The Silent Avatar Speaks

The first question new bloggers ask is “which blog system should I use?” To know the answer is a bit like knowing what fuel your car runs on best.

TypePad, Blogger, and WordPress are the most popular blogging applications and while each have their own advantages the clear winner is WordPress.

You can download WordPress (it’s no-cost), install it on your host server, buy a proper domain name and then get blogging.

MSN Spaces blogging system is used by a lot of teenagers use because it is linked with the MSN Messenger chat service. If you are serious about blogging then take my advice and steer clear of it. If you just want to blog about your dog/girlfriend/how much you hate your job then it’s fine, but if you are blogging for any professional purposes then you need something professional.

DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU

This could be your story…

Here’s a story about Mike . Mike’s niche blogger. He’s set up lots of little blogs on all kinds of topics (niches) with the purpose of making a few dollars from each blog by placing Google AdSense advertisements on them (Google pays you when someone clicks on the ads)

After a few months he had built up his income. None of his blogs had a lot of traffic, but they got enough from search engines to earn Mike between $1 and $10 per day. In total he earned over $2000 per month from his blogs. All in all not a not a bad effort.

One day he turned on his computer and all his blogs had gone. Just disappeared without a trace…

So what happened to his blogs you ask?

He was using one Blogger.com account to manage his blogs and Blogger.com determined that what he was doing was violating their terms of service.

They thought all his blogs were what are called “splogs” - SPAM blogs.

Splogs are blogs set up to get traffic to other sites. They are usually automatically generated and the owners have no intention of producing a useful website - they just want to get traffic directed to their other sites. You could say they are the SPAM of the blogging world.

Mike contacted the support staff at Blogger.com to explain that his sites were not SPAM sites but try as he may he couldn’t convince them his blogs were legitimate, so they never reactivated his account. Overnight he lost his regular $2000 per month income in one hit.

Therein lies the moral of the story… OWN YOUR BLOG

If Mike had hosted his blogs using WordPress on his own servers with his own domains this simply would never have happened. It may cost a bit more upfront to buy the domain names and rent the server space (WordPress itself is free) but the security and control you get makes it worthwhile.

Besides the ownership benefit WordPress has many other advantages:

• It’s free, very powerful and runs of a MySQL database so it’s quick.
• It has a very easy installation procedure.
• There are hundreds of free themes you can download and install allowing you to change the look of your blog.
• There are hundreds of plug-ins that provide extra functionality.

All of the above benefits are available because the WordPress system is Open Source Software, which means anyone can look at the code and modify the program. Consequently there are hundreds of programmers working to make WordPress the best blogging system and they do it for free - just for the good of the software.

GET STARTED BLOGGING

By now you will have seen the benefits of a WordPress blog.

If you haven’t done so already, here are the 3 steps you can do right now to get your new WordPress blog installed.

1. Go to http://wordpress.org/download/ and download WordPress.

2. Buy a domain name and hosting package. At the moment I use and recommend Bluehost.

3. Install your blog. Done!

If installing a blog is beyond your capabilities then take advantage of the one click installation option in Bluehost. This option allows you have a WordPress blog installed with one click so you don’t have to do the WordPress uploading process.

You can skip step one above if you do this.

BACK-UP YOUR BLOG

I’ll leave you with this one last very important note…

If you are going to stay with Blogger.com, TypePad, or even if you use WordPress there is one task you should add to your weekly “to-do” list – and that’s back-ups!

Make sure you have an offline archive of all your content so if for whatever reason you lose your blog just “disappears” or malfunctions you can restore all the content. If you own your domains you won’t lose your traffic either because you can restore things to exactly how they were.

So the choice is yours.. do you want your latest blog to run on ethanol, standard or super? The choice is clear.

Here’s to your blogging success!

Tags: Blogging // Add Comment »

Do you have a marketing expert on your payroll?

Wouldn’t we all like to say “Yes”!

The truth is you can.. and it’s not going to cost you as much as you might think. Keep reading…

I’ve been a big fan of Derek Gehl of MarketingTips.com for some time now, and I even went so far as to drive over 1200klm to see his team present a seminar in Sydney!

I always read his emails as they usually contain really good tips, and information about growing your business.

So if you could you use a team of Internet marketing experts that will eliminate 100% of the guesswork by walking you step-by-step through any Internet Business strategy and get $1,000s Worth Of One-on-One Internet Marketing Advice — then go see what they can do for you for the cost of a coffee!

To lean more, visit: http://www.marketingtips.com/internetentrepreneurclub/t/887435

Tags: Internet Marketing // Add Comment »

I’ve realised something..

There must be a gazillion advertisers simply throwing money way using Google AdWords.

I’ve just finished watching Brad Fallon’s and Andy Jenkins video on AdWords Triangulation and it’s jaw dropping!

If you use Google AdWords to advertise your website viewing this video is a must!

The video is a true Stompernet production - I just wish I had the resources to put out videos like the ones these guys do

The video is long… a full 54 minutes, buy it’s jam packed with information you need to know. In fact I would go far as to say that spending money on Google AdWords without viewing this video is as good as throwing money away.

This video gives the low down on everything you need to know about advertising with Google AdWords to drive traffic to your site (well almost everything - they freely admit they keep some of their tools exclusively for their members)

Not only do they show you how to

• set up and split test an advertising campaign
• creating a compelling advertisement
• use Google Webmaster tools

they also include valuable information on

• how to tweak your website Meta tags Title and Description Keyword tips
• how to make your all important Title tag “Ad quality”
• how to think like a consumer when creating your ads
• why each page of your website should have its own title tag and keywords
• why a Site map is important
• the techniques Stompernet uses for its members (well.. not all of them - you have to be a member to get the heavy duty stuff.

I would sincerely suggest you ‘opt in’ to their newsletter to keep up to date with the information these guys give freely to their readers.

I also viewed the Stomper SiteSeer video and took advantage of the free service Stomper SiteSeer generates about your website.  The report has some “fluff” which I guess is there for “newbies”, but well worthwhile for them to read.

The report is a web generated report (without a print option), but cut and paste of the information you need will suffice.

For certain I can say that in my line of work I come across countless websites which have the all important meta tag information missing completely! And the only way anyone is going to find their website is to Stumble upon it, or be given the URL of the site.  Sheesh!! No tags? No way!

So check out  Brad Fallon’s and Andy Jenkins video on AdWords Triangulation before they pull it down, and while you are there check out Stompernet Site Seer.

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Tags: Hot Off The Press, SEO, Traffic Generation, Web Design // Add Comment »

Driving traffic to your website easy?

Today I came across a “cartoon video” from Jim Edwards.

The cut and thrust of the video is not to put all your advertising eggs in one basket when it comes to your focus on getting traffic to your website.

In fact if you are just starting out on an online business you need to start planning out where you are going to get your website traffic from now. If you don’t do this you are going to encounter problems in the future. Maybe not next week, but maybe in months or years time, you are going to experience problems when the one area you have focused on for your traffic dries up.

Diversifying your traffic opportunities comes in 3 main ways:

• Buying - You pay up front for traffic to be driven to your site (eg Adwords)
  
• Borrowing - You pay for traffic afterwards t (by enlisting affiliates)

• Building - you rely on traffic being sent to your site through the search engines or other people’s Blogs

Let’s face it, who doesn’t need more traffic? It’s the biggest problem website owner’s face – getting targeted traffic!

There’s no problem that can’t be solved by getting more traffic to your site. Period. And the #1 question people ask around the globe – is how to get traffic to their site - and particularly free traffic. But getting free traffic requires you to do something.

Jim Edwards and Armand Morin are conducting a webinar to show you how to get more traffic. Once you know the strategies for getting traffic to your website, you can use these strategies over and over again. In essence it takes knowing “where to fish and how to fish” to successfully drive traffic to your site. They claim they are going to show you strategies they both in their business right now to get traffic to their sites.

Bottom line is if there is one thing they want o drum home to us all is this:
Get more than one source of traffic working in your business!

Go to MoreTrafficWebinar.com to check out their sales page. Only the first 1000 people are being let in the doors. If you can’t make the live webinars, they are going to put them all on CD Rom sent by mail. It’s 3 jam packed days of information starting May 6^th.

And the cost? US$297. It wants to be good for that price, (though they do back it up with a 30 day money back guarantee).

Tags: Traffic Generation // Add Comment »