Bank.

We were invited to a VIP preview event to experience some of the restaurants participating in this year’s Taste of Yaletown. Normally, every restaurant serves a three course menu but for our experience, we were treated to an opening course from Glowbal Grill & Satay Bar, a main course from Goldfish Pacific Kitchen and dessert with beer at the Yaletown Brewing Co. We also checked out the Cactus Club to see what they had to offer. Needless to say, it was a lot of food and we were stuffed after. Good thing we got in some walking in between the courses!

The 2009 Taste of Yaletown starts October 15th until the 31st. You can make reservations by calling the restaurants or by booking with Open Table. Once I get back from Blog World, I plan on checking out quite a few of the restaurants on the Taste of Yaletown list.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Our competition sells these lists for $2500 and more

2009-10-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

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Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

2009-10-13T13:04:00.001-07:00

Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

Tony Robbins Didn’t Know…

Posted: 13 Oct 2009 12:38 PM PDT

Earlier today I was watching a video for Jeff Walker newest product… yeah a new product, not just a relaunch of Product Launch Formula and I was struck by one small factoid within the first of many new (free) instructional videos.

Whilst consulting with Tony Robbins (yes THE Tony Robbins) who you would think would have all the fundamentals of online marketing totally mastered, there was a surprising revelation.

I am a customer of Jeff’s, I purchased his Product Launch Formula some time ago, and he keeps on updating it and giving updates to all his existing customers. This is a new product and from what I hear Jeff will be doing a special offer for existing customers.
There is a fair chance this will be a high ticket course… 50 people paid $25000 to attend Jeff’s exclusive training on leveraging and scaling product launches in new directions.

The thing is, Jeff’s also well known for giving away great content in the build up to any product launch, in fact a lot of the strategies can be learnt just paying very close attention to his own launches. I have over 3 years of emails from Jeff archived, and a number of his launch videos on my HD, including all the ones he used to promote his $25000 exclusive conference.

Yes I am using affiliate links in this post, it is a great way to gauge interest in different products as I get some kind of click through data and occasionally some email subscription data as well.
Clicking through and signing up for the free info doesn’t prevent you purchasing through someone else’s link at a later date, if someone is offering a better bonus than me.

p.s. I can be a slick commenter – I managed to get the first comment in on Jeff’s launch blog with a note about why this is about the only blog covering SEO that doesn’t offer some kind of consulting.
p.p.s how well do you find Jeff’s video streams from where you live in the world?

Tags: jeff walker, product launch formula, Product Launch Manager

Quick Online Tips

2009-10-13T11:12:00.001-07:00

Quick Online Tips

Miley Cyrus Quits Twitter, Sings Rap Song!

Posted: 12 Oct 2009 11:30 AM PDT

As more celebrities join Twitter everyday, Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus decided to quit Twitter, but she did it in style and made a rap song to tell her fans why!

If you hear the Miley Cyrus rap song, some reasons she suggests are she wants her private life private, and wants to put a stop on gossip sites buzzing news of every tweet she makes. She wants to stop pleasing people and admits she is too busy. Naturally Tweeple are tweeting our loud which gets the topic trending at #mileycomeback.

Celeb sites are analyzing if Miley Cyrus boyfriend provoked her to quit

And many Miley Goodbye videos are emerging all over the web

Did you know that the top 10% Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets and its not surprising that 60% twitter users quit within first month! Did you quit Twitter?

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Poll: How Many Hours Per Week Do You Work on Your Blog? - DailyBlogTips

2009-10-13T05:26:00.001-07:00

Poll: How Many Hours Per Week Do You Work on Your Blog? - DailyBlogTips

Poll: How Many Hours Per Week Do You Work on Your Blog?

Posted: 12 Oct 2009 10:32 AM PDT

If you have been blogging for a while, you probably noticed that it is a time consuming activity. Writing the content alone will take a lot of work. If you want to make your blog popular, though, you will also need to promote the blog, work on the design, interact with your readers to build your community and the like.

Thinking about that I figured that we could have a poll to discover how many hours most of us are working weekly on hour blogs. I opted for the weekly time frame because I know many bloggers who also have a 9 to 5 job do most of their blogging on the weekends.

These days I am working around three hours per day on the blogs, by that is seven days a week, so I am in the “20 to 40 hours” bracket. What about you? Have your say in our poll and feel free to leave a comment as well.

How Many Hours Per Week Do You Work On Your Blog(s)?(polls)

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Original Post: Poll: How Many Hours Per Week Do You Work on Your Blog?

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