Developing and running a successful blog business can be a monumental challenge. It’s hard work, just like anything else, and you’ll likely stumble your way through more than a few mistakes along the way. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had something to guide your way?

Well, you do. Collis Ta’eed is the guy behind Envato and he’s sharing everything you need to know in his new book, How to Build a Successful Blog Business. Available now through Rockable Press, this 330-page book serves as the subject of today’s review.

Blogging for Profit

There is a distinct difference between hobby bloggers and those who want to develop their blogs into real businesses. This book is clearly targeted at the latter group.

It has already received considerably positive feedback from such big names in the industry as Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse. For example, Chris Garrett is saying that you “need to get this now” if you’re “serious about blogging as a real business.”

You also have to recognize that Collis Ta’eed comes from a place of significant authority. He has developed several blogs that not only generate considerable traffic, but impressive revenue too.

A Comprehensive Guide to Blogging Business

You may have already had the opportunity to read Make Money Online by me and John Chow, but that book focused mostly on how you would develop a blog where you are the main contributor.

With How to Build a Successful Blog Business, the material covers just about every aspect of running a blog as a business. This 330-page book includes sections on brand creation, staffing, business structure, content planning, monetization, and long term strategies.

Perhaps of even greater interest are the three case studies that close the book. In these chapters, Collis describes exactly how he built and developed FreelanceSwitch, Psdtuts+, and AppStorm.

Writing Style, Comprehension, and Accessibility

It’s going to take you some time to get through the over 300 pages of content, but the information is all presented in a clear, systematic, and easy-to-understand manner. Consider this snippet from the first chapter.

Opportunities in blogging also arise from the many niches and topics that are still wide open. If you walk into any bookstore and look through the myriad magazines that line the racks, you’ll find there are audiences interested in reading about everything from sewing to tattoos, boating to cooking, movies to shopping. Can you name the blog to read on tattoos? How about a great blog about boating? Think you can find one?

The style is not unlike the “blogging voice” that you find on many of Collin’s sites around the net. It’s casual, but informative. You will find, though, that many of the pages are very text-heavy.

As a freelance writer myself, I was particularly interested in the FreelanceSwitch case study. Most of it was text, but Collis did include several screenshots (e.g., Google Analytics) and charts (e.g., revenue over time) to help illustrate his points.

Blogging as a business can be daunting and intimidating for many, but How to Build a Successful Blog Business outlines everything you need to know in a way that is easy not only to digest, but also to implement in your own endeavors.

Buy the E-Book or the Paperback

Anyone who is seriously considering a career not “just” as a blogger, but as the owner and manager of a blog business should buy this book. You’ll learn about hiring freelancers, setting up your accounting, developing traffic, increasing your income and so much more.

If you want instant access to the material, you can buy the e-book version for $39. This comes with a 100% money-back guarantee. If you prefer the dead tree edition, the $47 paperback is printed and shipped through Lulu.com.

CLICK HERE TO BUY HOW TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL BLOG BUSINESS

View full post on John Chow dot Com

HackingEthics

www.trishjones.com Watch this video tutorial and see how simple it is to get online with a blog today! Create a blog using free software from wordpress.org and get tips on why, if you want to become a serious blogger, if you want to make money with your blog or, if you want to control your blog, then using free blogs such as blogger.com or wordpress.com is NOT an option … You must own your blog. Here’s why …if you use hosted solutions such as blogger.com or wordpress.com, they can delete your site without your permission and there is nothing you can do about it. Also, using hosted sites to host your blog means that you have limited opportunities of monetizing your blog because some of them don’t allow you to make the most of advertising with say Google AdSense. WordPress.com for example makes it very clear that it is against their terms of service to commercialize your WordPress.com hosted blog by hosting paid advertising and will result in your blog being deleted. In fact, I’ve just been reading one forum where there is a reader called “Rainmaker” and he seems to have made it his job to report people who are commercializing their WordPress blogs and within no time, their sites have been deleted by WordPress. So don’t say you haven’t been warned. What you need to do is go to WordPress.org and download their free software and then upload the software to the server where you have your own hosting account, using your own domain name. Alternatively, you can use the …
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Make your own blog that is 100% customizable and that is completely ad free using free tools. We will be using a free account from www.awardspace.com, free blogging software called WordPress, and a free FTP client called Filezilla.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

HackingEthics

• Evan By Numbers May 2010 One of the main reasons that I started this blog was to hold myself accountable, since I truly believe that Accountability Leads to Success when dealing with personal finance and me.. it is even in my FIRST post from August 2008 it is right there in the first sentence of published work......
• 1st Carnvial of Dividends & Passive Income Welcome to the very first edition of carnival of dividends and passive income. I'm going to kick it it off with my own submission on How I Made $2,667 in Passive Income In March. Of course, if you've already read it, you can read about the Tax Benefits of......
• How Did I Get PR 3 In 2 Months? Make Money Online.Google, Yahoo and MSN are three big search engines. Google is the largest search engine. Its market share is more than 70%. Number of searches on Google is increasing even more. Daily millions of people visit Google. If you can get your website ranked on Google, it means......
• Frequently Asked Questions about Corporate Blogging If you are completely new to blogging, you may find that you have a lot of questions and at times, it can be hard to find the answers. We’ve compiled the most common issues facing new corporate bloggers and supplied the answers to these problems below. 1. Is this going......
• How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months [/caption] By: the Blog Tyrant In my first year of University I sold a blog for $20,000 USD after only eight months. It was then that I realized that making money online was something I really wanted to give a shot. Since that time I have sold several other blogs......

Affiliate marketing is one of the best and easiest ways to make money online. Unlike every other ways you can make money online, affiliate marketing is the easiest because you don’t have to work on getting product ideas, creating products, offering customer support and many other problems associated with creating a product, the product owner faces all these, all you need to do is promote. Another great benefit of affiliate marketing is that if you do things right, you can set everything on autopilot and even be earning money months after you haven’t touched your affiliate site. This post will be talking about 7 steps you have to take if you want to make money online from affiliate marketing.

1 – Choose a Niche

This is one of the most important steps you will take when trying to make money online from affiliate marketing. When trying to make money online from affiliate marketing, you can’t just get up and start promoting any product without any research, it won’t work like that. The first thing you have to do when trying to make money online from affiliate marketing is to research a niche. There are several ways you can get a niche and some three things to consider when trying to find profitable niches are the passion, problems and fears of people. What is it that people fear most and you are knowledgeable about? What is it that people are passionate about and you are knowledgeable about? You already have a niche idea! If you are not clear yet, I will be using an example. For example, lets talk about the fears of people, many people fear having their computers infected by a virus and I am a tech junkie, I have enough knowledge about computers and networking so I have discovered a niche in the antivirus industry – this same process applies to any field, just think hard and you will come up with a niche idea.

2 – Find a Primary Keyword

One of the steps that make newbies get excited is the process of finding a niche but I must tell you that is only the beginning. Tapping into niches is another important thing to do and that can be done by finding the right keyword.

There are several steps to finding a keyword and one great and free tool you can use is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It is very important to effectively research your niche to see if it is really profitable, for example, you wouldn’t want to go into a niche that nobody is interested in, you have to make sure your niche is profitable and that there are people who need what you want to promote – this is the benefit of keyword research. When researching keywords for your niche, it is very important to make sure your primary keyword has a decent number of searches every month, the minimum amount of monthly searches I will suggest is 1000. Once you find the right keyword with enough searches we can then go to the next step.

It is also better to make sure your keywords are in the long tail because this type of keywords convert better and also have less competition. For example, the keyword “how to cure antivirus on my computer” will convert more and will also be less competitive than the keyword ‘antivirus”.

3 – Get a Product

The reason I am suggesting this step first is because if you work on getting a product first before registering your website you will be able to see clearly and avoid any mistake ahead of you, for example, many people register their websites first only to see that they have no product to promote.

The first thing you should do is to find a product to promote, and which other place is better than the largest affiliate network, Clickbank? When finding a product, I will not advise you to just promote a product because of its large commisions but you should make sure it is the right product by checking to see the following are in place.

• Does it have a good sales page? You can know this by reading the sales page with the intention of a buyer, if you would not buy it if you were a buyer then its sales page sucks!
• Does it have a good customer support?
• Does it have a strong guarantee?
• Once you have verified the above and you are sure you have chosen the right product you can now move to the next step.

4 – Register a Keyword-Rich Domain Name

This is one advantage you have over the competition, if you register the right keyword-rich domain name you will have a lot of advantage over your competition and you will be able to dominate the search engine rankings easily. The reason why it is very important to register a keyword rich domain name is that most of your traffic will be coming from the search engines and if you could get the right domain name then you have simplified your process of ranking in the search engines easily.

A keyword rich domain name is the one that has your primary keywords in it, for example, if your primary keyword is “buy antivirus online” your domain name can be “buyantivirusonline.com”, I know it might be difficult to get something like this because many people would have chosen the goodies, but in this case you can add a modifier to your domain name. For example, you can use the domain name “buyantivirusonlinea.com” or “buyantivirusonlinenow.com”e.t.c. Just make sure the keyword “buy antivirus online” comes first in your domain name. It is also important to make sure your domain name is not too long and you should also make sure your domain name does not have any hyphen.

Another thing you must note is that .com domain names are the best.

5 – Write a Killer Review

After you have gotten a keyword rich domain name, the next thing you will do is to write a keyword rich and professional review. When writing a review, you should not make it obvious that you are writing the post because you are promoting something but you should make your link and call to actions obvious. Here are some elements every killer keyword-rich review must have.

• It should have the primary keyword in its title.
• It should have the primary keyword in its meta description.
• It should have the keyword properly used in the main article – It is very important not to just load your review article with your keywords because this can incur some search engine penalties.
• It should have a strong call to action.

6 – Build Backlinks for Your Website

After you have put everything in place, the next thing to do to make sure you get the best in terms of search engine traffic for your website is to build backlinks to your blog. There are several ways you can build high quality backlinks to your blog and one of the best and most effective ways is article marketing.

There are many article marketing directories you can submit your articles to but my advise is that you should only select ten high quality article directories. After you have a list of the article directories you want to get backlinks to, the next thing you should do is to come up with some short 400-500 words articles, after you have come up with these articles you can now begin to submit one article to three article directories – don’t submit your articles to more than 3 article directories because this can bring about the search engine duplicate content penalty thereby leaving your articles with no value.

It is very important to use your anchor text when writing your articles, for example, if your primary keyword is “buy kapersky antivirus online”, it is also your anchor text and you will make sure that you link it to the review post you wrote in every article you submit to article directories.

7 – Rinse and Repeat

The above 6 process should already be making you money but if you want to make serious money from affiliate markting you can rinse and repeat all the steps either by starting entirely in a new niche or by finding new products to promote, it all depends on you.

Making money online is not difficult as many people see, sometimes all it requires is you having a formula. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online and the above formula is all you need to start making money online from affiliate marketing.

Onibalusi Bamidele is a young entrepreneur living the internet lifestyle, he has prepared a free traffic report for you called the ultimate traffic formula. You can get the free report at ultimatetrafficformula.com

View full post on John Chow dot Com

HackingEthics

www.fridaytrafficreport.com A very quick tutorial on getting blog links and Power Linking with trackbacks. This is how you do blog marketing.

Lee Keller asks Kim Cavanaugh about using blogs in education
Video Rating: 4 / 5

HackingEthics

• Paper Toss World Tour iPhone App Review Paper Toss World Tour Specs: appstorereviewer.com Mobile Videos: www.youtube.com Twitter: www.twitter.com......
• Get The Word Out Internet Network Marketing Style! Image by magbag via Flickr Hopefully by now you realize just how powerful blogging is to creating your Internet Network Marketing business.  I am going to assume for a moment that you do in fact have a blog, next thing is to get some rankings so you can get......
• The 6 Best Tools to Use On Your Corporate Blog Whether you are new to corporate blogging, or trying to find ways to blog more effectively, there are some great tools out there that can truly enhance your blog. Most are free to use, while others do have a small fee. However, this is definitely time and money well spent,......
• Currency Trading and Intermarket Analysis: How to Profit from the Shifting Currents in Global Markets (Wiley Trading) (Hardcover) As head FX strategist at CMC Markets–one of the world's leading forex/commodity brokers–Ashraf Laidi understands the forces shaping today's currency market and their interplay with interest rates, equities, and commodities. And now, with Currency Trading and Intermarket Analysis, he shares his extensive experiences in this field with you. Throughout......
• Advantages Of Online Forex Education Courses It seems like everybody wants to change life by becoming financially independent and quitting the boring daily job. It is so good to be one's own boss. Forex market is extremely popular these days. This market is definitely a great opportunity to meet and reach goals. To do this we......

Why get training for online network marketing? For one, you’ll need it, especially if you don’t have prior experience in the business. Online network marketing involves some unique business practices and procedures that you may not have a grasp of if you’ve mainly worked in businesses using a different model. This is also an industry that evolves fast with new trends affecting the market and eventually, your income. In order to compete well, you need to keep informed and be updated about the new technologies and personalities in this business. Here’s how you can get online network marketing training to improve your skills and know-how:

Obtain it from your parent company.

Most network marketing companies will offer you training as part of your membership. Generally, this training is free and will often be provided by the company’s executives and leaders or by industry experts who have been hired for the job.

The training offered by your parent company is important, particularly because it is specific to the type of business your network marketing company is involved in. The training should include information about the company’s background, its management, its products and services, compensation plan and its market. The company should be able to provide you some effective means with which to target people for recruitment or sales and help you grow your business.

Before you sign up for an online network marketing business, ask about training. The company should be able to provide you with one at no additional cost.

Enroll in trainings offered by industry experts.

Many of the most popular and respected industry experts and gurus in network marketing offer training. Some trainings deal on a generalized knowledge of online network marketing while others seek to improve your business skills. Still others will offer to help you find ways to improve your business and increase your earnings.

If you’re a beginner, look for professional training that is geared towards strengthening your skills as a business person. You can then proceed to attend more advanced trainings. Check the Internet for information about these lectures. Some experts do travel from state to state to deliver their lessons while others offer their expertise through online classes. Find out if there is a seminar scheduled in your city and simply sign up.

A word of caution: getting trained by an industry giant can be costly so you have to choose your seminars carefully. If you find one that seems useful for you, ask for more information, particularly about the objective of the seminar and the topics that will be covered. That way, you’ll know exactly whether it’s right for you or not.

Train on your own.

Hey, you could get a master’s degree by studying on your own – why not get online network marketing training in the same manner? Plenty of people do. Go online and search for e-books, audio or videos that provide lessons related to your industry. These ‘trainings in a box’ can be particularly useful if you’re the type who can’t make time to go to a seminar or if you live in a location that’s too far from main cities where the trainings are.

Getting online network marketing training on your own is also convenient and less costly. However, do this only after you’ve received training from your own company or at least have a good understanding of what your business is. It’s also easy to be misled by promises from mediocre sources, so buy only from reputable companies and individuals. For free resources, you can also check out some valuable articles and advice from sites such as TheCompleteMarketer.com and NetworkMarketingTimes.com.
—————————————————-
Would You Like To Know How I Do It?

Then Get My Free”Success Secrets” Which Will Teach The **Exact Steps** This Former Retail Worker Made, To End Up Working FULL Time From Home…

Anthony Harris is a Platinum Ezine Writer And One Of The Top Internet Marketer Who Has Now Founded The RECIPE!!!! To Quick And Easy Internet Success*

Go Full Time From Home Now
http://www.thenewbizsuccess.com

HackingEthics

• How To Start A Home Business Online There are virtually limitless ways to start a home business online. You don't even need any experience because you can learn it all for free or very cheap, and relatively fast too. But existing experience does help because you can jump right in and start a home based business doing......
• Get the right internet marketing tools today You must instead focus on the marketing aspect of this Internet business and design accordingly. To help with this there are two awesome Internet marketing tools that are indispensable. Get the best internet marketing tools today Word tracker is indispensable because it allows you to determine if there truly is......
• Online Internet Business Many beginners of online marketing to do the same basic mistakes, and in doing so, they miss the chance to become a millionaire auto online. In a misguided effort to keep costs as low as possible, they try to do absolutely everything yourself. This is all well and good if......
• Search Engine Marketing – Exclusive Services Get your site exposed. Are you ruining your own campaign? Marketing is not something to be forgotten when delving into an online business. Marketing is in fact just as, if not even more important today in promoting a website than any offline business. So what does it take to market......
• Why Big Companies Are Blogging? There are still some old school business people out there that consider the whole idea of blogging for their business rather ridiculous. Unfortunately for these people, they will never understand that the world is changing and blogging is a whole lot more than just a bunch of people in their......

Affiliate marketing is quickly becoming one of the most popular ways to make money on the Internet, but it can be a complex and confusing endeavor. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could streamline the process, if only a little?

Making its official debut just recently at Affiliate Summit East in New York, Jounce is basically a specialized search engine for all the affiliate marketers in the audience. In this review, we’ll take a look at what it does, how it works, and why you should care.

What Is Jounce?

When you arrive at the main homepage for Jounce, you are shown a rather familiar search bar. However, you are sifting through the entirety of the Internet; instead, you are looking specifically for affiliate offers.

Rather than logging into each of your individual accounts with the various affiliate networks, you can search across all of them through a single, unified interface. After you put in a search term, you will be shown a range of affiliate offers across multiple networks.

From this list, you can see exactly which network is currently providing the offer, how much is the cost to the site visitor, what your commission rate will be, and so on. Here is a brief video demonstrating how Jounce works. You can also check the site tour for more information.

The tagline is preaching a little bit to the choir, saying that we recommend stuff to our friends and family anyways, so we should get paid for it too. Even so, the core concept behind Jounce looks very promising.

If you want to be more efficient with your “performance marketing,” Jounce looks like it could be quite useful.

The Typical Search Results Page

To give Jounce a quick test run, I searched for affiliate offers related to keyword phrase “make money blogging.” The search results are displayed below.

This results page is notable for several reasons. First, you are given the thumbnail image of the product being promoted, so you might already recognize some of these items. You are naturally also given its name and a brief description, as well as the network, the price and your cut.

Along the left sidebar, you can refine your search results further by selecting specific tags, network names, advertiser names, commission type, currency, and image availability. You’ll also notice that you can sort through the results based on a variety of criteria too, including price, your cut, and EPC.

The Single Product Page

Going one mouse click further, you can get the product details for any single item. This page provides you with much the same information as the search results page.

The information is presented in a relatively easy to understand manner, including all the details about payment threshold, offer type, weekly and monthly EPC, your cut, number of tiers, and so on. You can click through to see the product sales page as well.

When you click on the arrow next to the network, you are shown the ability to join that network immediately. That’s probably a big part of the monetization plan for Jounce, as many of these networks have referral programs.

What’s interesting is that while you can use the search for free and without an account, signing up with Jounce lets you access your affiliate links right from within the Jounce interface. And this is the real power of Jounce, since it means that you don’t have to log into your individual affiliate networks to get your hop links.

Should You Affiliate with Jounce?

One of the biggest reasons why you would want to participate in affiliate marketing and passive income streams in the first place is that it has the potential of offering you greater time freedom. Jounce is one such tool that can aid you in that effort.

I appreciate the relatively simple and straightforward interface, as well as the robust option sets for sifting through the search results. I’m sure they’ll be adding more and more networks as Jounce grows and matures, making it an even more powerful tool for all the affiliate marketers in the audience. Since it’s free to use, you really have nothing to lose.

CLICK HERE TO SEARCH AFFILIATE OFFERS WITH JOUNCE

View full post on John Chow dot Com

HackingEthics

• Social Networking Sites: How Do I Get Traffic? Someone tells you to join a social networking site to get traffic to your website, you are also told that attraction marketing works great in social networking sites. If this is the case, than why isn't it working for you? Image via Wikipedia Social networks have become very popular among......
• Search Engine Marketing Present And Future Trends The search engine advertising and marketing business is rapidly evolving and new developments are emerging every day. This is because search entrepreneurs are forced to develop and modify their methods based on modifications within the algorithm. One of many current modifications or traits which have been noticed by specialists from......
• Advertising on Facebook If you are not already making use of Facebook as a method of marketing your business or niche, then you are absolutely missing out on a great opportunity to reach out to hundreds of millions of active users. Today, Facebook has become one of the most popular online social networking......
• Offline Search Engine Marketing Methods The term search engine selling or SEM refers to the web selling of a web site. The a lot of common ways used for search engine promoting are pay per click advertising, article writing, blogging, and above all optimizing the location in a very means in that it is simply......
• Search Engine Marketing Firm To Generate Huge Online Traffic For constructing a terrific content material rich website you could have systematic planning and efficient tools. A educated designer makes use of architectural design principles, cautiously combining info delivery as well as intuitive navigation in an effort to satisfy the wants of the visitors while achieving their personal business objectives......

5 Things to Avoid When Social Network Marketing

Social network marketing has proven to be a very viable way to grow an online business. In fact it seems that many entrepreneurs rely primarily upon the social networks for marketing online. It is not uncommon to visit one of these sites and see a healthy percentage of the exchanges are targeting the solicitation of a product or service.

As recent history has shown online marketers are quick to identify growth opportunities for their businesses and social marketing has proven to be no exception.

The original intent of  social networking sites were for people to gather to share ideas, interests, stay in touch, or even meet new people all on a casual basis. With this in mind it is important to identify and adhere to the proper code of behavior that is expected while participating at one of these sites. This is especially true if your intent is to conduct business since your success will be based upon building relationships with other site members.

Here are 5 things you’ll want to avoid doing that could sabotage your social marketing efforts:

Not Taking Part in Discussions

The main idea of social networks is just that to ‘socialize’ with other members. You need and want to mingle to get become familiar with other participants while allowing them to become familiar with you. To not take part in online discussions and then attempt to market something is just downright rude. The result is you will be identified as nothing more than an opportunist or spammer and will rightfully be ignored.

Becoming Fully Automated

Some sites such as Twitter offer you the opportunity to program some of your comments in advance. The idea is great and is meant for people who want to interact at a certain time but will not be available. Some marketers and you know who you are, rely heavily if not exclusively on this type of automated system. Worse yet they don’t even try to interact all they do is repeatedly send sales pitches. Once again by doing this you’re destined to be ignored by others and labeled a spammer.

These are social networking sites whose intentions are for PEOPLE to interact NOT SOFTWARE!

Continually Selling

Your intent at these sites is to be building relationships with other members to gain their trust and loyalty. Eventually you can introduce different products or services but the majority of the interactions should be social in nature. If you’re constantly pitching a new product, idea, service, or opportunity NOBODY will want to associate with you.

Disruptive or Antisocial Behavior

Your conduct like everybody else at any social site should be courteous and respectful of others. You are a guest and should behave as such. Tactful and polite disagreements are acceptable but rudeness, vulgarity, harsh criticism or other like behavior should not be displayed.

Creating Fictitious Profiles

Most every site gives you the opportunity to ‘register’ your profile upon signing up and it is encouraged to do so. It’s hard to befriend or socialize with anybody when you don’t/won’t reveal your identity.

The same is true with falsifying your profile. What’s the sense? If you’re going to do that then why even bother joining? In fact people have a legitimate reason to ‘question’ your intentions if you are displaying a fake identity. If you are in business you obviously don’t intend to be so for long. That sends a real bad message!

Social network marketing can be an extremely effective and efficient way to grow your online business. and rapidly. There are many methods you can use for marketing online but few surpass the speedy results or ‘viral capabilities’ that these sites offer. It is up to you as a sincere and responsible business owner to identify and practice the proper etiquette that is expected when participating at any social site. Your ability to do so will enable you to maximize the full potential these sites have to offer for both you and your business.

More Social Network Marketing Articles

HackingEthics

• The Most Significant Part Of Most Businesses: Marketing We should always research thoroughly about the market and the status of the market before we start off with Internet market for our business. It is good to review the various marketing strategies that can be implemented on your site to bring in more customers. Check out all the various......
• Can You Really Make Money With A Part Time Income Business There are a lot of people that get online looking for a part time income opportunity to help them make extra money. There are many different opportunities that can be done part time. The big question that everybody has, but is not sure how to answer is, can you really......
• Internet Marketing Finally Defined Internet marketing or marketing on the Internet is no longer the mysterious world it once appeared. The activities you undertake to promote a service or product on the Internet is known as Internet Marketing. Internet Marketing is the opposite of what you've been taught at school. Esentially, Internet Marketing comes......
• 5 Twitter Marketing Mistakes to Avoid Do you want to use Twitter as an internet marketing tool? If so, congratulations. You are taking a step in the right direction. Once people realize that Twitter is more than just a way to stay in contact with friends and family, they start to see success. Depending on how......
• Let's Earn Earnings Online With Each Other We all know that times have definitely changed. It used to be that if you did not have a college degree, or come from a elite family, there would be no way to get a decent job. This was almost the only way to be able to earn an income.......

What to Look for in a Search Engine Optimization Company

If you are a serious business website owner, chances are you are constantly on the lookout for ethical means to promote your website to your target market. Chances are also good that you probably read somewhere or heard from someone that your most practical promotion solution is to trust your business to a search engine optimization company. The processes of promoting your site and increase your online visibility is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. If you are familiar with the term but do not have the expertise to properly implement SEO for your website, then you might want to consider hiring a Search Engine Optimization Company to do that work for you.

What is a Search Engine Optimization company? It is an organization whose objective is to provide the necessary tools and expertise to optimize your website towards the goal of securing for you a first or second page ranking in the search engine’s list of keyword-responsive sites. A Search Engine Optimization company’s role is that of an influencer, i.e., the strategies it employs for your website are geared towards influencing the search engine’s “spiderbot” to give it a high relevance rating which, in turn, influences its ranking. A Search Engine Optimization company’s indirect role is also to influence the surfer to visit your website but is not responsible for what happens to the visit.

There are many Search Engine Optimization companies that have hung their virtual shingle in cyberspace, with many more sprouting up each and every day. With so many choices available, it is important that you are guided in selecting the right Search Engine Optimization company that best suits your requirements and budget. Here are a few tips in selecting that Search Engine Optimization company:

• Always Go for Reputation and Experience

This is pretty much a common sense tip. When you are headed for the unknown, it always makes sense to go with a guide who knows what you don’t. A Search Engine Optimization company that has years of experience as an organization and has people working for it with years of individual experience is normally a good choice. Experience, however, is just one half of this selection criterion, the other half being REPUTATION. A Search Engine Optimization company may have the experience, but if it has a track record of unethical or even illegal SEO activity, then the experience counts for nothing.

• Avoid SEO companies that Spam

A Search Engine Optimization company that sends spam email to promote itself is not a good Search Engine Optimization company and will get your site banned costing you more that it will ever benefit from.

• A company that hides everything, has something to hide

Beware of the Search Engine Optimization company that has a “black box” solution for everything that ails your website, i.e., you don’t need to know how it works; you just pay. In all likelihood, what this type of Search Engine Optimization company is hiding from you is, at best, unethical, or at worst, illegal. It is very important for you to understand what is going to be done with your website (in lay man’s terms) because, at the end of the day, it IS your website and you will have to live with whatever the Search Engine Optimization company does to it.

• Go Window Shopping

Like with every important purchase decision you make, you must check out more than one Search Engine Optimization company before you make a decision. Ask for a list of the websites they claim to have worked on, and do your own research. Also, ask each Search Engine Optimization company you are considering about what they think of the other candidates in your list. Be wary if they launch into a negative marketing pitch about their competition. A really good Search Engine Optimization company will rarely badmouth a competitor. Even if the competitor is really bad, the worst that a good Search Engine Optimization company will do is objectively point out their strengths and weaknesses.

• Go with the Clear Deal

A good Search Engine Optimization company will always be very clear any work proposal it makes. It clearly spells out the terms of reference, timelines, commercial aspects, guarantees, penalties, any other items that it and you may find relevant towards meeting your expectations. That way, you know what you are getting into and what (and what not) to expect.

These are but a few tips on how to select the expert that will take care of optimizing your website for you. Approach a Search Engine Optimization company like you would any other company that you are considering to handle some work for you, and you are covered.

Related Search Engine Optimization Articles

HackingEthics

Sabotaging Your Social Network Marketing Efforts

Social network marketing is an online marketing strategy that has taken the internet by storm for not only its effectiveness but its ease as well. Done correctly, online social networking can attract a significant amount of traffic to any business site you choose. However many in their rush to generate this traffic, overlook the necessary ‘social graces’ required to be accepted at these sites. The end result is a lot of wasted effort and adding insult to injury, few friends are even gained from the experience.

If you are interested in using online social networks to make new friends while also boosting your business traffic, here are 5 practices to avoid!

Promoting TOO Much

Remember that online social networks are there for people to ‘socialize’ and not to be sold. With that said you will need to focus your initial efforts on developing relationships at these sites. If you go ‘swaggering’ into these sites promoting like a gunslinger you will likely be ‘shot down’ yourself.

Listening TOO Much

It is meant to be interactive and besides how are you to get noticed by being a ‘wall flower’ all the time? Pick out a conversation that you are comfortable with or interested in and start contributing to it. This is a great way to make ‘introductions’ and capture the attention of others.

Over Extending Yourself

This online marketing strategy is very effective but it can take some time to develop comfortable relationships with others. Plan on this and only try to work a few locations first in order to be most effective. As your time allows you can then increase the number of social communities you are working.  

Lacking Subtly and Tact

Join in on conversations but do not try to force your opinions since this is no way to fit in and be accepted. You want to make good impressions and develop favorable opinions about yourself and being obnoxious is not the way to do it.

Losing Patience

Do not expect overnight results since this will lead to frustration and you ‘throwing in the towel’ prematurely and wasting all the efforts and time already invested. The best suggestion is to simply relax and focus on making new friends. That is not so bad is it?

Social network marketing can be a great source of online traffic to your business if you conduct yourself properly while ‘working’ on these sites. The fact of the matter is that this online marketing strategy hold tremendous traffic potential, but only if you ‘participate’ in an accepted manner. Online social networking is ‘centered’ in socializing with other sites members. To overlook certain basics socialization skills will result in you being overlooked and disregarded by site members, therefore remember it is all about ‘connecting’ first! The 5 practices you will definitely want to avoid when using any of the online social networks are reviewed above. By avoiding these social ‘hiccups’ and taking the time to build relationships/friendships with others, you stand a much better chance of gaining both new traffic and friends!

More Social Network Marketing Articles

HackingEthics

• Get The Word Out Internet Network Marketing Style! Image by magbag via Flickr Hopefully by now you realize just how powerful blogging is to creating your Internet Network Marketing business.  I am going to assume for a moment that you do in fact have a blog, next thing is to get some rankings so you can get......
• Mistakes to Avoid When Blogging For Business Most businesses today recognize the power of blogging and are using it to their advantage. Everyone from the bigger companies to much smaller businesses are taking advantage of the free advertising and wonderful increase to website traffic that can be gained from successful blogging. There are some mistakes that you......
• Social Network & Social Media Marketing Service Added to WordsmithBob.com Just thought I'd put out an announcement that I've added a Social Network & Social Media Web Site Marketing Service to my stable of products and services. When I sent out my last newsletter with a huge article on Social Networking for business marketing, I got an awfully big......
• Internet Network Marketing: Build Your List With A Re-branded Training Site One of the more difficult things to do online is build a list. This is true Especially in the Internet Network Marketing industry. I remember when I first started marketing online how difficult it was to get leads. I couldn't get leads because I didn't really have much of value......
• Aaachoo Review: Money For Nothing And Chicks For Free? Aaachoo review, is it worth joining? I have recently been digging swom matter of fact now I have 2 paid social media sites that I like. While I think swom is great for connecting with newbies online, I think Aaachoo is great at giving you a full branding machine......

Chango is a new ad network that offers payout much higher than a traditional banner ad network. It does this by cherry picking the traffic going to your blog and serving ads only to readers from the US or Canada and who came to your blog via a major search engine like Google or Bing.

From an advertiser’s stand point, not all readers are created equal. The most valuable are those who live in the US or Canada because they spend the most money online. It’s also proven that readers coming from a major search engine are far more valuable than readers coming from any other channels.

What Chango does is allow you to capitalize on those high value visitors by serving ads only to them. If a reader doesn’t meet those criteria, then Chango can serve either a 3rd party ad (like Google AdSense), a house ad or it can collapse the ad and show nothing. By adding Chango to your blog, you are maximizing the revenue from all your ad spots.

Chango offers all the major ad sizes as well as customization for the color schemes. The ads are extremely easy to set up and install. Watch the screen cast below to see how easy it is to create a Chango ad.

Chango is completely free to join. If your blog gets a lot of search traffic, then I highly recommend you apply for Chango. The ad rate are significantly higher than what you’ll be able to get with a normal ad network that doesn’t cheery pick the traffic.

Sign Up for Chango Search Targeted Ad Network

View full post on John Chow dot Com

HackingEthics