Last time I needed a new theme, I was not only after looks, I wanted the function too.

A very specific thing actually. 

I needed a widgetized home page that will allow me to be more creative than having my home page display new blog posts only.

This is when I fell in love with Fabric8ted theme, designed by EightCrazy and approved by StudioPress. By the way, you will find this one, along with some other amazing themes, in the Community Themes Gallery.

The most important feature of this theme for me was of course, the above mentioned, widgetized home page. However, this theme goes one step further and not only features a Slider widget at the top but widgets for displaying your posts in three columns, then a widget you can use for opt in box, then another set for three column post display, then Twitter widget to display the latest tweet, a place for your Instagram feed…

I mean, a lot of home widgets…

These are only the suggestions on how to use these widgets of course. You can put any type of content in them to feature the most important pages on your site.

But having all these options already coded into the theme is amazing. As the sales page for the theme says:

…allows you to bring focus to multiple categories on your home page in a unique, organized, elegant fashion…

Getting all those widgets figured out on my own would take a lot of time, so buying the theme for $18.71 (as an existing Genesis customer) was a complete win for me. Who wants to spend hours, maybe even days, on coding a home page when you can get it that cheap :)

Apart from widgetized home page, the theme has other great features.

At first glance, you would say this theme is perfect for mommy and female artistic blogs, which I totally agree with, considering it has very soft colors and the handwritten font. However, since Genesis themes are so easy to customize, with just changing a few colors in the editor, you can do much more with this theme.

As a matter of fact, I am currently working on setting up my home page on Fit Chick Cafe blog, and you can see how a few changes, like colors and font, will make it look different, and not so soft.

While at colors, this theme actually comes with 4 different color options, so if you don’t like the original one, and don’t want to change it yourself, you have 3 more options to choose from, simply by selecting it in a drop down menu in theme settings.

The original color is Teal and Peach, the other three combos are:

• Purple and yellow
• Blue and pink
• Green and peach

The theme is set to work with one sidebar, which gives it three different layouts – content/sidebar, sidebar/content and full width option.

As any Genesis child theme, you can choose any of the layouts on each page and post, to give your blog different look or focus on main content and not sidebars.

The theme has a custom header option, which means you don’t have to mess with code to add your logo. Just hop over to the header tab and upload the image.

At the same time, one of my favorite things with this theme, as well as majority of StudioPress themes, is the widget on the right side of the header. On this blog, I use it for my social icons, but on Fit Chick Cafe, I use it for my author profile box, and the way it is designed, gives it amazing professional look I am so pleased with.

Another thing that is a must for me, for any theme I use, is widgetized footer. Technically, I want to have three widgets in the footer, which makes it look like it has content in three columns. Of course, this theme has it coded already.

Now, the thing that all new published themes over at StudioPress have, as well as the framework itself, is the fact that they are all mobile responsive.

Why is this important? It will display your site correctly on mobile devices and smaller screens without cutting off parts of your blog. Instead, it “rearranges” objects so the visitor can still see the entire blog.

The last but not least thing I like about this theme are tutorials provided by the designer, that explain how to exactly set up each widget and content in it to get the exact same look as the demo of the theme.

I have to say that some of the themes lack this. With Fabric8ted, it is definitely a time saver!

So, check it out, and let me know what do you think about these features! I can not recommend this theme enough, and I plan to keep it for awhile

Fabric8ted Theme Review – Theme Fabricated from StudioPress is a post from Online Income Star, blog about building successful online business and making money online.

I use it to run a pile of my own social accounts, clients’ accounts and to keep up with everyone I want. It just makes social media management extremely easy and what I love about it the most that the Hootsuite team keeps adding social networks so we can follow it all from one dashboard.

I have been a major Instagram user for some time now and having the possibility to use Instagram on Hootsuite while doing all other social media at the same time, makes the tool a must have for me.

I’ve also written about it here (here are my three favorites):

Why Hootsuite is way better than Market Me Suite

How to use Hootsuite to get new customers

How Hootsuite integrates with Instagram

Want more?

Just a few of the features that make Hootsuite my go-to social media management tool are

• the possibility to schedule up to 350 posts across all of your social profiles
• possibility to have unlimited profiles with Hootsuite Pro (all Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn pages you run)
• great analytics

Besides great features, though, they also have a Hootsuite University where you can learn about Hootsuite Pro and become a social media professional.

The best part

Until June 30th, you can get Hootsuite Pro for 50% off for 60 days, as well as 50% off on Hootsuite University. Now when you realize that you get a free trial for 30 days, you really can’t go wrong.

Click here and then use the coupon code HOOTXA50

Even if you are not in the market for a new management tool, I highly recommend signing up to try it, you can’t lose anything with a 30 day free trial of Hootsuite Pro.

Hootsuite Helping You Learn Social Media is a post from Online Income Star, blog about building successful online business and making money online.

Let me get straight to the point. Once you sign up for Feedblitz, you can create a RSS feed for your blog (like Feedburner) and use the service for email marketing.

The price of the service is based on the number of email subscribers you have. If you stick with RSS only, you will pay $1.49 a month, after 10 subscribers the price goes up to $2.95 and so on.

You don’t have to use their service to send emails to your subscribers if you are using another email marketing service (I use Aweber)… but you have to pay for it!

When I was setting my RSS feed, I noticed that, just like Feedburner, people can use RSS readers or emails to subscribe to your feed. This is where the trick is.

You can not turn off subscribing via email so once your RSS subscribers start subscribing with their email addresses, you will have to pay as if you were using the email marketing service.

I actually contacted their support about this issue and here is the short version of the back and forth:

Me: I can not find how to turn off the mail option since I don’t need it?

Feedblitz: You can’t turn off email from the options the feed displays, but it’s most unlikely anyone looking at an RSS feed is suddenly going to want email then. They’d sign up from your web site instead.

Note: this is exactly what happened! A new subscriber preferred to get the updates by email and used the RSS subscribe page to subscribe with it.

See how it looks below:

So I think it is highly likely this will happen!

Me: But how do I turn it off?

Feedblitz: You can’t. Like Feedburner, we don’t have that option.

Note: Feedburner doesn’t charge for this!

Me: OK, so funny enough I get a confirmation today that someone confirmed their subscription. Now I have one mail subscriber. I only offer RSS feed. I don’t plan to use the mail option.  So the subscriber counts in my numbers even though I won’t  send emails??
I didn’t even choose to have the email option for that feed! That means that want it or not I will move into higher paying tiers?

These are the only options when you create a feed (both include mail option):

Feedblitz: You can always grab their email address, import into your current provider, then remove from your feedblitz list via it’s Subscriber Management area.

Note: I can’t just “grab their email address” and subscribe them to my newsletter, those people want to receive RSS feed updates, not newsletter.

So your choices are:

• leave subscribers there and go into higher paying tiers, which was not an option for me since I already pay for my Aweber account.
• move subscribers to your Aweber, which is NOT what they initially gave their email for.
• simply delete subscribers and leave them wondering why aren’t they getting any updates.

Now, Aweber does have an option to send out RSS updates to subscribers, but if they only want RSS, you will end up with hundreds and thousands of subscribers to pay for over at Aweber.

What to do if you need RSS feed?

Just use the default one from your blog which will be in this format: http://yourdomain.com/feed

If it isn’t displaying correctly in Chrome, use this fix. And just wait to find a service that will cover the basics like Feedburner because with the whole in the market that will happen, you know someone will come in and provide a solution.

Think before you sign up for Feedblitz is a post from Online Income Star, blog about building successful online business and making money online.

It’s important to remember that marketing is actually something that does require knowledge, some degree of education and, most certainly, sensitivity to your audience.

Marketing also requires real data, not reliance on outrageous claims.

Here are some of the things that online marketers commonly do that really serve to annoy their potential demographics rather than appealing to them and making them want to buy a product.

Claims of Altruism

There is absolutely nothing morally objectionable about selling something to make a profit. One of the most common and, in reality, irritating forms of advertisement claims that somebody selling a product is offering it just so they can make your life better.

This is obviously not true. They’re selling the product so they can make a profit and, provided the product is actually a good one, it would be hard to find someone who disagrees with the idea that the seller does deserve a profit if they put something good on the market.

Avoid claiming that, after you found out about this wonderful product, you just wanted to share it with the whole world. Nobody’s buying it, and it makes you sound like a huckster.

Buy this or Perish!

Disaster marketing has become a big trend on the Internet. It might be a flashing, irritating banner advertisement that tells you your computer is infected with a virus when there’s no way the advertisement could possibly know that or it may be trying to scare people into thinking that the wealth they have saved up in cash is suddenly going to be worth no money at all.

The problem with this type of marketing is a gets irritating and that, eventually, the fear factor stops being persuasive. People get burnt out on being scared. The old adage about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar happens to be true.

Email Marketing Scams

In a survey run by TechCrunch, consumers were asked what types of advertising they thought were the most effective. Four percent of consumers thought that email marketing was effective.

Asked the same question, only 5% of people professionally involved in marketing thought this form of advertising is effective.

Email lists can be useful, provided they offer something to the people who subscribe to them and provided that your name brand is one that they trust. Remember that, even if they did sign up for an email list, consumers oftentimes reflexively identify any advertisement they get in their email as spam.

Poor email marketing is always a nuisance.

Get Help

In that same survey, a full 36% of consumers felt that advertising created by professional marketers was effective. Not surprisingly, 49% of professional marketers thought the same.

The take away from this is that professional marketing and professional marketing techniques really can make a difference.

A professional marketer, for instance, might advertise a VPN Service as something you can use to enhance your privacy and security online.

A clumsy marketer might latch onto a fear-based campaign, trying to convince you that anybody and everybody else sharing the Internet with you is trying to spy on every single thing you’re doing, which is absolutely silly.

The former example actually packages the service in an attractive way and appeals to people based on what it offers. The latter simply tries to scare them into buying something without even explaining to them what it offers.

When you’re engaging in online marketing, remember not to insult your audience’s intelligence and not to get it into your head that there is some easy, magical way to be successful. It takes work, it takes study and to take sensitivity to the people you’re trying to market to. Don’t be a nuisance.

Veronica Clyde is writer at VPNServices.net – a website where you can read reviews about the best VPN providers. You can read more about VPN services by visiting her website.

How to Avoid Being a Nuisance with Online Marketing is a post from Online Income Star, blog about building successful online business and making money online.

That is why you see me often write about it and especially review tools that may help you with your optimization.

Today, I have another one to show you, still in beta but looking promising – webmeup.

Now, if you don’t want to read the review, but would rather see for yourself, webmeup actually has a 15 days trial period. You do NOT need to purchase anything nor do you have to leave your credit card number.

Sign up for free trial.

Just go register for an account and start using it. Once your trial is up, you will be offered to buy subscription. You can do that with points even.

WebPoints are a very interesting approach I haven’t seen with a SEO company before. You get them for registering account, being active in the forums, filling up the info in your profile and so on.

The best part of course is that you can purchase your subscription with these points.

Another great thing with that is that you can end up on top 50 list of people with points which will give your site a link from the rating page. Not too bad for not buying anything, don’t you think!?

Read the WebPoints rules here to get the whole idea.

So now that you know you can use the software for free for some time, time to try it out. You don’t have to download anything, you don’t have to install software, nor deal with AdobeAir installer that slow down your computer and what not – the software is web based.

Once you are registered and logged in, just start using the software.

Dashboard and options in webmeup

The main screen is going to display your project, for example your site. You can create new projects or edit existing ones in this screen.

You still can’t see the reports, as the software is in Beta.

The main screen “Projects” has 3 tabs – Summary, Social Media and Details.

Summary tab will show you Google PR, Alexa rank, how many pages are indexed in Google, how many links you have and so on.

The Social Media tab displays the ranking factors related to social sites, like Facebook, Delicious or one of the other 10 listed.

You don’t have to stop with those 3 tabs, though, you can add more of them, to access the information you need easier.

Now, after we saw what the “overview” starting screen will show us, let’s see the project details.

Click on the link of your added project and you will get a whole new screen with much more details.

The left hand side will have a list of options:

• Project dashboard
• Ranking factors
• Keywords and Rankings
• Pages (site structure and landing pages)
• Competitors
• Backlinks (profile and management)

There is a really easy overview in the Project Dashboard – you can see how many of your pages are ranked in Google, how many are indexed in the three largest search engines and what are your top backlinking anchors.

From each of the smaller info blocks, you can click to go to a more detailed information about your site.

I will not go into every single detail of the dashboard layout, because you can see it for yourself for free, but want to tell you about the stuff I really liked in it.

So besides the things I already mentioned, webmeup has, as majority of the SEO ranking tools, an option for you to chose which search engine you want to check the rankings for and then see how your rankings are going (up or down trend).

The last thing I will mention here, that I really like, are some parameters you can manually enter and follow the results you really need:

• Landing pages – you can mark the pages that are landing pages so you can track the more important parts of your site.
• Competitors – enter your competitors info and see what they are doing and how is their SEO bringing results.
• Backlinks management – enter specific backlinks you want to track (great to track guest posting results).

The “bad side” of the tool is that it is still a work in progress, so you will run into an item or two that are still in the works. But I am pretty sure that once they are out of Beta you can expect not only full functionality but options added over time.

Price

And before I finish I will say that there is one thing that I personally didn’t like, that may not matter to those with more needs for good search engine optimization tool, and that is the price.

There will be 3 levels of subscription and if you have more than 1 site, you will need the “medium level subscription” which will cost you $99 a month.

Conclusion

Let me repeat it again – you can use the tool for free for 15 days so don’t hesitate to give it a go! That is the best thing you can do, to check how much will you like it.

I liked the tool and it covers all the major things you will need for your SEO. Considering it is in Beta you can expect more features added over time.

Note: this is a paid review but the opinion is mine.

Webmeup Review – Web based SEO tool with full free trial is a post from Online Income Star, blog about building successful online business and making money online.

Email Marketing Tips That Make Money Online

This post is only for hardened marketers. If you’re anything but Arnie I urge you to click back now…

For those of you that are still here I salute you! If you’re here at the end of this report I deem you some kind of super hero!

Now I’m going to share 21 email marketing lessons that I’ve picked up along the way to making a nice online income and providing an ideal standard of living for my family. And before you ask, yes I do make a good portion of my income through my email lists! About 50% I’d say.

But I don’t mind admitting that my first six months of email marketing was pitiful. With a list of  a few thousand I spoke to my readers having little idea how to get emails opened, how to structure them, how to connect, build trust and make money.

Hearing so many markets say “the money’s in the list” fueled frustration and confusion. But with enough pain the time had come to do some actual research into email marketing – The results have been pretty amazing and marked the beginning of a profitable online business.

What’s shared below comes from turning a cold list into a hot list (no buyers to buyers).  This is not recommended and honestly should be avoided at all costs, as I’m sure you’re aware.

However what you read here makes money and if you’ve got a list of just 100 people you are good to go!

Here’s a taster of my email marketing tactics

1. Knowing Your Market
2. Sub Listing Your Email Marketing
3. HTML vs. Text
4. Format and Consistency
5. Character Width
6. Killer Subject Lines
7. Test and Subscribe
8. Opening Sentences
9. Open the Loop
10. What’s in it for Me
11. Categories For Email Lead In
12. Email Body
13. Metaphors and Pictures
14. Using the P.S.
15. Links
16. Autoresponder Follow Up
17. Sending Emails
18. Offers
19. Objections
20. Testimonials
21. Golden Tips

Let’s do this…

1.  Knowing Your Market

With the majority of today’s marketers failing to make significant income online I’ve learned a core reason as to why – they resist knowing their marketplace.

There’s a big difference between thinking you know your audience and really knowing their biggest desires and numbing pains.

Knowing your market is number one on my list because of its importance…

What are your prospects fears, failure, desires, needs, wants, wins and losses?

Research (and work) deters people from progress and profit but as stated in the opening sentence this post is for hardened marketers. Investing time and effort into knowing your market intimately is perhaps the biggest leverage point I see a business owner can have.

Fact – researching your market is not so hard. Here are 3 quick and simple things you can do to get a better understanding of your lovely prospects and gorgeous customers.

• Go to delicious.com… and check out the most popular links in your niche. Just type your main keyword into their search bar and find the hottest posts around the web. This will give you a good idea of what people in your market are interested in.
• Visit popular blogs… in your niche and see which posts get commented on the most. There is tons of valuable knowledge to be found spending just half an hour doing this.
• Go to Amazon.com… (my personal favorite) and find the best sellers in your niche. Check out the comments sections and see what people are saying. Note down their language, common problems and frustrations.

There are tons more ways to discover your market but this blog post isn’t the place for that – I said Arnie not Superman!

If you take just one lesson from this post then let it be…

Build your venture on the solid foundation of “knowing your marketplace.”

After all they’re the ones paying your wages!

2. Sub-listing Your Email Marketing

This is always worth noting down because it’s powerful and so many people skip this necessary step.

One size fits all does not work if you want to profit from internet marketing.
We are talking about the keys to success here and optimizing your list through “understanding where your prospects are in the process” can have magical results.

• Would you… send the sales page to someone after they’ve just purchased your product?
• Would you… send someone a sequence about Social Media Marketing when you know they only read your product creation content?

Segmentation gets a lot of bad press, appears to be complicated and explains why people avoid it. But head over to Aweber (or which ever autoresponder provider you use) and check out their short, concise videos on segmentation. It’s a simple process to master once you’ve been exposed to the training.

Yes you have to track your links but that’s a must in today’s market anyway. (Tip)

3. HTML vs. Text

This is regarded as basic stuff but certainly worth a mention in my opinion.

Do you send emails as HTML or Text?

There are pros and cons for both methods but first let’s understand their formats.

HTML messages can be tracked which is the big benefit of using this format. However tracked open and click through rates are recorded using a tiny 1px image. The problem with this method is that many email providers such as Gmail, Ymail and others have images switched off by default!

When images are switched off inside an email account the click through or open rates cannot be recorded. You don’t know if the emails have been opened and results are inaccurate.

Generally speaking when emails are sent with images they are regarded as commercial and less likely to be delivered to your subscriber. With no deliverability comes no value, no trust building or sales. And this is where text emails have the advantage. Their deliverability rate is far higher because they don’t contain images and other formatting options such as bolding and italics.

What I do?

Send emails in HTML and Text. Most autoresponder services have this option by default. This ensures the best deliverability and gives me some kind of trend as to which emails are getting opened and clicked through. This is critical information towards optimizing emails. I can see which subject lines are working and which are not.

Granted the stats aren’t 100% but some data is better than none whatsoever.

4. Format and Consistency

Another tip when sending emails to your list is to keep formatting (fonts, sizes, colors etc.) the same throughout your email sequences and broadcasts.

Building trust and relationships with your lists means being a little predictable with how you write and how you present. If you choose a theme template for your emails then try and keep that template throughout your sequence. If Arial 12 is your preferred font style and size then consistently present that formatting.

We want people to be eager to open our emails but not shocked by the way it looks!

5. Character Width

I like to write emails with a maximum length of 65 characters.  Ideally I will keep length at around 58 maybe even 55 characters.

This ensures bite size readability and that the sentences will be formatted perfectly in ALL client providers.

Under this link – Format Blue Software (not aff) you will find this neat little tool that will format your sentence length via their dashboard. Currently it’s a $19.95 one off license fee and well worth it. There are lots of other cool little tools with this software but we’ll save that for another day.

Tip…

Don’t write your emails using Word. There’s all sorts of weird code behind Word and your emails will not be formatted correctly if you cut and paste your info.

Test formats in as many email clients/providers that you can…

Most of us have more than one email account. It’s good to create new accounts with different providers. I have accounts with Gmail, Ymail, @Mail and Hotmail. When you’ve composed your email send a test run to all these providers to ensure the email is formatted perfectly.

Tip…

You might have built trust with me over time. You might be offering me the best deal EVER! But if the email does not appear correctly inside my email account it gets deleted immediately. – Game Over.

Ensure you take the important step of checking your finished article in as many providers as possible. Optimizing your emails is critical and we want to make our readers experience as pleasurable as possible!

6. Email Marketing Killer subject lines are so CRITICAL

This is where the rubber meets the road! Subject lines are the most important part of your email. Why?

To get the email opened. It’s their one and only purpose.

Tip…

Ensure the subject line is not more than 60 characters long. This way the reader will be able to see the whole of the subject line even if they don’t open your email. This improves open rates!

Ideally your subject line needs to include curiosity and benefit…

A great copy writer will tell you that your headline is 90% of the entire copy.

If that’s true then you headline needs thought and a good old fashion stabbing! Have a go and write at least 5 headlines to find the one that resonates.

Example (and I’m just making this one up, no promises here!)

“This creepy tactic gets your site on the front page of Google in 10 days…”

To break this subject line down…

“This creepy tactic” (it makes the reader curious and wanting to find out what “This creepy tactic” is.)

“get’s your site on the front page of Google in 10 days” (this is a clear benefit that you will supposedly get if you open the email.)

Insider tip…

(Keep this to yourself) I’ve tested using the date in the subject line and it certainly improves open rates. Dates (in this format 06/18/2025) definitely draw attention and pull on the urgency strings. But use this neat tip sparingly else you’ll end up frustrating your subscriber.

Don’t get drawn into believing you have to write the subject lines first either. It’s fine to get your email together first and the subject line will often pop out at you later on…

Starting Place

The early 19th century author Robert Collier first spoke of “starting with the conversation that already going on in the head of your prospects, readers and clients.” If your subject line has curiosity, benefit and is related to what your readers are currently experiencing then your open rates will go through the roof!

Obvious though this may sound, the subject line needs to be congruent with the body of the email. Anything else will result in a lack of trust and a high unsubscribed rate.

(scroll below for the next page)

Email Marketing – 21 Secret Lessons from My Personal Toolbox is a post from Online Income Star, blog about building successful online business and making money online.

What they often don’t realize, however, is that professional writing is a lot different from personal writing, such as writing fiction or poetry or even journaling or blogging

Professional writing is done constantly, and the content is often dull or repetitive. Many professional writers stop writing their own content in their free time simply because they are burnt out on writing.

Don’t Stop Writing!

If the above describes you, you might be tempted to step away from the keyboard as soon as the work day is over and to only write what you have to in order to get paid. Don’t do this, however — remember that you have the career you’ve always dreamed of, even if your reality doesn’t match your dreams!

Also, keep in mind that it is important for you to write personal, non-work related content. This will keep your love for writing alive and well, will relax you, and will also allow you to diversify your writing samples so they show a little bit more of who you are through your work.

Dealing with Burnout

When you feel burnt out, don’t hide your feelings away. Acknowledge them instead so you can deal with them effectively. Ask yourself what you can do differently to feel less burnt-out.

Maybe you need to switch to content you find more interesting, or perhaps you need to take on less work. No matter what realization you arrive at, dealing with burn-out will help you to move past it and to focus on your writing, both professionally and personally.

Options for Personal Writing

Finding a form of personal writing that you absolutely love can change your entire outlook on writing and on life; it can also help to stave off or help you recover from burnout.

The best thing you can do is to explore and to try different styles. If you like direct interactions with your readers, consider starting a blog, or maybe try your hand at stories, poems or even a novel. Who knows? You might even get published!

Finding a Topic or Subject

Finding unique things to say, especially for bloggers, can prove difficult. It might seem like everything has been done before.

Don’t worry about what other people are doing, however. Instead focus on one simple thing — staying as far away as possible from the type of writing you do professionally.

This way, there will be no conflict of interest between your personal writing and your work writing, and you won’t be left resenting your clients for taking all the good ideas.

Try Something New

People tend to love blogs that detail someone’s experiences. So, what better way to blog than to go out, try something new and write about it. Maybe you want to seek out an online degree, for example.

You could easily write an entire blog about researching different schools, selecting one, and then about the challenges and joys you face as you enroll as a student.

Show Your Passion and Expertise

Is there a topic you love and happen to know a lot about? Maybe you’re an expert at giving relationship advice, creating gorgeous flower arrangements or baking cakes. Perhaps fashion, Scrabble or the news is your passion.

Whatever your special skill or hobby is, you can incorporate it into your writing.

Teach others how to do what you do or just post pictures and content and watch them marvel at your brilliance — talk about a confidence boost! Plus, when you write about what comes naturally to you, it feels less like work and more like personal fulfillment.

Take Up a Cause

While most of the blogging ideas we’ve mentioned so far have been on the lighter side, it’s okay to get serious too. If you have an issue that you very much care about and want to bring attention to, then feel free to use your blog as a platform to do so.

Just make sure that your content is well-researched and well-informed, because that’s one of your main responsibilities as a serious blogger.

Get Support

Whether you blog, write stories or create poetry, you don’t have to go it alone! Writers thrive when they have close friends who also write and who can provide advice, guidance and just a friendly face along the way.

Join a writer’s network or guild or even a local Meet up group for writers. You can even join a virtual group or blog ring if you’re pressed for time.

Michelle is an aspiring writer who works for a university that offers online degrees. When she’s not working she loves writing about anything and everything and blogs as much as she can. She loves that blogging allows her to share her writing with an unlimited audience.

How Professional Writers Can Write Great Personal Content is a post from Online Income Star, blog about building successful online business and making money online.

However, knowing that you need more comments is only half the battle – you need to know what you can do to make those comments happen.

Ask Questions

Use your posts to ask questions. This kind of call to action helps overcome that little barrier to initial participation. It’s easy to incorporate questions into all kinds of posts — if you write a post about tips on being eco-friendly ask readers to contribute their favorite green cleaning tip.

If you review a product ask readers for their opinions and recommendations.

You can also write posts that are entirely designed for questions and comments — say, outlining a problem you have encountered and asking for their ideas on how to solve it.

Develop a Back-and-Forth

Getting a comment from a reader is just the start of increasing comments. You should respond to them in the comments as well, so that the comments become a conversation.

Value Their Contributions

Use comments from readers to inspire future posts, and link back to the post where the comments started. Let readers know that you value their input and will use it in the future.

Court Controversy

The success of the online tabloid Daily Mail shows how controversial statements can draw in commentators. This doesn’t mean you need to say something completely abhorrent — but consider taking a look at a contentious issue in your niche. If you want to be even more provocative, invite someone whom your readers don’t agree with to make a guest post on your blog explaining his or her view — your comments will definitely light up!

Play With Others

Head over to other blogs in your niche and start commenting yourself. Don’t ever be a spammer, but it’s usually okay to link to one of your own posts as long as it makes a useful contribution and you are doing more than just dropping a link.

If you are really meticulous, you can build a feed around blogs that you get results for commenting on. Spend a few days commenting on some big blogs or other reasonably popular blogs in your niche, and see which ones are great sources of incoming traffic. Pare down your list to ones that provide a steady stream of visitors and comment whenever you have something useful to say!

Do Your Research

While you are off commenting on other blogs, do some research — which posts have the most comments? Which posts did you feel most drawn to comment on? Try to figure out what it was that sparked off the discussion and try to use those tactics on your own blog.

Make It Easy

The easier it is for people to comment on your blog, the more comments you are likely to get. However, you are also more likely to get spam, offensive comments and other unwanted contributions.

You need to weigh up the benefits of captchas, registration, and moderation in preventing unwanted content against the way they may discourage people from commenting.

Brankica’s note: Comment Luv plugin integrated GASP plugin in the new version. GASP prevents non human commentators from leaving a comment with a check box you mush check to confirm you are human and post a comment.

Reward Your Commentators

Plugins like CommentLuv, as you see in use on Online Income Star, encourage comments by rewarding your readers. When someone makes a comment, CommentLuv allows them to attach a link to something they posted recently on their own blog.

If they share the post with one or more of their social networks, they are given even more options for what post to share. The Top Commentators widget (included in CommentLuv plugin) can further reward your readers by linking to the websites of the people who have commented the most in the last month.

Used correctly, these tips apply across the board, whether you run a niche making money blog or a community for parents. How do you encourage people to comment on your blog posts?

Adrienne is a blogger and internet marketer at WebpageFX SEO Company. When she’s not blogging about tech and social media, you might find her practicing her French, whipping up some recipes she found on Pinterest, or obsessing over vintage postcards and stamps.

8 Ways to Encourage Readers to Comment on Your Blog is a post from Online Income Star, blog about building successful online business and making money online.

So this time, it is my favorite 7 blogs I read in 2012. The ones that I read even when I really don’t have time for it. The ones I always learn from.

2 Create a Website

Smart Passive Income

Steve Scott Site

Kikolani

Copyblogger

Kissmetrics

Unbounce

So check them out and start reading. If you read only these 7 blogs in 2013. you will be learning all you need. Of course don’t forget to implement what you read, otherwise you will just be wasting your time.

Magnificent 7 – BLOGS of 2012. is a post from Online Income Star, blog about building successful online business and making money online.

Of course, everyone is trying to fix their optimization if it is broken or just badly done and using different SEO tools and services but there is still a lot of people who seem to be forgetting one of the factors Google is focusing on after the updates – social media!

Social media doesn’t come easy to many and when you look at how many sites and factors it includes, you kinda don’t even want to try it. It is definitely overwhelming.

Well, it doesn’t have to be that bad I personally love social media and feel like I am doing it right, but I do try to use any help I can get.

I just finished trying out a new tool for people like me, bloggers who are into social media, as well as running other peoples’ social media presence.

It is called BuzzBundle, and it is created by Link-Assistant.com, same company who made SEO Power Suite. So let’s see what can you do with this tool.

Social Media Management

This is the first thing you will see when you install this tool. It is a social media management dashboard and it will let you run all your social media from one place.

First you create a persona.

When you do, you can add unlimited profiles to the persona. You can also automatically create new social profiles using this tool, just add the username you want to use, a password and let the tool access your email (probably best to create a new email for this) so it can confirm the new profile creation.

You don’t have to create new profiles though, you can add the profiles that you are already using.

Posting

This tool has a cool feature like Ping.fm where you can select a pile of different sites to post on simultaneously.

Here is a current list of sites and options you have using them through BuzzBundle.

Monitoring

You can add your site and keywords you want to follow to your BuzzBundle and it will pull in mentions of those keywords. To put this to use, you can follow your name, company name and main keywords, for example.

Then engage with people who talk about you.

Engagement

You can set up different streams in your dashboard and engage with people who talk about you and your company.

BuzzBundle has standard options we are used to in other social media management tools – you can retweet, DM, reply, post an image and shorten your URLs.

Being active in conversations with people who talk good (or bad) about your company will make you stick out, which is a good thing, if you are promoting your company in a positive light.

Competition

Yes, I will mention competition again. You have to know what others are doing and learn from them, so you don’t waste your time on strategies that don’t bring results. Simply copy what they do and use it!

You can simply follow their social SEO strategy and learn from it. BuzzBundle let’s you see how your competitors are running their social media strategy.

Layout

It is pretty neat to keep all your streams in one window. You can arrange streams for blogs, forums, social networks and more, all together so they are easy to keep an eye on.

Extra features

Scheduling posts – probably my favorite feature in any management tool, BuzzBundle has it too.

Browser – while you are going through dozens of mentions of you on Twitter, blogs, Q and A sites, etc you may want to see the post in question in a browser. You don’t have to leave BuzzBundle, they have integrated browser.

Favorites – I am sure you are using favorite tweets to keep up with some of the messages, but now you can favorite more than just tweets. BuzzBundle lets you favorite any post you want.

Price

This is the only “fault” I found with this software, since it is a bit pricey compared to others.

Now, there is a free version, and it has a lot of options, so you should definitely give it a go. You can see the comparison between the free and professional edition here.

Conclusion

Social media is one thing you should focus on in 2013. And we can use any help we can get, so try this tool out and let me know what you think about it!

Download here.

Note: this is a sponsored review and I have received a free copy of the software, but the opinion is all mine. 

BuzzBundle Review – Improve Your Social Media Game is a post from Online Income Star, blog about building successful online business and making money online.