If you don’t know who Roger Federer is, he’s probably the top tennis player of all time. He’s so calm on the court that his opponents almost think he’s asleep. Yet underneath that calm exterior beats the heart of a panther. You couldn’t sneak up on Federer if you tried, he’s just that alert.

The game of tennis hasn’t changed at all over the years. Oh, the equipment and the clothing and the players all change frequently. But the game itself is still played the same way it’s always been played – you use a racket to shoot tennis balls back and forth across the net.

The game of Internet Marketing hasn’t changed either. It might seem like it but the rules have always been the same. You need to be yourself, play your best game, and deliver quality content. We can take some lessons from Federer.

Relax and take a deep breath: So many of us are ready to throw in the towel if we’re not instantly making money online. Someone tells us they had great success with some new marketing trick, so we put everything we have into it and when it doesn’t work we think we’re failures. What we need to do though, is take a lesson from Federer. Step back, shake it off and forget about it. That game is over. Time to stop thinking about it and start focusing on the next game.

Re-evaluate your opponent: In Internet marketing we have so many opponents. We have other webmasters competing for the same traffic, we have Google and the other search engines constantly changing the rules, we have our readers who can be the most fickle creatures on earth, and sometimes we’re our own biggest opponents. We get distracted, lose focus and concentration, and become our own worst enemies.

Before you move on to the next new campaign, re-evaluate your game. Try to find out why you lost the last point so you can prevent making the same mistake. Maybe the only reason you weren’t successful the first time around is because you don’t have all the knowledge you need. It might not be something you did wrong after all.

Flex your muscles: All athletes understand how important it is to flex your muscles before and after strenuous exercise. Flexing before you compete warms those muscles up and helps you move easier while preventing injuries. But stressing after exercise is equally important. It gives those overworked muscles a chance to relax and increases your circulation.

Flex your Internet muscles by moving into marketing areas you’ve not tried before. For example, step outside your comfort zone and create a video or go design a killer Facebook fan page. If you’ve spent most of your time writing articles then maybe those writing muscles need a little break, to get the blood flowing again. When you move into new marketing areas you can flex muscles you’ve never used before. And when you increase the circulation to those muscles you’ll also be increasing your traffic.

Evaluate your tools: The rules of the two games might not change but the equipment and tools do. New tennis rackets hit the market and springier new shoes. You don’t get to be the top player on the circuit using last year’s equipment.

The same holds true for Internet Marketing. What tools are you using in your business and do they need to be updated? There’s always some new program or plug-in being introduced guaranteed to make your business run smoother and faster. If you use these tools you need to keep them up to date.

In most cases, your most valuable tool is your mind and it’s the one tool most marketers ignore. You can never learn too much about Internet marketing. Like I said, the rules change frequently and you need to keep up.

One Internet Marketing lesson we can learn from Roger Federer is that your competition changes frequently, too. Maybe you ranked for that killer keyword last month but this month your competitor may have bumped you off the page. Maybe there’s a whole new list of keywords. You’ll never know if you don’t keep your mind sharp and focused on the game.

First of all, it will give the opportunity to your visitors to continue reading content they might be interested in.

Secondly, it’s a great way to improve your WordPress blog SEO-wise: search engines love cross-links to relevant content.

An easy way to display related posts is to use post tags. To display this list of related posts, you must paste this code within the loop:

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<?php

$number = '5';

$tags = wp_get_post_tags($post->ID);

if ($tags) {
	echo '<h3>Related Posts</h3>';
	$first_tag = $tags[0]->term_id;
	$args=array(
		'tag__in' => array($first_tag),
		'post__not_in' => array($post->ID),
		'showposts'=>$number,
		'caller_get_posts'=>1
	 );
	$my_query = new WP_Query($args);
	if( $my_query->have_posts() ) { ?>
		<ul>
			<?php while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>
				<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
				<?php
			endwhile; ?>
		</ul>
	<?php }
}
?>

This snippet of code allows you to easily display a list of 5 posts related to current post based on its tags, without installing any plugin that would use more resources on your webhost.

If you want to display more than 5 posts, edit the number in the first line of this code.

Get Involved

Your readers want to interact with you. They read your posts and they feel like they know you. When they comment they want to hear your responses. Take some time each day to go through the comments and respond as you can. Obviously you may be limited depending on how many comments you are receiving for each post, but you can at least be as active as possible on your own site. This will go a long way towards building a personal connection with your readers.

Get Personal

Your writing style is going to be what makes or breaks the success of your site. Your audience is not there to read a monotone rendition of your post. They want to see personality. They want to feel like they know the person behind the post. Let yourself shine through and create an identity that they can easily feel comfortable with. If humor is your thing then spend some time making them laugh. Develop a style that is uniquely you and can be recognized instantly by your readers.

Add Some Interactivity

Get the readers involved in your site. Ask questions. Host giveaways and contests. Request participation in events. Do whatever it takes to get the audience involved with you and with each other. This puts them in a place of feeling a connection not only with you as the blogger, but also with the site.

Use Social Media

Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites allow you the chance to friend and follow your audience. You can then interact with them on an even more personal level than your blog allows. Polls, contests and just general posts give you the opportunity to not only connect with them but to also find out exactly what they like and don’t like about your site.

1. Start your own Group: Joining LinkedIn Groups is a definite must, but starting your own group is even better. You can, if you choose, control who gets invited and who gets accepted. You can even upload a logo to reinforce your brand.

   When you create your group you can give it a name, create a description and define its purpose. Using keywords you attract a very targeted following and you’ll actually have 2 targeted profiles on LinkedIn – one for you personally and one for your group.

   But it’s the Group Discussions that matter the most. Your discussions are similar to forum postings and can either be closed and available only to members of your group or they can be open to the world. As the Group owner it’s easy enough to establish yourself as the authority within the Group. And by using keywords in your topics and posts you can attract targeted traffic and refer all of them to back to your blog for more information.

   As a Group Owner you also have the ability to message the members of your Group. Which means you can send them information about specials or seminars you’re offering. Maybe send them all a free ebook or download, or a weekly newsletter. It’s email marketing on steroids and the possibilities are endless.

2. Answer questions in your blog: Earlier I told you that you could answer questions at LinkedIn to help establish credibility and authority. Before you answer that question though, go write a blog post with lots of detailed information. Then go back and give a brief, informative answer at LinkedIn and tell people that you discuss it in depth on your blog. Or write a blog post that relies on images to get your message across. You can’t include images when you’re answering LinkedIn questions so it’s another good reason to send people to your blog.
3. Start Group Discussions: As a member of any Group, when you start a discussion you have a maximum of 200 characters to use to title your discussion and then you can include a link to relevant content. And yes, that link can lead to one of your blog posts. If you’re a member of a Group that has 10,000 members then that means that 10,000 people will potentially see your link. You don’t get those kind of results with any other free method of link promotion!
4. Invite your blog followers to connect with you at LinkedIn: Chances are, a lot of your blog followers already have a LinkedIn account. And if they don’t, they’ll be more willing to join if they know they’re already invited to join your group. Invite them to connect with you and once they do, you can start connecting with their contacts and invite them to join your Group, too.
5. Update your status: It sounds so simple you wonder how it can have any effect. But each time you update your status it shows on the homepage of every single person you’re connected to. Think of it as a powerful Tweet. You have 180 characters for your message and you really only need to update 2 or 3 times a week, assuming, of course, that doing other things like joining in discussions and answering questions.

These tips and the tips I discussed earlier are really just scratching the surface. The possibilities for using LinkedIn to drive traffic to your blog are unlimited and the sooner you get in there and work with it, the sooner you’ll uncover the potential.

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, though, at LinkedIn quality really does matter. You won’t be able to get away with half-baked answers and a link back to your blog. Your Group members won’t tolerate you spamming them with promotional offers 2 or 3 times a day. The comments you leave need to be relevant and add to the discussion or you’ll get drummed right off the site. If you keep in mind that you’re dealing with professionals when you network at LinkedIn you might find that it’s the best marketing move you ever made.

Understand the purpose: Before you even start writing that guest blog post you need to understand why you’re doing it. For you, the benefits are easy to see – you get a valuable link and the potential for more traffic back to your site. For the Top Blogger it also all boils down to traffic, but in a different way. He’s only going to accept guest posts if they add some value to his site. He’s not as concerned about the new traffic you’ll bring to his blog as he is about keeping the traffic he already has. And he’s not going to jeopardize that just to give you a little link love. You have to earn it.

Read their blog – Obviously, no Big Name Blogger is going to accept just any old blog post you want to submit. Whatever you write has to be relevant for his readers. And the only way to know what his readers are looking for is to read his blog.

Bring something different to the party – The reason that bloggers accept guest blog posts is to add some variety to their blog, to give their readers a fresh perspective. Even Big Name bloggers occasionally hit writer’s block or run out of ideas or just want a day off. Don’t rehash the same tips that everyone else is using. Come up with something new and fresh.

Put your best foot forward – Getting your post published on an A-List blog can open up a lot of doors and you know what they say – you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Make sure you check and double-check for spelling and grammar errors, punctuation mistakes, breaks in continuity, all that ‘good writing’ stuff.

Do the research – Just because it’s someone else’s blog that doesn’t mean you can slack off on SEO. Do the research to use keywords that will attract traffic to your post. That Big Name Blogger already knows you’re going to be sending a certain amount of traffic his way but imagine what he’ll think if your blog post is such a hit it turns into an Internet meme.

Learn how to write good titles – Remember, you’re here to help draw traffic. Cutesy titles, titles with puns, comical titles – those are all great for your own blog. But a good search engine optimized title will include a keyword along with a clear description of what the reader will learn when he reads the post. If the blog owner wants to change the title he will but you’ll be saving him a lot of time if you just put a good title on your post to start with.

Follow the rules – A lot of Top List Bloggers advertise the fact that they accept guest bloggers. If that’s the case, look around the site to see if he or she has posted any rules they want you to follow. And then make sure you follow those rules exactly so they don’t have a reason to ignore your submission.

Send it in your first email – If the blogger doesn’t have a list of rules posted, don’t bother sending an email to ask for permission to submit a guest post. A lot of those bloggers are too busy to answer and they don’t want to be bothered trying to help you pick a topic. Just write one and submit it. And then move on. If they want to use it they will and if they don’t they won’t. Don’t send a follow up email asking about it, either. And if you’re hell bent on getting something published on that blog, write something else and submit it again.

Link to his content – Internal links are high on the list of things you need to do for SEO. If you’re writing relevant content it should be easy to link to one of the blogger’s previous posts. He’s probably going to do it anyway so you’ll not only save him some time but you’ll impress him by doing something that most guest bloggers don’t even think about doing.

Include your byline – You’re not bragging, you earned that byline. A Top List Blogger has decided to accept your guest post. Now don’t make him have to hunt you down for your byline. Include it with your post. Two or three lines is sufficient. Make sure you include your real name, a link to your website, an anchor text link to one of your own key blog posts, and your USP.

However, if you want to keep your post titles clean, all you need to do is paste the following piece of code in your functions.php file:

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function the_title_trim($title) {
	$title = attribute_escape($title);
	$findthese = array(
		'#Protected:#',
		'#Private:#'
	);
	$replacewith = array(
		'', // What to replace "Protected:" with

		'' // What to replace "Private:" with

	);
	$title = preg_replace($findthese, $replacewith, $title);
	return $title;
}
add_filter('the_title', 'the_title_trim');

Once the code is pasted in fuctions.php, simply save the file and it will be activated automatically.

Website directories are lists, or indexes, of websites and the listings are broken down into categories, sub-categories and further if necessary. These lists of websites are a resource for people searching for information. You can go to your favorite search engine and type in a search time and you’ll see pages and pages of results. But if you go to your favorite website directory you’ll see results that have been edited to filter out the garbage. Ideally, a website directory contains links to sites that contain quality information and these sites have been selected by human editors.

There are literally millions of website directories out there. You can find general directories or niche-specific. To find them, just do a search for ‘website directories YOUR NICHE‘. The best general example is dmoz. This is an open directory project where real people, just like you and me, actually edit the listings. It’s purpose is to help categorize the Internet and separate the wheat from the chaff. Not all sites that are submitted are accepted.

Website directories promote themselves to searchers as being the best place to come to find quality websites in whatever niche – they save time and they weed out the riff-raff. They promote themselves to you, the webmaster, as being someplace where you can get a valuable backlink and traffic. They need your quality website so they can attract searchers (who will click on their ads) and they need searchers (traffic numbers) so they can attract your website to their index. It’s one big circle and, like everything else on the web, success depends on quality.

Submitting Your Site To Website Directories

Like I said, there are two ways you can make money online with website directories and one is to submit your site. Submitting your site to a directory isn’t like submitting to article directories. You don’t have to write an article. You just submit the link to your home page and fill in tags, keywords and a description. If you’re accepted then you get a link back to your site and you’re listed in the index.

But here’s where that ‘quality‘ thing comes in. The whole point of submitting to directories is to gain a link back from a quality, relevant site. I could put up a page of website links on my PR0 iguana blog and call it a directory but what’s that going to do for your investment blog when I include it on my index? Nothing. In fact, it will probably do more harm than good in the eyes of the search engines. That link will just look like low-ranking spam. But hey, I accepted your site for my directory! Yippeeee!

OK, you can probably see where I’m going here. Good website directories are going to be choosy about what sites they accept. But you have to be just as choosy about the directories you submit to. Here’s what to look for:

Relevance – Submitting to general directories like dmoz.com is great, because they already have a reputation and page rank. But there are some pretty high-ranking directories out there that are niche specific, too.

Authority – Look at the directory’s page rank. While it’s not the only concern you should have you do need to be aware. New directories hit the web every day so not everybody has a high page rank. If they don’t, though, what’s their traffic look like? Are they a growing site or are they just out to make a buck? It’s important to know this because when that site goes down the tubes for being spammy, it may very well have an affect on your site.

Fee vs Free – And speaking of bucks, do you have to pay a fee to be listed in that directory? Some do charge for the privilege. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. If they’re not collecting money from you then how are the making money? You need to look at that because if they’re not getting it from you then they’re probably running ads. And that’s next on the list…

Ads – A quality directory, just like any quality website, will be concerned about the service they provide to the people who come there looking for information. That’s what brings them their PR and that PR is what attracts you. So take a look at the ads on the site. Are they plastering Adsense all over the page? Do searchers have to scroll through dozens of banner ads before they get to the categories? Yeah, you get a backlink out of it, but you also want people to be able to find you on that directory. And a poorly run directory isn’t going to attract any searchers anyway.

Setting Up Your Own Website Directory

If you’ve read this far then you can probably figure out the rest. If you’re going to try to make money with your own directory then you need to think quality and SEO, which essentially go hand-in-hand anyway.

When you start looking around you’re going to find plenty of crap directories out there. They’re just big link farms sandwiched in between a lot of Adsense and affiliate marketing ads. The people who set them up are thinking – “Cool! I’ll set up this directory as a way to lure in a bunch of traffic and when they get here they’ll click on my ads!”

But you and I both know you have to get the traffic first. And the only way to do that is to provide quality, relevant information. The reason searchers use website directories is because they know that some editorial process has been used to provide a list of quality websites. If they wanted to see everything that was available, they’d just stick with Google. They’re counting on you to show them the best.

For that reason, you need to be choosy about what sites you accept. If your directory is full of poor quality sites and spammers then searches won’t hang around long.

Be diligent with SEO. Use keywords for categories, use tags, use your meta-tags. Your success depends most upon your visibility in the search engines. Without it, searchers can’t find you. If searchers can’t find you, you have no traffic. No traffic means nobody wants to list their website in your directory. There’s that circle again!

Be very careful about the sites you accept. You’re going to be linking to them and you definitely don’t want to link to porn or spam or poor quality content.

So there you have it. In a nutshell, if you want to make money online with website directories, the keyword is Quality, whether you’re submitting your site or building your own directory.

Use these traffic reports to keep an idea of the kind of traffic you can generate over time when starting a blog from scratch, without leveraging any other web property.

Unique Visitors and Pageviews

Let’s start with some general data about this month traffic: unique visitors and pageviews. These two indicators are the most commonly used in web statistics. Every webmaster know how many unique visitors he is receiving monthly as well as the number of page impressions. Here is Dukeo’s data for this month:

The number of unique visitors grew by a very nice 15% during past month. Once again, Dukeo beat its own record of the biggest month in terms of Unique Visitors and also the biggest in terms of Unique Pageviews.

My traffic is growing steadily and it’s time for another month of growth. Let’s see if I’ll reach the 20k pageviews in February…

Traffic Sources

Here is a general overview of the sources where dukeo’s traffic has been coming from during the past month.

For once, search engine traffic didn’t grow that much compared to other traffic sources. The different percentages stayed quite steady.

Top 5 Traffic Sources

Wondering what are the top 5 traffic sources of dukeo.com? Here comes the answer.

This graph clearly demonstrates that traffic coming from Google is still very impressive compared to the traffic coming from other sources. It accounts for over 6 out of every 10 visitors that Dukeo is receiving.

The traffic coming from Twitter completely crashed. This is mostly due to me quitting Triberr. I joined the website a few months ago and it was bringing some decent traffic to me. However, not so long ago, the admins of that service decided to change the way ot works and as a result you can’t put it on auto-pilot anymore. Result: traffic crash.

Top 10 Keywords

Following comes the list of the top 10 keywords which brought some traffic from search engines to dukeo.

1. freedom (40)
2. kong paris (33)
3. add me on facebook (28)
4. mywot (25)
5. dukeo (21)
6. thai massage paris (21)
7. caricature body (17)
8. john chow (16)
9. kong restaurant (16)
10. ryan eagle (17)

Let’s add some interesting information about the number of keywords which are bringing traffic to dukeo.

The number of keywords bringing traffic to Dukeo this month increased once again. The growth was a little more important than previous month, which is quite encouraging.

Top 10 Posts/Pages

And finally, here is the list of the top 10 most viewed posts/pages during last month. This may include some posts which have been published during previous months but are still very popular or highly ranked in SERPs.

1. Homepage (1950)
2. Delightful Thai Massage at La Villa Thai, Paris (310)
3. Celebrating Birthdays at Kong Restaurant, Paris (286)
4. Affiliate Summit West 2012 Las Vegas – Adsimilis Dinner and Party (270)
5. How To Make Money Online Writing Book Reviews (238)
6. 185 Extremely Creative Billboards To Use As Inspiration For Your Ads (223)
7. Gallery (223)
8. Reviews (162)
9. Top 7 WordPress SEO Strategies (159)
10. How To Make Money Taking Photographs And Selling Them Online As Stock Photos (153)

Dukeo’s pages has been viewed almost 1900 times more than previous month! I can’t wait to see next month’s stats!

However, there’s one very big mistake I made in the beginning of my online career, one that I really do wish I could take back. If one of those little green men decided to visit me tonight, and he brought along a time machine, I know exactly what point in the past I’d want to return to. The day I decided it wasn’t really important to put an opt-in form on my blog.

The biggest mistake an Internet Marketer can make is to put off starting a list. I hate to say it because it’s been said so many times already, but the money really is in the list and you’re nuts if you think otherwise.

I’ve been working online for a few years now and I’m not the type of person to dwell on the past. I don’t worry about what I coulda done or what I shoulda done. The past is over and done with and you can’t change a minute of it. The best you can hope for is to learn from your mistakes so you can avoid repeating them. And trust me, this is one mistake I’ve never repeated.

I understand that when you’re just getting started you may not have the skills to install that form on your very first blog. But you’re going to have to learn sometime and there’s no time like the present. Aweber is one of the best email service providers online and one of the benefits of using them is that they have operators on real telephones who are happy to walk you through the set up. So that eliminates that excuse.

And once you have everything set up, the hard part is done. It’s not like you have to stand there with a clipboard and manually write down everyone’s name and email address. Aweber does all of that for you. So that eliminates that excuse.

Why is that list so important? Well, if you think about it, how else are you going to contact people and generate leads when you’re working online? You have no idea where your visitors live, they’re from all over the world, so there’s no way you can track down phone numbers or mailing addresses. And eventually you’re going to have hundreds or even thousands of people a day traipsing through your blog. Do you really think you’d have time to call them or send them a postcard anyway?

Generating that list of leads is crucial for any blogger and the sooner you start the better. It’s a lot easier to manage that list and learn how to use it while your blog is still new and just getting a trickle of traffic. Don’t wait until you’re getting thousands of visitors a day before you set up your opt-in form because you’ll have missed so much valuable traffic by then.

Once you have that list your marketing opportunities skyrocket. And because everything is automated you can communicate with everyone on your list by just generating one email. Want to tell all of your loyal followers about the new product you’re promoting? Send one email and you’re done. Want to invite all 20,000 members of your list to visit your new Facebook fan page? Send one email and you’re done.

There are entire ebooks written about all of the different ways you can use your list to generate income and increase your profits. But each and every one of them starts with the same link – “First you need to put an opt-in form right smack dab in the middle of your blog!”

My mother says that when I was growing up I always had to learn all my lessons the hard way. I could never just take someone’s word for it, I always had to screw it up myself. Don’t make the biggest mistake and Internet Marketer can ever make. Don’t make the same mistake I made. Listen to me now and take heed – Set up that opt-in form and start generating your list the moment you launch your blog.

Start your list with Aweber for Only $1.00

If you do not have a list already, you should start building it right now! The best service provider for email list building is Aweber. They are currently offering a $1 trial account for all new customers. Your trial account will have the same functionnality as any Aweber account and includes unlimited email campaigns, newsletter, broadcasts and follow ups. Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. If you are not satisfied with Aweber service, you can contact them within 30 days and they will even give you the $1 back!

During the day, you can see only one bug on this billboard. But if you drive-by during the night, you’ll discover that there is never just one. Clever way of doing some day time/night time adaptation.

BMW Bridgeport Creative Billboard

Ah dummies… It ALWAYS does its work at catching your atention!

Mini Vending Machine Creative Billboard

There are a lot of billboards playing on the small size of the mini making it almost like a toy or a snack. Car becomes a consumer object almost on the same level as a pair of shoes or a can of soda.

Adidas Shoes Sizes Creative Billboard

Adult size shoes, adult size advertising… Kid size shoes, kid size advertising. A good way to adapt to the target audience.

Die Hunger People Creative Billboard

Luckily this billboard is not advertising any product. From what I understood this was part of an art project. Anyway, you’re forced to react to this billboard… Mission accomplished: you’re not indifferent.

To see more Creative, Funny, Original and Surprising Billboards, I invite you to check the full list of 185 Extremely Creative Billboards To Use As Inspiration For Your Ads. And don’t forget to share this post with the social buttons on this page!