As many of you likely noticed I was absent for most of April, and only managed to squeeze in a few days of actual work. Our first was scheduled to arrive on the 13^th of April, so we had company down visiting for a couple of weeks hoping to meet her when she arrived.

Being a girl she decided to wait until the 22^nd to finally make an appearance keeping us all anxiously waiting, but since she arrived perfectly perfect, you won’t get any complaints from us!

Now that May has rolled around I am faced with getting back into my work routine and attempting to continue on with the many projects I was working on prior to all the excitement. (I’m still excited, but now I’m so sleep deprived that I often confuse that joyous laughter coming from me as a slow and simple madness! LOL)

I now find myself in a situation that many others have faced or will face and thought I’d outline a few ways to help you stay productive online with your blogging and marketing efforts while your routines at home change to include your newest addition to the family.

Bring your baby to work

Now this may not work for everyone, but for myself I have a dedicated office in my home and it just happens to be large enough to accommodate a playpen or crib so that I’m able to keep a close eye on her while I’m working. For those of you who work from a laptop this is even easier, you can choose to go to her/him, or you can work from the living room, kitchen, etc.

The early days and weeks are filled with uncertainty (especially for new parent like myself) and being able to keep a close eye on your little one will allow you to stay focused knowing that you can simply raise your eyes to see how your little one is doing.

Keep a recording device close at hand

Ideas seldom come when we’d like them to, and sitting down in front of the keyboard knowing you need to produce a quality article in the next thirty to sixty minutes can be daunting if your slate seems blank either from lack of sleep or simply lack of ideas or even lack of time to do some research.

By keeping a notepad, voice recorder, or other favorite device close to hand you can ensure you are capturing the many ideas we all seem to have while driving or going about our daily lives. This pool of ideas will serve you well when crunch time comes.

Learn the art of multi-tasking

Most of us are already pretty good at multi-tasking, but you may want to learn to take things to a whole new level now that things are getting a bit busier (to say the least). Incorporating “to do” lists into your daily routine will help ensure that you get those items that are crucial to the success of your business completed.

Don’t try and do everything at once

Try breaking your work and life tasks up into manageable pieces and work on getting a couple of smaller tasks done rather than attempting larger or longer lasting tasks. Your work life and regular life have changed dramatically and you’ll have to develop an entirely new system if you’re going to stay productive.

Leverage your babies sleep time

This is the time to tackle some of those larger projects that may require an hour or two to complete. I know this is where most people advise you to get some sleep, but trying to balance a home business and a baby requires a few sacrifices to be successful.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

If you’re a blogger (as most of my online friends are) then you most likely know a few dozen bloggers who might just be willing to help out with a task or two. That graphic design job, or logo you’ve been struggling with might just be a task that one of your more artistic friends could knock off in no time flat, leaving you just that much ahead.

There are also most likely some offline resources available to you that may allow you time to get some work done. A spouse, grand parent, or other relative might just love to share some time with your new family member while you go about your business of providing an income for all of you.

Don’t write-off childcare just because you work from home

Most people in the workforce use childcare of some sort to allow themselves to provide for their families. Just because you work from home doesn’t mean you can’t avail yourself to some of these services in order to free up a few hours a day. Often there is childcare within a dozen or so blocks from your home, and it can mean the difference between working on your business, or just working on surviving!

Analyze your actual workload & refine

Most of us spend a huge amount of time on trivial or non-productive tasks that generate little or no income whatsoever. Spend some time outlining where your time is actually being spent and then cut out those tasks that aren’t high priority. There will always be general tasks that need doing such as checking and responding to emails, backing up websites, or monitoring your social media presence, but we all have tasks that can be skipped in favor of more important ones.

Working from home is an awesome experience, and with a little bit of work and strategizing on your part you’ll be able to continue doing what you love long after the arrival of your little one!

If you are a stay at home mother, college student, individual struggling to find a permanent source of employment or anybody else looking to make money online by staying at home, then affiliate marketing is one of the best ways in which you can do so. One of the most popular methods of making money online is through affiliate marketing. The best part is that you wouldn’t need to employ much physical labor and work at your own convenience when you want to make money affiliate marketing. This is because of the way affiliate marketing works.

What is affiliate marketing?

This is basically a method by which you direct customers who visits your website or blog to the website of a merchant whose product you are advertising on your website. There is no particular work that you have to do at a specific time or regularly. Once you have set up your website in an appealing manner, all you need to do is keep updating it from time to time. You will get paid a commission anyway, if you can direct customers to the website of the merchant, or the customer you had directed makes a purchase, depending upon the program that you have chosen. Here are some success tips for making money with affiliate marketing.

1. Attract traffic – The main source of income for you is traffic to your website. Hence you should build your website in such a manner as to make it very appealing. You should include original content in your website which is creative and worth reading. Also the content of your website should be in accordance to the product that you are advertising, otherwise customers will get confused and not visit your website. Thus attract more traffic to your website so that you are able to direct more customers to the website of the merchant and in turn earn high commission.

2. Choose a handful of good products – Don’t have the misconception that the more amount of products you advertise, more traffic you will attract and thus get paid more. What happens is the contrary. If your website looks like a banner advertisement, nobody will really make an effort to find the product they are searching for in the jumble. It is better that you offer products and related information that customers would be willing to purchase.

Along with practicing the above two tips, you should also take care to choose reliable merchants to advertise. If you advertise products that make customers dissatisfied, the traffic you attract will suffer hugely. Thus you can follow these tips to make your efforts successful.

When you’re planning to build a new website there are two main ways you can go with this. Either have the site set up on a separate domain, which you have to buy first, or have something built on a free platform that will support you with both a domain and some hosting space.

Of course, both approaches have a couple of advantages and disadvantages that you need to understand before you make the final decision.

First of all, the biggest disadvantage of free website platforms is that you’re not really the owner of the site. You own the content, that’s true, but the site itself remains the property of the platform where it’s been built.

This makes it not the best choice if you’re thinking about launching a new online business. However, if you just want to launch a simple site to share some info about a single idea, or give some advice on one really specific topic then free websites sound very good.

The main benefit is that the platforms that give you the opportunity to create such free sites usually have some reputation of their own. This means that they receive a fair amount of traffic, and can give you the head start you need for your new site.

Something you might consider a downside is that the platforms are moderated to some extent. So you won’t be able to get everything published there. Also, there are some banned topics. Apart from the obvious ban on adult content, some of the platforms on this list don’t even allow to publish anything that’s too pitchy or touches upon any “marketing spam” areas (like anything related to “make money fast,” for example).

Apart from that, free website platforms are simply great. I mean, come on … a platform that allows you to launch a site for free … how great is that?!

Let’s take it from the top with the leaders opening the list:

Squidoo

Squidoo is one of the most respected free website platforms out there. It has the PR of 7 and it hosts more than 3 million pages.

The platform lets you create single one-page websites focused around one topic. Those sites are called lenses – Squidoo lenses.

Every user can receive a number of trophies and points, which then transfers into leveling up (World of Warcraft style). I don’t know what the maximum level is, but it’s still fun, encourages you to improve your lenses, and create new ones to reach higher levels (and with levels come rewards).

HubPages

HubPages is very similar in nature to Squidoo. The idea is quite the same, only here instead of lenses you get hubs, and the interface is a little different as well. However, the main difference is that if you link to an external page the link’s going to be “nofollow” – not the best scenario if you’re using the page for SEO purposes.

Other than that, it’s a great site that features more than 1.2 million hubs and has a good PR of 6.

Weebly

This is where we start to look into platforms that enable you to create a whole site instead of just a single page. At Weebly, you can select your category, pick a subdomain, and build a site containing a lot of cool elements. All while using a nice drag & drop website builder.

Webs

Essentially, it’s just like Weebly, only the interface is a bit different. The idea is the same – it’s a free website builder that allows you to create complete websites, and then host them on a subdomain based at webs.com.

Wix.com

Wix is great for creating visual websites that feature some clever elements that are not common to other platforms or even custom-made websites. For the most part, Wix uses Flash as the core of its platform. This means that there are no boundaries regarding what can be placed on the site. The only problem is that you can’t really use such a site for SEO purposes. Flash is still not very Google-friendly.

This closes the list of my top 5, but I’m not done yet. Here are 4 more platforms for your consideration if you’re not satisfied with the above ones (whatever the reason might be):

• Jimdo.
• Yola.
• Webnode.
• Jigsy.

What’s your opinion about such platforms? Have you ever tried to use any of them?

About the author: Karol K. is a 20-something year old web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland and a writer at ThemeFuse.com, where he shares various WordPress advice. Don’t forget to visit ThemeFuse to get your hands on some premium WordPress themes (warning: no boring stuff like everyone else offers).

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Infographic courtesy of: http://www.thegappartnership.com/

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Over the course of the past year, sweeping changes to search engine rankings — largely concerning Google’s changes to its own online platform — have forced businesses and publishers to change how they produce content. For marketers, these changes have created a mix of challenges and opportunities. Google’s Panda update, the centerpiece of its search refinements, garnered the biggest attention, but the increased integration of social media into publishing has also had its hand in changing how marketers think.

And if all goes according to plan, another milestone shift in the Internet landscape is on its way, and yes, you can once again thank Google. The company is planning on bolstering the reliability of its online search results by instituting “author tags” to determine page rankings. The plan has been in the works for more than a year, and the new tool has split professionals and consumers into proponents and critics of the new system.

What is an author tag?

While content is currently organized in online search results according to the quality of the domain it is published on, Google is hoping to implement “AuthorRank,” a new approach to ranking content that values the authority and reputability of an author’s content more than it judges the website the content is hosted on. Known more casually as author tags, these could have huge implications for authors, publishers and marketers alike.

These author tags will be utilized through Google+ profiles, through which users can link to online content they have authored. Google’s author ranking system will use these author profiles to rank Web content authors in terms of their value and following. It also attempts to link together the entire body of work of a content author, making it easier to browse and review that work.

The author tag, once fully operational, will be a small bit of code that can be included in a page’s code to identify an author. A separate bit of code can be used to indicate that all of the links presented on a given Web page represent content produced by the author. The code can then tag the content to that author, thus boosting his or her status as an online author and allowing the resulting content to rank high in Google searches.

There are still some unknowns about exactly how the author tag will work, but a few things are clear: authors’ reputations will be weighed more than ever, and not only by the publisher of their content. Publishers and marketers, meanwhile, may find certain advantages in publishing content attributed to certain authors. Depending on how exactly Google handles this author ranking, there exists the potential for marketers to take advantage of the system, to the benefit of themselves and the companies they represent.

The author tag’s impact on marketing

No one is totally sure of the degree to which the author tag will determine search results rankings, but if it factors in heavily, search marketers could have a heyday. Although it could be frowned upon in some circles, marketers could exploit authors of currently significant repute and/or create social profiles accompanying their content in an effort to develop a strong authorial presence online. Pay-per-click marketers could see a particular advantage in utilizing author tags in this manner, although the changes could affect operations for all online marketing efforts.

This could be overcome by Google, but if the author tags are heavily weighted, the process could be very complicated. Most experts believe that author tags will make a noticeable difference in search results rankings, but they won’t turn online searches upside down.

Even so, a PPC management company can be useful to online businesses hoping to maintain a competitive edge in marketing and advertising efforts even as the conditions of online marketing undergo another significant change. One thing is for sure, even though content rankings may be unpredictable, Google will always be willing to help out its PPC customers.

About the author: Dawn Altnam lives and works in the Indianapolis area, and she enjoys following the tech and business worlds. After furthering her education, she has spent some time researching her interests and blogging of her discoveries often.

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As you probably already know, the Over-Optimization penalty was introduced the other day. If you are like me and most of the internet, then you felt the impact of the penalty. Just to give you an idea Google’s, Matt Cutts said that this would effect roughly 3.1% of all English sites but from reading other blogs, forums and even getting emails I am convinced that this effected much more than that.

Now, Google is not going to come out and say they are going back to the pre over-optimization days, so we all need to get ready to change our sites and do things the Google way. Below, you will see a video that outlines what you should do first in order to get your site ranking again in Google’s search engine. It is highly recommended that you start there and then follow the steps below in order to blog the way that Google wants you to blog.

Steps To Proper Blogging

Write Quality And Unique Content

If you are not already doing this, then you need to start right now. The benefit of writing quality and unique content is that you will not be able to get more natural links and that is what Google wants. What you need to remember is that we are all playing Google’s game now and you have to follow their rules. Google loves quality and unique content and now, so should you.

Create A Community

Do you participate in Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and all the other community driven sites? If not, then now is the time to start. We all know that social media will be the future of the internet and Google is smart enough to consider that in their rankings. Whether they go by Twitter followers or Facebook interaction isn’t sure yet, but what is sure is that they love social interaction.

Build Quality Links

Google has always stated that they rank quality over quality and that is a for sure thing now. Instead of creating hundreds of article links or blog comments, create one web 2.0 article and link to that. Doing this will take the risk away from your website yet you will get all the benefits from it. I know this sounds a little strange but creating one PR2 link on a web 2.0 property is much more valuable than 50 PR0 links pointing directly to your site.

Blogging after this most recent Google update will be different but that doesn’t mean you won’t make it through. Just stick to what Google has told us already and make sure your site is compliant with Google’s best blogging practices.

Author Bio:

This is a guest post by Adam Snyder at DormRoomCash.com. If you want more articles like this, then you can get all DormRoomCash’s articles by email.

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How often do you write guest posts? If you are only publishing one or two guest posts each week, then you are probably not getting as much out of them as you want, right? There are a lot of reasons to write guest posts and the truth is that writing one guest post each week won’t accomplish that much.

Now, the biggest problem with writing a guest post is that you need to know what to write about. This is why you should have a few ideas already written down and planned out. Once you have this, it is all about sitting down and putting words on paper. Similar to what I am doing right now.

Being that you already have your ideas written down, you can write without any interruptions and finish your guest posts in record time. Once that is one it is on to the fun part – submitting the guest posts and watching traffic come rolling in.

One problem though – Guest posts usually don’t bring in tons of traffic.

That is where you are wrong. A guest post should be able to send loads of traffic to your website and if it is not, then you are the one that is doing something wrong. With that said, lets talk about what you can do to get more out of guest blogging.

Ways To Get More From Guest Posts

Write More Posts – Like I said earlier, writing one guest post per week is not enough. My advice is to write as many guest posts as you can and submit them to a bunch of different sites. It doesn’t matter if you write 10 great guest posts and submit them to low ranking sites, just make sure you get your posts out there. The benefit of writing a bunch of guest posts is that you will now get more traffic and have more quality links pointed back to your site.

Publish Posts Around Same Time – Posting 30 guest posts throughout the month is one way to go, however, publishing your guest posts around the same time works better. The reason this works better is because readers will start to see your name more often and they will start to look at you as an expert in that field. Just make sure you don’t have 30 guest posts published on one day, spread it out to at least 3 different days so it doesn’t look unnatural.

Write Better Guest Posts – When you write a guest post do you write just for the sake of it or do you write to each the reader a lesson? If you are writing guest posts, then you need to make sure they are as good as you can make them. A lot of times writing 100 extra words will be the difference between a decent guest post and one that goes viral within hours of publishing it. Just do yourself and the readers a favor and write better guest posts all the time.

Deep Link Instead – How many guest posts have you written or seen where the link is to the homepage of the site? A lot of people do this and so do I, however, there is a good time to do it and a bad time. The best time to link to a homepage is when you are trying to increase your Page Rank or rank for a certain keyword. Now, the problem with doing this all the time is that you won’t have any links to your supporting pages and therefore, they won’t rank very high. This is why you should deep link to the inner pages of your site at least once every two guest posts. I understand this is not what you were taught to do at first but the truth is that deep links will increase the Page Rank and of the site and give it authority much faster than homepage links will.

If you want to get more out of each guest post you write, then following the tips above will ensure that this happens. Just don’t make the mistake that many bloggers make and publish all your posts on your own site because inbound links are just as important, if not more important than content on your site.

Adam Snyder runs DormRoomCash, where he teaches his readers hundreds of ways to earn money online. One of the key articles he writes is about 5 Ideas on how to make money and if that is what you are interested in, then you might want to check his site out.

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I know that a lot of my readers have either already made the switch to blogging full time, or are in the process of it, and a few diehards are even blogging full time while working full time with the end goal of leaving their jobs to work solely for themselves online.

But what are we supposed to do when it comes to taking time off? Holidays, sick time, offline commitments, travel? All these things can mean time away from the keyboard and it’s a good idea to have a game plan in place beforehand so you can still manage your blog business while you’re away.

Hiring a writer

If you’re income is stable enough, or your savings can support it you might consider hiring a writer while you’re away to keep things running for you. You can choose to have him or her write as themselves and as a member of your staff which will show the level of success you’re blog is at, or you can choose to find someone who has a similar writing style and have them ghostwrite for you while you’re away. The choice is yours.

Scheduling ahead of time

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the scheduling feature that WordPress has built into its interface, and likely use it from time to time. By setting up your posts to go out for the next couple of weeks it can almost appear to your visitors like you never left. Even better if you’re able to log in every couple of days and make an appearance in your comments section which in this day of smart phones isn’t too difficult for many of you.

What about content

Scheduling ahead of time is all well and good, but where exactly are these extra posts going to be coming from? It’s always a good plan to write much more than you need. If you need a post for tomorrow, write two. If you start an article and then run out of steam, save it in an incomplete folder for later use. Having an extra twenty or thirty posts at your disposal will ensure that you are ready for almost any situation including holidays, or simply having nothing to write about. Just make sure you replenish your pool rather than depleting it when you’re feeling too lazy to write!

Blogging Buddies

What’s a blogging buddy? Well just like it sounds it’s an online friend who also runs a blog (preferably in the same niche so he or she is comfortable writing on your topics) and who can take over your blogging duties while you’re away. The benefit for them is that they too have someone to look after their site while they take some time off at some point. While there are some bloggers who bite, most are a pretty generous and friendly bunch.

Open the guest blogging doors

Guest blogging can be great for everyone involved. The guest blogger gets a free link and some added exposure, the blog owner gets some fresh content written by someone other than himself, and the readers get to hear what a new voice has to offer. We all have our own unique style of writing and even if one isn’t better than the other, it’s often nice to experience a fresh outlook or perspective.

By stockpiling your guest post reserve you can have a “guest post week” where you use nothing but posts that your readers, or colleagues have submitted. Most won’t mind waiting a week or two, or even longer if they know why you’re doing it (never just hold on to the post without explaining why) and that you intend to publish, and when.

Pause all publishing

Now this one isn’t usually an option, but I wanted to list it to show you why it might not be a good idea. You’re readers have become accustomed to your posting schedule even if you don’t realize it. If you post at 6:00 am every day then people will know that they can incorporate it into their morning routines. I have certain blogs I’ll stop in and visit before starting my own day and if they all of a sudden just stop I’ll notice for sure.

You’ve likely developed a routine for posting which includes both time of day, and days of the week (some of you post daily, while others post every three days, etc.) It’s not usually a good idea to disappoint your readers. The newer readers you have who haven’t developed any loyalty toward your blog may just look elsewhere for their morning blogger fix.

We are all entitled to time off and with a little bit of planning you can make sure the experience is enjoyable for both you, and your readers.

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The internet is ostensibly the most powerful tool mankind has ever created since the beginning of time, and it has never been easier for an individual or a corporation to either build, or destroy their individual reputations.

Who’s telling the news?

It used to be we watched the news to see, and grasp what was going on in the world around us, but now it’s the soccer mom, on her way to pick up the kids who announces the train wreck alongside the highway, and while she waits, watching she is also updating her Twitter feed, or Facebook profile. The news travels quickly from there.

News travels fast

Train wrecks aren’t the only bad news that travels fast, disappoint a customer and see just how fast word can now spread.  See a movie, and leave a terrible review about it in your status update, and I guarantee at least a few people will skip that particular movie based solely on that fact. Now more and more people are doing this, and the effect it has can be felt on each of us.

Monitor the web

It’s important that we monitor the internet as well as social media platforms for mentions of our company, its key players, our products, etc. for both positive and negative experiences our customers and clients are encountering and sharing with their network.

Acknowledgement

The positive reviews should be called out, and the individual should be thanked for being a supporter of your brand, and informed of their importance, small acts like this will stand out in their minds for quite some time.

Be quick to respond

Negative reviews should be addressed quickly and with no negativity on your part. While not everyone will be right, it should be remembered that they too are entitled to their opinion.  The act of responding in a positive nature, and asking how you can fix the situation to their satisfaction will be noticed by more than just the individual with the complaint.

Refunding or replacing the item is a small price to pay for the positive outcome that in all likelihood will also be shared with that person’s network.

It’s a learning experience

Treat each instance as a learning experience and even go so far as to document it for your own records, or for training purposes. As time goes on, you’ll become adept at turning even the most dissatisfied customers into satisfied ones.

Remember we now live in a day and age where individuals can influence thousands of people, and with others that number can increase into the hundreds of thousands, or even millions depending on their online popularity and community.

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Sales copy is something that every blogger needs to get better at, whether you think so or not it is true. I say this because at some point you will need to use it and you want to be able to use it effectively. For example, if you want to sell people on signing up for a free eBook, then you will need to know what effective sales copy is and how you can use it.

Most people think that sales copy is only for selling eBooks, affiliate products and things like that, however, it can be utilized in blog posts as well. Do you want to get more people to follow you on Twitter or Facebook, if so, then using sales copy to sell people on connecting with you is a must.

Sales copy is used in many different ways and for lots of different reasons. Am I saying that you need to learn more about sales copy, no, but it wouldn’t hurt if you did. As a blogger, it should be your goal to be the best that you can be and I am going to share with you some tips that will help you do just that.

Improve Your Sales Copy Now

Don’t Promise The World

One tip that I have for you is to never promise the world and then under-deliver. This is what so many people do and it won’t last long for you. It will only take one upset person to tell others that you are promising something that you are not actually giving. Do yourself a favor and tell people exactly what you are selling them on, this way everybody is happy in the end.

Give Proof

One way to improve your sales copy is to provide proof. Whether you are trying to sell somebody on how many people are signing up for your eBook or why a coarse you are selling really works, giving proof to it will greatly affect you sales copy. Just know that a little bit of proof can go a long way, especially if the readers is new to your blog because you have not built that trust level up just yet.

Solve A Problem

A great way to improve your sales copy is to solve a problem. Most people think they can write sales copy with selling in mind, however, people buy/signup for things to solve some type of problem. If you want to ensure that your sales copy works, then solving a problem is the best way to go about doing it.

Write With Humans In Mind Not SEO

I don’t know how many people do this, but you should never write for SEO and not humans. A lot of people focus on getting ranked high on Google and because of that they focus more on using keywords and the right keyword density without even thinking about what actual humans want to read. Don’t write for SEO purposes only, concentrate more on humans reading your content.

Don’t Hard Sell

The last thing is very simple, never hard sell. When you try to hard sell the only thing that happens is that you will drive readers away. Nobody wants to feel like they are buying a used car, so don’t sell to them that way.

Sales copy is very important but if you don’t know how to do it effectively, then it is a waste of time. Go ahead and try some of these things to improve your sales copy and let me know how they work out for you. I know for myself that these have help out quite a bit.

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