IMLoop is currently still in it’s building phase but the owners Sean Supplee (Me) and Dan Moses are hard at work to build new features and smooth-en out the site. The main focus will always be to offer great content that’s helpful to all and allow for easy connections to be made. These connections can result in Customers, JV partners, List swaps, Sponsors and more. These are real connections that will help your business grow and allow you to build your brand and your name stronger then ever.

I want to take a moment and paint a clear picture of where IMLoop is headed. It’s our goal to make IMLoop a friendly but prosperous platform where you can come in for free and through channels such as groups, crowd pages and other features to be able to build your brand and get the connections you need. One of the hardest things to do when you are starting up is to meet the right people in your niche that could line up your products with each other bringing in new customers and taking your business to the next level.

Come on in and join IMLoop for free and help us grow the community with your valued input. There already are many great people that make up the network, the only thing missing is you!  Join IMLoop The Social Network For Internet Marketers

You can also go the paid rout posting ads on other blogs that are like yours, backlinking your blog on like websites and even using adwords to expand your reach. The only issue with this is it can quickly burn a hole in your pocket with minimal results.

What if there was a way to target your niche audience and spark more interest in your postings?

The answer: LinkedIn Groups

Linkedin is a social network that is business friendly and often times I see it under used by those in my field of blogging. What makes Linkedin groups more powerful then Facebook fan pages and tweets is the fact that LinkedIn is more business friendly. When your on LinkedIn you expect to connect with professionals and have discussions on business matters.

What are LinkedIn Groups?

LinkedIn groups have a strong business presence compared to Facebook and Twitter. These groups are often more industry specific compared to other social networks which allows you to pinpoint your target audience. In so this makes LinkedIn groups more powerful then other social networks as your engaged audience is expecting to be sold to or learn more about your business and how it can help them grow their own business. The best thing about what LinkedIn groups has to offer is it’s free, social, targeted audience, effective in driving quality traffic to your blog and gets you noticed in your industry specific network.

Setting up your new LinkedIn promotion

1. Create your blog or make sure your blog is in tip top shape. Don’t use sub domains etc. The best blogs have their own domain name or are attached to your main business. Don’t be rude, insulting or arrogant in your postings, your there to provide quality content that is helpful to people not to bash people.

2. Join LinkedIn, most already have accounts at LinkedIn however your profiles have been dead for the last few months or even years. Be sure to update all your information and keep it as related to your target niche as possible.

3. Join a LinkedIn Group and/or create your own group. Groups are easy to search and most industries already have a massive group in which you can post your content to. This content will need to be approved in most cases by the group admin so be sure the content you are posting is helpful and related to the group you are joining.

4. Just a few tips, when posting your content be sure to add a comment and keep it interesting. Just like with any ad or email you send out you need to spark some type of interests to get people to click-thru and read the entire blog post.

I’m not saying they don’t work in terms of the quality of information they give, but any system out there is not as simple as clicking a button. It takes time, effort and learning the system in order to maximize your results with it. What you need to figure out is what type of system interests you. Finding one that you enjoy will lead you into better success since it wont feel like work and you will enjoy reading and learning new tactics.

Here are a few examples of how people are making money online every day.

• Create your own product or service (Ebook, Software, Game, Report, Newsletter)
• Build a list and promote others products in exchange for commissions
• Write articles and other useful creative content for bloggers and article directories. (Content is king)
• MLM, yes people do make money in MLM but you need to build a solid team of both marketers and also sellers/buyers of the product (customers) Products that do the best in MLM are consumable
• Traffic exchanges and list builders, Yeah for some reason these two have a bad rep with most marketers, But honestly its how I started building my business and its been awesome! You just need to learn how to use them right like any system

Here are the simple steps it took to create my app which you can find on the Google play store at Sean Supplee Dot Com App

This was all created with the Green App Machine

Step 1: Setup your application details such as app name description and a cover image for it. Use something that will really stick out and grab attention while people are browsing.

Enter Your Application Details

Step 2: In this step you will add what type of content you want your app to have. You will also be able to set up ads that will earn you money from your new app free or paid app.

Fill in the type of content you want your app to have along with how to monetize it with ads.

Step 3: Fill in some content about your website, twitter page and Facebook fan page along with other great content your honestly limitless. Then preview the app yourself so you can see how others will see it on their mobile devices.

Preview your new app

Step 4: Publish your new creation and add it to the Android marketplace. This took me the most time as it was brand new to me however doing it again it would only take me about 2-3 minutes. Also you will need to wait anywhere between 30 minutes to 24 hours for Google to approve your new application. Mine was approved in under 3 hours and is now live! Super cool!

Publish your new creation and start earning

You can start building your own Android apps  yourself by joining the Green App Machine. This powerful user friendly system is sure to increase your presence and also teach you how to make a solid income from your newly created apps.

Search

- Google
- Bing
- Yahoo
- Ask
- AOL

Blogs are already pretty well set up for being ranked on search engines. However there are a few key steps you should take to make your blog a little more SEO friendly. First login to your WordPress admin area and click on  Settings then Permalinks. Under permalinks click on custom structure and input /%postname%/  This will make all of your blog posts now have your title in the link as well which will help you rank for keywords and help search engines get a better idea of what your page is about. To take it one step further a powerful SEO plugin for WordPress blogs that I use myself is Headspace 2 which will allow you to create custom page titles and descriptions to be used on your search results.

Blog Directories

- Technorati
- Blogher
- Icerocket
- Botw.org
- Blogdigger

All blogs come with an RSS feed, by pinging your blog or adding it to these directories you will gain additional exposure across many networks and make your content easier to be reached.

Social

- Facebook
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Pinterest
- Tumblr

Social is all the rave now a days and if you don’t have a smile one click method to have you visitors share this content over social networks then you are really missing out. The plugin I use that works best with social marketing for WordPress blogs is  Really Simple to Share or DiggDigg

Social Bookmarking

- StumbleUpon
- Buzzfeed
- Reddit
- Delicious
- Digg

Social bookmarking sites got really abused during the days of black hat back linking methods but some survived. The ones listed above are great bookmarking communities you should be active in.

Advertising & Affiliate Networks

- Clicksor
- Clickbank
-  CJ
- ShareASale
- AffiliateWindow
- 7search
- PepperJamNetwork
- LinkConnector
- AvantLink
- AffiliateNetwork

Blogs continue to advance, in doing so they have the ability to be huge selling blocks. You can sell advertising on your site, sell products and or services you recommend and even create your own products and sell them right from your WordPress site.

Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with people that completely run their own business and go there every single day to help run the company. In fact it’s people like that that create small businesses that fuel America and help build it better and stronger every day.

The question here is are you looking to be self employed? or are you ready to take the next step and be a true entrepreneur?

These next few question will help build a complete new mindset you need to take that plunge and get you ready to become an entrepreneur.

•  Are you a self promoter?
• Do you plan and create goals for yours (the big picture, then small goals leading up to that big picture) ?
• Are you good under pressure?
• Are you comfortable with risk?
• Are you self motivated?
• Are you competitive?
• Are you optimistic?
• Are you patient?

There are two methods to building a list. For this blog post I will be calling them “The Freebie List” and “The Buyers List” both have their purposes but each needs to be treated differently and be built differently.

First lets go over The Freebie List, this is the method most people use when they first get into list building and it’s ok to start here. It’s when you create a standard squeeze page and give away a free product such as an ebook, report, audio, video or just about anything else you can think of. The people opting into this list are looking to get their hands on the free product you are offering. Now where you can slip up is in your follow up emails. By offering more free products and information via your emails you start to train your list in expecting to get everything for free. You will notice that this list rarely converts on any buying offers however they will join up to just about anything they can get their hands on for free.

It’s ok to grow a list like this if that is your goal and in fact I use one myself to test other products I am launching to see how well conversions are for different squeeze pages before I put it out there for the world to see.

To build a buyers list you need to train your list to expect to have to pay something to get the better information. I’m not talking hundreds or even thousands of dollars, although you could if you wanted to, but instead offering a simple $1 offer or $7 upsell later on in your sales funnel. You can either follow up your freebie offer with an upsell for $1 or $7 on the next page or do it later on in your Auto responder series. Either way is effective but the important part here is to separate the lists as soon as the person orders. When someone buys from you even if its $1 you need to get them on your buyers list which will be a separate list from your freebie list.

Your freebie list will be great for testing conversions of new pages, swapping ads with other marketers and so forth. However your buyers list you are going to treat with extra care and only offer paid services, your best stuff at a discount for being a loyal customer.

Once you have created a system such as this you will quickly begin to see results as you start growing your list.

One of the most effective methods is trying to be the first person to comment on any new post. However you need to actually sit there, read the persons post and leave valuable information in your comment. Remember your name, your picture and your brand are being represented here so do not come off as a spammer and just write “Wow! This was a really great post” instead here are some tips to creating a comment on someone else’s blog that is likely to help build your brand in a better light and also get you more quality readers.

Contribute to the post.  With most people you follow you already know a bit about the niche and have your own ideas, opinions and feelings on the subject. Get personal with it, write how you feel, or add an extra tidbit that’s helped you that relates to the post. Not only are you encouraging others to comment on your comment but you are also helping them as well with your ideas and viewpoints. More importantly be sure to read over the entire post. Many readers are tempted to skim or read the first two paragraphs, leave a comment and then return to reading the rest.

Feeling a little lost and have questions? Well ask them in a comment and the owner of that blog, or even other readers will help you out. It’s ok to ask questions if you don’t understand something and honestly bloggers love it when you contribute in this way as well.

Remember, being the first person to comment is important so be sure to subscribe to the blogs you read the most and like. However if you happen to miss out on  this chance then consider replying to the person that made the first good comment or asked a question. It’s a great way to stay up at the top of the page and get noticed.

Lets first go over what Alexa is and how they get their rankings. This is pulled directly from the Alexa website…

“What is Traffic Rank?

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site’s current rank with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on traffic during the second quarter.”

As you can see only people using the Alexa tool bar are counted int their rankings. If someone visits your page and does not have the Alexa tool bar well that’s exposure for your site that’s not counted into your overall monthly ranking.

What Alexa does do however is paint a overall picture and gives you an idea of how much traffic and exposure a site is getting. This along with a PR (Page Rank) helps advertisers have a feel for how much exposure their ads will be getting. Normally the better the rankings the more you can charge for advertising on your site. However I would not recommend weighing to heavily on these types of rankings as their are programs and things webmasters can do to manipulate these rankings to a certain extent, however this is the case with just about any ranking system there is always some type of black hat method to skew the results in your favor.

Bottom line, to me I don’t feel a Pagerank or a Alexa ranking should be the final word in the “value” a website provides. It’s impossible for any services to tell any one person that this is the site for you with the ultimate answer you seek. However it does play its roll and along with other factors can help you determine where you stand and if changes you are making to your site are having some of an impact.

Should you work on your own sales funnel or use an existing one?

If your new to marketing then I recommend you use someone else’s sales funnel and get paid a commission based off of your leads.There is a lot of work and dedication that goes into creating a successful sales funnel. It requires constant tweaking to maximize your results and a large amount of understanding triggers that get people to act. I recommend either following one of my systems I have created such as Power Surf Central, Making Money Online With Sean or List Siphon. Each target different sections of the internet marketing world and you will see how I write my emails to get results and how the overall sales funnel is set up. It’s a good idea to learn the terms other popular marketers use in their emails, upsells, downsells, sales pages and more. After you spend time learning it you can start writing up your own emails, capturing leads and even build your own sales funnel if you want.

It’s not required for you to build your own funnel to make serious money online, to be honest with you I know many successful affiliates that do nothing more then promote others products and make a killing from it. Building a sense of trust with your readers of your blog or email list is important. Be sure you review every product you recommend to others yourself first. Once you build this trust the sales will follow as more and more people begin to follow you and hang on your word wondering what your honest and trustworthy review will say about it.

All you need to figure out is how much money and time you are willing to invest in your online efforts. But the most important thing off all is to commit to it and do the work that is required in order to make a successful living online. It’s not for everyone, but those that do it right and believe in themselves will get ahead and see results.