It is that time of the year where online shopping starts to break the records and just about a good time as any to run experiments to test your “various methods” of promoting products online. Having been approached by some people within my circles as to what method I have been using to find products to promote, I thought it would be interesting if I shared it with you too.

The steps I will share with you today are by no means the only way to find and promote hot products, but it is a method I use often and has been working for me. It is not a very simple process, but it is highly effective. Even if you don’t implement exactly the same steps here, it should provide you with some ideas on how to improve your online sales.

Essentially, here are the steps that I apply to get me rolling…

Find or identify products using Google Insights For Search or the real-time tool as mentioned below

Build keywords “around” the product by using Google’s keyword tool

With the help of Google Analytics or Clicky, use your top landing pages, or

Create niche websites for the “product” or “group of products” identified on the research phase. Read more at www.iblogzone.com

What Is Content Curation (definition)?

Good question and my quest to find an easy to understand definition of the term yielded very little results. I did however come across GetCurata.com which defines a content curator like this:

A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online.

What Are The Advantages Of Content Curation?

To be an effective curator of a certain topic, I am of the opinion that you have to not only love it, but also know how to “identify” valuable information. By providing real value to the community and doing things properly, you can at a certain point, be considered as an authority of the subject matter, thus allowing you to build more relationships, increase your social engagement, build your brand, etc. Curated content on Scoop.it can be shared, liked, get +1s, and more. You can share just about anything you want from posts, to images and even videos. Just be sure that they are in fact related to the topic you have chosen, and remember that you can create unlimited number of topics. Read more at www.iblogzone.com

I know. Hard to believe right? And most likely, you are wondering what is the catch? Before moving further, there is actually, but contrary to what you may be thinking, I will tell straight out what it is. If after this, you are still not interested, then I am afraid that nothing else will convince you. OK then, the catch.

HostZilla’s free cloud web hosting catch is nothing more but the amount of disk storage space, which is limited to 100mb. That’s it! For as long as you keep your website under this space limitation, you can happily have your site in the cloud. If this is something that interest you, read a bit further. I promise, it won’t cost you a cent, and I am proving that to you. Read more at www.freecloudapplications.net

How to Learn SEO

The first thing that should know about SEO is that it is an ongoing process. There is no such thing as set and forget when it comes to search engine optimization. What works today will most likely cease to work tomorrow and if you stop monitoring and continue on with your SEO campaign, you will definitely be outranked by your competition. That’s a fact!

Anyway, the best way to learn search engine optimization is by actually putting what you learn into practice and seeing the results as you work. The idea is to set aside about 30 minutes of work per day to put into practice each SEO technique you learn and see how much it impacts, if any, your results. If you do everything at the same time, you will never know which one worked and which ones did not. This is why monitoring your SEO progress is a crucial part of your campaign.

Best SEO Practices

See more at basicblogtips.com

I have always wanted to install a local WordPress copy on my PC and have been having a hard time doing it. Reason being is that I am not a tech savvy guy and most of the tools or tutorials available out there can be too complicated. I wanted an easy solution, one that does not fry my brains out, and if at all possible free, why not?

Anyway, before getting into the nuts and bolts of Instant WordPress, let’s look first at some reasons why you may want to install a copy of WordPress on your local computer. I am sure that there could be a lot more reasons, but over the top, these are what I can come up with:

You don’t need to have a domain name or web server to run a WordPress site in a local environment. This is ideal when you want to test WordPress themes, plugins, and changes you may want to do in your site without doing it live. Think of all the mess you can avoid .

You may want to “replicate” an existing website to another and avoid all the process of spending time to tweak, and configure a new site. This is actually a time saver, if you create niche sites

And, as I said, perhaps many more reasons… Read more at www.iblogzone.com

As a blogger, regardless of what level you are in, you should know that getting comments is one of the most motivating aspects of blogging. Why, because among other things, it is the best way to know that you are not alone, that someone actually reads what you have to say, and most importantly, it is also a form to build relationships and interact with your audience. The later is probably the one that I have benefited most over my blogging career. Trough commenting, I have made friends, met people, and even gained business partners that, in one way or another, are a important part of my online ventures. Obviously, the opposite is also true. If we like to receive comments, other fellow bloggers does too. The feeling is always mutual.

Anyway, I really don’t want to repeat myself as to the power of commenting and benefits of having a blog CommentLuv enabled. If you are amongst the 400.000 plus, that downloaded CommentLuv, this is one of those plugins that really don’t require further introduction. I have been using it since 2009, and this is the only plugin that I never let go of. That in itself should tell you something . In any event, I provided my two cents about commenting and the CommentLuv plugin some time ago. With the exception of some adjustments, they still apply today, and if you want to know more, I recommend reading the following: Commenting 101 – the power sometimes ignored Is Your Blog CommentLuv Enabled Read more at www.iblogzone.com

To revive an old blog post is like digging up gold. Old blog posts usually get buried in mountains of old content and you need to bring it to the surface to shine. Would you leave a gold nugget in the ground?

Webmasters often leave old content for dead and neglect the fact that it is possible to revive an old blog post.

Here are 9 Tips on How to Revive an Old Blog Post Read more at www.iblogzone.com

Creating a niche website is something that I have a lot of fun doing. One of the main reasons for this is that I love doing experiments and see where that leads me. If all goes well, I learn something, if not, I learn something too. You see, that’s the whole idea of the so called “trial and error”. You learn either way .

Today I will share with you how I created a niche website, in less than one day. I am not counting the time it took me to research and prepare the action plan though. If I account for all the minutes I’ve spent over the days doing this, I would add another 1/2 day in there. Anyway, once I had everything together, I put the plan in motion.

That said, the idea of this post is to run you through the steps of creating a niche site, while sending a message that, having the right motivation and determination, you too can make things happen. Read more at www.iblogzone.com

To make money online, you need traffic. To get traffic, you need content. Now where have you heard about this before? Needless to say that content is one of the most important part of all your blogging efforts. This is particularly true if you are monetizing your blog or blogging for business. However, come a time when the need of creating content meets writer’s block. Not sure what to write, not sure where to start, and you keep thinking and thinking and nothing, nada, zero. You just can not get that magic click of what to write next.

What can you do to beat writer’s block? Read more at www.iblogzone.com