Bulicio.us

Marketers have long known the powers of great copywriting. After all, it’s what fills their pockets every single day. Effective sales copy is nothing else than the application of applied psychology.

If you are dabbling with the idea of becoming a powerful copywriter, you need to start out by learning how humans react in a certain environment and why. Successful copywriters are masters of human psychology. They know exactly what makes us tick. The best in the industry have basically the power to print money on demand.

If you have been buying eBooks, courses, memberships in the past, you probably don’t even realize that most of that “buying” was done unconsciously - via clever marketing techniques e.g. - copywriting.

This is why the best copywriters in the business can demand large sums of money before a product is even launched. Internet marketers are only too happy to pay these guys their due fees because they know it will make them a stack more than it cost them.

When we buy, we do so because of emotion. Always.

We buy because we want:

* Money
* Security
* Confidence
* Knowledge
* Health
* Fame
* Comfort
* Time

Usually just before we click that “buy now ” button something important happens. Rarely do we justify why we should not buy. Most often we find plenty of reasons why we absolutely must buy. Even if that small voice within tries to tell us otherwise.

Such is human nature that our emotions are doing the selling for us. The copywriter is merely a master with words. He masterfully crafts his sales copy to nudge, poke, tempt, lure, provoke and eventually seduce us into buying.

Once we have convinced ourselves that we really need this product right now it is often too late. But what exactly happens just before that?

Emotions happen!

Whether you want to:

save

* Money
* Time

stop

* Worry
* Embarrassment
* Doubt
* Work
* Risk

or feel the need to:

* Collect
* Improve
* Beautify
* Express
* Be creative
* Be efficient

and experience all the other emotions we usually feel when we buy things doesn’t matter. On the bottom line we buy because we associate our emotions with the product. We feel that this product is the answer to our prayers. We believe it can help us to escape our misery.

The copywriter is the conductor, while you are the musician, playing to his tune.

Now that you know these emotional sales copy triggers, you might be able to withstand impulse buys in the future.

Today I learned another lesson about communication and how important it is to keep the communication channels flowing at all times when we interact with other people and clients. Due to my lack of communicating with a friend of mine over the last few weeks he felt there was something wrong with us.

In a client/service provider relationship, communication is key to making sure we are on the same page at all times. It is so easy to misinterpret information and if left unaddressed, this can lead to misunderstanding pretty fast (like in the case with my friend).

“You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.”
– Martin Luther

Funny enough, in my business communication is key, and even though I know this, I let my friend down by not communicating what I should have. I was driven by guilt to be honest, which stemmed from my lack of doing something for him. Guilt is a funny fellow. He makes us act like total losers and admitting this isn’t an easy feat, since I have to show that I have dark sides too and nobody likes to do this.

So now you know the truth about me (I am human after all), here is what I have learned about guilt and communication.

Always act on your promises

This is where I failed. I promised to so something and then didn’t do it. That really sucks and while I normally always fess up to delivering on my promises, in this case I didn’t and look what can happen.

Regardless of how long it takes you to do a job and whether you are busy with other things, stick to your promises, no matter what.

Also, don’t put a monetary value on your promise, since this is exactly what I had done. I failed to deliver because I run out of time due to a fully booked schedule.

Don’t promise what you can’t keep

While I did deliver on my promises to my friend initially, I couldn’t do it lately and that is where the trouble was. When you make a promise, look at it long term too. I didn’t and I learned a good lesson from this.

So how does my experience tie in with customer service and communication?

[BTW, for those of you who wonder, my friend and I realized we had neglected our communication channel and after discussing the matter at hand, all is well again.]

I guess I just reaffirmed myself how important it really is to communicate with each other, regardless whether professionally of with friends. The following pointers should hopefully help you in your communication ventures so you don’t repeat my silly mistake.

Double check

When you work with clients make sure to always double check. They often fail to provide you all relevant information upfront and once you start your work you could experience a rude wake up call - when half way through the job the tactic changes.

“Effective communications starts with listening.”
–Robert Gately

It helps to ask questions. Lot’s of questions. Get into the mind and shoes of your client and think of ways to help them better their brand. Once you do this, the questions will come.
Corporate rules

Corporate clients are a lot more demanding than individual business owners. This is not because they are more nasty or anything like that. The demand stems from the different environment in which business is done.

Expect meetings, interviews and tests and be ready for them. Again, it is of the utmost importance to ask a lot of specific questions to nail your part in the puzzle. You need to know exactly what is expected of you in order to service your client best.

Ask for feedback/Give feedback

If you are working on a long term project, ask for feedback. Especially if you don’t get any while you work. Most of my clients drop me a hint or two about their pleasure with my work quite naturally along the way. But if they didn’t, I’d be worried as quiet doesn’t always reflect happiness.

Also, don’t be afraid to give feedback in return. Your clients appreciate this as much as you do.

Voice your concerns

If you have concerns in regards to a client, don’t be afraid to voice them. Things are often half as bad as they feel or look once you take the initiative to talk about them.

It’s the tone of voice in which you voice them that makes all the difference between a successful or unsuccessful confrontation.

Sort out confrontations fast

Sometimes confrontations can’t be avoided. It could even lead to termination of your working agreement between each other. Sometimes it is actually better for both parties to go separate ways when bad blood has been voiced.

It really depends on your relationship though. A long term client is much more open to your suggestions or complaints. After a while there is a mutual relationship that grows together like a marriage. You become comfortable with your client and he with you.

“The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.”
– Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French Philosopher

Don’t get too complacent though. It’s in those times when divorces happen so keep your communication channels open at all times.

Speak up

Never be intimidated to speak up, even when you are at fault. I admitted mistakes to clients before on several occasions and I am still alive and kicking. They didn’t lynch me. We all make mistakes of some kind and the most important thing is to admit them and clear the air ASAP.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Proper communication helps us to iron out those crinkles so that the business can go on… just like in the movies.

Ego and communication - not a good match

I wanted to touch on the subject of egos. They really don’t fit well with communication. Sometimes we just have to admit we stuffed up, even though we don’t like to. Yes, we all have an ego tucked away somewhere and admitting a mistake is not a good for the ego.

“Communication is really all anyone ever gets paid for ultimately…and if you cannot effectively communicate…you will PAY…not get paid…”
– Doug Firebaugh

End notes

I want to leave you with the following end notes. They perfectly convey that in the end, we need to step aside and listen to the other person before we go and bash the living daylights out of them.

“The first and most difficult task of dialogue involves parking the ego and listening with an open spirit. From this receptivity can come questions which lead to understanding.

“What is it you see that I don’t?”
“How do you see this differently and why?”
“Please help me understand from your perspective.”

To ask these questions requires that one no longer need to have the best or last answer. Expanding one’s understanding becomes more important than being right or getting one’s point across.”
—Dr. Ann McGee-Cooper
from the article Dialogue: The Power of Understanding

Over the course of years I have been working online I’ve learned and increasing amount of search tactics to find information on Google. As a freelance writer who has many niche marketing clients it is imperative I find information super fast.

The more time I waste, the less money I earn because my rates are tailored to the time I need to get the job done. Tailoring my searches to my respective needs means that the results are more accurate right away, allowing me to concentrate on the writing, rather than spend time researching Google for hours.

Also, I wanted you to know that while I mention Google here, some of these search terms will also work on other search engines. I simply love Google and couldn’t imagine life without it. It is the tool I used most in my business besides my brain and my fingers.
1.) The hyphen search string

A hyphen search string will omit any word that is being placed after the actual hyphen in your search.

For example, if you were to search for Internet -marketing, the results would omit anything to do with marketing but return information related to the word Internet.
2.) The wildcard search *

To use a wildcard search insert the * symbol instead of a word. This is great for long tail searches as well as comparison searches. Examples, the search pay * will return varied results while you can do comparison search to find more detailed information like this search: [pay * per word]vs[pay * per hour]
3.) The date range search

To search for information within a specific date range, do this:

Internet marketing daterange:2008 january-2008 july

This type of research is especially important if you need relevant and updated information.
4.) The exact search

The phrase or exact search allows us to find relevant information by putting quotes “” around our search term. This will cut out all irrelevant and time wasting results. Example: “marketing blogs”
5.) Blog keyword search

If you are a niche marketer, or an assistant to a niche marketer you will find this particular tip very handy while searching for blogs to comment on.

writing inurl:blog

You can also use the search term inurl: to restrict the search to page URLs e.g. inurl:writing
6.) The filetype search

I love this search as I can find PDF’s, PPTs, spreadsheets (xls) and more with this particular search:

business filetype:pdf
7.) The safe search

The safe search excludes all adult content from the results: safesearch:online
8.) The link search

This search finds linked pages on any website. While Google does return results, you will find more up to date stuff on Yahoo for this particular search.

link:www.bulicio.us
9.) The site search

If you want to find information on only the one website you are best off to use the following search term to find the most accurate results: site:bulicio.us

While you could also do a search with the www in front of the URL, the results are often limited.
10.) The find stuff using either or results

if you need information on two words that might not even be related, you can use the OR in between. Example: marketing OR writing
11.) The definition search

The definition search is great for writers or bloggers. Whenever you don’t quite understand the meaning of a particular word or phrase you can use this search to find its definition.

define:writing
Bonus tip

Did you know that you can also use Google like a simple calculator. this is so handy when you add up all your income at the end of the month. Simple us the same symbols like you do on a simple calculator:

* + = add
* - = subtract
* / = divide
* * = multiply etc.

You too can become a search warrior

Knowing your way around the search strings will make your online life a lot easier. If you struggled up to this stage, these “shortcuts” will give you a huge advantage over your competition since you will be faster and able to find more accurate information from now on.

I know that there are many more of these search strings and if you feel like sharing, feel free to let us know which ones need to be on this list. Maybe it will become the 50 best killer research strings instead.

I honestly could care less about ‘trends’ in the make money online world (Why would I? Most of them are ridiculous), there’s one that you can’t ignore. People that are selling their own ads are making a lot more money than people who aren’t.

In this lesson, I will cover 5 steps to selling your own ads:

1. Make room for your ads and get some up before you try to make sales
2. Contact your competitors.
3. Set your prices.
4. Create a solid advertising page.
5. Contact potential advertisers.

Step 1 - Make room for your ads and get them up.

You will have a hard time selling ads if you don’t already have ads sitting there. This means you need to create a section for the ads now.

A very popular and effective format for selling ads is the 125×125 ad banners in the sidebar. I use this ad placement and it has worked out very nicely for me. Your sidebar will need to be at least 260 pixels wide to use the 2-column placement that I have. If your sidebar isn’t wide enough, you could use a single column.

In order to make sales, your ad section will need to appear as high as possible in the sidebar. I took a look at some of the big sites in my industry and tried to match their placement.

In order to be able to charge the same amount to all of the advertisers, I knew that I would need the banners to rotate. To make them rotate, I used a plugin called Got Banners. The page I got it from no longer exists so I guess I’ll just post it here: Got Banners Download. You basically install a little piece of code in the sidebar and then manage the banners by going to Options Got Banners (Settings;Got Banners in WP 2.5+) in your WordPress admin.

Some of you may want to sell advertising on your sites. This could be very effective if you do it right. Create a section where you can put the banners now, and we’ll discuss making the sale later on in this lesson. If I had a bunch of niche sites, I would probably create the section in a theme that I could use on all or most of my sites. Your enemy with that approach is wasted time, and using the same theme will save tons of time.

Another very common ad placement is the 728×60 banner like the one they use at SparkPlugging.com. They don’t sell their own ads as far as I can tell, but the placement is what we’re looking at. Again, you have to create the placement before you can make the sale.

What banners do you put in until you can make sales? I would use affiliate banners from sites like NeverBlueAds and AzoogleAds. They have all different sizes of banners that should fit in nicely on almost every site. You can also use banners that point to other sites that you are trying to establish.

Perception is everything when it comes to making these sales and you have to put your best foot forward. Trying to sell banners when you don’t have any banners in your section will be a HUGE waste of time.

Step 2 - Contact your competitors.

At this point of the process, you are NOT trying to sell advertising to your competitors. You are simply going to contact them to determine the rates they sell advertising for. Many of your competitors will have the rates published somewhere on their sites, others will have to be contacted via email or telephone. You should ask how much they charge, and how many impressions (total hits on pages the ad is on) you could expect to get per month if you were to purchase an ad spot.

Step 3 - Set your prices.

Once you have determined how much your competitors are selling advertising for, you will be able to set your prices accordingly. You should figure out exactly how much your competitors are charging per impression.

If your competitor can deliver more impressions than you each month, you will want to lower the amount you charge per impression by a slight amount, something like 10%. If you can deliver more impressions than your competitor, I would increase the amount you charge per impression by 10%. After you start selling ads it will become easier to determine whether you can sell your ads for more or not - this formula is here only to get you started.

Example: Your competitor is charging $500 per month for an ad spot and can deliver 500,000 impressions to that ad each month. That means he/she is charging $0.001 per impression. That’s 1/10th of a cent.

If you can deliver 50,000 impressions to an ad, charging the same amount per impression would give you a price of $50 per month. Lowering your rate by 10% would give you a monthly price of $45. This gives a slightly better value than your competitor, which is a trade off for not being able to deliver as many impressions.

Step 4 - Create a solid advertising page.

9 out every 10 banners I sell are sold directly from my page. In order to sell advertising, you will need to put your best foot forward - talk about your strengths as a site.

Possible Strengths:

• High amount of traffic
• Valuable traffic - maybe you don’t have that much but you have people that are looking to spend a few thousand dollars on a cosmetic surgery or something.
• Targeted traffic
• Solid organic traffic - Organic traffic has a longer attention span than social traffic.
• Good rankings for solid keywords
• Loyal traffic

I use PayPal subscription buttons to make the sales on my advertising page. That way, all of my ads are sold on subscription. During the first few months I sold my own advertising, I created a HUGE hassle for myself by not selling on subscription. I had to invoice each advertiser every month and that ended up being a major pain. Switching to the subscription method made my life a lot easier.

These subscription buttons can easily be made from your PayPal account. You simply go to ‘Merchant Services’ and then click the ’subscribe’ link in the ‘Create Buttons’ section. It will have a simple form that you will use to create the button, and will then give you code that you will paste in on your advertising page.

Step 5 - Contact potential advertisers.

At this point you basically have two options. Firstly, you could wait around hoping that you can make advertising sales from the traffic you currently have. I’m doing this now, and am selling out my advertising almost every month. However, in the beginning I was a lot more aggressive, because I needed to be.

After I created my ad sections and set my pricing, I contacted all of the companies that were advertising on my competitors’ sites. This resulted in some sales during the first week. I didn’t have an awesome sales rate, but was able to get a few because I contacted so many people. I want to say I contacted about 30 and sold maybe 3.

When I emailed these companies about the possibility of advertising on my site, I let them know that I was offering advertising at a better rate than other sites they were advertising on.

It’s very wise to contact some sites in the beginning, because once you have some legit advertisers, it becomes a lot easier to sell to more.

One trick that I considered using (in the end I didn’t have to) was selling a few spots at a huge discount. For example, you could contact a premium advertiser in your industry and offer them an ad spot for $1 per month. That gets a high-end advertiser in your ad section and that looks great to potential advertisers. As an alternate method, you could tell them that you would like to give them free advertising for a few months. That way, you get a premium advertiser in your ad section and might be able to sell to them after the free period ends.

Conclusion

Selling your own advertising can result in a lot more profit for your online business. Making that sale will require creating a good perception and providing a little more value than your competitors. This value can be provided by either providing more impressions or a better rate per impression.

SEO copywriting is writing material that presents well to the reader and ranks majestically in the search engines. Here are some secrets of the best search engine copywriters:

1. They make every title rock. Articles that have great titles get linked to a lot more than articles that have titles that are boring. Getting your writing linked to is more important than any other factor of SEO copywriting.

2. SEO copywriters will make every post scannable. Your reader should be able to scan the posts and articles you write - never expect them to read the entire article. They should be able to easily find headings that explain to them what the next section is about. They should also find ordered (numbered) and unordered lists. This leads to increased links from other sites.

3. The advanced SEO copywriters target a set of keywords with every post. You’ll notice that ‘SEO copywriters’ has already appeared three times on this page - that’s because I’m trying to target that keyword with this post. I wouldn’t recommend adding your keyword more than 3-4 times on the page though.

4. They get the keyword into a few heading tags on the post or page. If you’re a blogger this means to make sure your keyword is in the title of your post. You can also add your keyword into headings within your post. WordPress bloggers can take advantage of this: Permanent Link to Secret ‘Blogging Traffic Booster’ In WordPress.

5. They know that there are many variations of the target keyword that could be searched for. If a post targets ’seo copywriter’, it should probably also target ’seo copywriting’, and ’seo copywriters’.

6. They will not overdo the keyword targeting with the article or post. A bad copywriter will add the keywords in too many times which is even worse than not having them there at all.

7. They do not stick to standard keyword densities for every post and article that is written. Think about it, if you have exactly 5% keyword density for every page of your site, it’s very easy for search engines to know what you’re up to. I would recommend not checking your keyword density - ever! Get your keyword naturally into your text 3 or 4 times.

8. They never try to trick the search engines. Using shady methods like hidden text and cloaking is eventually going to get you banned. A good search engine copywriter will never, ever get a site banned because he/she won’t use shady techniques. For a more complete list of what can get you banned, visit: “Permanent Link to 10 Simple Ways To Get Banned By Google” -10 Simple Ways To Get Banned By Google.

9. They optimize HTML titles, image filenames, alt tags, and meta tags. Having a picture of your target keyword can help to rank for the keyword if you use the keyword for the name of the picture. You should also use the keyword for the alt text of that picture. If you are using the ‘All In One SEO Pack’ for WordPress, your keyword will be added into the HTML title of your page and the meta description if you use it in your post title and in the first paragraph of your text.

10. They tag the post or article with tags that correspond to their keyword. Using “Technorati Tags” Technorati-type tags - can get you links from pages about that keyword. A great search engine copywriter knows this and tags each post accordingly.

75% of Google’s Blogspot blogs are spam. This sad fact, according to a study by Microsoft Research throws into question whether it’s wise to be using Blogspot at all. According to Matt Mullenweg, who is one of the developers of Pingomatic, 80% of the spammish pings they get at Pingomatic are from Blogspot blogs.

Spammers use Blogspot and other free services because obviously they don’t have to pay to setup their splogs (spam-blogs). One person uses the service to create a few thousand splogs (sometimes as many as 500,000) and they’re in business. Unfortunately, in my opinion they make it harder for honest bloggers to gain the trust of the search engines while using free hosted blogs.

What We Can Learn From This

If you’re using a free hosted blog, I would seriously consider moving it. If that just isn’t in the cards right now, make sure that you keep working on building links because that is what will help you to earn the trust of Google and other search engines. Don’t post content that other sites have written because it is quite likely that you are on a shorter leash than sites that have their own domain name. Make sure that all of your content is 100% unique and don’t get too frustrated if traffic is hard to come by in the beginning.

I don’t think it’s likely that Google is penalizing every Blogspot blog out there - I think it’s more likely that they have made the sandbox trigger more sensitive to compensate for the spam problems. In other words, they won’t rank you until you have a certain level of authority.

Based on my experience with Blogspot blogs I can say that it is harder to gain the trust of the search engines while using them. However, once you do they’ll rank as well as any other type of site.

Welcome to Part Two of the lesson on statistics! During this lesson, you will learn how to check your blog or site’s statistics.

This is the second of a three-part series will help you to:

• Install a real-time stat counter. (Part One)
  
• Learn how to check your stats and what you should be looking for when you analyze your stats. (Part Two)
• Learn how to improve your site’s performance using statistical data. (Part Three - the most important part of the lesson)

Let’s show you how to check your stats!:

1. Go to StatCounter.com.

2. Sign in with the user name and password you set up in Part One, and click ‘Login’. If you missed Part One, go back and use it to install your stat tracker. You are going to type your user name and password in the upper, left-hand corner:

3. Go into where your project stats are stored by clicking on your project name (outlined in red):

You will then arrive on a page that will show you some stats! You’re going to see something like this (except you’ll see a week’s worth of stats):

You will probably see more than one day’s worth of stats, and each day will look just like this.

The green bar represents the total amount of impressions for the day. The chart shows that 885 total pages were loaded on this particular day.

The blue bar represents how many different visitors I had on this day. On this particular day, 665 different people came to my site, and they loaded a total of 885 pages.

The orange bar represents how many of the 665 different people had been to my site before. 51 people had been here before they came on this particular day. In other words, they came back - they are returning visitors. Let’s show one more example to make sure we’re clear:

On the day when these stats were captured, a total of 237 people visited the site and viewed 561 pages. 59 of the 237 people had visited the site before. I’m going to save what we can learn from these stats for part three of the lesson.

Although these are the first stats that are shown to you, they aren’t the most important! There are tons of good stats in here you will want to have a look at.

On your screen in your StatCounter account, you will see this navigation (to the left). Each item in this navigation is a different type of statistic that you can learn from. I’ll describe some of these in detail in Part Three of the lesson, but here are simple explanations of what each of these do. Take the time to click to each to see for yourself!

‘Summary‘ is the first one that comes up, we already talked about the summary stats - it’s where you see the green, blue, and orange bars.

‘Popular Pages‘ are the pages of your site that are viewed the most.

‘Entry Pages‘ shows the pages that your visitors find first. Many of your visitors might not be finding your homepage first!

‘Exit Pages‘ shows the last page they looked at before they left your site.

‘Came From‘ shows what sites your visitors came from. If they found you by clicking a link, it will show you the page the link was on. The pages people came from are ranked - the ones people came from the most will appear at the top.

‘Keyword Analysis‘ shows you which keywords are your best. It shows you the keywords that have been used the most to find you. This list is displayed showing the most-used keywords at the top, and the least-used at the bottom.

‘Recent Keyword Activity‘ is very similar to ‘Keyword Analysis’, except it shows you chronologically which keywords people have found you with. The latest keywords used to find you will show at the top.

‘Recent Came From‘ is kind of like ‘Came From’ - it shows the pages your visitors came from. The difference is that ‘Recent Came From’ lists the most recent pages people came from at the top, and doesn’t rank the pages.

‘Search Engine Wars‘ will show you which search engines people are using to find you. It will show you how much of your search engine traffic is coming from each search engine, by percentage.

‘Visitor Paths‘ is one of my favorite stats. It shows which pages of your site were viewed by each visitor. You can see how each visitor went from page to page to page. You can even see at what point they left a comment!

‘Visit Length‘ shows you by percentage how long people are staying on your site. It shows you what percentage of your visitors leave after less than 5 seconds, from 5 to 30 seconds, and so on.

‘Returning Visits‘ shows you the percentage of your visitors that have been on your site before. You will see that some of your visitors are first-timers, some have been a few times, and some have been to your site 10+ times.

‘Recent Pageload Activity‘ shows you which pages of your site have been loaded recently - the most recent page to be loaded shows up at the top of the list.

‘Recent Visitor Activity‘ shows your most recent visitors’ activity. You can see how many pages they loaded, where they live, what browser they are using, and some other fun facts.

‘Recent Visitor Map‘ shows where your visitors are! It actually loads up a map and shows you where each person is.

‘Country/State/City/ISP‘ is pretty self-explanatory.

‘Browser‘ shows you the percentage of your visitors that use Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and so on.

‘System Stats‘ shows you the resolution of your visitor’s screens, and what kind of operating systems their computers have. (XP, Vista, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.)

‘Lookup IP Address‘ allows you to find a user if you know their IP address.

‘Download Log‘ allows you to download and save your stats.

Make sure you have a good look through all of your different stats today. Get comfortable with the different areas in StatCounter.com, because tomorrow we’re going to be going over the stats you should be looking at the most, and what you can learn from them.

Part Three of the lesson will probably be the most thorough less I’ve ever done! Make sure you don’t miss it, it will be here tomorrow.

How often do you check your stats? I hope that you’ve been checking them often or you could be missing some really valuable bits of information! Learning how people find you can really help you to increase your traffic.

This three-part series will help you to:

• Install a real-time stat counter. (Part One)
  
• Learn how to check your stats and what you should be looking for when you analyze your stats. (Part Two)
• Learn how to improve your site’s performance using statistical data. (Part Three - the most important part of the lesson)

Today, of course is part one of the series, let’s get a free, real-time statcounter installed for you! Here are the steps:

1. Go to Statcounter.com.

2. Click the link that says ‘Register’. It looks like this, in the upper left hand corner:

3. Fill out the information form. You have to fill out both the account details and personal details. All they’re asking for is your name, country, and email - no biggie.

4. Accept the terms and conditions.

5. Click ‘Register My Account’, it looks like this:

6. Select your time zone. This step simply will allow Statcounter to show you your stats with the correct times.

7. Click ‘Proceed And Add A Project’, it looks like this:

8. Select ‘Standard Statcounter Project’ and the click next:

9. Type in the title and URL of your site, and choose the most appropriate category. The category actually doesn’t really matter, I choose business every time I do this.

10. Leave ‘Maximum Visit Length’ on 30 minutes, and leave ‘Log Size’ on 500.

11. Type your IP address into the ‘IP Blocking’ box. If you look closely, you can find your IP address on the Statcounter screen here:

12. Click ‘Next’, it’s in the lower, right-hand corner.

13. Click ‘Configure And Install Code’:

14. Choose the type of counter you want to use and click ‘Next’. I use the invisible counter. If you want to go with the invisible one, select it and click ‘Next’.

15. Statcounter will then ask you a few more details about your website. I would use the following options, if you’re using a WordPress blog:

15. Statcounter will then ask you if you use a web page editor. You are going to select ‘No, I want the default install guide’ and the click ‘Next’.

16. Statcounter will then give you some code on your screen. Copy the entire piece of code:

17. We’re now going to paste that code into the footer file of your WordPress theme. Log in to your WordPress admin. Go to ‘Presentation’, and then ‘Theme Editor’. On the right side of the screen that comes up, click ‘Footer’. If you use Blogger, you can still paste the code into your template.

18. Paste the code you copied directly to the left of the </body> tag:

19. Click ‘Update File’ in the lower, right-hand corner and you’re all set!

20. Watch for Part Two of the lesson tomorrow. I will show you how to check your stats and go over what you should be looking for when you check them.

Did anyone run into problems anywhere? If you did, let me know! I can help you to figure out where it went wrong if you give me enough details.

It’s about time Google did a PageRank update!

In case you haven’t heard, Google is in the process of updating toolbar PageRank. I went from 0 to 3 which isn’t too bad! I was hoping for a 4, but since my site is still less than 3 months old I know that I should be delighted with a 3. I have set a firm goal to have a 4 by the next PR update.

How did you all do on the PR update?

A Little Secret

The PR update hasn’t spread all over the internet yet. If you’re still seeing your old PR, there may still be hope! I’m still seeing my old one from home. Check the future PR tool at SEOChat.com. It checks several of Google’s data centers; some of them will show your old PageRank and some of them will show your new one.

From time to time, I like to review some blogs I have recently found. I generally review new blogs, I feel like new blogs can use the most pointers! For today’s blog reviews, I have found several blogs that are in the beginning stages. Here they are!

WriteToRight.com
This blog offer some very nice reading for business owners, sales people, and success minded individuals. One of the better articles on the site is “4 Tips The Every Owner Should Practice.”

I really like the simple layout of the site. The only tips I would have for WriteToRight.com is:

1. Get more information on the site. (Of course this would be a tip I would give to any new blogger.)
2. Take advantage of white space. Make sure that articles are organized into paragraphs. Use bullet lists and numbered lists. The 4 tips article does a lot better job of this than the other articles do.

Very nice site, well done.

AccelerationOfMoney.com
This site was created to help people to create wealth. I was able to find a very nice article that helps you to realize you should start investing at a young age. The article is called, “What You Want To Know Before You’re 30.”

I also like the layout of this site. The above article was very informative, I definitely learned a lot from it. Tips for this site are going to be the same:

1. Get more information on the site. (Of course this would be a tip I would give to any new blogger.)
2. Take advantage of white space. Make sure that articles are organized into paragraphs. Use bullet lists and numbered lists.

Cameron Speaks
This site is all about the laughs. Cameron pokes fun at anyone and everyone. There are a few really funny sections, including a section that tells people why Mac computers are garbage.

I think the site will definitely gain a following. The only tips I have for this site:

1. Make sure to double check for spelling errors. (I should better follow this tip myself.)
2. Find some subject material that is really mainstream. Ripping on celebrities and companies might bring some search traffic that wouldn’t find you otherwise.

Tag’s Kitchen
This blog teaches people about cooking, recipes, and kitchen tools. Dave (the owner of the site) keeps a weekly schedule, so you know what to expect. Here’s the scedule he follows:

• Monday - Reviews a cookbook or cooking magazine.
• Tuesday - Discusses what he will cook that week.
• Wednesday - He has a list of ingredients and tools needed.
• Thursday - He will actually go over the recipe and cook the food.
• Friday - We will discuss variations, what we could have done better, what we could have done different, etc.
• Saturday-When he posts on Saturdays it will usually be random kitchen stuff.

One of my favorite articles on the site is, “Experimentation in the Kitchen.”

Very nice, keep posting! Like any new blog it needs the same tips I gave above:

1. Make sure to double check for spelling errors. (I should better follow this tip myself.)
2. Find some subject material that is really mainstream. Ripping on celebrities and companies might bring some search traffic that wouldn’t find you otherwise.

DeniPreston.com

This site is all about fitness! You can find out how to lose weight, get ripped, and age with grace. They also have a BMI calculator and offer daily fitness tips.

One of my favorite articles on the site is about walking. It was interesting to me because there are times when I’m too tired to run.

Tips for Deni: post, post, post, post, and post some more.

ItWillKillYou
This site is a crack up! It’s a blog that talks about different things that can kill you, or give you cancer. I laughed at the article, “Driving Gives You Cancer.” The site will be very, very good when it gets more material.

Overall I found each of these blogs very interesting. Most of them need a lot more material, as most new blogs do. Keep going guys! If you’re interested in having your blog reviewed, visit my article titled, “Review My Back And I’ll Review Yours“