So how did I create a blog from nothing and get it Ranked in the Top 1% of all world-wide traffic in only 3 month’s time?

What follows is the story of what I did, and why I did it. Some things are simple, while other things take some work. But they can all be accomplished with perseverance and adherence to a step-by-step plan.

I Don’t Do What I Don’t Like

First I will tell you what I did NOT do. I did not fill my site full of previously published eZine articles in order to dramatically boost my Google Index count. And I did not plagiarize other people’s original content in print, or in YouTube videos, and I did not use any type of auto-Spam software tools. All of these techniques I have seen used elsewhere.

No, I did it the old fashioned way. Maybe a little bit too old fashioned for many, but my methods are what I’m personally comfortable with. I seem to be doing something right, so I’m going to outline my techniques for you now.

My very first post for this website was written and published on Friday morning, August 6th, 2010. As I write this, today is Friday morning, November 5th, a full 90 days from the day I created this website from a blank page.

A brand new website begins with an Alexa number between 14-16 Million, where I began. After 90 days my rating is 200,000.

The Goal of This Article

I had a specific plan for getting Traffic and becoming popular, and I’m going to share that plan, and my results thus far. I’ve had some hits and misses, so we will discuss both.

In this article we will talk about:

• My Goals for This Website
• Alexa Ranking
• Google Page Rank
• The History of Social Media
• Social Media Yesterday & Today
• My Strategies & Execution

Why I Started This Website

Three months ago I decided to start a website in a very popular niche with a humongous amount of competition. Maybe not the smartest move for someone just starting out. For the last 10 years I have been working in a different field altogether, trading Equities and S&P Futures for my own account, from home, utilizing live data feeds from the various exchanges. After the near crash of the stock market back in May of this year, I decided it was time to expand my horizons a bit.

Before that I had worked in various sales and marketing positions, and took the challenge of creating and developing this website, quite frankly, to simply see if I could do it. Could I make a name for myself in a highly competitive field in a reasonable amount of time? My plan was to use this as a base of operations for other endevours. If not, that would prove I really didn’t know as much about Marketing as I thought I did.

• I wanted this website to present all aspects of Sales and Marketing that were useful and successful, in an in-depth, interesting, and entertaining manner. My goal was a serious (well, most of the time) site, and wasn’t interested in short 500 word fluff for attention spans too short to be able to run a serious business in the first place. Ouch, that sounded a bit catty! [Hiss]

• This would NOT be a blog about blogging or limited to Niche Marketing, although those things would be included.

The Alexa Controversy

The first thing we need to address is the controversy surrounding the Alexa Traffic Ranking system. The basis for the Alexa numbers are the toolbar plugins that are part of a very small percentage of web Browsers. If this was the only source of the numbers, then it would be appropriate to assume that “Geekier” websites would have higher rankings because, well, Geeks are the people more likely to have the toolbar and more likely to visit other Geeky sites.

Here is how WebsiteGrader.com analyzed my site.

A. Traffic Rank: Top 0.69 %

Alexa is an online service that measures traffic for millions of sites on the Internet in a similar way to Nielsen television show ratings.

Your website has an Alexa rank of 215,913 which is in the top 0.69 % of all websites.

Social Media Marketing Isn’t New at All

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If I couldn’t grow fast I shouldn’t sell Internet Marketing

Buzz/Keywords – Alexa. Page Rank, Twitter, FaceBook, Social Media, Traffic

What is being called Social Media today is simply the latest incarnation of things savvy Interneters have been using for years: IRC, Newsgroups, Bulletin Boards.

IRC was created by Jarkko Oikarinen in August 1988. Half million users live online with IRC at any given moment.

Newsgroups created

Bulletin Boards created

CDD Peer2Peer

IRC OP @SanSoo

Why are Twitter and Facebook so much more popular? They are so much easier, being Browser Based, rather than Software based,

Nothing new about Social Media Marketing, and experienced marketers know that. Social Media Marketing is nothing more than the new Buzz Word for the old methods. Many want you to believe this all new and exciting, because New and Exciting Sells!

Don’t get me wrong, for many, many people, Social Media IS new. But that is because it’s new to the Internet Browser. The Browser can bring things to life that in days gone by required separate software.  Most people these days no nothing about old, important software, like mIRC, or Agent. Savvy Internet Marketers have been using Live Internet Relay Chat Rooms and USENET Newsgroups for years.

The others were left behind because Newbies to the ‘Net were first exposed to the simple-to-use Browser. Even tho Newsgroups were part of every ISP package, and were useable thru the Brower, Agent handled the job far, far better. For years, Browser developers have been working with things like JAVA, Plug-Ins, Active-X in order to give more functionality to to them, bringing the technology to the point where they are now capable–to a point–of handling more complex tasks than simply looking at a web page.

Strategy & Execution

• Gain Exposure
• Establish My Reputation with Quality Writing
• Guest Posting – Understand their Audience
• Establish Friendships & Contacts
• Build Catalog of High PR Backlinks with Guest Posting
• Promote on Twitter and Other Sites
• No “cheating” with Auto-Backlinks, Auto-Blogging, or Building an Index with Previously Published Articles or Plagiarizing Content
• No “collecting” followers simply for numbers

• - Goal is to build a “catalog” of ‘players’ as Friends and Followers as a Resume (you are known by who your friends are)
• - Cross Connect Twitter & Facebook Friends & Followers
• - Attempt interaction with the most important to enhance “Contact” leverage
• - Don’t eve bother perusing those who ignore their Followers or have only Fan page
• Twitter Strategy – Find ‘players’ in my niche, hope for follow-back, keep my follow ratio lower than my follower, unfollow anyone who didn’t follow back, follow top tier media tweeters
• Facebook Strategy – Post my best Articles as links on Facebook as showcase of who I am, Find any niche figure I was interesteed in on Facebook and ask to be friends, compound that by asking their best friends for friendship

Here are a few things about blogging that are rarely discussed, but can be powerful strategic tools if used with a little creativity.

We will talk about Domains, Sub-Domains, and Directories, the differences between them, and how to use each one for very specific purposes.

What is a Domain?

Domains are based on the Domain Name System (DNS).

Top Level Domains (TLD) are the “Dots.”

• .com, .net, .org, ect.,
• as well as the Country Codes, such as .us, .cc, .uk.

Internet Hosing companies use Hostnames, and which we see as Uniform Resource Labels (URL). These are Second Level Domains (SLD), which members of the public can register before setting up a new website.

• smartbloggerz.com
• earthlink.net
• whitehouse.gov
• redcross.org

What is a Sub-Domain?

Sub-Domains are domains subordinate to their parent domain, and comes before it, kind of like a First Name is not as important as the Surname, or Last Name.

• en.wikipedia.org
• support.hp.com

Although part of the Domain name itself, in many ways a Sub-Domain behaves like a separate Domain altogether. This is both interesting and useful, as we shall see in a few moments.

What is a Directory?

How Does this Affect Page Rank?

The page you are looking at now was built with Thesis.

Click here to open my 2nd blog built with Headway. It will open in a 2nd Tab so you can flip back and forth easily.

I am an Affiliate for both themes, and I am hoping to give you enough truly informed information based on first-hand experience, so that if you decide to purchase one of these themes, you will choose to purchase through me. Fair enough?

As you flip back and forth between the two Tabs, you will not notice much difference between them. I few minor details are different, but I could have made both blogs appear so nearly identical that there would be virtually no difference at all. There will be some differences that are more noticeable depending on which browser you are using.

One look at my website tells you there is some nice customizing here. I chose these themes because I wanted the power and versatility of WordPress, and a Look & Feel that was all my own. My goal was a clean, easily navigated site that could showcase my skill without going cuckoo with Design that overpowers the content.

The obvious question at this point is, if I accomplished that same look with 2 themes that are both priced the same, what difference would it make which I choose? The answer lies “under the hood,” as it were, and what was required of me to get these results. Both themes have their own methods of getting to the end result.

As a marketer with multiple sites, I have some important criteria:

• Ease of Use
• Speed of Development
• Ease of Versatility
• Does it Include Everything I need, or must I Buy Plugins?

In this review

I know. I’m shocked too.

Roger Moore wasn’t the best actor to portray the legendary 007, but there was something very different going on here.

As the cars weaved in and out of the dense downtown traffic, they narrowly escaped colliding with double-trailer big rigs or crashing through the crystalline glass of expensive boutiques.

The usually cynical white collar audience was getting more and more excited, until the mounting tension finally burst into a avalanche of wild, unbridled applause.

They were laughing, they were cheering. They were tearing up their seats like teenagers in the 1950′s watching Black Board Jungle.

So what in the world was happening? Did the villain manage to transcend celluloid  and unleash Silly Juice into the theater?

Throughout the short little movie scene, Billboard, after Truck Panel, after Storefront Marque, unobtrusively draped the background.

The New York movie audience, or more specifically—the Madison Avenue audience full of advertising executives—were gasping in disbelief that a 3 minute segment of entertainment could so effectively package half a dozen subliminal product advertisements that were masquerading as “scenery.”

It had never been done before, and for better or worse, advertising has never been the same since that fateful day.

Painting the Backdrop

As you sit at your keyboard, it’s highly unlikely you feel as though you are in the middle of an exhilarating car pursuit.

But it’s your job as a writer to seduce your readers into a world of emotions, where they feel as if they are.

And if you are attempting to motivate your readers into a Buying Action, then maybe you should add a little “Scenery” of your own to greatly enhance the thrill of the chase.

The Layers of Persuasion

Not all forms of persuasion are overt. You may be trying to sell the Sizzle, but that doesn’t mean you need to draw attention to the Aroma. That’s best left in the background, for your reader’s imagination to discover on its own.

Scenery can do several things.

In our example above, scenery served up advertising as a backdrop to entertainment. Most audiences probably didn’t even notice what was happening. Their focus was on the Action, not the Ads.

At other times, scenery evokes emotional responses. Whether bright and cheerful or dark and somber, the power of the action is greatly enhanced by the setting.

A writer must paint the color of emotion in the mind and the heart, most often with simple black and white text.

Are You Selling with Words?

• While admiring his reflection in the hood of his freshly waxed car, Jim wasn’t thinking about the the 2 Year protective coating shielding his Ride.
• The new semi-custom grip conforms comfortably to the size and shape of your own hands for more control and a fluid, effortless swing.

Or, so I thought I would profit.

Amazon closed my account, and will not acknowledge my Affiliate standing at all.

I have tried to contact Amazon by Email, by Phone, and by Live Online Chat.

In each case, since my account had been closed, I now have no access to any of my old data. And no access to any information at all about my Sales, Orders, Payments, or anything else.

The reason I’m locked out is as follows:

After careful review of your
account, we believe it may have been accessed and used by a
third-party to make purchases without your permission, but it appears
they did not use your credit card to make these purchases.  It seems
that someone obtained your personal account and/or financial
information elsewhere, and used it on Amazon.com to access your
account.

We have closed your account effective immediately because of this
possible unauthorized account activity.  If this recent account
activity (Digital download) was authorized by you, please reply to
this message as soon as possible and we will reactivate your account.

I have no way of finding out what supposedly happened, and no way of getting anything at all fixed.

Amazon is a great company—as long as nothing goes wrong.

If something DOES go Wrong—Amazon totally Sucks.

Amazon Customer Service is superb, if all you need to do is return a book.

I have been in the Internet Marketing game for a long time. My first website was back in 1995, and was included in one of the first printed books about “Great Websites.”

I was included in Microsoft’s first List. That was waaaaaay before Bing, or Google, or Search Engines at all.

You have no idea how primitive things were back in those days

We had to code everything in HTML and then run it though NetScape 1.0. The background colour was Grey.

That was State of the Art back then

Yep, I have been around the block a few times, and I never considered Blogging as a way to make money on the Internet.

Blogging is a Fad, full of Hype and propaganda.

Blogging used to be known as a Web Log, a Diary. Now it’s pumped as a Business.

Blogging is not a business. The successful Blogs are not real Blogs. Successful Blogs are Information Channels, for lack of a better word.

The most successful Blog is the Huffington Post. The big, successful Blogs have multiple authors.

But me? I’m just this little guy, building small websites. My Blog/Website right here, is about what I know about Selling.

Of course you do.

Do you like LOTS of Traffic?

Winning. DUH.

I have discovered that there are two types of Posts or Articles that bring the most Traffic to my website.

Yes, only two.

The Very Important — and — the Very Silly.

Totally opposite sides of the spectrum will bring pretty much anyone, and everyone, to your site.

Was the Charlie Sheen Campaign Totally Brilliant?

Was / Is Charlie Crazy? Stupid? Silly? Totally Distrubing? You’ll have to do the Math on that one for yourself.

Whether or not this was a spontaneous accident, it really doesn’t matter. The Charlie Sheen Meltdown could have been (maybe IS) one of the best Publicity Stunts of all time.

I’m guessing the Meltdown was real, BUT, I’m also guessing all parties involved will come to grips, come together, and truly milk this thing for all it’s worth. And then, when the TV monstrosity comes back on the air, the Ratings will be higher than ever.

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

People love to see stupid. Why is that? My answer, of course, is that most people ARE stupid. But that’s not just me. The Rulers of Rome understood that concept very well. The Rulers of the Media at that particular time called the people the Mob. Elites from ancient times to the present have all labeled the “unwashed masses.”

Why do the Elite maintain such low opinion of those they so easily dominate?

Reality TV is a good place to start on your quest for Truth.

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