Many of our regular readers will know that we recently updated the site to a new look, but as well as that, we made a lot of backend changes to try to speed up the site a bit.  More and more importance has been put on website speed, of which is becoming a major SEO ranking factor.  For that reason alone, we wanted to look at ways in which to try and speed up the site and we found MaxCDN.

What Is MaxCDN?

MaxCDN is a Content Delivery Network (also known as a Content Distribution Network) that helps to spread out your content to different servers to help speed up your site.  Normally, you have all your files saved onto one server, so whenever someone clicks onto one of your pages, they have to wait for those files to load up.

Let’s say your server is based in the US (as mine is), the people that live closest to that area will experience quicker loading times than people on the other side of the planet in China.  This isn’t a major problem if the vast majority of your traffic is coming from one place (in this case the US), but if you have traffic coming to your site from around the world, then it can become an issue.

Furthermore, if your site became really popular overnight, perhaps one of your posts went viral, then it would put a lot of strain on your server.  This is where MaxCDN comes in.

By distributing your content (images, stylesheets (css), scripts (js), etc.) around the world on their servers, it can significantly improve the speed of your site.  Since switching we have had a lot of people say that our site is noticeably faster, and we are still making tweaks behind the scenes to improve this.

Added Benefits

As well as site loading speed increasing, MaxCDN will have a big impact on user experience on your site.  Due to pages loading much quicker, this will help reduce bounce rate and keep people on your site for longer.  This in turn will lead to more pageviews as people will be more willing to check out your other content that you have on your site.

One of the reasons we decided to make changes to our site was because we had had some server issues.  On a couple of occasions our server was under pressure at our busy periods, leading to our site crashing a couple of times.  MaxCDN offers better crash resistance by distributing the load from your server across their own set of servers.  So, your site shouldn’t have as many (if any) problems like this again.

Like we have said, search engines are putting more emphasis on site speed, so the faster your site loads; it will have a positive impact on your SEO.  Site speed can help you rank higher in the search engines, which can help drive more traffic to your site.

Who Should Use MaxCDN?

Well, anyone really!  If you have a website with a global audience, it can help your site out significantly.  This is even more relevant if you have a very large website with lots of content.

One of the great things about MaxCDN is that it is easy to integrate with WordPress.  You can just set up an account and install MaxCDN on WordPress pretty easily.

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Not too long ago, Google announced that it was retiring Google Reader (officially ending on 1^st July 2013).  For many people, this probably wasn’t a big deal, but for those who regularly used Google Reader, this was pretty devastating.  I was one of those people, though since then I have found a great replacement that I feel is even better – Feedly!

Why So Sad To See Google Reader End?

A big part of being a blogger means you have to keep up to date on what’s going on in and around your industry, and the best way to do that is to regularly read other blogs in your niche.  For me Google Reader was where I could keep up to date on ALL of my favourite blogs online by reading their RSS feeds.

It was great to be able to see all my favourite site’s posts in one place, rather than having to manually navigate to each site.  The great thing was that Google Reader let you know when a new post was waiting to be read on one of your sites, something that you could only find out by actually visiting the site directly without it.

Like I say, this was great and helped me stay informed for all my favourite blogs.  This also helped me easily find great content that I wanted to share with my followers on Twitter or Google+.

Without exaggerating, Google Reader was one of the best and most frequently used tools that I used on a daily basis.  I’d spent time adding and setting up all my different RSS feeds on there, so when I found out that it was to be no more, I simply had to find a replacement.

What Is Feedly?

As soon as I learned the bad news, I quickly looked for alternatives to Google Reader, of which there were quite a few.  I tried out a couple that I thought looked good for a week or so and ended up choosing Feedly as my weapon of choice.

For me, Feedly stood head and shoulders above the rest.  This great web aggregator allows you to organize your favourite blogs, news websites, YouTube channels, Podcasts, etc. all in one place.  And the best bit is that you can sync with your existing Google Reader!  Hallelujah!!!

Having used Feedly for a few months now, I can safely say that it is far superior to Google Reader in every way.  Google Reader was great for pulling all your favourite content together, but it did it in quite a dull way.  Feedly on the other hand, is much more visual.  I see it as like having the best magazine ever that is perfectly tailored to your tastes.

You can arrange your content in multiple different layouts (magazine, headline list, card view or just full articles) that lets you quickly and easily look through and find a post you like the look of.

Here is what the Magazine layout looks like. Here you have featured posts displayed above a list of the latest posts.

Once you have read a post, Feedly will automatically mark your post as read, so you only see content that is still to read.  Should you have already read a post on a site, you can manually mark it as read to make it disappear from your feed.  You can even save your favourite articles to read later.

Feedly makes it easy to share posts that you are reading by placing the popular sharing buttons both at the top and bottom of posts.  You can even click on and navigate to the post on the original website should you want to comment or share it from there.

One great feature that I like is the fact that you can categorize your feeds.  I have lots of different RSS feeds added to Feedly, so it is very useful to group them together by category.  Personally, I have categories for; blogging, SEO, web design and film, so as to help me keep them all tidy.  The added benefit of this is that you can search for latest posts from all your sites via your different categories.

I can keep up to date on all my favourite sites by category – here displayed as a list.

By far the best feature though is that Feedly can be accessed across multiple devices (desktop, tablet, iPhone, Android, etc.), meaning that you can always stay up to date with your favourite content.  Even better, they are all synced, so you can read a post on your mobile on your way to work and it will be marked as read when you open up Feedly on your laptop.  This way, you won’t get the same posts being shown to you all the time.

Why Should I Bother Using It?

Well, RSS readers in general are great for, like we’ve already said, keeping up to date with your favourite sites.  Feedly is simply the best at doing this.

If you are someone that has a lot of favourite sites, but sometimes finds it hard to keep up to date with them all, then Feedly would be a great way to gather them all in one place.  I have found that since using it, I read much more and it helps me to stay on top of what’s going on in my niche.  I honestly don’t think I could do without it now.  That is why I love Feedly!

Do you use Feedly?  Do you use another RSS Reader (Google Reader included)?  Would you consider switching?  Please let us know below by leaving a comment.

Why I Love Feedly – The Best RSS Reader OnlineIncomeTeacher - Learn how to make money online with your own blog or website!

Welcome to the new look OnlineIncomeTeacher! (Fanfare)  I hope you like it as I have spent quite a bit of time getting it ready over the last couple of weeks.  For this post, I thought I’d go over the changes that I’ve made to the site, why I decided to switch to a Genesis WordPress theme and more importantly WHY we decided to change the site at all.  Hopefully it may help you with your own website redesign.

Why The Change?

I had quite a few people ask me why I was planning to change the website when I first revealed my plans.  One reason was that I simply just fancied a change.  I love playing around with my website, changing things, making design improvements and just trying to make it look and feel better.  Admittedly, I don’t always get it right (quite often I don’t), but it helps me learn more about web design and keeps me on my toes.

Our old design was actually our 3rd version of OIT

The added benefit to revamping a website every now and then is that it keeps your readers interested.  Websites can start to look a bit tired if they look the same year in, year out.  We all like to redecorate our homes every so often otherwise it can get a bit boring.  Well the same can be said about websites.  Be it aesthetic or structurally, all sites can do with a bit of a change now and then.

It’s also important to keep up to date with important web design trends.  Failure to do so can result in your site being left behind by the competition, so it’s always good to stay current.  We have talked a lot here on OnlineIncomeTeacher about mobile friendly web design, so I won’t go into it too much again here, but that is arguably THE most important design requirement at the moment.  Our previous website was mobile responsive (visible across multiple devices) so that wasn’t a factor when deciding to make the change, but I thought I should mention it here for you.

The primary reason for the new change however was due to some technical difficulties we had been having a few weeks ago.  Our site kept crashing over a period of about a week, which left me wanting to tear out my hair.  As it turned out, it was probably a blessing in disguise.

Why The Site Going Down Was The Best Thing That Ever Happened!

As it turns out, it was our server that kept crashing which led to the site going offline repeatedly.  After quite a bit of time waiting in customer service chatrooms, I got to speak to a really helpful guy called Dave who explained exactly what was causing our problems (thanks Dave!!!).

Now, to cut a long story short, the problem that we were having was that our site was causing ‘High Loading Issues’ on the server, which resulted in our hosting provider temporarily disabling our site until we sorted out the issues.  This can be caused in a number of different ways, but in our case it was simply a case of us having too much stuff on our site.

Every bit of a website (images, videos, social media buttons, plugins, subscription boxes, etc.) has to be loaded in order for your site to appear for one of your visitors.  The longer that whole process takes and the more website visitors you have, the more strain is put on your server. We had simply reached our limit, which was causing all the problems.  I have to laugh writing this, as this whole process that I’ve just fitted in a single paragraph took me ages to get my head around.  I was (and still am to a point) a complete novice to this side of website management.

Whilst incredibly frustrating that the site kept going down for this reason, it forced me to look at my site in a totally different way.  I began to look at all the plugins that I was using, the design elements that we used, the amount of links, thumbnails, css coding, etc. and started to prune a lot of excess baggage.   This was the point that I decided that the site needed a complete overhaul.

Plugin Pruning

I was recommended to install a plugin (ironic I know) called ‘P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler)’, that would show me exactly how long each individual WordPress plugin, that we had installed, was taking to load.  This scans your site and gives you a report on the impact each plugin is having on your site.

Two screens from the P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) showing you what impact each of your plugins is having on your site.

I ended up removing 19 plugins from my site (20 if you include the ‘P3 Plugin’ after I had finished with it), leaving me with only 9 necessary plugins remaining.  No wonder really that we were having issues with loading time.  Simply by doing this and getting rid of a lot of plugins, it had a HUGE impact in server loading time and the site was noticeably faster afterwards.

Once you realize that everything you have on your site has an impact on loading time, you look at things totally differently.  For instance, I always presumed that if you deactivated a plugin that you weren’t using, it wouldn’t affect your site. Wrong!!!  Even deactivated plugins have an impact, so it pays to completely remove any plugins that you aren’t using.

Even some plugins that I thought would have minimal impact were leaving a much bigger footprint than I’d imagined.  A good example of this would be ‘Tweet Old Post’ that I had been using.  After installing it, I didn’t pay it much thought, but on seeing my P3 Plugin report, I was shocked to see that it was one of the biggest contributors.

I’d definitely recommend checking out ‘P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler)’ as it helped me hugely.  Just remember to remove it when you have finished with it!  You don’t have to get rid of all your plugins, of course not, but try to remove the ones that are causing the highest load times.  I think you may be surprised.

Switching From WooThemes To Genesis WordPress Theme

So, despite the fact that removing all these excess WordPress plugins improved my site greatly (and more importantly resulted in me getting my site back online), I wanted to go further and trim the fat off my site.

Having looked at some website speed tools, such as ‘Google PageSpeed Insights’, I could still see room for improvement.  Whilst my site was loading much faster than it was, my current theme (WooThemes – Canvas) was taking a good portion (44%) of the loading time.  It appeared that it was taking so long because of the way it is written.  WooThemes (at least mine anyway) uses lots of different style sheets, which results in it taking longer to load, as it has to fetch each file every time a page is loaded.

Now, I love WooThemes and have been a big supporter of them over the last few years, using them for all my sites.  I did however feel that it was time for a change, so very reluctantly I started to look for alternatives.  I would still highly recommend WooThemes to anyone though.

I decided to go for the Genesis WordPress theme framework by StudioPress, as it has had lots of great reviews from other high profile bloggers and website owners, and is particularly well known for the way it is coded.  This is a platform that WordPress themes can be built upon and is included with every StudioPress theme that you buy.  There is a handy Genesis Guide for Absolute Beginners (PDF) that you can download to help you out.

I was pretty impressed with the choice of themes that StudioPress has to offer.  They have tons of different types of themes that could suit a whole variety of different sites.  Despite feeling like a kid in a sweet shop, I had a few particular requirements for the theme that I was looking for.

1. It had to be a responsive design and work across multiple devices. Mobile is the future!!!
2. It needed to have more customizability on the homepage, as I felt that was an area we were lacking with our previous design.
3. It needed to have a modern and clean structure to it.

Try the News Theme FREE Demo (Click Image)

I wasn’t too bothered about the default aesthetics of the demo theme, as ultimately I was going to spend time customizing it to make it look unique.  I’d always recommend that you look for functionality in a theme first and foremost, as you can make it appear anyway you want really.  It’s the functionality that you are paying for, so make sure you get that right!

Another good tip would be to always test out a theme demo on all types of devices (desktop, tablet, mobile) before you buy.  Certain themes can look totally different on the small screen.

I ended up choosing the ‘News Theme‘ (of which you can try the free demo by clicking on the picture), as I liked the more modern look of the homepage layout.  It turns out that the vast majority (not all) of the StudioPress themes are responsive, so that wasn’t too much of an issue, though I did make sure to check on both my tablet and mobile beforehand.

It’s Customize Time

I have to admit, coming from WooThemes, Genesis took a LOT of getting used too at first.  I’d been so used to my old setup and way of working, that it took a while to feel comfortable with the Genesis WordPress theme.  Whilst I am still learning, I have to admit that I am really liking Genesis.

I found that I spent a lot of time on the StudioPress website reading up on their tutorials and asking for help in the Forums.  On a couple of occasions where I just couldn’t figure out how to do something, the ‘Copyblogger Media Support’ team (they own StudioPress) emailed me with the help that I needed.

Most of the changes are purely aesthetic and have been done by me messing about in the style.css file.  A couple of handy tools that I used were ‘Firebug Lite for Chrome’ and ‘Chrome Developer Tools’ that help you to make edits on your theme, without the risk of messing everything up.  If you are looking to edit your theme, whatever theme you are using, definitely have a look at these.

Never Finished

I’m pretty happy with the new look to the site.  It’s not perfect and I’m sure that I will be making plenty more tweaks and changes in the coming weeks, but I quite like it.

I tried to put more emphasis on the mobile design when working on it, rather than working on the desktop site and hoping that it looked OK on the small screen.  I’d not done this before, but hopefully it paid off.  More and more people are surfing the web on their smart phones and tablets, so it’s vitally important that your site works (and at the very least is visible) and is mobile friendly.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new design and get some feedback.  What do you like about the new design?  More importantly, what don’t you like?  Have you noticed something that doesn’t work that I have missed?  Are you looking to redesign your own site?  Let me know by leaving a comment below!

New Look OIT – Switching To The Genesis WordPress Theme OnlineIncomeTeacher - Learn how to make money online with your own blog or website!

Every blog has them, every blog needs them, every blog wants them. What am I talking about? Infographics!

What are Infographics?

Infographics are not new and have been around for many years. The term Infographic, (short for Information Graphic) is basically a term for a graphical visualization or a representation of data. I bet you have seen many of them going about your day to day business, whether your work be online or offline.

People in the online industry tend to be familiar with them and in fact some people probably think that is where they evolved from. Wrong!

Think about your nearest subway (not the sandwich firm) but your underground infrastructure.  How is that displayed? In all stations – usually with a map of each line and each station. Whilst it is not a to-scale map with distance it does give the traveller clear idea of the station order and information.

The London underground map is a great example of an infographic

Whilst I do not want this post to be a history lesson, it is important to realise that Infographics were not invented by social media buffs on Pinterest last year. You could argue that ancient cave paintings could be considered as early Infographics, but they are definitely not new.

So, Should You Make An Infographic?

Well, if you have a post that you are thinking of writing that may be better portrayed as an Infographic then the extra work involved is well worth it. Not only do people tend to prefer pictures they are also way more socially engaging, meaning they get more likes, shares, comments (generally) and so on.

It can actually be easier to get your message across in an infographic.  People tend to waffle on a bit if there is lots of data to dissect.  A good tip when making an Infographic is to try and keep it simple. Get your message across and that is it.

The great thing about infographics is that they can be created for free!  All you need is some interesting information to create an infographic about.

Six Tips To Use When Making Infographics

1. Use Eye Catching Images – If you can, try to use images that stand out and make the infographic appealing. Remember it is a visual representation of information, so try to make it as eye catching as you can. You have already stated that you can present this data better than words, so show it!
2. Use Your Authentic Voice – The same goes for standard posts as with Infographics, put your own style on it with your own voice. People come to your blog to read your work – make your Infographics the same.
3. Offer Value – Whilst a graphic on the “Top 10 Subway Sandwiches of All Time” would be awesome, it would not really offer that much value. Offer your target audience what they want, or more importantly what they need.
4. Be Educational – Same goes for this really – if you can educate people with an Infographic it is more likely to go viral. If someone asks “Does anyone know what the best WordPress plugins are?”, then you can say “Yes, check out this Infographic that I made on ……” and so on.
5. Keep It Simple – Going back to the Underground example, they use colours for the lines. Keep the graphic nice and simple, so as not to confuse the reader as to what it is all about.  Making infographics too complicated will only end up confusing people.  Remember, infographics are supposed to make it easier for people to understand information.
6. Be Relevant – Whilst I really like Zombie films I am unlikely to make an Infographic displaying “The Most Exuberant Zombie Deaths Of The Modern Film Era” (Again, awesome) but readers of my marketing blog would probably not find much use for it.  Keep your infographics relevant to your niche and your readers will be more interested.

So, I guess then I should make one about this post? Here you go…..

As you can see the one above simulates the above question, just presented visually. OK,  it is slightly bias towards Infographics, but you get the idea.

So, the next time you write a post – could you represent it visually? Or, how about recycling some older posts with by adding an Infographics?

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When looking to track your website statistics, there is no better way that using Google Analytics on your site.  Traffic is still, by far, the best way to check how well your site is doing online, so it is important to monitor how well your site is performing.  Thousands, if not millions of website owners from across the world use Google Analytics to analyse their site statistics everyday.

Hopefully, this blog post will provide you with an overview of how you can make the best use of Google Analytics for your site.

Using Google Analytics

Adding Google Analytics To Your Website

Before we start, it is vitally important to know how to integrate Google Analytics on your website.

While you set up your website on Google Analytics, make sure that you plan it out for at least a year. The vast majority of people will start with a single domain name, however, you might have to expand into subdomains in the future where it would be difficult making any modification to the Google Analytics settings.  Therefore, Google Analytics with subdomain and sub-directory tracking should be well set up in advance.

In addition to this, ensure that you turn “ON” the ‘subdomain’, ‘Top Level Sub Domain’ and ‘Display Advertiser Support’ tracking as it will help you to incorporate it better with other Google tools such as Google AdSense and Google AdWords.

Goals

The most significant thing is to set up the right goals on Google Analytics first. You should know the right metric to calculate the overall target of your business goals. Once the goal is set, anything you do on Analytics will automatically fall in place.

AdWords

When we talk about Google AdWords, you will be amazed to know that AdWords and Google Analytics can do wonders for your site. The quickest way to include Google AdWords and Google Analytics is by introducing the goals from Google Analytics into AdWords. This is actually done through an AdWords conversion panel where you would find that the goals are ready to be transferred, provided there is adequate data available.

Custom Campaigns

To remind you that while you set up Google Analytics, do not forget to activate the “Custom campaign tags” in the snippet settings. This is important especially when you want to track traffic from a definite source like an advertisement you have sited on a website and wish to add custom codes to the referral URL you have given on the ad. You can add the custom URL to Google Analytics by manually adding them to the tracking code.

Check Tracking Code

But before adding any URL to the tracking code it is crucial to check whether the tracking code is implemented properly. So how do you check the tracking code? One of the best ways is to track the source code of your website. You can check either the most important page or all the pages and then look for the snippets. If the snippets are in place, then it is rest assured that the tracking code is properly implemented. However, make sure that your website has the updated code, if you have done any modification to the code setting.

Analytical data is collected by Google. This data includes the number of visitors for every page on your website, the source of traffic, the amount of time spent on browsing and even the information on mobile devices used to search your website. Above all, the most important information is the collection of keywords that the visitors use to find you. Google Analytics quickly identifies which section of your website is receiving the most traffic and which sector needs to be rethought, reworked and reworded.

If you invest your time learning the primary keywords and integrate them in your site, you can ensure that your potential visitors are searching for you. Without proper development of the keywords or search engine marketing stratagem, your site becomes dormant and will be visited less by your targeted audience. More importantly, all the parameters and the variables are customizable in Google Analytics, which will help you to identify the strengths and weaknesses in your internet marketing strategy.

You can simply describe Google Analytics in one word – “versatile“. No other platform can match its versatility or usefulness. You can use it with the similar effectiveness as on a single page portfolio website or a hundred page eCommerce site.  The point is that you look to implement it properly so that you can look to monitor and improve every aspect of your site.

Make sure you check out our Beginners Guide To Google Analytics.

Google Analytics – The Best Tool For Your Site OnlineIncomeTeacher - Learn how to make money online with your own blog or website!

LinkedIn now has more than 200 Million users worldwide!   The professional networking site is a rich resource for recruiters and marketers who are just beginning to discover the potential of this site.  Many people though misunderstood LinkedIn to be just another social media platform and are using it carelessly by making many costly mistakes.  These LinkedIn mistakes have the potential to damage the perception of your brand/business and reduces the chances of others wanting to work with you in the future.

The good news is that these costly mistakes can be easily avoided and fixed. It is my intention to highlight these common mistakes so you can start using LinkedIn effectively.

These common LinkedIn mistakes that people make can by neatly grouped into 3 categories.

1 – Not Displaying Authenticity

No Profile Photo

When online, professionals want to know who they are dealing with.  Not using a profile picture can make you appear anonymous, which gives the impression that you are hiding something. If you are serious about building business relationships, be comfortable showing who you are. In fact go ahead and show yourself as confident and approachable

Not Looking Like Your Profile Picture

Many people get studio photos done for their profile, which can give the sense that you are serious about the impression you want to make. However, make sure that you don’t go overboard with the photo shoot so as to still be recognizable as you in real life.  Worse case scenario would be that you met with a potential business contact, only for them to not find you on LinkedIn as they didn’t recognize your profile picture when they searched for you.  Just be real!

Posting Photos Of Cute Babies & Pets

This is a BIG no-no!  Potential business partners want to connect with you, not your family or pet.  They want to see someone who is professional and ready for business. LinkedIn is a professional network, so make sure to save the baby photos for Instagram or Facebook instead.  Afterall, you wouldn’t include them if you were sending out a CV or Resume would you?

Having Annonymous Endorsements

Having too many LinkedIn endorsements from people with no profile picture, can be worse than not having any endorsements at all! This seems to indicate that your contacts, or people who can testify of your services, are themselves not comfortable showing who they are (or maybe they have nothing to show and are not confident of themselves).

The best endorsements that you can get (and show) are from people with an active, well maintained LinkedIn profile.  Business clients and potential employers are going to look at who is endorsing you, as they will give a better indication of you.  Make sure that they are good ones.

2 – Not Making A Good First Impression

Incomplete Profile

Lacking a complete write up on your profile summary, experience or work section can look bad. An empty profile creates a negative first impression to anyone that may be viewing you. First of all you give no reason for other professionals to want to connect with you. And secondly it shows the lack of care and attention you give to your own online professional image. Spend time drafting and refining your profile before you show it to the public and of course keep it up to date.

Complete Profile, But Very Vague

Long paragraphs of vague descriptions on your profile summary, jobs and experience does not allow others to see where your expertise is or what results you have accomplished. Where possible use quantifiable results with a timeline or show actual achievements by linking to a white paper, a certificate or some slide presentations.  Any way that you can back up what you are claiming on your profile is good to include.

You’re Being Too Personal

Status Updates that are too personal are frowned upon on LinkedIn. By all means, post about trends, upcoming events, a book you just read or published, an interview where you were just featured, etc. but no one is interested in the TV show you watched the night before. If you have nothing useful or informative to post, you can share other people’s content. 

3 – Not Showing Sincerity 

Not Making An Effort When Connecting

Try not to use the default text provided by LinkedIn when inviting others to connect. Do a little homework on the person you want to reach out to and remind them where you have met or why you want to make the connection.  Care enough to reach out personally.  It will make a better first impression if you do!

Pitching All The Time

Talking about your offer and pitching the moment connections are made. All this does is show that you are not interested in building a relationship with someone, but are only here to pitch your sales.  You may argue that that is the main reason why you are on LinkedIn, but be prepared to be removed from people’s contact lists if you are doing this.  It’s just like cold calling, people don’t like it.

Similarly, some HR recruiters go around asking new LinkedIn contacts to apply for jobs (that they may not be interested in). This is just to boost their own application numbers, so when they go to their boss, they can say that they got X amount of people to apply.  Often, these people won’t even include details of the job that they want you to apply too. LinkedIn is a place to network, not spam. Recruiters who do this are not only hurting themselves but the image of the brand they represent.

No Communication

Not responding to queries and messages sent from your contacts can put you in a very bad light. You kill the potential for any real business relationship this way, as they will be less likely to get in touch with you again. It’s absolutely pointless getting onto LinkedIn if you have no intention to build meaningful relationships with people.  Start as you mean to go on.

If you are doing any of the above, you need to stop before you destroy your image or any potential business opportunity. Take time and care to build high quality business relationships online, it is not a numbers game.  Spamming is never welcomed, whether you are on LinkedIn or not, so just don’t do it.

It is my hope that these common mistakes be avoided so real connection can be made for future partnerships and collaborations.

Are you guilty of any of these LinkedIn mistakes?  What other mistakes have you seen people making on LinkedIn?  Please let us know by leaving a comment below!

10 Costly LinkedIn Mistakes Users Make OnlineIncomeTeacher - Learn how to make money online with your own blog or website!

Are you ready to make money online? I only ask as you may be unknowingly unprepared to dive into the online realm.

I recently spoke to someone about joining my online team. This individual seemed ready for a change and was eager to get started, but their mindset was totally unprepared for what it would have entailed. This isn’t uncommon, I myself had a poor mindset when I first started making money online – I admit it!  Back then, I thought like a scared, broke person before I even started and even though I attacked my online business venture with bags on enthusiasm, my mind was not right.

This is why I struggled for months before eventually prospering online. I never asked myself specific questions, never qualified myself. I was just not fully prepared to start earning online, so I ended up struggling to prosper.

You CAN make money with your website, but in all honesty, you need to know what making money online will entail before you start anything.  Believe me, it will benefit you in the long run!

Here are 3 key questions that you should ask yourself before looking to make money online.

1. How Much Time Will You Spend Working On Your Online Business?

This is a key question that many people overlook when first starting out.  How many hours will you spend working your online business every day?  Think this one through carefully before committing to your online venture.

Let’s say that you decided to open a traditional store in your local area. Think through all of the planning, all of the hard work, dedication, blood, sweat and tears you would need to put into your operation to make it a success.

Now visualize yourself starting an online venture and you can quickly see that you will be working 6, 8 or 12 hours daily to make this thing work. Just because you are working online, it doesn’t mean that there is less work to be put in.  You cannot succeed online unless you are willing and ready to work as much as you do at your current job, or as much as an offline business person would work.

2. What Are Your Goals?

I remember back when I was an online business newbie. I had zero direction, no goals in place when I started my venture and because of this, I struggled for a long, long time.  You only succeed online if you have clear and definite goals in place before you set out to reach your final destination.  You need to figure out where you are headed, otherwise you end up working aimlessly on tasks that don’t seem to get you anywhere.

Let’s say you like travelling and want to run your online business whilst on the road – great!  Now list out each travel destination that you would want to visit before you take a step further. I myself have lived in Bali, Phuket, Penang, Hoi and other tropical locations for months at a time.

Now you can set up income goals, personal goals, or any goals for that matter that you wish to establish. Just be quick to write out your goals as a framework for ordering your mind toward a definite end.

3. Are You Ready to Give?

Back when I first started, I was set and raring to go and make money online. I wrote one blog post, checked my email and found no opt ins. Oh well. So I wrote another blog post, and then another and another. I saw no opt ins, no comments, no money. I was crushed! I felt like I was wasting my time, or so I thought. But what I failed to realize was that I needed to give in order to receive.

Giving freely precedes online success. Be of service and adopt the mindset of being a servant, of helping others and of course be open to receiving. If you are hungry to make money online, ask yourself the giving question and be ready to write, to give, to connect and to help individuals reach their own goals.

You can succeed if you are ready to give, but you will fail miserably if you are stingy, refusing to give at all, because everybody can sense a selfish person and will run from you when you try to offer your product or service.

So, are you thinking about making money online? If so, have you asked yourself these key questions?

If you asked yourself these questions and are currently running an online business, is it maybe time to ask each question again? Maybe you need to re-commit?

What questions would you like to add to this list? How can you better commit to your venture? How can you let online newbies know what they must do before making money online at a regular clip? Please let us know by leaving a comment below!

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“If you build it, they will come” only works with baseball diamonds created out of cornfields in Iowa.

It just doesn’t have the same impact when you’re talking about trying to promote your new red-hot content for your blog. And even if you already have a dedicated following that are hanging on each and every one of your blog updates, the odds are fantastic that you’d like nothing more than to get even more eyeballs on your pages. More readers equals more influence, and more influence gives you the opportunity to monetize your new traffic, spark communication with your readers to see things that you may have overlooked, and expand your knowledge in your market or niche just by teaching the content effectively.

Here are 12 simple steps that you can do right after publishing your brand-new blog post to increase the exposure that it enjoys almost instantly.

Keyword Optimize Your Content

Even though a tremendous amount of people have a picture in their mind that world-class writers just produce final drafts almost at will, the cold hard truth of the matter is that the only separation between really masterful writers and ones that you don’t really care for is that the experts go back and optimize their content.

Whilst there are a number of reasons that you’ll want to let the content sit for a little while and then come back to it (i.e. allowing your brain to get a bit of distance from what you’ve just created and to see it with relatively fresh eyes), the number one thing you should be looking to optimize your content for when trying to gain more exposure is keywords!

Keywords are one of the most important details involved in SEO where search engine algorithms pay close attention to the words and phrases that you use to identify what your content is about.  Get this right and this is the best way to ensure that your content will get picked up by all the major search engine providers as well as giving its organic search ranking a bit of a boost.

Don’t Rely On A Single Source Of Readership Or Traffic

One of the worst things that you can do is to rely on just a single source of anything in our modern world. The environment that we are all living in right now is so complex, ever-changing, and rapidly shifting right beneath our feet that to rely on just a single source is almost inviting disaster.

The same can be said with your own website.  Regardless of what your current source of traffic is, look to integrate an RSS feed or other form of syndication as soon as humanly possible to boost the chances that you’ll be able to reach out and connect with every single person you possibly can.

This is the best way to get your work seen by more and more people, as RSS feeds are a reliable source for social networking and other hub sites to pull content from.  It can be a powerful way to effortlessly connect with other people without having to lift a single finger to enjoy those results.

Tighten Up Your URLs With A Shortening Service

Even if you plan to distribute your hot link to your blog post on your own and with proper anchor text at every opportunity, the odds are that someone reading your blog post is going to want to share it. The last thing that folks love to see is a gigantic blog post link cluttering up their Facebook feed, websites, or email accounts – especially when you can use any of the URL shortening services that
are completely and totally free to reduce the clutter dramatically.

Not only that, but you’ll also be able to tap into the analytics service that many of the major URL shortening services use to track who’s clicking your URL, who sharing your URL, and where these people are coming from. This can all be incredible market research that you can use to boost the effectiveness of your advertising and marketing campaigns, resources that cannot be overlooked.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Shouting From The Rooftops When You Have Something To Say

With the rise in prominence of all the major social media networks  (especially Facebook and Twitter) it would be more than a little bit foolish to ignore the power of shooting out a couple of status updates to each and every one of the friends on your account or your Twitter followers in an effort to drive traffic to the post.

It only takes a few seconds, and you’ll be sharing your new information and updated link with people who are probably just dying to read more of the stuff that you’ve already written.  The odds are fantastic that your status update is going to be connecting with people who are actively searching for new content that you publish, and this will give them the feeling of being more closely engaged with you.

Publish “Trailers” On Other Sites

We’ve all seen movie trailers that whet our appetite to see a new and exciting film that is about to be released.  Why not do something similar with your own site!

Jump onto one of your favourite forums (preferably one where you think your readership can increase), write an attractive and enticing headline, and then post a quick discussion and breakdown of the information that you found in your blog post. The choice of deciding to unveil yourself as the author of the work or keeping your identity hidden lies entirely at your own discretion, and both have their own pros and cons.

You might want to leave out the fact that you were the one who created the content in the first place, as it can spark communication in that specific forum thread rather than driving the traffic to your new blog post. And since we are trying to get more traffic to your blog, it would be better to try to answer people’s questions there.

Try to make sure that your headline is as attractive and eye catching as you can, so as to almost force them to click onto your thread, but ensure that it also has a connection with the content that your sharing on the blog.

Unlock The Power Of Social Bookmarking

Sure, a lot of the lustre and link juice has already been wrung out of social bookmarking platforms, but that doesn’t mean that they are not still an effective way to drive traffic to your new blog post with laser like precision.

It’s definitely still worth your while to find the hot social bookmarking sites like reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon to try and boost your link juice with whatever is still left in their tanks.  The real increase in targeted traffic is going to come from being a part of the actual community and sharing powerful information with the folks you are creating a relationship with.

Obviously, this will take a little bit of time to see real results, but just like watching a garden grow from a seed into a truly bountiful feast, you’ll be able to reap the rewards long after you’ve put in the effort.

Hit Up The Blog Commenting Circuit

Bloggers understand exactly how difficult it is to create new readership, and are almost always more than happy to share the fruits of their labour with new bloggers looking to establish themselves.

One of the very best ways to get into their good graces is to become an active participant on their blog commenting section, always adding to the conversation at hand and never looking to take more than you give. The last thing you’re going to want to be seen as is one of those spamming authors just trying to leech a free ride from someone who has put in the hard work and effort to create a readership community.  Do that and you will find yourself ostracised faster than you can even blink.

This doesn’t mean that you have to dedicate more time commenting on blogs and dropping anchor text than you would writing new posts and content, just that you should indiscriminately carpet bomb these commenting sections in the hopes that you’ll be able to steal readership from someone else. Become a part of the conversation and add to whatever you can as often as you can and you’ll see tremendous results.

Get The Twittersphere Buzzing

While people are quickly becoming masters of using Twitter to instantly communicate with people that they never would have had the opportunity to do so otherwise, there are a lot of users out there who are searching for help and guidance from actual experts. After you’ve written a blog post about a specific topic (one that you feel could help people get through whatever they are struggling with), you should fire up the Twitter search engine and see who is looking for answers to that specific problem.

All it takes is 15 or 20 minutes of strategically dropping your blog link on to their Twitter account with helpful advice and assistance, and you’re going to win over truly lifelong fans and raving readers who will spread your message as far and wide as they possibly can. This is the proper way to ethically “hijack” someone’s Twitter account, and can really produce tremendous results in ways that no one can foresee.

Publish Links In Your Email Signature

While this is definitely the slower way to get the word out about your brand-new, red hot blog post (unless of course you’re using email marketing, which will talk about in just a moment), adding a hot link to your blog post in your email signature can boost your readership one email at a time.

Email platforms like Gmail, Outlook, and a whole host of others, you can set up a parameter that will automatically pull the most recent blog post from your site and inserted into the email signature (literally set it and forget about it). This is the best way to implement email signature promotion, and one that you should look into.

Search Through Your Customer List And Send Out Targeted Email Marketing Campaigns

If you’ve already started to monetize your blog traffic, the odds are that you have already created an email list or newsletter to help you interact with each and every one of your customers more effectively.

While you could certainly blast out the news of your latest blog post to each and every one of them, you’ll be able to avoid a lot of headaches and create some powerful affinity if you spend the time to segment your list and only target the ones who you think would benefit most from the blog post that you’ve just created. There is tremendous power in segmenting and targeting specific people through your in-house list, and it doesn’t have to be just in a money making effort.

Unleash Multi-Step Marketing With Your Newsletter

This step for implementing a perfect blog post promotion strategy is a combination of the ‘trailer creation’ and the ‘segmenting of the email marketing list’ that we talked about earlier, and works like a charm!

Drawing from the advantages that each one of those two distinct promotion tactics brings to the table, you’ll be able to excite and interest your email newsletter or mailing list and push them to see your latest content without ever worrying about alienating them at the same time.

There’s no reason to segment the list here, as you’ll be shooting the message out to people who have already raised their hand to get as many updates from you as you can possibly publish.

Try To Grab Guest Blogging Spots Or Have Other Authors Write About Your Post

Finally, you’ll want to try and tap into your network of other bloggers that you’ve established a real relationship with to try and set up guest blogging deals, or at the very least, have them write about your new post and give their own spin on your content, while including a link to the original article.

This can expose you to an entirely new audience and though you might only have a one-time surge of traffic, you’re bound to hold onto many of them if your content and marketing is in line with what they are trying to achieve and are actually looking for.

These are just some of the tips that you can use to help your blog posts reach more people.  Do you already use some of these tips? If so, which ones? What other tips would you recommend? Please let us know in the comment section below!

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These days, expanding your business couldn’t be easier!  Most businesses, from the local, privately owned ones, to the national and international giants, have some type of online business expansion that they are working on to try and reach more people.

Bill Gates predicted that by the end of 2002, there would only be two kinds of online businesses – those with an Internet presence and those without any business at all. While he may have been a bit premature with his predictions, the fact remains that the Internet plays a huge part in business today, and one can no longer afford to lag behind.

If you haven’t yet established an online presence for your business, now is the time to make it happen. Following are a few things you should be aware of before you make your move and launch out into the World Wide Web.

Doing Business Online Will Not Make You Rich Overnight

Despite what the Internet gurus might tell you, expanding your business online is not a quick way to make an easy buck. Like any other business venture, it takes time, hard work and expertise.

Just because you are using the Internet to promote and sell your products, it doesn’t mean you will see the returns overnight.

The success of your website will depend on a number of things, including your particular products or services, your marketing strategy, your determination to make it work and how much you are willing to put into it.

An Online Business Expansion Will Cost You Money

Another big myth about starting an online business is that it won’t cost you anything and that you can do it without any starting capital. True, starting an online business means you don’t need to find and pay for a physical location and deal with all the expenses that come with opening a new branch, but you still need to be prepared to spend money if you want to make money.

Unless you are lucky and happen to know a lot about web hosting and web design, you will have to pay experts to design your website and get it properly SEO optimized. Aside from this, you will need someone who knows what they are doing to manage your website, especially if you are going to be selling things online.

Then you will need to organize customer support options to deal with the inevitable complaints and issues that will crop up once you have generated enough traffic to actually be making online sales.

Your Website Needs To Be Mobile-Friendly

Simply having an online presence is no longer enough, your website needs to be mobile-friendly as well. Today, there are almost 1.2 billion mobile web users throughout the world, which means that if your website is too slow or just not set up for mobile use, you could miss out on a lot of business.

Tablets and smartphones may have larger screens than mobile phones used to, but a regular website will still be difficult to view and require lots of scrolling up and down. Large images that may load quickly with broadband will be sluggish on a mobile connection and video clips that run with Flash may not run at all on many handsets.

This sheds bad light on your business and prevents users from understanding your key message. To avoid this, it is important that you work with a qualified design company that understands what you want to convey and knows how to bring that across to your target audience.

Your Website Should Be Constantly Evolving

You should never think of your website as “finished” because a website that isn’t evolving, changing and being updated with new content daily or at least weekly, will not generate much traffic, despite your best efforts with keywords and design.

Try to find ways to keep your website fresh and attractive to new customers. Some businesses opt to keep a blog as part of their website. This is a great way to keep customers updated and add new content as often as possible.

Also, it’s a good idea to give your customers a place where they can comment on your services or products, the design of your website, etc. Many people shy away from doing this, for fear that customers will leave bad feedback, but as a business owner, you should be welcoming all feedback, both good and bad, because it will help you to improve your service and keep your customers happy.

Besides, these days there are plenty of other online places where people can vent if they want to, so it’s better to have it where you can see it, react to it and hopefully learn from it.

None of this is meant to discourage you from expanding your business online, as it can be hugely profitable and you will certainly earn back the money you spent. It is simply to make you aware that expanding to the online market place will cost you time and money, no matter how you look at it.

If you are prepared for these challenges, your online expansion will give your business a huge boost.

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Are you losing readers from your website? Are you left scratching your head thinking what is causing this?  There can be a number of different reasons as to what is causing this (no SEO, poor content, no social media interaction, etc.) but there is one thing that many sites fail to look at, and that is Typography!

Content is by far the most important aspect of a blog, as it is this that will attract the traffic to your site.  That said, if people can’t read your content properly due to poor site typography, then they won’t stick around for long.

By definition: Typography  is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. – Typogrpahy From Wikipedia

Typography is a significant aspect of contemporary web design especially for those working with @font-face property in CSS.  Here are some design tips that you can use to help improve your website readability.

Top Typography Tips

The Grid System

The Use of Grids in Website Design

If your design elements and text are all over the place on your pages, it can becomes difficult for the reader to follow the page correctly. It just looks messy.  You can use a CSS grid system for your site to ensure that your content is all organized into neat columns and grids.

This makes directing the visitors to all the key elements on your page much easier. Some of the popular grid systems that you can use are Blueprint or 960.gs which can be used when designing your website.

Colour Contrast

While grid system and layout are all important, so are the colours that you use. Using a light text on a light background or dark text on a dark background will never work. This will just make things very difficult to read, if not completely unreadable.

You are much better sticking to using either;

1. Dark Background with Light Text
2. Light Background with Dark Text

These keep things simple and make sure that your text is easy to read.

An interesting point to add is that if your target audience are people over 50, they will tend to prefer darker text on a light background as they find it easier to read.  The contrast in colour also plays an important role. For instance, if your site has a black background, make the elements bright to draw the attention of the readers (i.e. dark blue may not work so well).

Visual Hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is the process of guiding your readers through your article and getting them to notice the different aspects that you want them to see.

Every article will include; large paragraphs, small paragraphs, titles, subtitles, quotes, images, etc. which become reference points for your readers when reading through a post.  Factor in the use of different colours, fonts and various other elements and you begin to create a visually interesting article that naturally draws the eye of your readers.  Which leads nicely to our next point…

Using The Right Font

In order to present your writing in the best way possible, you need to choose  the right font.  The font that you use is arguably THE most important design element on your site, as it is your text that will be read the most.

You may be tempted to use a snazzy or unusual font type, but in most cases you are better off sticking to something simple.  Use stylish fonts for other visual elements, but  keep your articles easy to read.  Remember that what is important is how they look inside your text.

Keep Text Short and To The Point

It’s fairly well known that when people visit a site, they don’t generally read an article word for word, they simply scan through it.  Therefore, by breaking up your posts into short and to the point paragraphs helps to improve readability.  This links in well with ‘Visual Hierarchy’ as it helps to draw the eye of the reader and keep them interested.

Use bullet points, quotes, statistics  etc. to break up big chunks of text and make sure to check over your post before your publish it to remove any “superfluous” words and sentences that aren’t necessary.

Incorporating some of these tips into your website design can help to engage your visitors and allow them to interact with your website more.

What about you? What design tips do you use to improve readability? What design elements do you really like/dislike on sites that you have seen?  Please let us know by leaving a comment below!

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