Dumb Little Blogger

How I Doubled My Opt-in Rates To 1.4% And Got 1356 Subscribers In 60 Days

2016-08-11T10:15:00.000-07:00

The digital marketing industry has come a long way since its inception in the early 2000s, as and when new tools and websites popped up, new strategies and methods were devised to bring in targeted traffic at the lowest possible cost. During this time 100s of tools, websites and methods have gone obsolete, but the one thing that has remained intact and effective throughout is the good old email marketing.

Even today nearly 18% of global web traffic is driven through emails, though this share has been falling over the past few years, it still isn't something marketers can ignore as nearly all of corporate communications and important personal conversations happen through emails.

Building a strong email list has been a priority for me since 'Day 1' in this business, and over the years we have tried and tested various different strategies to increase the percentage of our visitors joining our mailing lists, in this post we will be explaining each of our methods along with the results we have witnessed with them so far,

The strategy we used to build a massive email list and nearly double our optin rates can be summarized in a quite simple way,

Amazing Content

Call-To-Action

Massive eMail List

The above strategy would work best in a perfect world, but may not yield much results here, so in reality this is how our strategy actually looks like,

Amazing Content

Ask For eMail IDs

Ask Again...!

...and Again

Give Incentives

Massive eMail List

If you can come up with good quality content and can bring in targeted traffic to your blog, building an email list would be a piece of cake with our method below. All you need to do is install certain Wordpress plugins and configure them and keep checking your conversion rates.

At the moment we use MailChimp to manage our email lists and most of the apps and tools we've recommended here can be integrated with MailChimp.

The idea is to ensure that your opt-in form gets as much exposure as possible, so if your goal is to get as many visitors to join your email list as possible all you have to do is install the Wordpress plugins mentioned below.

1) Hello Bar

The Hello Bar is an extremely simple Wordpress plugin which has gained a lot of popularity over the past few days, many of the top blogs and websites across the world currently use it to grab attention towards their 'Call-To-Action' buttons.

We have been using the 'Hello Bar' on our blog for quite sometime and it has worked wonders with our conversions.

It blends seamlessly onto any Wordpress theme without intruding on user experience and is yet quite visible and provides massive exposure to the 'call to action'.

Overtime we witnessed a conversion rate of a little over 0.30%, the bar got close to 103,759 impressions and we got 311 successful opt-ins.
Using Hello Bar you can test multiple variations of your text, call-to-action and buttons, it collects and stores all of the essential data so that you can decide on the best combinations to maximize your conversion rates.

2) Featured Subscription Box (Plugmater)

This was something I was quite skeptical about as it occupies a lot of space on the site which may intrude into user experience, something that I could have also used to place ads and generated revenue from, so I had to look into the opportunity costs of this quite a lot before deciding to keep it, which made data collection and analysis crucial.

Plugmatter allows for plenty of customization, so you will need some time to play around with it and come up with something that best suits your blog.

Keep in mind that this is a paid plugin, but so far I feel that its been worth every penny, the conversion rate we witnessed with this plugin is far higher than Hello Bar.

The one thing that Plugmater doesn't do efficiently is collect data, so you will have to maintain a spreadsheet of your own to track the performance and conversion of each and every variance. Another thing to factor in is the opportunity cost, how much potential revenue are you losing by adding this box to the top of your page instead of an ad?

3) SlideUp Box (Dreamgrow Scroll Triggered Box)

Our second best performing email sign up form is the Dreamgrow Scroll Triggered Box, its a simple and elegant plugin that 'slide's up' from the bottom of the page and is something that comes closest to an actual popup (something which can hinder user experience).

You can configure the slider to show up when the user scrolls down to a specific location of the page, so it captures attention when a user reads your content and doesn't show as soon as the page loads. This simple feature can help improve exposure manifold and eventually your conversions.

We got conversions of nearly 0.70% with this plugin, which is quite amazing and we still continue to use it across all our sites.

On To Our Readers

There are a number of other plugins you can use to further improve your conversions, these include popups like PopUp Domination, but these plugins often hinder user experience, but they can surely get you conversions of over 1%.

eMail marketing should never be ignored as a source of traffic, it can be used to get consistent traffic to your blog, sold as solo ads with guaranteed clicks and can be monetized in a number of ways.

Once your email list has been built it takes a great deal of effort to maintain your subscribers and keep them active, that is an art and science that requires its own post. :)

How To Promote Your Music On Youtube

2015-08-26T23:18:00.004-07:00

In this guide I'm going to show you how to build a massive following on Youtube by taking your music videos viral. If your an aspiring musician there is no better place to promote yourself than Youtube, but due to increasing competition and lots of junk content you will have to actively market yourself to get more exposure.

This method was invented by Paschalis in his blog post on how to promote your music so its not something I've come up with, but I have made a few changes to make this more effective.

1) Find Your Target Audience

The first step would be to find your target audience, you'll have to identify the keywords to target in order to reach your desired audience.

You would need at least 15 to 20 keywords in order to get started with the next step.

2) Optimize Your Videos

Once you have your keywords in hand, start optimizing your videos to target those keywords, ensure that you have mentioned those keywords multiple times in your tags, descriptions and titles.

Youtube is a bit strict regarding keyword stuffing these days so please make sure that you don't overdo this.

3) Likes, Views And Comments

Once your done with the above steps your video should get ranked for the keywords of your choice, once that's done you can start adding comments, views and likes to your video at a slow and random pace in order to improve your rankings.

You can buy this service from Fiverr at a cheap rate, but you must ensure that the views and comments are drip-fed to make them look natural.

You should start seeing improvements in SERPs and most low / medium competition keywords should reach page 1 within 2 to 3 weeks.

Source - http://www.musicproductiontips.net/how-to-promote-your-music-on-youtube/

http://www.reelseo.com/music-video-youtube/

8 Highly Motivational Quotes From Harvey Specter

2015-08-09T07:19:00.002-07:00

Comedy Centrals popular legal drama Suits has inspired millions of youngsters to consider a career in law, although the field is highly glorified in the show it does have a lot of motivational quotes meant for everyone.

These are few of the best ones so far,

Life is like this, I like this

All I'm saying is try and create a situation where failure isn't even a possibility

I don't have dreams, I have goals

You know who cries the hardest in the Miss America Pageant? The Winner, because she knows she can't win again and winners always want to

The only time success comes before work is in the dictionary.

The internet is filled Harvey Specter quotes, these are probably one of the best ones, hairy raising quotes and dialogues like these come up in every episode of the show, so compiling this list was one hell of a task.

Source - http://www.totallyawesomecrap.com/8-most-bad-ass-harvey-specter-quotes/

How I got my bounce rate from 80 to 30?

2010-01-02T23:34:00.000-08:00

Most of my blogs traffic comes from social media sites, forums and other blogs through comments, and as you all know such traffic is mostly not targeted and thus, reducing conversions. Other than this my biggest problem until recently was that my bounce rate was 80%, it took a lot of work to reduce this bounce rate to 30%. My traffic comes from the same sources and my search engine traffic didn't change, but I still succeeded in reducing my bounce rate using some simple on-site strategies, I have mentioned some of these in my previous articles for different purposes,

First of all, bounce rate is the percentage of your visitors who leave immediately without checking other pages or spending any time on your site. This is does not allow you to efficiently monetize your site, as such visitors will not increase conversions. Bounce is usually calculated with one common formula, Bounce rate = Total number of visits viewing one page / Total number of visits.

Interlinking posts
I have mentioned two to three times about this in my previous posts. Interlinking of posts has many uses, one of them includes decreasing your bounce rate. This works best when you do it with links inside your content, as it increases curiosity in the reader. The key here is to write attractive text links to grab user attention and manage to create an extra page view. Interlinking of posts also helps in your seo, it played a key role in getting my blog to PR4. I implemented this strategy one month ago, and the results were quite surprising. Just two days after I started to interlink all my posts my bounce rate started to steadily decrease. The reason why this works is that its of great value to your users. This is one of the main reasons why sites like Wikipedia rank so high and are so popular, i think Wikipedia has less than 2 percent bounce rate. (To learn more visit : Benefits of interlinking posts)

Include related, popular and latest posts sections
This is one more thing that is very effective, if a visitor doesn't get his needs fulfilled, he has a list of other articles on that topic in your blog itself. This works very well if you have a wide collection of similar articles. There are many widgets for both blogger and wordpress to automate this process. The most popular post sections lets the your visitor get a feel of your blogs content. All of these also comes under the interlinking section, but this has a bit less effect on it.

Get related links, avoid social media
As I have mentioned above, my blog gets most of its traffic from social media sites like Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, reddit and also through blog commenting, but even though I get a lot of visitors none of my them from such sources stayed longer than 20 seconds, neither did they visit the second page. This is very common for any blog, but you can cure this by placing links on related sites, promoting your blog on related social media sites. My traffic from Digg leads to very less conversions, but the traffic i get from Sphinn which is of my niche leads to good conversions and reduces my bounce rate.

Divide long posts into two or more
I did not use this method, but people who have, told its effectiveness. Many sites containing tutorials
are divided into different pages for topics. It is widely observed that such sites have a low bounce rate. This is because as in a normal post no one would have the curiosity to check out out other topics they would be interested in, besides long posts are very boring and if I come across a long post I would hardly read the first two paragraphs, but if its divided into two or three more I would definitely take my time, take breaks and finish it. This is all just games for the human mind, its up to you to twist and tweak to suit your visitors.

Usability and stickiness
When someone visits your site the first thing they see would be your design and style. The human mind plays a crazy game, you'll have to fool it, to increase conversions. I have seen many sites with good enough content, but really great design, sticky posts, which are all interlinked. Stickiness actually means to hold attention of a visitor towards your content and increase the time he/she spends on your site. There are a set of plugins and widgets which are used to increase stickiness, most of them are related, popular and latest posts plugins, but somethings which work best is simple changes in your theme and some simple designs sch as borders and linings.

Conclusion
As I mentioned above, this all depends on your visitors mind, your goal is to seem attractive to his/her mind. These are just small tips I have mentioned here, you can make maximum use of it by experimenting with some tips and tricks. I will be writing more on this topic in the coming weeks, to stay updated please subscribe to my feed.

Money making principles for bloggers from Robert T Kiyosaki

2009-12-29T07:45:00.000-08:00

First of all my real guru and role model is none other than Robert T Kiyosaki, known for his Rich Dad Poor Dad series. In all of his books he has given many methods for making money, which can be used by anyone and everyone, he was the one who inspired me to earn money at a young age. I have read almost all of his books and I feel really lucky to have found out about those books. I'm not writing this to just put up a quick affiliate link and profit from that, I'm here to just tell you the inspiration behind my desperation, hard work and ambitions for making money, though I haven't succeeded yet, but I'm sure these simple principles are going bring success for me.

In the first book Robert introduces himself as a son of middle class school teacher in Hawaii, then he sets out to learn how to get rich with his friend Mike from Mike's father, whom he calls as rich dad. The book contains everything which Rich Dad had thought him and also his own personal experiences. After the success of his first book he released a set of books related to personal and commercial wealth creation and management. The following principles are all taken from his books,

Do not work for money, make it work for you
This sounded strange to me when I first read it, but after I understood it sounded very practical. He says the rich do not work for money, they invest their money on their workers who work for them, he meant the harder the worker's work the richer the owner gets. But he does say its good to work for things other than money, such as experience, knowledge or sometimes just for the sake of it, even he worked for the Xerox Corp to gain experience and knowledge on marketing and sales, but he never worked their for money.

He says people today are slaves to money, and that too sounds practical as today people do anything for money and listen to it when it says them to work their ass off. The policies of working hard for money were of the past, today hard work doesn't determine how rich or poor a person is. In the Industrial Age people worked hard to get rich and that was the only way to get rich, but this is the information age, but still people aren't adapted to it.

Currently I'm working hard to build this blog, but you see I am not working hard for money, as I have not yet monetized this site, but I will leave this blog once I get enough traffic and money and hire someone to blog for me. Most of the bloggers these days work hard even though they have no one to boss on them, this is because they haven't grown their blogs to live without them, no matter how hard they try they can't go on a holiday without their blogs.

Win with honor lose without shame

Robert started his first business the Nylon and Velcro Wallets, which had huge success in the beginning, but eventually went bankrupt, but Robert didn't get discouraged, he made plans for many other companies and invested in many of them. In one of his books he gives an example of the people of Texas and their tragic military defeat in the war of Alamo. He say's :

I like Texas and Texans. In Texas, everything is bigger. When Texans win, they win big. And when they lose, it's spectacular.

In that war the Texans fought bravely even though they knew their was no chance of victory, and they got their butts kicked, but today Texas makes billions every month from the debris of the war as it has become a famous tourist attraction. Texans don't bury their elders, instead they take inspiration from them.

Its been around almost a year since I started to blog, till now I haven't made more than $200 a month, and my marks in school has deteriorated steadily, but I know that someday I will make a living from blogging, these kinds of stories inspire me to continue working hard, while trying to change failures into successes.

Money is an idea
This was one of the most confusing principles I've learnt from his books, I've still not understood this properly. This was told to Robert by his rich when he was young, but even he didn't understand that until he grew up. It actually means that money is represented artificially on paper and coins, but actually money can be anything you want it to be.

I know that the above explanation was not very clear, but those are somethings that influence you everyday, but you'll need to get deep into commerce and law to recognize that.

Money is an idea and what its represented as can be called as wealth, so rich people make more money and represent it as wealth, these transactions of money and wealth are binded with many theories and laws, which make them invisible for us.

You don't need money to make money
When Robert told people to make their money work hard for them, instead of the other way, he got replies asking him, whose going to give them money to make it work hard. Robert replied in his next book telling people that in the information age, you don't need money to make money, he says the same thing that money is just an idea and if you have the idea other people will give you money. I couldn't understand that back then, but i did understand it when I started to know about investments and capital markets. In the industrial you had to make use of only your money, but this is the information age, and now people have to make use of others money to get rich.

Good debt and bad debt
While the rest of the world concentrates on reducing debt, Robert says that he keeps getting into more and more debt and never concentrates on reducing it. He says if he had bad debt he would be worried about it, but if gets into debt by creating or acquiring an asset he wouldn't be worried, as the income he gets from his newly acquired asset would repay the debt. He gave an example on this and let me tell you in his own words:

Just say I have more than $300,000 to invest and i find a house worth $300,000 for sale then I would invest $30,000 on it as a down payment and the rest is borrowed from a bank, now I have $270,000 more left to invest on other properties and stocks and the house I bought gives me a rental income of $3000 a month and I pay $1000 every month as an installment to the loan I had taken, so I have $2000 of income and more money to invest.

By doing this Robert has built a huge business empire, and everytime his net worth grows, his debt also increases. As a blogger its really not a common practice to borrow money for your blog, but today your blog is no less than a business, besides you can grow your blog faster and get richer if you get some money to invest. I believe that its always easier if you have some money to invest than sitting and working your ass off by promoting your blog.

Savers are losers
If you take our parents or grand-parents, their main goal in life was to graduate with good grades, find a secure job and save for their retirement. Even when they wanted to buy a house or go for shopping they hesitated to use borrowed, they would usually save the money and buy a house instead. Well, that was right at their times, but even today, people plan for saving money to invest, though people use their credit cards for shopping, funding an investment is usually the same old traditional way.

There are still many people who feel investing is risky and tend keep money in banks and use their interest returns.

Most of the bloggers do not invest their own money and even if they do its going to be very small. This is because of their mentality to save money and use it, if some comes and invests a huge set of money and starts promoting his blog, he will definitely be ahead in the race, making you a loser.

Money can't give happiness

In the end of his first book, Robert tells us that money doesn't make one happy. Money can give you power, freedom and fame, but its something that gives you happiness. He told that being rich he had the freedom to do whatever he wants and spend time on any project which interests him, money gave him power and also fame when he got many media coverages, but he tells that he got happiness from somewhere else. This is something true, in my life I've seen many happy middle class people, but sad rich and high class people. I totally agree that money has no connections with happiness, but before I felt most of the problems and sadness comes only when there is lack of money.

Imperial monetization methods for your blog

2009-12-23T23:37:00.000-08:00

From the past one year I have come across thousands of blogs, each getting over 70,000 visitors every month. I have a habit of checking out the ad rates of other blog and calculating their maximum revenue potential, to my surprise most of those blogs earn less than $200 a month. This is because they use the traditional banners and links to monetize their sites. First of all the banners and links can generate good income, but it can't generate a six figure income, which can make you an imperial blogger. The money you earn doesn't depend on your traffic, number of subscribers or the number of comments you get, it depends on your monetization strategy, people who make most money online have it well optimized knowingly or unknowingly. Today bloggers use two types of revenue models traditional and imperial, but there are thousands of what I call as the monetization strategy. This post gives different methods of imperial monetization, but its up to you to create, optimize and implement these methods according to your strategy.

A short note on traditional monetization
The traditional monetization way is the method used by most of the people today, it is really good for beginners, but when your blogs traffic touches 20000 visitors, you no longer need to use the traditional way, but to my surprise bloggers with more than 100,000 monthly visitors still put up Adsense and sell banners, they will definitely make money, but they don't realize that their blogs have a bigger revenue potential.

But why doesn't this type of monetization not work? Just imagine, a blog has 12 different ad spots, and it gets 100,000 visitors a month, it sells those ads at $100 a month, leading to a total of $1200 every month, now even if that blog's traffic grows by 40% you cannot increase your ad rates because you can do so only your advertiser demands increase, this is one of the many disadvantages of traditional monetization.

So now just imagine your selling a product on your site, it takes one post and a banner on your homepage and it keeps generating revenue everyday and the only thing that matters is your traffic. This doesn't mean you'll earn $100 extra everyday, your going to definitely more than and after sometime thats going to become your top revenue.

Selling an E-book
This the new growing trend on the internet, because of its environment friendly and economic price, I'm sure has real growth and high revenue potential. Darren Rowse made $72000 a week when he first launched his ebook, and truly don't think he invested much. He only promoted his ebook within his blog and used its traffic for promotion and sales. When your selling an ebook the most important aspects are your reputation, good content and your blogs traffic, if your blog doesn't get enough traffic then you should be ready to invest money on your own for exposure. For tips to launch your ebook visit - How to successfully launch an online product?

Action Plan

Set up a landing page
Set up an affiliate program with ready made banners
Post sample articles on your blog, for giving users a feel of your product.
Promote it on forums, social networks and buy advertisements
Send inside traffic from your blog using banners and links.

Sell an hardcover book

Ebooks are toys of the near future, as today hardcover books are comparatively profitable, this because it can be sold both online through your blog, as well as offline through mainstreet publishers. Same as above, content is always first, then is what you call as marketing.

Marketing a hardcover book is pretty tough and expensive, you'll have to use both offline and online advertising, you need an high traffic blog to sell your book, if you advertise on other blogs and if you are successful in creating a buzz online, some mainstream publications may cover your product.

Many successful bloggers and journalists have made fortunes selling hardcover books, some examples include Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki and Malcolm Gladwell.

Action plan

Set up a landing page on your blog
Send traffic towards the landing page
Try to create a buzz
Get some media contacts with some small publications
Use some self publishing services such as Lulu, Iuniverse, WorldClay and Self Publishing.

Membership sites

Another highly profitable revenue model is setting up a membership website, this is more profitable than an ebook as your customers are not just one time buyers, they keep buying if they feel its worth their money. Most membership blogs charge their users on a monthly basis, their price ranges from somewhere around $2 to thousands of dollars.

The tactic most people use when it comes to membership sites is to keep a free version of their service or an initial free version, then the pricing is usually kept low and is increased according to your traffic, this is what i meant by imperial monetization.

There are certain tools and plugins commonly used while creating membership sites, some include Aweber, PHPautoresponder, Amember, WishlistMember.

Selling templates and themes

These days every company and every individual wants to have an online presence, to do it well most people buy an expensive host, good content and one thing which they are very serious about is its template and design. Most webmasters don't mind spending a bit of money on a hot ready made theme. This does have a problem because it depends on your audience and the percentage of it interested in themes.

There are many bloggers using their blogs traffic to sell templates, most of them are in the blogging tips and make money online niche. Your template has to be exceptionally good as there are many average templates out there.

Examples of some bloggers are Brian Clark, who makes millions every year selling his Wordpress framework and the other guy is CarloCab who uses his high traffic make money online blog to sell his self made wordpress theme.

Action plan :

Create a professional looking theme or outsource it to a web designer
Create an attractive landing page, with details and pictures of your template. Add a tutorial page and a forum if you can.
Set up an affiliate program with ready made banners.
If you can give away a free version of your theme for free with a link to your blog as part of your promotion strategy.
Buy traffic to your site from related blogs.

Offer consultancy/related services

This is a job which takes a lot of planning and hard work. There are many people looking for someone to outsource their work, and your blog, your articles and your traffic will prove your expertise. All you have to do is put up a post listing your services and their prices in detail and then make sure you provide a good quality service. This is not what i like as I believe in generating passive income, but 3 customers a month can generate good income, and you can even hire someone to do this.

Recently, my friend Sushant of smartbloggerz.com started webmaster services on his blog, he got 4 to 5 clients every month, but his earnings were less as he charged very less, but i kind of felt that the work he did was more, but he also monetizes his blog with banners and text links. Many bloggers use consultancy services as their only source of revenue, one of them include Marko Saric, who runs HowToMakeMyBlog, he listed his services in a separate page named 'Hire Me' and prices were not listed, but now he also has an ebook to monetize his site.

You will have to be well organized for doing services, if there is some sort misunderstanding between you and your client, both you and your client will loose money. Other than this there are many other problems, so I consider that you hire someone once your business gets a firm hold with long term clients, until then you'll need to take the help of some highly specialized softwares for freelancers, some of them include, Backpack, Webnote and FreshBooks.

Action plan :

Create a page listing your services and their prices, with your contact information.
Set some rules and regulations.
Tell your customer to pay 20% before starting your work.
Sign up with freelancer directories such as Elance, Limeexchange and Freelanceswitch.
Use some of the tools I have listed above for quality service.

Create a job board

The internet has seen many mainstream job boards, but I'm talking about job boards for freelancers, or small or part time jobs, these kinds of job boards were neglected, but in the past few years there have seen many such job boards and almost all are successfully running. If you have a job board there are many types of revenue models you can use, either you charge for both opportunity and job listing or you can make it free and sell sponsored listings which come on top of every page, but you'll need to have a lot of listings for this, another thing people do is they monetize it with advertisements, but thats not what i call imperial monetization.

Most of the job boards are mainstream, but there are many which are based on blogs and use their high traffic blog users to sell job out job posts. Some of them include Problogger and Freelanceswitch.

There are a few plugins that would help you create and run a job board with ease, they are WPJobboard and Job Press.

Mentoring programs

Many people feel that free online education is not worth, so there are many people willing to pay for good quality education online, and one more thing is that the education industry is something thats ever growing no matter how market conditions are.

Its really profitable to start a mentoring program related to your niche, all it takes is good content, structure and promotion. You can deliver information in the form of text, audio or video or you can use all the three. Its advisable give a basic version of the program for free to make users feel your service.

Mentoring programs are much more profitable than selling ebooks because, in this the user keeps buying for months together, but an ebook is bought once for all.

Action Plan :

Set up a landing page containing introduction of your program with the table of contents.
Send internal traffic through banners and links from your main site.
Use tools such as Aweber to deliver your information.
Create an affiliate program
Increase the price according to the increase in subscriptions.
Set up a bait (such as freebies and discounts on certain products for subscribers)

Conclusion

All these are some of the methods which are applicable by small bloggers with up to 20000 monthly visitors, there are many more which make a lot of money, but that would take a lot of man power and initial investment and not possible for sit at home bloggers. The web like all other industries has no long term trend, these are the trends today and are going to exist for the next couple of years, but we will have to keep changing our monetization strategies as web keeps changing.

The return of the 'Dot com bubble'

2009-12-20T22:35:00.000-08:00

There were sights of a speculative bubble which was covering around 1998 - 2000. I was too young at that time but there were many people I know who were part of the tech and internet business at that time, including my mother. In the year 2000 the bubble had grown too big and it just had to burst, after that the next two years were only sights of layoffs, cutbacks, bankruptcies and a depleting economy, but unlike this time only tech and internet companies were hit back then.

History as it is
The reason for this was that most of the Dot-com companies could issue millions of dollars from the market and venture capitalists without having any serious potential for profits. Entrepreneurs at that time had a change in behavior, most of them just created companies to sell them, they had no intentions for optimizing it for revenue, all they did was start a company run it for sometime, with or without any profit, and then sell it by burdening it on investors. Due to the high confidence and plenty of cash there was plenty of free spending among internet companies, that is companies spent millions of dollars on giving bonuses to employees, expensive vacations and silly promotional ideas such as giving thousands of dollars to the one millionth visitor. All this caused a steady drain in the investors wealth, and on 10th March 2000 all this needed to be taught a lesson and there was sharp decline in the market and within the end of the year up to 5 trillion dollars were lost. Most of the dot com companies died out, but some companies like Google and Amazon, even though they didn't make any profit before survived it.

What the F***?

Now that would have given a good insight about the previous dot com bubble and why it happened, but why is the title called 'The return of the dot-com bubble', it was just a year ago when the worst financial crisis in modern times affected us, and now how and why will this happen. You see many industry experts think that the web is again moving towards the crisis like last time, till now their haven't been any restrictions from governments of any country. The World Financial crisis deflated this bubble, but now its growing faster than ever. Many entrepreneurs these days take huge salaries, bonuses, start free spending and most of all they cannot be called entrepreneurs because they tend to sell their businesses rather than running it. They are trying use the soaring investors who are looking to invest on the web by burdening the company's free spending expenses. Even many investment banks are misleading investors.

The aftermath
The situation is going to come back to normal someday but it would take 2 to 3 years and i think by then all governments would put restrictions on the web to avoid another bubble, those restrictions will be valuable to the investors and to the web but not favorable to work at home internet marketers. The many consequences thats going to happen are as follows,

Bankruptcies
These are like the most common words we here during a crisis, according to law a company is declared bankrupt when its unable to pay its creditors, the government usually helps a bankrupt company or its assets can be seized by its creditors. The dot com crisis is definitely going to cut through the operating margins of many companies, leading it towards bankruptcy.

Layoffs and cutbacks
These are also something we here in common during a crisis, when a company is trying to save money to increase operating margins, this is also used to increase its share price and investor confidence.

Fall in advertising revenue
Most of the web companies have their revenues from advertising, which are the first to be hit. Some companies which get their revenues from non web companies do have chances of survival, unless even the mainstreet businesses are affected. Even the ones who use paid usage will not be affected much.

News is no longer free
This can be a dream for news corporations, maybe someone will bring standardization among them and optimize news corporations for full revenue. You see most recessions are not so bad. Internet users will be affected, but there has to be something to keep the internet running.

Standardization
This is a necessary method on the internet, all niche blogs should register and follow the rules of their particular niche and other sites too will have a set of rules which everyone has to follow. Standardization will hurt someone for sure but everyone is going to profit in the long run.

Unavailability of funds
After this one, finding funds for your startup will be very difficult. Investors will fall once and twice but not the third time. Funds will available someday, but it will considered a risky game to invest on internet stocks, so i feel there will be a total change in the internet lifestyle.

Dollar out, Euro in
After the crisis, the dollar is going to loose out its value and policy makers will be forced to make the Euro the internet's standard currency, this is really good for Asian countries as it increases our revenue, but purchasing on the internet is going to be expensive. This will be very profitable to the web industry in India, China and some south-Asian countries.

Drain of wealth
Even after the recession is over we are going to face a drain of wealth from countries like USA and Britain to countries like India and China. This is because after the bubble, the European and American markets will be in a transition, so most investors will tend to invest overseas in countries like India and China. Even many firms will move towards India cut costs.

'Make Money Online' by teaching others to make money

2009-12-20T04:30:00.000-08:00

First thing is that this is not for those who are looking to make money online, but for those bloggers willing to blog on the 'make money online' niche. From the past 2 years I've been comepletely addicted to net after I realized that it can lead to ample amount of money. From then I've seen many blogs born and dying, most of them were related to the make money online niche, many of the owners were my friends and I've got plenty of chances to chat with them. They usually told me that very less visitors ever visited them again, so they were forced to shut it down.

After a lot of discouragment I still decided to start a make money online blog, as i was really passionate and knowledgeable at that niche. I did have initial failures, I don't think any of my users visited more than once, but I did some changes in my theme, content and promotion and it seems to work.

The question here is how is the niche today and what does it take to succeed in it. Its not a one time strategy to follow throughout your career, it keeps changing according peoples demands, search engine algorithms and monetization strategies. But, there are somethings that remain same for at least the time being,

Write for humans not spiders
Whatever you do to impress Google's spiders there are a lot of chances that it may turn against you, I have heard a lot of news about Google becoming vampires to publishers. Many big media hubs have accused Google of being the cause of revenue loss, so its your human brothers who are going to stay loyal towards you. I never mean to say not to optimize for search engines, I mean to say that never forget your users, make sure your readers come first. Today, most of the traffic does not lie in search engines, it lies in the power of the people, your blogs message could spread like wildfire in the hands of people through social media.

Don't be unique, write unique
Its really not wise if you publish everything on the first page of other blogs and call it your blog, especially when your in the 'make money online' niche. Readers demand something different, you see there are thousands of blogs who write similar articles on link building, but still many people read those even though they know a lot about link building, this is because each blogger has something different, maybe the way of writing or a useful link or an extra tip. I never say to be totally unique, just don't entirely photocopy.

Use indirect monetization
Selling advertising banners and links have died out in many other niches, it still has a grip on the this niche but its better and more profitable to use indirect monetization. This means start selling courses, memberships, ebooks and consultancy services to monetize your blogs traffic. Another means is sponsored reviews and affiliate marketing which has fast growing trend among advertisers, but in these you'll need to use techniques to increase conversions.

Don't promise the moon
I have come across many blogs which write content telling readers that it can result in a six figure income and after i get a small glimpse at their idea I can hardly see a few dollars. This is what i call a very bad idea, it used to work before, but now internet users are much more intelligent and will not fall for any scam so easily. Such words can give you a lot of negative publicity and will surely reduce your blogs quality.

Use multiple networks
Initially if you want to use ad networks for monetizing your site its wise to use multiple ad networks to deal with unused inventory and falling ad rates. You can easily use adservers such as OpenX and Showyouradhere to use multiple ad networks. After you grow start to sell ads directly and still continue to use ad networks on zones which are unsold.

Make use of big competitors
When it comes to any business, people usually find ways to avoid competitors, but when it comes to the internet it works best if you use your competitor. I don't mean to create any partnership or collaboration, I mean to use those blogs for driving traffic by commenting, guest posts, interviews etc. This works mainly in the 'Make Money Online' niche because comments, forums and links are used by people who are heavy internet users.

Attracting traffic through comments

2009-12-19T06:04:00.000-08:00

Most of the initial traffic to my blog came from the sites I've commented on, it was very surprising to see that some of the comments I made on sites like Problogger, DailyBlogTips and Shoemoney drove upto 30 visitors each in just 24 hours and that time this was a very high traffic for me and made up to 90% of my total blog traffic. This was when i started to realize the power of comments, i truly couldn't believe my eyes when a comment on DailyBlog tips drove 104 visitors in 1 day, you can see it here (I've written the second comment).

I slowly began to realize something different I had done in the particular post, i started experimenting with different comments and I decided to right this post and also try to get your views on it. That particular comment drove 104 visitors, my total traffic per day was 150 visitors, most of them stayed for 2 minutes and performed up to 5 actions in average.

In this post I've tried to combine all the techniques I've used to optimize my comments of full traffic benefits,

Grabing Attention
Be resourceful
Simple comments such as 'Hey great post' will never gain attention and you will get only one or two clicks, your goal should be to get as much attention as possible, and this is done by being as much resourceful as possible, try to give information or ask questions to the blogger and other readers.

Disagree with the blogger

Another way to gain attention, if you see my comment in that link you'll notice that I have disagreed with Daniel and this helped me grab attention of many of his readers and even him. He too replied to my comment, which I was feeling really proud about.

Add humor

This is something I constantly do and it also gets me a lot of replies, I usually make fun of the blogger by making some small minor joke which doesn't hurt anyone. This can definitely gain replies from others too.

Getting traffic
Optimizing for clicks
Every blog allows you to post a link in your name, but its not always seen as you have to get your blog's name seen. You can do this by giving a your blogs link separately below your comment, if that blog allows that. Another way to get your link seen is by posting a link related to the content and encouraging readers to visit the link.

Be on the top
Its really important to be on the top, its advisable to stay top 5, i have managed to figure out the usual time of posting for bloggers in my niche, I visit those sites during that time and most of the time I'm top five. This is because blogs like Problogger would get over 100 comments within 12 hours and its really difficult to gain traffic by commenting in the end.

Building an audience
Design, speed and content
Many times, people who visit my blog from the comments I have made, usually leave within seconds, this was because earlier my blog had a very bad design and was also really slow, so most of the traffic I got from commenting went wane as only a few visited me again.

Choose a few good blogs
My advise is to choose a few good blogs and be as active as possible. If you comment on many blogs and are not active on any of them, you will fail to create an audience for your site. I kept commenting on every article on Problogger from the past 3 months and that is why I've got a great audience there.

Get active and reply to others
Putting up one comment on the top isn't enough to gain exposure, be with the post and reply to some comments you find interesting, I used to 5 comments on each post in DailyBlogTips when i started. Make sure your replies are interesting and do not forget give a link below.

Use the same avatar and name
When your getting active on a particular blog it is important to keep the same avatar and name on every post so that the constant readers of that blog can recognize you, and may click to see your latest post. Not only this, it has a lot of long term benefits.

'A bloggers guide to profits' ebook for free

2009-12-19T02:01:00.000-08:00

I have spent hours in front of my computer in the last few years, trying to earn enough income to support my living online. All my efforts failed, and I even was about to fail at my school. I didn't earn as much as my internet bills. I knew that blogging is going to lead me to success, so I kept trying, and one day I found this free ebook 'A bloggers guide to profits' I thought it was all just a scam, but it was free so I thought Why not give it a try? After reading that book my income rose more than $3000 and I asked author if I could give away this book for free on my site. He agreed, and today you are getting a chance to experience the web money.

Blogging in action: From start to six figure income using a professional blog

What are you gonna get from this book?
* Build Passion For Your Brand with your customers just by writing down your thoughts and plans (best of all, it costs next to nothing!)

* Boost Sales With Your Personal Touch as that special, magic, human connection starts to grow between your business and your customer. (Any company, big or small, that doesn't follow this concept in the relationship age of business just won't make it!)

* Conquer The Search Engine Rankings without even trying! The secret power of blogging is that you can get listed in search engines like Yahoo much faster than with any other type of site. (And there's more, keep reading!)

How much does it cost?
Well, this book costs you 23 seconds, that is it a million dollar weapon for just 23 seconds. I do appreciate if you could donate some money to this blog to keep it ad free and running.

Click here to become a blogging millionaire

'Make Money Online' E-book for free

2009-12-19T02:00:00.000-08:00

Did you enjoy this article? If so please subscribe to my feed and follow me on Twitter.

'Make Money Online' one of the hottest trends on Google, and it is the word everyone is trying to master these days. So, I decided to contact this author who did not want her name displayed and asked if I could sell this e-book for free on my blog. This book contains everything from how to turn into a freelancer till setting up a million dollar web business.

Driver Robot : a top converting affiliate product

This book contains 74 pages and one can finish it within a week. Setting up an online business takes a very good foundation, not a financial foundation, but an educational foundation. This is because many things on the internet is free and you can set up a web business for free, the only thing you need is the education and then your bank balance is gonna be sky high.

How much does this book cost?
It costs you nothing, all it costs is 23 seconds to download and then the power of internet money is in your palms. But, yes I would appreciate if you donate some money for keeping this e-book free and available for all.

Download free e-book

How to successfully launch an online product

2009-12-19T01:57:00.000-08:00

The best way to make a six figure income from ones blog is by selling memberships and products. But in todays highly saturated niches, its almost impossible to capture an audience of your niche, especially when your a newbie and have no cash in pockets.

It is not completely rocket science, if your successful in creating a buzz, then your banker will not be able to manage your balance. All it takes is a well planned, well managed and attractive launch for your product. If your planning to lauch your product for free, then you should be a famous personality or own a famous blog, otherwise just forget about it.

There are many ways you can launch your product for free and still make a fortune, but this way you'll have to be ready to wait 2 or 3 years or so. I'm sorry if i have disappointed you, but this is the truth, many of them who had instant success, either were very lucky or because of very low competition. Again there are chances of instant successes, but for that your blog should have heavy traffic, and you can sell your product to monetize your blog.

What do people look in a product?
Firstly what implies for success of your product is its quality, people look for the best value for their money. If your product is good and people like it, its going to have a lot of publicity in a short time span. For that you'll have to convince people to buy your product, that is something which takes a lot of hard work, luck and creativity.

The more information you give to your users about your product, the more convinced they'll be, increasing your chances of making a successful sale. The experiences of others who have read your book can also be displayed on your site, this gives out an encouragement among potential buyers.

Set up a landing page
An attractive, creative and informative landing page is crucial for attracting buyers. One more reason why a landing page is important is that it can be indexed by search engines, leading to more conversions. Usually a landing page should contain a brief introduction of yourself and the product, then user experiences and some images. To make the landing page more effective you can give away, freebies, bonuses, gifts and discounts. A successful landing page offers these main questions,

What is this about?
Who the hell wants this?
Why the hell do they want this?
What do they feel about it?
Where are they now?
Well then how do I get there?

Send out a press release

Now you have got a good product people would like and an attractive landing page, now its time to send traffic towards your landing page. First of all you should announce it to the media which will then announce it to the public, the best way to do this is to send out a press release. There are many press release sites, most of them are read by media houses interested in every niche, most of them are paid and a few are free but I can't guarantee that free press releases are being read. It takes a lot of creativity to create an attractive press release, you'll have to make sure you give a detailed information on you, your company and your product and one thing that plays a crucial role is the title. Most paid press releases cost from $200 to $500, try to find the least priced ones.

Blog advertising
Blog advertising is really efficient when your selling a product, it is very cheap and can also get you some dofollow links if you ask the blogger. For better service its better if you use networks like BuySellAds, PayPerPost and ReviewMe. This is a really good method because if a blogger puts up a banner or post on his blog it spreads virally through social media, which gives you more exposure. Most of the people who come across your product, tend to find more information about your product before buying it, if they find positive information on other sites, they will be very much willing to buy it.

Ask for free endorsements
This is to ask a blogger or a webmaster for writing about your new product for free, this works only if you have good relations with some bloggers or your product is a free social service product and your asking them to contribute to the community. Bloggers sometimes can write about you or your product without you asking if your product is highly exceptional, they will link to it when they write relevant posts and can also become your affiliate. This can be very valuable, only thing you need is a great product and the art of convincing people.

Go social
During your product launch make sure your active on social sites, its better if they are in your niche. Your goal here is to take part in as many discussions, projects and activities as possible. By social I truly don't mean sites like Facebook and Myspace, I mean't forums and groups. When I launched my blog I was very active on forums such as DigitalPoint and WarriorForum and both of them generated solid traffic in the beginning.

Recruit affiliates
Another way get your product promoted is by recruiting affiliates, your affiliates will demand 30% of the products pricing, but its really helpful as they do everything from writing reviews to posting links and you don't have to pay them anything except for sales. You can register with e-junkie which is currently the best program both for vendors and affiliates. You may have to keep banners of all sizes ready and some ready made articles as this can be attractive to affiliates.

Article marketing
Now to give your buyers a good taste of your product, you can give some articles on tools and tips on your product. Use article directories and post your article there with a link to your landing page. You can also post articles on related blogs. Your main goal here is to convince readers that you don't sell that product and give them as much information as possible, try giving some negative info to increase there confidence in you.

Collaborations and partnerships : an efficient way to grow

2009-12-18T03:51:00.000-08:00

From the beginning of my blogging career I had a friend, Bittu, who was also my advisor and partner, who was the main reason I decided to earn money online, I got to know that I could make money online just because of him. After a lot of talk we decided to create our first blog. He was an expert in design and development and i was really good at content, promotion and marketing, so we decided to share the profits and do equal work.

This was really beneficial to both of us, i could never have built a site with a great design and he could never have written awesome content and done the expert promotion and most of all its really much easier and fun if your doing it with friends. When we lost our first blog we both were equally depressed, we had no money left and both of our parents weren't ready to fund us, both of us gave each other an hand out and we started this blog on blogspot.

In the legal way its seen as a joint venture, which means two or more individuals or entities contribute equity, resources, share profits, expenses and administration. As for a blogger its not necessary to legalize everything, but when your about to do with a total stranger it is essential.

It is not really necessary to collaborate for only building sites, it can be done for many things such as contests, research, content development and promotional programs.

Set up goals and rules
You'll have to make sure everyone in that partnership is getting equal returns for their investment, especially when your investing something other than money. I and Bittu made sure we have equal returns, and even if we did get unequal returns, we used to never mind. So just sit with a pen and paper and start making rules which everyone should agree.

Legalize things
Even if you and your partner have a very good understanding between each other, it is good to hire a lawyer and start legalizing stuff. It is just to make sure none of your partners break any rules you have made before. If your entering a partnership with someone you don't know, then this is mandatory. Maybe your lawyer may list some tax and national advantages you may have by entering into a type of partnership, there are tax exemptions which can be claimed in India.

Arguing is good
There are lots of chances that you and your partner may not have the same thoughts, ideas or knowledge, which can lead to a lot of arguments. There wasn't a day when me and Bittu didn't argue, but still we remained good friends. Whenever the situation gets hot, try to get someone else in and decide an end to your problem, besides, arguing is good as its always better if more people sit together and decide the future of your business.

Do not loose control
When your partnership includes transfer of assets, money and power, there are chances you may end up loosing control of your blog. While legalizing you'll have to make sure that you have no chances of loosing control. If this happens, the blog which you built for years with sweat and hard work is all just a name.

Make sure you aren't exploited
Everyday there are many people looking for exploiting newbie entrepreneurs, trying to put the burden all expenses on your head and maximize their profits. Make sure you have a proper plan of partnership, study the entire plan and make sure you understand the proper flow of cash and inflows, try to spot anything that may sound suspicious and immediately consult your accountant or banker.

Keep in constant contact
I and Bittu were lucky, as we stayed near by and we also went to the same school, so we constantly met in our houses, during break time in school and in our bus.We always spoke about new strategies and future plans. This constant contact made our networks growth even faster. You can use mails to pitch your partners the latest in your business and earnings and other stuff.

Be free to leave
Once you feel that the partnership was no longer profitable or beneficial there should be no obligations in getting out of it. Neither you or your partners should face any legal or personal obligations while being part of it or leaving it. Make sure it doesn't become a burden on your blog.

PR 0 to PR 4 in just 2 months

2009-12-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

I guess i got my christmas gift in advance, Dumb Little Blogger is now a PR 4 site according to Google in the their recent page rank update, I never thought i'll make it to PR 4 within just two months, I also made a direct ad sale and my affiliate sales have increased a lot ever since the update.

When i first started to blog I had hoped for a PR 4 in six months, and this is as you can see very much above my expectations. After a bit of research I got to know that it isn't very difficult to have a jump from PR 0 to PR 4 in something like 2 to 4 months, I've asked many of my friends on how long did they take to reach PR 4, all of them were somewhere near to 2 months.

A few weeks back i was trying to recollect everything I had done to increase my page rank, I also tried to figure out sites which gave me maximum links. These are some of my results

Guest posts
When i first started this blog, the first thing I did was to look out for blogs that accept guest posts, I wrote two posts on Smartbloggerz, one on Dailyblogtips and another one at moneymakerinfo. All of these gave me quality anchor links which were very crucial for my blogs search rankings. This way I also made some relations with other bloggers and also got some traffic. Once you have got a good professional blog, then try to look out for more blogs in your niche which accept guest posts, if they don't contact the owner and ask him for rights to publish on his blog. I'm sure you'll find some good blogs which are looking for guest posts. Make sure you get seo'd links to your blog and also ask for giving a short summary of you and your blog at the end.

Blog Commenting
I guess i had underestimated the power of comments for too long, I first realized it when i had left a comment on Problogger which gave me 28 unique visitors in just 24 hours. I also started to check my google webmaster dashboard for finding out if Google counts my links left on comments, it did but all the posts weren't counted. After a few weeks I watched out for the blogs in my niche and tried to figure out the time they all create a post, I was successful in being in the first 5 comments everytime. This drove significant amount of traffic and gave me a lot of good quality backlinks. I do believe that Google no longer counts links in comments but it will index some comments. Almost 40% of my backlinks come from other blogs in my niche where I have commented.

Interlinking posts
Interlinking of posts play another crucial role in Google Pagerank. I started interlinking all my posts for specific keywords and then I was surprised to see that Google started to index my pages faster and I guess it did consider all my posts as high quality. There are a number of advantages of interlinking posts, it can increase stickiness, pageviews and can give a lot of value to your users. Google also sees your internal linking structure to rank your blog, you should optimize it not only for your users but also for google.

Volume posting
One last thing that helped me boost my rankings was volume posting, i realized that I had posted 17 posts in 6 days which was when i had school holidays. During this time i had interlinked all those posts and i had plenty of visits from Google bots, which was a key reason for being PR 4 in their next update. Now this is how exactly volume posting works

The more content I write
The more posts get indexed on search engines
Increased internal linking
Increased ranking for long tail keywords
and, thus my page rank increases

Conclusion

I know I've missed out many methods, but these are the methods which are easy and are still useful, many other methods have become of no use as Google kept changing their algorithm to keep out spam. These methods are easy and can be very efficient. If you have any more methods please comment below.

Generating passive income from your blog

2009-11-22T00:37:00.000-08:00

Now how many of you here can leave your blog not updated for 6 months without loosing traffic and still making money, this wonderful act was performed by Maki of DoshDosh, he traveled entire Asia in 6 months and was able fund his journey all from his blog. This is because he was successful in making passive income from his blog. 3 months in his journey he tweeted a series messages to his followers this is how it goes if i could remember that properly,

I have traveled almost to every place in Asia, i haven't even been online from the past 3 months, but i was able to fund the entire trip without any hassle.

You see most of the people work hard for 11 months and go on a holiday for 1 month, but I work hard for one month and go on a holiday for the rest of the year.

There are 3 types of incomes, earned income that is something that you work hard and earn, portfolio income that is you buy assets with your money and make your money work for you, and the last is passive income that is you buy or create an asset which generates income with or without your presence. Passive income is something that I'd want you to develop , not only your blog you can try various methods to generate passive income, but this post mainly concentrates on generating passive income from your blog. For example authors earn royalties for years for the book they took just 3 months to write, that is passive income.

Now for us bloggers to generate passive income our goal should be to keep generating traffic, keep selling ads or our products and keep up the income. First think what would happen to your blog if you'd stop blogging for months, stop tweeting and promoting your blog, if it would still live on and generate enough cash then your generating passive income.

Search engine traffic
One source of traffic that is constant, with high conversions is traffic from search engines. Search engine traffic to your posts have no effect if you blog or not. You'll have to work hard for the first 6 months to increase search engine traffic. If you have a low pr then you can increase search engine traffic by finding out and using long tail keywords. You should also be able to generate traffic to sales pages either directly from search engines or from other posts which get search engine traffic.

Referrals
If your selling a product on your blog then make sure you create an affiliate program, this way you have no need to work hard and promote your products, your affiliates do it for a small commission on the sales. The same way if you can get other bloggers in your niche to showcase your content with a link your sure to get constant traffic. The key is to not let your traffic fall. Using of social media is not recommended as it does not give you constant traffic if your not active.

Automated ad sales
The best way to generate income from your blog is to sell your adspace directly to your advertisers, this should be done without any of your efforts that is you should not be involved in email conversations or receiving payments, invoicing or uploading an ad. You can use some self serve advertising platform to sell ads for you. This is a very efficient method to generate income form your blog, you can make it passive by automating it.

Magnetic content
This was supposed to be on the very first of my list, magnetic content is something that pulls new and previous users towards your blog, it can convert your readers into subscribers and can also force them to make a sale, a bookmark or showcase it on their own blogs. So your having social media and viral traffic even when your offline, and of course magnetic content is the key to search engine traffic, so this is something that describes the success or failure of your blog.

Guest bloggers
Once your blog gets fame and grows to be one of the best in your niche, their will definitely be lots of people ready to write for you, not for money but for exposure. All you have to do is make sure that your guest bloggers are getting enough traffic to their blogs or a nice seo'd link. Just write a post on your blog telling your users that your allowing guest posts and if you can keep a moderator to review and moderate guest posts.

Outsource
As a blogger your biggest works are posting, marketing, seo, promotion and social media marketing, now when your offline you should make sure you don't loose your grip over social media, you can manage this by outsourcing it to some individuals or companies, you may have to pay a huge amount but you won't have much work.

Using Adwords to promote your blog

2009-11-19T07:14:00.000-08:00

Google Adwords is one of the most used and the most efficient source to promote your blog. Google Adwords has become very competitive and expensive to bid for good keywords, but still its not a bad source of promotion.

Adwords currently allows two ways to formats of advertising, image ads and text ads. Both are equally good and can definitely generate brand exposure. If your looking to build audience to your brand image ads are the best, you can make wise use of it by keeping low cost per views. If your trying to promote a blog, I think its best if you go to text ads. Google text ads are priced extremely low at $0.1 but there are chances that you may not appear on searches, but don't worry go ahead with $0.1 and keep increasing your bid every month.

I have launched many Google Adwords campaigns, but almost all just generated traffic not subscribers, but recently a friend of mine told me a simple trick, that is to send traffic to your welcome page instead of sending it all to your homepage. Your welcome page should contain a list of your best articles according to categories and above that give a short summary of your blog and encourage your visitors to subscribe. It is really better if you could give away a free ebook for subscribing. You can see Dumb Little Bloggers welcome page here.

If your planning to go ahead with image ads, develop a good catchy banners and logos, the 468*60 banners work the best.

Building an online business empire

2009-11-18T07:16:00.000-08:00

Real estate, stocks, bonds, and other paper assets happened to be the investment most preferred some years ago, but now most people tend to create assets online. There are many reasons why so many are looking to build online properties, some of them include,

It takes very little investment but gives you high dividends
There is very less need for manpower
Almost everything online can be considered an asset, your blog, Twitter account, facebook pages, myspace account and every where else where you have an influence on people.

There are two ways web entrepreneurs increase their net worth, by creating assets and investing or buying assets. You'll have to use both of these methods wisely to build an online empire. As a web entrepreneur your ultimate goal is to build your business empire, create an attractive portfolio and sell it on the mainstreet.

Every blogger works day and night to build his blog and turn it into a successful business, but many of them fail or hardly cross the accredited investor mark. The reason is that most bloggers think like bloggers, not like investors and they try to build their blogs, but the key is to grow your business not your blog.

Creating your online empire

It takes a lot of hard work, time and investment to create your online empire. Once you cross the first milestone that is the accredited investor mark (An investor with a net worth of 1 million or an annual earnings of more than $200,000) the rest is pretty easy as you have plenty of availability for loans and other fundings. Most successful entrepreneurs say that the first million is often the toughest. In this post I've included everything necessary for starting and growing your business.

Funding your business

Finding money for starting your online business is a tough part, even though you wont need a lot of money. There are several ways i used to fund my first blog, I first went to my parents who were ready to buy me a hosting space and domain name, then i had some money in my personal savings, with a bit of money in some revenue sharing sites. Totally it added up to $120 including the hosting and domain name costs. I started my site created content, promoted it and monetized it. My first blog gave me enough fundings to start many more blogs, but due to improper planning I lost a lot of money an had to start Dumb Little Blogger on Blogspot.

Reinvesting income

Once you get some traffic and put up some ads on your site you'll get some income, this initial income is crucial for the growth of your business. But if you can see above I messed it up with my sites income and had to loose everything, reinvesting your income should be done strategically (Read my post on Reinvesting your blogs income ) and should be implemented according to a plan. I spent all my income on starting new blogs and that was a bad idea, i should have started one new blog and should have spent rest of my money on promoting my first blog. That bad move was something I repented for months.

Buy/Create websites

An effective way to grow your online network is to expand your reach to new and untapped niches. As i mentioned above it is not wise to keep developing or buying new sites. Know your capacity, create or buy a site, develop good content, promote it and monetize it. If your ready to buy a site its better if you use platforms such as Flippa.

Go social

On the internet every social account has a value, every networking site is capable of some income. Many people monetize their Twitter accounts and charge up to $200 a tweet. I recently came across an article on DoshDosh called '10 Ways to make money with Myspace' in this article Maki has clearly described the use of Myspace for generating income. As I mentioned above every social account is like a virtual real estate.

Generate passive income
Once your blog begins to grow you should make sure that your investment is working faster than you are. You may create a hell lot of assets online, but all of this should not result in you working harder and harder as your network grows. Passive income means an asset that generates income with or without your presence. For example authors earn royalties for years with just one book and they literally have no work once their book is published.

Generate brand awareness
Most people get Google in their mind if they think about Orkut and if Orkut wasn't part of Google it would never have made so much fame. If the Envato Network starts a new blog, it would get instant fame as all of us know the quality of Envato. If you find McDonalds and another fast foods restaurant with the same quality you'd obviously prefer going to McDonalds as it is much more popular. This is the game of brand awareness. Once you create 4 to 5 blogs you wont be associated with any of those blogs, you'll be associated with your networks name. If your blogs give out good quality content, your reputation increases, you'll find more funds and sponsors for your existing and new blogs. Once you get 3 to 4 failures you'll have to be ready for some troubles, your sponsors loose trust in you, your investors may pull out and eventually your going to end up in financial problems. Sometimes even when your blogs get really popular your network will have no identity, to solve this problem you can create social accounts in your networks name, put banners on your site and write posts informing your users that your part of this particular company.

Finding capital
After the first round of funding you use to start your business, you'll need another round of capital to expand your blog. This can be used buy more equipments, hire employees, expand your niche and if you want to rent an office space.The first round of funding was very simple and was the best for raising small capital, but when you are in need for a second round of capital your business should be incorporated, you should have a business plan and well organized system of working. Reinvesting income does not come under capitalizing, you can reinvest your personal dividends though. You can start off by getting selling equity, but make sure you don't loose a controlling stake unless your running under serious need for money, another good way is to take a business loan, but too much can result in the fall in your company's value. You may have chances of loosing your house and all personal wealth if your unable to pay back your loan.

Collaborations and partnerships
If you have ever seen my first site, you'd observe that I was the only author at the beginning, but after some time I had another author. We both worked together, we wrote posts on a daily basis, we took care of the expenses together, we promoted and also shared the revenues among ourselves. This proved to be pretty beneficial to our blog, it increased its productivity, promotion became more efficient and of course my blogs income increased. There is a need for good planning and legalizing some aspects. This can lead to many disputes among your partners and maybe you may plan to sell or shut down your blog.

Outsource and grow
Now your blog is big, earning full time income and has already created an awareness among your niche community. I think its time to outsource your work and go for a long holiday. If not for a holiday you can outsource some of your works to concentrate on others. You can't keep writing articles for all your blogs or keep posting links for search engine optimization, you'll have to concentrate on managing your business, your investors and your customers. Outsourcing may seem like more expenses for the first 4 months, but then you'll immediately see your productivity increasing on the other aspects.

On to our users
I really hope this article was useful, please leave your comments below, you can subscribe to our feed to keep up with future updates. Please do follow me on Twitter. If you really liked this article please bookmark it and share it with your friends and your also free to post it on your blog with a link to this blog.

World's biggest Photoshop mistakes

2009-11-15T05:09:00.000-08:00

Photoshop is a tool which all of us have used and loved to use. This tool has got itself into the professional design world. I guess these professional designers have to read through the tutorial again. Many of these pics have been part of famous brands, can't believe they couldn't spot such big mistakes.

1. I dont think you can carry a computer this way, Right?

2. A extra pair of hands is always handy.

3. A 3th hand? Where is the dude?

4. I have never seen a belly like that. Do you?

5. Thats just scary.

6. Do i have to say anything?

7. I dont know the exact proportions of the human body, but i cant touch below my knie while standing straight. Do you?

8. Here is an other one.

9. This is maybe the biggest photoshop disaster i found. Have you ever seen people basketball without a head?

10. No Veronica Kay is not just a one legged model, its another big photoshop mistake.

11. Gues what, it didnt just happend ones. The editor of Veronica Kay probably hated veronica.

12. Or maybe number veronica has done the same diet as this girl?

13. Did eminem just got a facelift?

14. He can count to seven.

15. Brad Pitt has a twin brother and kid.

16. She wasn’t really naked, look at the thongs reflection.

17. I have seen this one all over the web, so it has to make this list.

18. This BMW probably has some spinners.

19. I didn’t know spiderman had a flexible girlfriend.

20. Unbelievable, is this done in paint?

21. Some girls wish they had a belly button. This girl is one of them.

22. They saved a view bucks by not buying the iStockPhoto photos.

23. This guy needs to do some more Photoshop tutorials.

24. The photo retoucher must have had an unbelievable hangover?

25. They erased someone, but forgot a little piece.

I hope you all had a good laugh, and remember dont make these mistakes yourself.
If you also have found some terrible photoshop mistakes, just tell me and i will put them in the next “25 PhotoshopMistakes” list.

Sources:
photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com
ego.globo.com
oddee.com
photoshopmistakes.com
webdesignerhelp.co.uk

Powerful blog startegies to increase affiliate conversions

2009-11-14T19:01:00.000-08:00

Imagine a scenario. You have a site rich in content and you get less than 50 visitors a day, but almost every visitor from search engines. Everyday 2 people are lead to your affiliate program to buy a product worth $50, so you have $100 in one day. This counts to $3000 in a month, I know its not possible keep up with these referrals every day, but it all depends on your conversions.

If you want to generate affiliate sales from your blog, there are many ways to do so, you can put banners on your sidebars, annoying pop-ups, send emails to your newsletter subscribers, but are all of these going to work?

No, you may get a lot of click throughs if your blog has good traffic, but very less sales. Even if it does generate sales it is totally short term, your users may subscribe only for a month and if they don't like it, you may loose your reputation.

Below are some strategies which cost you nothing, but are sure to increase conversions.

Write a review - get it indexed by Google
Just tell me how many of your banners have been indexed by Google till date. Its your posts which Google is interested in, if your affiliate is not very famous, then you can easily get on the top 10 for your affiliates keywords.

All of us are aware that search engines increase your conversion rates, and those conversion rates are maximum if you send the potential search engine traffic to a review of the particular product. Internet users feel insecure to buy a product which gives very less information and they certainly won't believe the text on the sales page.

I wrote a review of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, which instantly got indexed by search engines and till today I've made around 7 sales which is not quite bad.

Give discounts and freebies
If your affiliate is pretty famous, then you'll have very less chances of being on top of Google, and of course people would directly visit their site. Their are a few ways to solve this problem.

I've written above that I generated 7 sales of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog ebook. You see the the book is hosted on Problogger and almost all my visitors are constant users of Problogger, so one thing which made them buy from me was that I announced that you can get a 40% cash back. You can use this effective method, most affiliate programs give you somewhere between 20% to 75% commission, why not give some part of your commission to your buyers.

Make sure you do this properly, or else this can give you a lot of negative publicity. Once you announce that offer, you'll have to give their money back, sometimes before you get your commission.

Send traffic to your baits
The above two strategies are your baits, now its time to send traffic towards your bait. There are various methods to do this, you can send traffic from your blog itself or from outside your blog.

Create threads on forums and write a small review with a link to your blog
Use social networking. You can use your Facebook Fan page to promote your baits effectively.
Send e-mails to subscribers and announce the new product.
Start PPC campaigns and send traffic to your bait.
Use banners and text links all over your blog and even below ever post.
Effectively comment on related blogs.

How to increase Twitter retweets

2009-11-14T05:51:00.001-08:00

The messages you Tweet reach only a small number of people interested in your tweets, but if they again tweet it reaches a newer audience, social sites, their blogs and of course increased click through rate. But how do you get people to retweet your messages.

Well first of all only a small number of followers will take their time to tweet your posts. In my case only 1% of my followers retweet my messages. But it depends on the number of active followers you have and how interesting your tweets are.

If you want strong traffic you'll need your tweets to reach as many people as possible that is even the followers of your followers need to retweet it.

Increase followers
Your followers consistently increase once your tweets start getting retweeted, but your posts get retweeted only when you have a good subscriber base. You start to get good traffic from Twitter once your account gets more than a 1000 followers, so the first 1000 is the toughest. I have written some effective ways to increase your Twitter followers "How to increase your Twitter followers".

Using Tweetmeme button
Optimizing your blog also plays an important role in increasing retweets, one way to do so is adding a Tweetmeme widget next to your post or below your post. Many bloggers say that after adding the retweet button their retweets have almost doubled. The reason why this widget is so effective is that it is not very time consuming to your users as they don't have to migrate to Twitter for retweeting, there is a small pop-up with the message and a link and all the user has to do is click on retweet.

Educate your readers
Many Twitter users have no idea what retweeting is, i got to know about it like after one month of using Twitter. You can educate your readers by writing posts on the topic, give links to the post next to your retweet button, encourage retweeting at the end of every post.

Encourage your readers
Tell your readers to retweet your post by writing something like " Enjoyed this post, if so please retweet it". You can also encourage retweeting in your tweets by adding text such as " plz retweet". I know its tough to do this as Twitter provides only 140 words which can hardly make up a good summary and a link.

Reciprocate with friends
As I mentioned above, getting your first 1000 followers can be the toughest. Some ways to make this simple is using your friends to retweet your message and do the same to your friends. This may not get you tons of retweets but it can definitely get you a hand full of followers. You can do this frankly, just email your friend telling them that your retweeting all their posts and ask them if they'd like to do the same.

Please do retweet this post, thank you

Please do write your comments below and tell us if you know any other way to increase retweets.

Using facebook to promote your blog

2009-11-13T23:56:00.000-08:00

Most of your readers probably will have a Facebook account, and if they don't creating one would be easy. The networking site which people use to connect with their high school buddies and previous colleagues has several features you can use to establish a new audience to your blog.

Facebook has users in all professions, interests and educational qualifications, so what ever is your blogs niche your sure to find readers on Facebook, and of course you can also connect with your previous readers.

Increasing your friends
The first step to take as soon as you step up on Facebook is to search for groups in your niche and start sending out friend requests to its members, it is necessary to make friends who are interested in your blog's topic as when you post a link on your wall your friends should be interested in it and be ready to share it with their friends. Once you have found groups in your niche just send out friend requests blindly.

Create a Facebook Group
Facebook groups are easy to create and most users are very active on groups in their niches. Just create a group, start some discussions, post some links, videos and photos. Next invite all your friends to join your group and encourage them to invite their friends. While creating a group their are a few things to take care of,

First of all your group shouldn't be in yours or your blogs name unless your blog is very famous or your a very famous personality.
Do not spam your Group with only your links, you can post links of other blogs as well.

Promote your group and blog using other groups
The best way to promote your group and your blog in Facebook is to leave links on other groups in your niche. This sure to work and would definitely give a few spikes in your blog traffic and a few more group members. The key is to leave links on blogs with more than 100 members.

Advertising your group and blog
Facebook gives you an opportunity to promote your blog with a paid ad. Advertising on Facebook has two options CPC and CPM, both are equally efficient. For targeting only your potential audience, it takes just 10 to 15 cents for thousand views.

Facebook application
I do agree that Facebook applications are hard to create, but you can outsource it at very less cost. This can boost your membership and your Facebook presence. You would definitely need an investment of $30 for developing an app and promoting it with an advertisement.

Connect with me on Facebook.

Promoting your blog with $300

2009-11-10T20:54:00.000-08:00

Almost all of us want to create, promote and make money online for free, but it is true that if you want to start a free blog and use free traffic methods you will have to compromise on more than one thing, you can loose a lot of time, you will have to work the hardest to get your site up from 0 to 100 and from 100 to thousand like how i'm getting myself killed promoting this blog.

There are many efficient free ways to generate traffic, but you'll need a lot of research, guides and of course a lot of luck. If you think you want targeted, consistent and revenue generating traffic there are many ways you can do so, but you'll need to pay from your own pockets.

Not all bloggers tend to invest $300 on their blogs, but I really don't think $300 is a such a big amount. Teens can save this much with just 3 months of their allowance, if your an adult and working elsewhere then I'm sure you would definitely earn more than a $1000. So, why not keep aside $300 for a better, richer and happier future.

This $300 is excluding your hosting space, domain name, design and content (if your outsourcing it). All of this requires a lot of hard work too. I truly don't recommend that you fully depend on paid methods to generate traffic, I want you to make your money work hard to generate traffic using these paid methods and I want you to work hard on forums, social bookmarking sites, networking, creating content and monetization.

Google Adwords

One of the most favorite traffic generation methods for all bloggers. Mostly due its high click through rate, highly targeted traffic and all of these at very low cost of $0.1. I think you can invest $30 on Adwords from our $300 investment package. You can automate it to spend $1 a day and keep cost per click rate to $0.1 per click. Adwords would say that your price is too low and may not appear in searches, but don't mind that just pay the money and your ready to go. For Adwords I don't think it is appropriate to send traffic directly to your homepage, you should send it a welcome page which gives your intro, categories and suggests to subscribe to your feed. You can see it here.

Stumbleupon Ads

I recently wrote a post on using Stumble Upon to promote your blog, that post clearly states the high traffic potential of StumbleUpon. If you directly Stumble a good post you are sure to get around 30 to 40 hits and some may like it send your post to some new audience. But if you are willing to get thousands of views and get listed on their high traffic pages you'll have to advertise there. StumbleUpon Ads are very expensive, it starts at 5 cents per view. We used $30 of our $300 on Adwords, now we have $270 left. I think $50 would be a wise investment on Stumble Upon and that would generate 1000 views, and if your post gets more likes it may also travel to a wider range of targeted visitors. The key to Stumble Upon success is the post you advertise, you can't use your homepage, you'll have to find a short resourceful post. Posts with only images perform really well on Stumble Upon, on my first Stumble Upon ad campaign I advertised "30 Hilarious blogger jokes" which contains only funny images related to blogging and that performed really well.

Buy a review

The most effective form of advertisement in today's web is sponsored reviews, in this you buy a review from a blogger who writes about you or your blog for his readers. This is very efficient as how much can you really tell about yourself on a ad banner. Sponsored reviews are much more expensive, but it gives a clear view of you, your blog and your services. People who visit your site are highly targeted and you definitely have a chance of getting a subscriber, a bookmark or a buyer. Previously we had $220 left, sponsored reviews are available from $50 to $1000 according to the blogs traffic. I think you can invest $100 for sponsored reviews, but it is not wise to buy a review directly from the advertiser you can use services such as SponsoredReviews and ReviewMe.

Outsource seo/marketing
This is the most expensive, but the best in this list. You can find a lot of seo firms ready to do seo optimize your site. You can find a good seo firm for $100 and thats not much. It is advisable to invest up to $120 on marketing.

Conclusion
We have invested our entire investment package, now just promote your blog virally and see how this $300 turns itself into thousands of dollars. I know I've missed out a lot of advertising methods such as banners and text links, but you see in the above list I've given options were your investment lasts longer and you get returns faster. Google Adwords costs $0.1 per click so I can monetize my blog and get back all my investments within a month and the same goes for others.

If you think there are other ways or if I have something wrong posted please leave your comments below.

Using your creativity to make money online

2009-11-10T06:04:00.000-08:00

In the 21st Century the richest are not always those who work the hardest. It takes the ability to view things at a different perspective to be rich. People may think its strange or non practical and they may say that your doing a big mistake. Let me tell you if your doing something that has never been done before it is not always necessary that you succeed. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were laughed upon when they told people that they were gonna download the entire web, but they went ahead not caring about the outcome and the result they are the 14th and 16th richest men in the world.

This post covers some case studies that I came across in the past week, I've been really inspired by all of these stories and i'm trying to find some creative idea that is one of a kind on the web but you see my art teacher tells me that me creativity is very limited and i think he was kind of right.

I guess most of you have heard of the teen girl named Ashley behind the site Whateverlife which provides free Myspace layouts and tutorials. The site currently receives up to 7 million monthly visitors and she as also manged make some long term advertising contracts.

All of us are aware of Alex Tew, who needed money to fund his studies, so he set up milliondollarhomepage . This site contains a homepage with one million pixels and he sells one million ad banners on it for one dollar each. After a few months do you guys have any idea on how much money he made, get ready for a shock, he made $103,037,100. I guess he would give up his idea to fund his education now, he may plan to buy a yacht and go around the world instead.

Andrew Fischer, a 22 year old web designer who created a site named Killofthebill, which contains a list of links and a banner at the top. The highest bidder gets the top banner and as soon as a higher bid appears the previous link will appear among the links below. He has raised up to $5000. Very creative indeed, he is making a hell lot of money with out struggling to sit and write posts.

The last on my list is this young guy I came across on DailyBlogTips. I don't think he is very famous, but his creativity can not be underestimated. In 2005 he auctioned an adspace for $40000 on his head, thats right his forehead. A company named SnoreStop agreed to pay him for stamping their logo on his head for a month.

Installing Disqus comments on a customized blogger template

2009-11-06T04:39:00.000-08:00

Disqus happens to be one of the best comment systems for any blog, it provides a wide range of options both for you and your users. The best thing is that it can be integrated to almost any type of blogging platform. Recently some Disqus users mailed me and wrote on forums that their blogger templates began to act weird after installing Disqus. Some complained that the load time increased, the comments didn't appear below posts and many more.

Actually it happens to blogger users using highly customized templates such as mine. In this case while installing Disqus do not choose the option 'Blogger', just choose Generic code from the menu Admin > Tools .

Follow all the related instructions as it is and maybe you may loose some old comments.

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Please give your opinions in the comments below and your free to self promote in the comments

Top 30 richest internet entreprenuers

2009-11-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

This is a post about my biggest role models, I really hope I could put my name on this list some day. Most of the internet entrepreneurs in this list started of with almost no investment or very minor investment and today they have grown up to be the ultimate investors.

One of the best things I love about the internet is that you can make be worth a lot of money withing just a few months and a laptop and a room. I have started this blog with just that and currently working my ass off reach my dreams.

If you really want to live a life like they do, then you should take up the internet seriously, and make blogging your full time job. Its difficult to earn millions of dollars with a blog, so start off and create an empire of online business. Best off luck.


1	Larry Page	Google	1998	$18.5 Billion
2	Sergey Brin	Google	1998	$18.5 Billion
3	Jeff Bezos	Amazon	1994	$8.7 Billlion
4	Pierre Omidyar	eBay	1995	$6.3 Billion
5	Eric Schmidt	Google	1998	$5.9 Billion
6	Ronald Burkle	Yahoo	1995	$3.5 Billion
7	Mark Cuban	Broadcast.com	1995	$2.6 Billion
8	Jerry Yang	Yahoo	1995	$2.3 Billion
9	Omid Kordestani	Google	1998	$1.9 Billion
10	David Filo	Yahoo	1995	$1.7 Billion
11	Kavitark Ram Shriram	Google	1998	$1.7 Billion
12	Todd Wagner	Broadcast.com	1995	$1.5 Billion
13	Peter Thiel	PayPal	1998	$1.3 Billion
14	Niklas Zennstrom	Skype	2003	$1.3 Billion
15	Janus Friis	Skype	2003	$1.3 Billion
16	Jack Ma	Alibaba	1999	$1.1 Billion
17	Mark Zuckerberg	Facebook	2004	$700 Million
18	Simon Nixon	MoneySuperMarket	1999	$680 Million
19	Andrew Gower	Runescape	2001	$650 Million
20	Reid Hoffman	LinkedIn	2003	$500 Million
21	Zhang Chaoyang	Sohu	1996	$425 Million
22	Steve Chen	YouTube	2005	$350 Million
23	Elon Musk	PayPal	1998	$328 Million
24	Chad Hurley	YouTube	2005	$300 Million
25	Duncan Cameron	MoneySuperMarket	1999	$280 Million
26	Marc Andreesen	Netscape	1994	$253 Million
27	Reed Hastings	NetFlix	1997	$150 Million
28	Blake Ross	Mozila	1998	$120 Million
29	Andrew Michael	Fasthost	1999	$110 Million
30	Max Levchin	PayPal	1998	$100 Million

To our success in 2009,

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