Archive for category Internet Marketing

Odds and Sods

Jun 24

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Miscellaneous | No Comments

Just some odds and sods today … a little bit of housekeeping at Blog Income.

To those who asked (thank you for asking) and those who are wondering – I am taking a short hiatus and will be back full steam in four to six weeks … that is not to say that this will be a completely silent blog for that length of time, but certainly the posting will be somewhat sporadic.

Tonight is one of those sporadic moments … I just had to let you know that Ed Dale’s annual 30 Day Challenge is just days away only the name has changed and it is no longer 30 days – this year it is simply THE CHALLENGE and starts July 01.

If you take only one internet marketing course this year, this is THE ONE no matter where your level of internet marketing competence lies … best thing is that it is FREE! Hop on over to

http://challenge.co

No. That .co is not an error. You may already know this but just in case you don’t this is a great time to go and grab yourself some awesome domain names ending in .co … how often have you gone to get a .com or even a .net or .org and found that the simple and most effective names are gone. The assignment of .co domain names is not live as yet but you can go over pre-register at

www.domainmonster.com

I have pre-registered for a few … they’re not cheap at $24.95 but I think they’ll fly. This is your chance to get the domain that got away and your opportunity to register a truly global, credible and recognisable domain name. The flexibility that comes with .CO domains means they can be associated with companies, corporations or even other commercial endeavors.

Even if you don’t want to pre-register it is worth the visit to the site, I like the way they are positioning the launch. The message is compelling, of course by now the obligatory video is there but I like that they have a “landrush” option which is an auction format – so if you have the shekels you could bid for say www.internetmarketing.co and any other “good” web address that suits your business. Another feature that I like is aimed at those who have trademarks … the pre-registration requests are filled only after the landrush and trademarks are filled. You do not pay anything up front.

The last item today … why the absence? The reasons are several but they all revolve around working ON my business. Sometimes one gets so entrenched working in the business that you find yourself doing the same things over and over again – that is good to a degree because it is an excellent way to become familiar with what it is that you do, but if you don’t step away for a while and take a bird’s eye view you’ll just stay where you are. I’m going to take this time to go and do some eagle soaring (and there are plenty of them but literally and figuratively).

If I come across something whilst soaring out there that I think would be of value to you, I’ll quickly make a post here – till then ciao!

Those Doggone Blogging Blues – Having Nothing More To Say

Jun 11

Posted by Valentina in Blogging for Money, Internet Marketing | 7 Comments

dogging the blues

What can you do about it?

Question. As you have been writing on your subject have you at the same time continued to increase your own knowledge base on it? If not, this is a good time to do so. Here are some good ways to broaden your scope on any given subject/topic:

Visit your colleague’s blogs. Guaranteed you will find something that will get your attention. A new slant, a new resource, a fresh approach, perhaps even the appearance of your colleague’s blog may give you some ideas.

You may want to visit blogs that have a commonality but not necessarily the same niche as yours. For example while Blog Income is a blog on blogging I find visiting sights on personal development and personal finance to be both inspirational and broadening. I apply some of what I learn at those blogs to some of the other areas of my internet marketing – and to my personal life.

2. Review

3. Interview a blogger: This is a natural gimme. It’s fun to come up with questions. I like interviews where the blogger answers questions that are yes, helpful, but also that may be off topic and put the blogger in the hot seat. It’s a way to break through the din of what is expected and perks your reader’s interest.

4. Invite a colleague to be a guest on your blog. Pick a favorite blogger: one whose sun is rising. In the make money online grouping you are more likely to have such a blogger accept your invite than if you invited a big name guru. Moreover I like the guts and nerve that the newbies display – they have to do something to rise above the noise and they have to differentiate themselves from the pioneers while basically still writing the same stuff as others who have gone before them.

6. Republish some of your earlier posts. Some of your best writing may have been done when you first began. Lets face it that was when you were pumped and bent on showing the blogosphere that you knew whereof you wrote, and you took time to polish the prose so that it came across as being professional. The thing is that was early on in your blog income career when hardly anyone was aware of your blog let alone visiting it. New traffic typically reads the current post yet some valuable stuff may be buried in your archives.

7. Last but not least

These are simple steps which if followed will remind you why you decided to blog, why you chose the topic you did and guaranteed invigorate you to continue.

Tags: blog income, blogging, making money online

Sunday Morn Musings: Parting of Ways

Jun 6

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Making Money, Sunday Morn Musings | 2 Comments

Slept in late this morning. Perhaps it’s just my body telling me that it needed some catch up, although I recently read that lost sleep like time is lost forever and that you cannot “catch up” on sleep and yet, if you go to bed early and sleep in late, what could be it but catch up?

Lots on my mind this morning. How do I choose which of the many thoughts swirling in my head should be written about? Should it be about money? Should it be about the environment? Should it be about parting? All separate but somehow like a vine they intertwine. I know. I’ll take a stab and see if I can make sense of that which my brain seems to be dwelling on this overcast Sunday morning.

Parting. Whilst sitting in a grouping listening to one after another of my colleagues speak I was suddenly acutely aware that I no longer enjoyed being here. I felt a sense of discomfort not with what was being said but with my feelings. Betrayal came to mind. How could this be? This is the group that I started. The dissonant and discordant energy was exactly what I wanted, no make that thrived on: contentious, mind disturbing, thought provoking, irreverent – political correctness be damned. It was all there. How could I now no longer want to be part of something I created?

This niggling thought followed me around all day yesterday and here it is again this morning. I am reminded of how people who break out of their bearings are often criticized for being “too good for their britches” – an observation often lobbed by the status quo at a usually successful friend who no longer spends time with them. I can understand that.

Not that the situation I speak of has anything to do with any newly acquired riches. Rather it has to do with a dull but insistent knocking in my cranium, each dull thud sending a message “…these are not your people.”

Indeed the rhetoric is palling. It assaults my values and frankly I am tired of the same old same old Robin Hood mentality that the rich are corrupt and should be taxed (even more)that seems to dominate these meetings. There is more. At one time there was a balance present and the bantering back and forth was fun, sharpening not only the tongue but one’s own appreciation of and respect for how others think.

With time the members changed. Being the lone wolf is not only no fun but it sinks you into a funk. I am not there to change anyone’s mind – that was never the intention. There are still some who present opposing views with some forethought and intelligence. I do not have to agree to enjoy a mind expanding experience.

No. That is not the reason my brain is going thud, thud. Lately, on my drive home from these gatherings I cannot help but question the knee jerk reactions that are being presented … and you know, even if they were knee jerk with substance, it might be ok. But its mostly rhetoric that is riding high on hype and for that I have little tolerance.

There is a side of me that says that I should soldier on and another that keeps telling me to surround myself with like minded people. These are not them. Have you ever found yourself in such a situation? Is it outgrowing your friends, associates, colleagues – your position? Has your thinking changed? Your circumstances?

I’ll sleep on it but I think that I am at a fork in the road and right now it is the road that takes me on a different path that beckons. It is sad. This was my baby – somehow, I don’t think I will be missed. Oh, the money and environment? I’ll save that for another Sunday … the sun is just beginning to peep, time to go out and have some fun!

Gather Success Challenge V – Promotion Challenge

May 31

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing | No Comments

Massive Action Flower Cluster

This week’s Gather Success challenge is to drive traffic to the post about this challenge on Gather Success. The task is to promote any which way: blog, email, Facebook, Twitter etc. this url:

http://bit.ly/bDDm4N (so please feel welcome click and visit

The purpose is to get good at online promotion by using all the tools we have on hand for a single purpose, i.e., take massive action. I think of massive action as a cluster, like the photo of the flowers to the left – it is the cluster of the flowers that forms the beauty of a shrub in bloom. I think that we all use these marketing tools but not necessarily as a cluster. We are vaguely aware of the power of massive action but for some reason seldom use it to our advantage. Alvin is one smart cookie. Yes it is his site we are promoting (gold star for big smarts) and here are the rules:

1. Traffic hits to blog post is determined by unique visits
2. You may use Twitter, Blogs, Facebook or Email List for promotion
3. You will need to digg the blog post once!
4. RT the blog post once!
5. Reddit the blog post once!
6. Delicious the blog post once!
7. All promotion should point the blog post with your bit.ly tracking link to track @

Notice the addition of points three through six. I have Delicious and Reddit programmed on to this site ( and many other social marketing sites), but actually going to the sites and doing the digging gives me a personal introduction to Digg. As I was thinking about this, I have been keenly aware that although I know of Delicious and many other social bookmarking sites, I really don`t know what each one is set up to do, in other words, what its specialty is.

As I click away on the keyboard, this is good news and not so good news. The not so good news is that I am late to the game – not the whole challenge, just this week’s. The results are due in on Tuesday (and today is Monday)! Nevertheless, better late than never. It is the exercise I want to get into my system. Action develops memory smarts like reps develop muscle strength.

The good news is that I am in the number 5 position for the challenge … albeit a distant number 5.

The main benefit of participating in this challenge however is the heavy lifting of actually doing the marketing. It’s just like when I started this blog, I knew a lot about blogging and internet marketing but found that when I put shoulder to the grindstone, theory and action did not always run on parallel bars. It really is blood, sweat and sometimes even tears, to get the wheel to grind.

Participating in the Gather Success Blogger Challenge I have picked up the following:

- Going back to basics is empowering: At the very least it reaffirms that which you already know, at best you pick up new gems that you may have missed first time around or were never aware of in the first place.

- Escalated speed of progress. Familiar territory covered quickly and with ease, unfamiliar ground quickly understood and enacted.

- Identifying areas of weakness. In my case I know that my social media smarts are in need of some serious smartening up. Having gone through the exercise I now visit Twitter and Facebook with some regularity. I don’t always post, just hang out and try to understand by osmosis. I have to admit that I am beginning to understand Facebook better than Twitter, but am confident that the latter will eventually become just another marketing tool I use with ease.

- Procrastination rules – aaarrrgghhh!!! This is my big elephant in the room. It shows up way too often in all that I do. I mean, here I am, putting up this post the day before the results are due instead of the day the challenge began!

This makes me think of my previous habit of being chronically late for just about everything. I decided to change that. I did. I did that by simply changing the goal from being on time to being early by 10 to 15 minutes. That bought me time for unexpected delays. I am still not perfect but am on time better than 90% of the time.

I will now work on my procrastination. Instead of saying that I will complete the project on time I will change that to I begin my projects in a timely fashion so as to complete them before they are due.

- It’s fun to play … participating in challenges gets the adrenaline going and sharpens your smarts.

I hope that some of what I have experienced to date will be useful to you. In the meantime you could help me play by visiting:

http://bit.ly/bDDm4N .

You can also view all of the videos of the call-ins that Alvin hosts every Tuesday and pick up the same gems that I do.

Tags: Internet Marketing

Frank Kern’s State of the Internet Address

May 27

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Making Money, Miscellaneous | 8 Comments

With Frank Kern at Mass Control

Have you seen Frank Kern’s State of the Internet Address? It is on video that is several months old now – in fact Frank put it up in December of last year. One of the members of an online mastermind group I belong to brought it to our attention.

I just watched it this morning. Excellent.

Frank is one cool dude and really knows his internet marketing stuff – he’s been in it since 1999 and has become an acknowledged master at the art of the game. Not bad for a kid who was once told by a professor that his chances of success in life were none and none.

In his State of the Internet Address Frank talks about his vision of where the internet is going, his predictions and how we as internet marketers are in the perfect place at the perfect time to ride the perfect wave of money that is coming our way.

Currently only 10% of brick and mortar businesses have an online presence, mostly in the form of a brochure rather than an ecommerce/marketing site. Frank predicts that within the next decade 100% of bricks and mortar businesses will have an online presence and that an ever growing number of these business owners will be looking at having more than a “brochure” presence, but rather as a means of attracting and retaining customers.

As online shopping grows and customers become increasingly comfortable with pulling out their plastic or using alternate forms of payment such as PayPal, there will be areas of commerce where online shopping will eclipse that of traditional bricks and mortar.

We as internet marketers are standing in front of a tsunami! Those of us that take advantage of this phenomena will be riding the wave, those of us who dither around looking to perfect our art will be swamped.

I love the way that Frank simplifies everything. Commerce?

B has money
B hands money to A
A hands B a product of greater value than the funds he received.

Note the word “greater” … that’s what Frank calls outcooling your competition.

Gather Success Challenge IV – Retweet Challenge

May 22

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment

Chirping for Retweets!

This week’s challenge at Gather Success is all about the ReTweet … the objective is to get familiar with Mr. Twitter, now that is a challenge and a half for me! That is not good. I’m not in the habit of getting familiar with any misters that I don’t know very well … and Mr. Twitter? Why, we’re practically strangers!

Yes, I have a Twitter account. Yes, I took a workshop with Matt Astifan on how to be a good Twit – no wait, that would be Tweeter.

No. I have not been putting what I learned to practice. I haven’t even got the tweeting thing down pat let alone the REtweet.

This challenge is forcing my hand.

There are points at stake and the winner even gets cash! A whole $100 smackeroos. All I have to do is get the following retweeted

RT @MrGatherSuccess by @goldenkoi Join In The Tweet Contest & Win $100 In Prizes! More Details @ http://bit.ly/9zLn3M

I have noticed that there are some in the contest who have real savvy social media smarts but hey, who knows, maybe, just maybe if not the loot I can at least figure in the top three? That will give me 50 points (in 3^rd spot).

In addition to actually tweeting I can promote it through any online media – including blogs and email. So if you’re on my mailing list, you’ll be hearing from me again

The difficulty level of this challenge is 6 out of 10! It`s getting steeper all the time!

If you are a frequent visitor here, please feel free to retweet; yeah, I know. No - whoring is too harsh, the word would be “chirping” thank you, please!

How to do this: Login to your Twitter account. Copy and paste the two lines below, and tweet it.

RT @MrGatherSuccess by @YourTweetID Join In The Tweet Contest & Win $100 In Prizes! More Details @ http://bit.ly/9zLn3M

If you are a first time visitor – hey jump in the game!

And speaking of jumping in the game. Each week`s challenge is a standalone module so if you want to you can still register and kick ass. No seriously. And then you can log on to the weekly webinar with Alvin – I have picked up so many tips. Some I have posted here, but there really is soooooo much more … and it’s fun!

Tags: social media, Twitter

Gather Success Challenge III – Affiliate Marketing

May 19

Posted by Valentina in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Making Money | 5 Comments

Earn Money with Affiliate Marketing

Tonight was call-in number 4 for Gather Success’ Blogger Reality Show. Our challenge for the last week as centered around affiliate marketing, we were to promote, market, and ideally make a sale of Atomic Blogging 3.0 system. At least one challenger had a sale.

I did not even attempt this challenge. Last week was crazy busy with non-IM type of stuff. So of course I did not get any points awarded.

Speaking of points, Alvin made some good ones on how to choose your affiliates. For the purpose of the call he used Clickbank as a good example of an affiliate directory. Here is a step by step process on how to find a good affiliate:

If you don’t already have an account set up go to Clickbank.com and set one up. It’s easy and its quick
To select a product click on Marketplace. It seems that many of the challengers are in the make online income niche, which is very competitive and even though Alvin makes good money in that niche, his suggestion is that it is much easier to make money promoting affiliates that are not in the blogging for money business. The competition is significantly less
Clickbank is really good at giving statistical information on the affiliate program. One of the statistics that Alvin likes to look at is the gravity. Gravity tells you how popular a product is so the higher the number, the more popular or demand there is for it. There are several factors that contribute to the popularity of an affiliate program:- collateral support such as banners, sales page and ongoing marketing including but not restricted to emails.
- conversion
- commission
After selecting a program, check out the sales page and any other promotional material the affiliate publisher is offering.
Where do all the screenshots come from?
Transaction records
Be sure the product has testimonials
Get your link, button or banner and test it.
Try the buy button to see whether it works or not
Check the bottom of the page to make sure that the affiliate link is the same as your Clickbank ID. If its not then don’t promote this product. Go through the process with another.

From the submissions it seems that many of us have our own challenge with affiliate marketing. How many times have you been told to promote a big ticket item because the amount of time and effort spent is the same as for a small ticket item but the financial rewards are much greater even if you sell far less.

That might work if you already have your affiliate marketing chops down pat. You really need to build your affiliate marketing muscles before going for the big game. Alvin’s suggestion is to challenge yourself with small weekly goals, something like “… I am going to earn US$200 this week selling product XYZ at $20 each…” and then set your whole campaign up for the week. See what results you get at the end of the week. Make small adjustments to the campaign for week 2.

Track everything. You may hit your $200 mark the first week, maybe not. The thing is now you have a goal and a method and as you continue to improve your marketing skills, the sales will begin to come in. This takes practice. As you get better you can start marketing higher priced products.

Affiliate marketing when mastered is an easy way to earn an online income.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, blogging for money, earn online income

Keyword Stuffing Confuses Search Engines

May 13

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Keyword | 3 Comments

keyword buffet

Keyword rich might be good for your static home page – don’t count on – but used liberally in your posts it has the same effect on search engine spiders as a buffet laden table of food: no focus. Keyword stuffing might be the better term for it and you know what you get when you stuff yourself at a buffet

Indigestion.

At our weekly Gather Success Challenge online get together, Alvin took us through a number of items we should keep in mind when writing our posts.

TITLE
Capitalize the first letter of each word in your title. This Small change makes the title stand out more.

Consider:

Keyword stuffing confuses search engines
vs
Keyword Stuffing Confuses Search Engines

As you can see the second title commands greater authority. Rule of thumb is that words such as the, a, and, for, are not capitalized.

PLUGINS
The beauty of using Wordpress is that there are plenty of plugins to help us optimize our marketing effort, but the one plugin that you must have is the All in One SEO. When installed, enabled and configured, this plugin helps to optimize your keywords with search engines.

PAGE URL
Each page has its own URL. To optimize the keyword you are fighting for, place them at the beginning of the URL title. For example:

The domain URL for this site is: http:// www.blogincomelife.com
A page URL looks like this: http://www.blogincomelife.com/new-look-for-blog-income/

The page URL always follows the domain URL. After hearing what Alvin has to say, a better way to have titled my article would have been “Blog Income Sports a New Look” the reason being that the keyword is “blog income” and not “new look”.

KEYWORDS
Many of us tend to put as many of our keywords into our posts as possible with the idea that as our sites are crawled, we begin to rank higher and higher for our list of keywords.

Stop it.

Too many keywords confuse the search engines. They don’t know what sort of traffic to send to your site.

Use no more than three of your keywords. Mention your main keyword once in the first 50 words of the post and once in the last 50 subwords, i.e., words related to your keyword or a slightly different phrasing of the keyword .

CATEGORIES
Just as with keywords, when writing your post think of two maybe three categories that it will fit into, definitely no more than five.

BACKLINKS
The importance of backlinks cannot be stressed enough. Search engines consider backlinks as votes for your site – simply put, people like it and if people like it then the search engines give you good marks and move you up along their ranking.

Quality links carry more weight than others. Here are some good ways to get quality backlinks:

- Get backlinks from .com, .org or .ed

- Age domain matters

- Authority sites (have lots of traffic, links and ranking)

- Article directories

Comment on blogs that fit the above criteria. Personally I like to mix it up otherwise how would the newbies ever get started.

spider keyword buffet

IMAGES
Now this was a new one for me. When uploading images to your post, give the image an alt tag. For example the when I uploaded the image above this was what I filled out. Images get crawled and it’s just good practice to have something for the spiders to read.

There was so much more. Each challenge is a stand alone. You can always join and do the latest challenge. Points add up. At the end the participant with the most points wins to work with Alvin on his new project. Definitely some of the participants are internet marketing savvy. No matter. If you participate you will learn. From my perspective its all about tweaking the details – even if you only pick up one point, that point can make a huge difference to you.

Tags: keyword research, Link Building

Gather Success Challenge II – Red Cross Receipt

May 13

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Miscellaneous | No Comments

Further to my post of yesterday re my saga of donating to the Red Cross – it’s here! The receipt by email has arrived in my Inbox and here it is

red cross receipt

Just as an aside – if you ever need an instant econfirmation on a purchase (or donation), do it online, not by phone.

Once again … Thank You.

Tags: blog income

Gather Success Charity Challenge

May 9

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Miscellaneous | 2 Comments

Alvin Phang’s Super Blogger Challenge is in full swing. Our 2^nd challenge is to raise money for a worthy charity organization: The American Red Cross.

I don’t think Alvin could have picked a more universal charity organization. The Red Cross crosses both geographical and political boundaries. Whenever disaster strikes, Red Cross workers and volunteers are first on the scene, helping out with manpower, supplies, food, medical care, water and doing whatever is necessary to bring the area to as near normalcy as is possible.

Recognized as a universal sign of help and hope the Red Cross is more than just a logo. It’s workers and volunteers put in selfless hours of physical work, often under difficult conditions.

The Red Cross is a confederation of relief societies in different countries acting under the Geneva Convention. In 1863 an international public conference was held at Geneva, Switzerland. Twenty-five nations attended and struck a treaty which was adopted as the Geneva Convention.

“…the treaty provides for the neutrality of all sanitary supplies, ambulances, surgeons, nurses, attendants and sick or wounded men and their safe conduct, when they bear the sign of the organization: the Red Cross.Although the convention was international, the relief societies themselves are national and independent.

It was necessary for recognition and safety and for carrying out the general provisions of the treaty, that a uniform badge should be agreed upon. The Red Cross was chosen out of compliments to the Swiss Republic, where the first convention was held … The Swiss colors being a white cross on a red ground, the badge chosen was these colors reversed.” Excerpted from ‘The History of the Red Cross”

The origins were founded on devastation of war. Today the Red Cross is present not just on battlefields of conflict and at scenes of disaster, but in the humanities of all societies.

In the wake of Haiti, Nashville, Chile, Indonesia … the list of the Red Cross presence is inexhaustible, its funds are not. The objective of the Gather Success Charity Challenge is to raise as much money as possible by May 11. I am taking part in this challenge.

Any contribution is appreciated, every amount, no matter how big or small makes a difference. As a small gesture of my “thank you” to you, I am offering a free PDF of my e.book, The ABCs of Blogging For Money (Value US$47.00). To donate just click on the donate button below

You will be taken to my PayPal. After all the funds are collected I will issue a check made out to the American Red Cross and will publish both the check and the receipt from the Red Cross for the contribution.

I am taking part in Alvin Phang’s “Gather Success Charity Challenge“ if you wish to take part please click here to find out more.

Tags: blog income

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