Blog Income Life

Blogging for Money and Loving It!

Posts Tagged Internet Marketing

The Week That Was: Mar 21-27

Mar 27

Posted by Valentina in Weekly Review | 1 Comment

Sometimes you just have to laugh because the alternative is to cry.

Such was the case this week.  There are times when one is tried every which way.  I always tell people who are experiencing some really tough times that it means they are on the threshold of something big but to make sure that they are up to the big, the universe sends challenges.   We all get through challenges, life goes on, but it is how we deal with those challenges that determines whether we move up, stay static or slide backwards.

OK………….. I’m waiting for the big times to come!

Blog Income was down for almost two full days at the beginning of the week.  Incompatible plugins. Then Friday, once again while I was in the back office, I managed to shrink the site and the font size – if you scroll past to earlier posts you will see that the font size is small.  The good thing is I have found out how to increase the font size for each posting – now to just make it universal and widen the blog to it’s original size.

All this in the last week of Quarter One!   … so, better times ahead.

New posts since the last Week That Was:

Sunday Morn Musings:  Big is NOT Beautiful! 21/03/10
Social engineers are at it again.  As usual they employ semantics as their tool of choice and preach from the pulpit of political correctness.   They want us to think that “Big” is beautiful.  Read that as FAT is beautiful.  BALDERDASH!  … On my Sunday soapbox (maybe that is what I should call it)I take issue with fat and health.

Life, Timing & Love all live in The Land of Internet Marketing 24/03/10
… calm has returned to the domain of Blog Income and that makes life good but it’s been a few hair raising and tearing days.   At first annoyance, then disbelief, then as the reality began to seep in, utter panic.  An internet marketer’s nightmare

WordPress Direct Review – 26/03/10
“No more wasting your precious time with setup, Search Engine Optimization, or maintaining your site . . . WordPressDirect has been designed to handle all the setup, SEO and maintenance functions for you. With over 15,000 users, we are the leader in Search-Optimized Blog Publishing.”

Now that’s some powerful statement and if true it is the best kept secret in the internet marketing world.  In this post I go over my experience along with some suggestions for improvement that WPD might want to take to heart.

Lean pickings this week.  With every challenge met new things are learned.

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

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WordPress Direct Review

Mar 26

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Product Reviews | 8 Comments

When you first log on to the WordPress Direct site, the message that greets you is loud and clear:

“Let us do the heavy lifting for you!

No more wasting your precious time with setup, Search Engine Optimization, or maintaining your site . . . WordPressDirect has been designed to handle all the setup, SEO and maintenance functions for you. With over 15,000 users, we are the leader in Search-Optimized Blog Publishing.”

Now that’s some powerful statement and if true it is the best kept secret in the internet marketing world.

I was first introduced to WordPress Direct (WPD) in the summer of 2009, August to be exact.  I was participating in Ed Dale’s annual 30 Day Challenge. The instructions were to use WordPress Direct which was available for free for 30 day challengers for the 30 days.  After that pay or return to the regular WordPress.

Of course I paid – moreover there was a special for members of the 30 Day Challenge (and my guess is that there will be one again this year).  I am so glad I did.  In October I transferred Blog Income from Blogger to WordPress Direct.

Increasingly the internet marketing crowd is beating a path to the door of WordPress, but WordPress has a steep learning curve and for us non-techie types the upward curve is nosebleed high.

How does WPD  differ from WordPress?  Well as their intro says, they do all the heavy lifting for you.  Lets take a look at their claims and see just how much lifting they do do.

#1.  Handle All The Setup

This is a biggie for me.  To give you a bit of a background:

In January 2009 I signed up for a course on niche marketing.  Included in the course were instructions on how to set up your own WordPress site.   While the majority of the course was easy to understand, the WordPress setup had it’s challenges.  I needed to install an FTP file and learn how to upload and download, c.panel navigation and php.  This may be simple once mastered but the exercise gave me nothing but grief and no results to boot.  The site languished.

I even downloaded several other tutorials on WordPress.  Then it dawned on me that simple though it may be, it wasn’t simple enough as there were plenty of courses being offered at varying prices on how to set up your WordPress.  WPD showed up at just the right time.

When you log into your WordPress Direct Account the first thing you want to do is watch the video tutorials. There are two sets: the first three are on  Internet Basics and the second are a set of five on How it Works.    These are very easy to follow.  Each step is clearly illustrated.  There are no assumptions that the new member knows anything about internet marketing – they even take you through the initial stages of selecting a domain name, hosting and installing your first site.

I just reviewed these videos again to make sure that they are as newbie friendly as I remember.  They are.  For the veterans you can skip the Internet Basics videos (although you never know what new nugget you might pick up).  I just went through the second lot on How it Works and just realized that I am not taking full advantage of all that is available to me.

Installation once again is as easy as ABC.  It’s a series of point, click, select and fill in the blanks and voila!  You have a site up.  You are then taken through configuration and setup where needed and then you publish your first post.  You are also shown how to get into the WordPress Admin area and how to navigate from there if you want.  So now you have all the bells and whistles of direct access to your site’s WordPress administration area where you can choose to do most of your backend office type of stuff, or get most of that done through the simple  WordPress Direct dashboard options.

So do they do the set it up for you?  My conclusion is that yes they do.  This gets a big “A+” from me.

#2.  Search Engine Optimization

When you are completing the setup of your site, you will be asked to include your keywords both long tail and short, a brief description and other bits that help to make your site search engine friendly.

What I really like about WPD is that all the themes come loaded with a pack of important plugins.  All you need to do is to activate them.  When I was setting up my site for that course I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there were only two plugins that were given.  Now plugins are important as they play a key role in the appearance of your site, ease of navigation, ad display, spam filtering, enabling comments and so much more.

As you cut your chops and become more experienced in the ways of WordPress and internet marketing, you will want to add more plugins. Plugins are like an aftermarket product – think of all the toys and goodies that you can buy for your car.  A word of caution as I recently found out, make sure that you backup everything before installing a new plugin, not all of them play nicely with each other and you might end up with a blank page!  Trust me that is one experience you do not want.

So does WordPress Direct deliver on Search Engine Optimization?  This is a toughie.  SEO is always a work in progress, but I give WPD two thumbs up for getting you started with a bagful of goodies that the average newbie knows nothing about and saves a ton of time for the advanced and professional internet marketers.  I can tell you that once I switched this Blog Income from Blogger the SEO bots were a lot happier with what they saw and within a short period of time the search engine traffic increased.

#3 Maintenance Functions


What I like is that not only can you automatically update your plugins, but you can also update to the latest WordPress edition as it comes available without having to backup, uninstall, reinstall the newest edition and marry your site with the new WordPress edition.   I notice though that WPD does not jump through hoops to support the latest edition as it comes out and that is probably a good thing as not everything when it’s first updated is free of bugs and with open source products such as WordPress that may be a bigger issue than not.  For the tech proficient probably not a problem, for the rest of us update when WPD says so!

The deal breaker for me though is the support.  I was exchanging comments with another blogger who is a whiz on WordPress and she wanted to know why I was using WPD, when I told her that they had real support, she was both surprised and impressed.  In my brief experience with WordPress Direct (7 months) I cannot count the number of times I have had to submit a ticket because of zigging when I should have zagged.  Every issue was resolved – either I was advised on how to fix it, or, it was fixed for me.  Usually within two days.  There is a hierarchy if you will as to what and how much of your site they will support if the theme is “foreign” and this is clearly spelled out in the FAQ section.

So, Does WordPress Direct deliver on maintenance and functionality?  Woohoo!  Do they ever!  High Fives all around.

Some Shortcomings:

I think they can do a better job of  themes.   They offer over 1500 themes and you would think that surely there is something there that will fit just about anyone.  But I find that the selection offered leaves something to be desired.

1.  The majority of the themes seem to be overly ornate.  Now I know that newbies tend to go for the flashy looking stuff, with lots of art, but once the first blush of blogging/internet marketing is off, we soon realize that simple is more.

2.  We want themes with shallow, that is short headers.  Some of the headers hog most of the space above the fold and we want to have that space not for the pretty pictures, but for our content to grab the visitor’s attention.

Having said that, I have manually installed themes directly from WordPress to my roster of available themes that I can work with through my WPD account.  I also think that they miss the boat somewhat by not playing up that you can import your existing WordPress accounts, theme and all and that there is all sorts of customization available for the advanced internet marketers. I know that this is a perception held by many professional internet marketers, that WPD limits your selection of themes and restricts access to and functionality within the admin area of WordPress.

It would also be great to have some of the more popular themes included without having to manually import them, Atahualpa and Frugal come to mind.  I like these in their simplicity and flexibility when it comes to customization. DarkZen is another one I like.

Conclusion.

In my opinion WordPress Direct is a must have for the newbie and professional alike.  It saves time for all.  With WordPress Direct you have the advantage of a “done for you” setup without restricting you only to that which is included as part of the package.  Your site is powered by WordPress and you have the added benefit of being able to work on your site via the WordPress back office admin area simply by logging on as http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin and a responsive support team.

Would I recommend WordPress Direct to everyone?  You bet!

P.S.   Disclaimer:  I have become an affiliate of  WordPress Direct .  Should you open your account through my links and decide to become a paid customer, I will make a little bit of coin.


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Life, Timing & Love all live In the Land of Internet Marketing

Mar 24

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Miscellaneous, Traffic | 5 Comments

Life is good – again

Timing is everything.

I’m in love

Earning an online income is not easy, it may be simple but not easy. But it is immeasurably easier if your internet marketing life is good, if timing works in your favor and if you have a love here and there to take you through the rough times.  I just had such an experience.

LIFE IS GOOD – AGAIN!
Today calm has returned to the domain of Blog Income and that makes life good but it’s been a few hair raising and tearing days.   At first annoyance, then disbelief, then as the reality began to seep in utter panic.  Allow me to walk you through the turn of events  of the last two days– perhaps my experience will help you avoid this type of pain.

When you begin to know a little bit, you become a little brave, and a little bravery can be plenty dangerous.  I refer specifically to the back office – the admin area of the blog which is where I was on Monday morning.

As mentioned before, Blog Income is going to have a complete new facelift and that is in the works, but… said I to myself, in the meantime, could I not make a small change?  One of the suggestions made by my Monday night Internet Marketing Mastermind members was that maybe I could make the font a little bigger.

As chance would have it that Monday morning I came upon a blog that tackled that very same question and the answer was very simple.  Install the TinyMCE Advanced plugin.  No problem.  I knew exactly how to install a plugin. I did.  For some reason it did not take.  For one thing the “settings” option did not show up. I pressed a button here and a button there, looked at some of the other plugins.   Came back to the new plugin, tried editing an existing post.  Nothing happened.

Went back to the blog that wrote about how to change the font in the first place and wouldn’t you know it, there was no way to contact the author!  Now that in the world of the internet is a cardinal sin.  Before logging out I pressed the view site button – nothing, blank, zero!  Hmm.  Opened another window and put the URL into the browser line.  Nothing, blank, zero …. oh yes, bottom left hand corner “done.”

Worse yet – I could no longer log into my admin!  Same blank and “done” results.

Several  times on this blog I have mentioned that my sites  are powered by WordPress, and  supported by WordPress Direct. (WPD).  I sent in a ticket marked “urgent” and went about doing other things on the internet.  Annoyance began to seep in.  Last week of Quarter 1 and my blog is down!  Google will come crawling and surely write up enough demerits to put me in the dog house I thought,  Alexa will demote me, traffic will meet a blank white space and never return.  This couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

That night at my weekly Internet Marketing Mastermind meeting, I mentioned my dilemma to the group.  When two of the top and most savvy IM types both said “oh oh” at the same time, annoyance turned to queasiness. “Oh oh” is not a good response.  Jason offered to help by going into my c.panel but of course I could not remember  either the username or the password!  We agreed we would connect the next day

I was sure that by next day WordPress Direct would have a solution.  Next day dawned and still nothing.  Panic.  Left a message for Jason.  Resent ticket to WPD.   Acting on Dave Doolin’s suggestion,  closed shop for the day, went out enjoyed the ocean, the flowers, and the company of non internet marketing friends.   Completely cleared my mind.

Came home refreshed and resolved to rebuild the blog – with the new look.  Fortunately I have all the content.  After dinner checked with WPD , still no response.  Opened Ewen Chia’s tutorials on WordPress and began by finding the theme I wanted to install and was at that point in  Fantastico when the next step was to press “install”.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING.
My finger was poised over the install button.  The phone rang.  It was Jason returning my call.   Told him I was ready to start rebuilding the blog and that I was just in the process of installing.

“Hold on” he said.  “What’s the name of your blog again?”

I told him.

“Works for me” he says.

“What do you mean it works for you?”  I wanted to know.

“Well my browser brings up your site”

I was astounded!  Floored!  Flabbergasted!

I checked on my own browser .

YUP!   There it was!

I told him what I was about to do.  He told me that had I gone ahead with the new installation (outside of WPD)I would have have created even more problems.  I was literally seconds away from pressing that install button, in other words, seconds away from more problems.

I sat there and thanked my lucky stars, the universe and the creator of all whom I call god.  Seconds away from screwing the whole thing up.  It’s amazing how so much of everything we do is in the timing.

Dave’s suggestion that I take the day off kept me from making further decisions and taking action in the heat of the moment.  The day grounded me.  It gave time for Jason to call me.  Equally importantly it gave the time needed for WordPress Direct to address my problem and fix it.  But that call from Jason was the most critical of all.  Timing plays a greater role in our success than we realize and the whole day ultimately was all about timing.

I’M IN LOVE

After taking a few deep breaths I was able to collect myself.  Checked on my ticket …  there is a message from Alex:

“Valentina,

Your site went blank because you had two XML plugins (different versions) activated at the same time. The Google Sitemap XML and the karaliev’s plugins (older version) were both activated causing the error.  I upgraded the Karaliev’s plugin and everything should be working fine now.”

It hit me!  When I was going through my plugins I remember that my Google Sitemap XML was not activated.  I recall that in some recent course it was to have been activated – so I did!

It was love at first sigh of relieve!  This was not the first time that WordPress Direct saved my bacon – err … that would be site.  They have helped me many times with this blog and the other sites I have with them.  The issues were never as big as having my site disappear and I was beginning to feel fairly confident about WordPress, thinking that I can now put up a WordPress site without the benefit of the heavy lifting that WordPress Direct provide.

HUH!  Are you kidding?

Not on your patoeey!  Never!

I’m in love with WordPress Direct.  I love Alex and Brian and Roy  and all the other support that have patiently helped me out time and time again.  They have never failed me … and when you’re in love with that good, it’s a keeper!

Oh yes, another thing.  WordPress Direct comes preloaded with a lot of goodies.  I just found that I do not need TinyMce for font etc. – I have the kitchen sink that gives me that option. How did I find out?  There is an icon that I never pressed before… well, you know all about bravery now, it turns out that its the kitchen sink.

It’s all good.  Experience makes you stronger, even wiser but I still buy into Steve Jobs “stay hungry, stay foolish” even if foolish is sometimes all wrapped up in bravery.


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Don’t Ignore the Fries!

Mar 11

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Making Money | 6 Comments

When you’re blogging for money, do you keep your fries front and center?

Huh!!!

Read on:

“Don’t ignore the fries,”

Those were the words I was hearing on the phone.   My friend Nelson called me this morning and we chatted away.  He’d just returned from Hong Kong and we were doing a bit of catch up as he asked me about business.   He always does.   I told him about my progress in internet marketing.

“Has it replaced your network marketing income yet?” he wanted to know.

The answer was no and a further confession that the network marketing business wasn’t getting much attention these days, in spite of being the primary source of income for me.

He then took the time to tell me about MacDonalds, how they keep introducing new items to their menu, how they experiment with eggs and salads and coffee and even different types of burgers.

“But” he said “They don’t ignore the fries”

Meaning that the fries are a profitable staple item and they don’t fool around with them – in other words the fries always get attention at MacDonalds.

Nelson and I go back a long way – back to the days when I was still in Corporate and so was he.  He was the local big honcho for a major insurance company and I was an executive with a Fortune 50.  Often we shared the elevator on the way up to the floor of  our respective offices, down for lunch or when just calling it a day.  We became friends.

Years later we started a new Toastmaster club – one that met on Saturday mornings.  Neither of us had any toastmaster experience.  Each of us felt it was a good personal development for the coming year – and well, why would we want to join a club when we could start one?  We were told that no one would come to a toastmaster meeting on a Saturday morning.  The maverick in me was being tested.    Nelson was unflappable.  We went ahead.   Not only did they come but they came from as far away as an hour’s drive away!  Today it is one of the most successful clubs here in Vancouver and until recently it was the only toastmaster club that met on a Saturday morning in all of British Columbia.

Over  the years we each went through some good times and bad.  It is that same unflappable demeanor that took that Saturday morning club to success that helped Nelson weather some real tough challenges.   Sometimes I feel that my decision to become an internet marketer is akin to the decision to start a toastmaster club on a Saturday morning.  The probabilities of success are not exactly a given but the maverick in me is still alive and well.

Nelson is never short on advice.  I respect what he has to say.  I hope that at  times I return the favor.  He wasn’t telling me  anything I did not already know.  We joked about it.  He too likes to try out new things and told me that the penny dropped when he was filling out his tax return… the biggest contributor to his bottom line is still his insurance business.

In marketing you learn that even though you want to add a new product, a new source of revenue, you never do so at the expense of an income producing item. The only time an income contributing item is up for discussion is when the new product has replaced the income of the old one.

This is true in anything we do in business.  If your desire is to earn an online income because you want to escape the tedium of the 9-5, don’t even think of throwing in the towel and going full time without first building a strong and viable online business.   Build it up on a part time basis while being the best employee that you can be.  Block time.  Work it.  It won’t happen overnight – guaranteed – but you will begin to see increments of progress and one day there it is, an online income equal to that of your employment!

Along the way you will be making many decisions.  What affiliate products to promote.  Which ones to continue with, which ones to drop.  What marketing channels to use.  Which ones to increase, which ones to stop.  Whether to develop your own product.  How to joint venture.  As you navigate through the intricacies of business  don’t forget to ask yourself the question:  what is my french fries?

It is when your online income  equals that of your employment that you will have an enviable choice to make:  whether to stay as an employee and continue  your internet marketing on a part time basis, or to become a full blown entrepreneur.  You might surprise yourself and find that the job you hate isn’t so hateful after all.  It’s amazing how people see things differently when faced with a choice driven not by need, but by success.

But until then, don’t ignore the fries!

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Five Steps To Keep Your Blog Income Goal On Track

Mar 10

Posted by Valentina in Goal Setting, Internet Marketing, Plan Development | 2 Comments

Are you on pace for your 2010 internet marketing goal?

In three weeks and a day the first quarter of the year will have come and gone.  If you are serious about your blog income business this is the time to take a quick overview of where you’re going, where you are and where you’ve been so far this year.

Reviewing your progress in anything that you do is critical to success.  Goals drive success.  So you need to review the progress of your goal for the year.  I review by day, week, month and quarter.  I don’t spend a lot of time on all the details, but come the end of a quarter,my blog income business undergoes a microscopic review. Year to date results are tallied  and adjustments where necessary are made.

This is a good time to take a quick overview of the current situation vis a vis your blog income goal.  With three weeks to go there is still time to save the bacon.

Am I on track?

NO!

Do I know how far off track I am?

YES!

Here is a quick way to review your progress and maximize your internet marketing performance:

1.  Goal.
You can do this for any part of your life, but for the purpose of this blog and post let’s stay with your blog income business.  What was your goal for the year?  .

A common annual goal is to achieve a certain income.  Assume that your goal is $100K  for all your internet marketing streams.  A very simple plan might look like this

1Q = $10,000
2Q = $20,000
3Q = $30,000
4Q = $40,000

Total = $100,000

2.  Progress to date:
What is your year to date income?  With three weeks to go, if you do not make some quick adjustments will you achieve $10,000?  If not how far off the mark are you?  If the shortfall is just a projected thousand or two, what can you do to turn up the heat.

3.  High Gain Activities
A quick review will tell you what in your marketing mix has worked the best and brought you the money to date.  You will notice that every time you took action there was an upward  spike in the results.  Very quickly identify the action that brought you the most income.  Take that model and ramp it up for the rest of the month.  If it is affiliate marketing that is the major contributor, see which affiliate product contributed the most to your bottom line.

4. How Many Sales Needed?
If your current track projection shows that you will be $2000 short of your 1Q goal, what are the steps that will lead you to reaching $10K?  Ask yourself these questions:

a)  What is the commission for each sale?
b)  How many clicks to reach one conversion?
c)  How much traffic  per click?

For ease of calculation:
commission per sale:  $100
clicks to make one sale: 10
traffic to generate 1 click: 10

Armed with this information you come up with this formula
2000 visits = 200 clicks
200 clicks = 20 sales
20 sales @ $100 commission = $2000

5. Which Piston Is Firing  The Traffic Engine?
Look through your statistics to identify which marketing action drives the most traffic.  Isolate it and increase that marketing action in direct proportion to meet and deliver the additional numbers.

This is also a good time to look at your second quarter.  Based on your 1Q results what are the action steps for the coming quarter.  What adjustments do you need to make?

Look at your business as sailing.  When you sail you know what your destination is.  You have a mapped out route.  Depending on how the wind is blowing, how the currents are running and daily weather changes, you need to continuously tack your sailboat to reach your destination.  A review of your  results is just tacking your internet marketing business to success.

In short:  review, correct, continue.

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Computer Backup Ensures Peace of Mind for Your Blog Income

Mar 8

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Miscellaneous | 6 Comments

If you value your blog income business – and you should – then you simply must backup everything that you have on your computer.  It will save you worry and needless hair tearing as well as gnashing of teeth.

A little over a week ago my dear old laptop that I called Big Money died.  Poof!  Gone!  Panic engulfed me as reboot after reboot failed.  Bluescreen, Fat 32 rebuild successful but the mouse would not cooperate and I could not log in!  My whole internet marketing life dwelled in that computer!  Life looked dismal.   Blog Income was dead.  I was dead.

After the initial shock I went shopping and got me a brand new snazzy looking Toshiba job.  The first thing that I liked was that the prices for PC laptops have really come down and boy, do they pack a lot more toys and whistles than dear old Big Money had!  But of course there were additional items to purchase, such as configuring the new darling – which I quickly christened Money Magnet – transferring everything from Big Money, a new office software package, Outlook which  I can’t live without, and of course the extended warranty plus those pesky taxes that the government seems to insist on.  Add it all up and the price of the  computer doubled!  Ouch!

Never mind – this one is called Money Magnet, ergo it will attract money, not like Big Money which didn’t quite get the gist of is moniker that it was supposed to MAKE, not cost, big money!

Granted at almost 5 years of loyal service Big Money had run its course but OMG!  Everything of any value rested in that sleek silver rectangular thing called a computer.  We had a relationship.  It had traveled the world with me.   All my courses including the videos, all the PDF’s that I downloaded, all my original work that has been published online as well as off, all my usernames and passwords!  They were all there!

I vowed that never, NEVER, again would I be so careless.  From here on in, I would backup everything and if you haven’t been backing up all your valuables then its time you do.

Job One:  Terrabyte external hard drives can now be had for under $100.  Another option is to backup everything in a cloud … new term for me too.  Basically what it means is that all your content can be stored somewhere out there in uber space, with the clouds sort of like self storage boxes in the sky.  There are free ones but as you need more and more storage room, you have to either upgrade to a paid version or open yet another one elsewhere – now we have clutter.

I was recently introduced to DropBox.  You get some free space and can increase that with referrals, or just bite the bullet and buy what you need – it can always be increased.  What I like about this system is that it is so user friendly for us non-tech types.  Just drag and drop.  I had a huge file that I wanted to share with my friend.  The attachment was way too big to send by email.  I was faced with either breaking it into several pieces or creating an online document that would be hyperlink downloadable. The notion of each option took me down into a tizzy downward spiral and I kept putting it off.

Dropbox to the rescue.

First I created a share file in my dropbox with my friend’s name.  Then I dragged the whole schmiel into that file and voila!  Just like that my friend had full access to the goods!  Check Dropbox out (yes, that is an affiliate link :-)

Job Two:
Create a document for all your products that need a username and password.  Yes, store them on your computer for ease of access but also up in that cloud or Dropbox.  Go low tech if you need to and write them down in a notebook along with other important data and put it somewhere safe. I actually did have a lot of my usernames and passwords in my little black book.

Job Three:
Keep your computer free of clutter.  It’s not just your closet that needs a good cleaning. Go over what you have on your computer.  Do you really need everything that you have there?  What about things that you downloaded years ago but have not even cracked open yet?  If you are still married to the thought that you will someday read those files move them over to your new storage in the sky.  My dear old Big Money got so bogged down with downloads that eventually I could not even defrag it as there was less than 15% free space (actually less than 5% which is a cardinal sin).  I started to toss things out but the space was slow in being freed up.   While at it go to all of your email accounts, or  your Outlook;  if you haven’t read it and the dateline is a month or older, be ruthless, be strong:  DELETE!  Ditto your “sent” and “junk” files

Des out at Affiliate Progress has some good suggestions on how to use Filezilla and FTP to back up all your sites as well.  Hop on over there.  He writes good stuff – makes tech seem like a cake walk.

Come to think of it – spring is a mere two weeks away.  That closet is getting rather full.  I am sure that there are clothes there that will never see the light of day again, at least not on me.  They belong to a different era – one that was slimmer!   Yeah.  Bundle them up and take them over to the local goodwill store!

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

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The Week That Was: Feb 22 – Mar 06

Mar 6

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Weekly Review | 2 Comments

Whoa!  That’s two weeks!

Yes.

Between Olympics, workshops and a computer that finally went to its final reward in the sky there was no “Week That Was” last weekend.

Got my new computer – a snazzy looking black lacquer Toshiba job with more space in it than I know what to do with. I could no longer defrag my dear old laptop because space available was below 15% – this one has 4 times as much space on the hard drive.  I know, over time that space will be filled too.  Oh nooo…. I will move lots of stuff for storage to a cloud, or buy an external hard drive. Or both.

Do you name your inanimate objects?  For example does your car have a name?  Mine doesn’t.  Several cars ago it did.  It was given a name by my daughter.  Her toys had names, she reasoned, so why wouldn’t a car.  Yes.  She still names her cars.

I name my computers.  Do you believe in the power of the word?  There has been a lot written about NLP (Nuero Linguistic Programming).  My dearly departed laptop had a name, I called it Big Money.  Perhaps my intentions weren’t clear.  The idea was that with the use of the laptop the Big Money truck would drive UP to my driveway but what happened was that it drove AWAY from my driveway.  I don’t regret it one bit though. The big money was spent on courses, so I chalk it up to education.  My brand spanking new laptop is named Money Magnet.  Do you think I did better this time?

So to the Weeks that Were – summary of posts published since my last weekly review.  If you haven’t read the post  in full these summaries give you a glimpse.  If one catches your attention hop on over and read the whole meal deal.   Comments are welcome and encouraged.

An Open Letter to Nathan Hangen – 22/02/10
I hang out at Nathan Hangen’s Blog.  I buy his products, the latest one being Beyond Blogging and am a great admirer of his but a recent post on his blog got my hackles up so I put on my boxing gloves and gave him the old one two in an open letter. He was OK with it.   To read what it was that got me in the ring with him and his reply, read the whole article which addresses blogging on blogging.

Blog Income To Go Under Knife – 23/02/10
At my regular   Monday night Internet Marketing Mastermind meeting, I had this blog critiqued.  There were lots of good suggestions.  The recurring theme of the comments suggested that it looked, well, a bit too cluttered.  I had already clued in to this and it was good to have my hunch confirmed.  Readers are encouraged to send in more suggestions.  Read the full Blog Income article.

Blog Income Month In Review: February 2010 01/03/10
Each month I review the results of this blog.  My current push is to increase traffic as I believe that all else will fall in from there.  Did I achieve my traffic goal for the month of February?  Yes.  Two valuable lessons learned which I think everyone can apply to their own blogging agenda.  For the full report just log on to Blog Income Month in Review

Twitter and All That Social Media Stuff
Spent two jam packed days learning about the basics of Social media at Matt Astifan’s Workshop.  We learned how to Twitter, all about Facebook and the importance of You Tube to internet marketing.  Am I an expert now?  Absolutely not.  Read about my experience and why I plan to play pretty with Twitter and other social media sites,

Is Centralizing Your Internet Marketing Services The Best Option?
When buying your services for your internet marketing business is it better to bundle and buy from a single provider or should you spread out and buy independently?  There are pros and cons for each.  Weigh in with your preference in the comments section.  Read full Centralizing Services article.

Alright!  We’re up to date!   Tomorrow: Sunday Morn Musings!

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Is Centralizing Your Internet Services The Best Option?

Mar 5

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Making Money, Miscellaneous, Random Thoughts | 9 Comments

Why would anyone ever want to deal with ten when one can handle all?  Central based management eliminates layers, promotes efficiency and peace of mind.

Well, call me a nutcase but I don’t buy into it.   For online as well as offline I like to decentralize and that’s true for my  personal as well as blog income business services.  It may mean a little more work but that’s the way I prefer it.  Centralizing in my view is surrendering unnecessary control and no, I am not a control freak (at least I don’t think so).  It’s the way my daddy brought me up and for good reason too!

This is a conversation I have had on and off for many years.  For the last few it seemed to have retired into a dormant state .  A few weeks ago it stirred, awoke and surfaced again and it just won’t go away.  I thought you might like to weigh in with your point of view on this – besides I’d love to know what your opinion on this subject is for while not exactly earth shattering it does impact every one of us in some way or another.

Central or regional management?  That has been an age old battle in the corporate world and depending on the trend, objectives of the company or the personal preference of the top man at any given time, companies have taken one route over the other suffering confusion, issues  of resentment, loyalty and trust in the transition.  It seems that when a company’s fortunes are  contracting the troops are reigned in, when fortunes  are on the rise employee empowerment becomes the modus operandi.

Centralized management may be an operative model for corporations and governments too, but I question its validity when it comes to You Inc., especially to those of us who are on the internet to earn an online income.  The issues are small, but then as you grow so will the issues.

There is a school of thought that subscribes to centralizing as much of your internet marketing as possible.  Some of the biggest names support the concept.  Bundle up as many services and buy them through one provider whenever you can.    The obvious pro for such a system is that you have everything ready in one spot, don’t have to go looking for things – they are all there under one roof, so ease of access and efficiency rule.

But I prefer to purchase my services independently rather than bundled and directly from the vendor if possible.  My father was a business man.  Historically my family have had to fly by the seat of their pants – long story but it began in 1917 in Russia when the Russian Tzar lost his country and his life, whilst my grandparents on both sides merely lost their country.   So this might be taking it to the extremes but my father often told me that how not having all the family eggs in one basket enabled them to first make a life in China then Japan eventually Australia … and then here I am, in Canada!

What I learned at my father’s knees was that one should not give up control over that which is yours.  So I come by this bullheadedness quite honestly.  At the most basic level of my blog income business I buy the following services separately:

-         DOMAINS: I use a broker, Go Daddy, even though I may be paying a bit more than if I used another broker because amongst other things, I find their services and support to be outstanding.  No Go Daddy is not the actual registrar of domains and to be honest, I,m not sure but I don’t think that you can buy domain names directly from the registrar.

-          HOSTING: I could, but don’t, have Go Daddy host my sites, instead I use Hostgator.  Hosting is their specialty and once again I have found that their support has been exceptional.  On the reverse side, I could but do not buy my domain names through Hostgator.

-          BLOG PLATFORM:  I choose to use WordPress Direct.  This is a second layer, if you will, on WordPress.  This appears to be contradictory to my mantra of buying direct from the service provider.  I have good reason.  For someone like myself who is not the best at tech type stuff (and not wanting to be a master of all) I like this platform because they offer full support.  They do the initial heavy lifting but I still have direct access to the back end admin area of WordPress.  Once again I could but do not use Go Daddy as my site platform.

What if I had decided to use Go Daddy as my one stop shop for the above three services and something went wrong.   I don’t just mean that Go Daddy would go down.  An extremely successful internet marketer I know had come to some sort of an impasse with his domain broker.  The breakup was not pleasant.  Imagine the additional work he would have had to go to move his many, many sites from the domain broker’s basket   Fortunately, he subscribes to the same principles that I do.  All he needed to do was move all his domains to another broker.  The adjustments were minimal.

I have spoken with people who bought their domains through their hosting service.  The hosting service disappeared.  They had no idea how to recover their domains. Moreover it was not clear if it was the host company or themselves who were registered as the owners of the domains.  Eventually after much hair tearing they were able to find the domains and come to a happy conclusion .   In my instance, should Hostgator run into difficulties I know  that my domain names are not affected.

This is just an example.   It is obviously over simplified.  I use it to illustrate my point.

As you begin to earn more and more from your online business you will want to outsource some of the daily tasks.  What are your thoughts on this?  Would you prefer to centralize, appoint a company to handle the many aspects of your business and just deal with one person?  Or … would you rather select individuals who specialize in certain tasks and have them report to you?    Which model do you think is better suited for you?  Why?

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Blog Income Month in Review – February 2010

Mar 1

Posted by Valentina in Internet Marketing, Mastermind, Month in Review | 13 Comments

What a month!  Where do I begin?

How about starting with the end?  The Olympics.

The Olympics Closing Ceremony was on the last day of the month – yesterday.  We in Vancouver had the distinct honor of hosting the world to the 2010 Winter Olympics.  What an exhilarating experience that was!  I have to admit that many a time I absented myself from my computer and spent the hours glued to the TV, watching as the best of the best squared off each other for that most desired of metals – gold!

There is so much I could write about these 17 days.  As always I am amazed at the strikingly small difference between the finalist and the last – fractions of seconds.  That would beg the question that perhaps this is just a crapshoot, that on any given day the last place athlete could just as easily be a first  place finish.  But then you need to look deeper – and when you look at the performance of each athlete at world class events leading up to the 0lympics, the results have typically been consistant across the board.  Top three almost always place top three.   It makes me think that the athletes have the same potential, their talent is outstanding – so what is it that makes the ultimate difference?  That would make for a good topic for a Sunday Morn Musings … and perhaps it is something that we internet marketers could take a page from.

And speaking of which, there was no Sunday Morn Musings this week!  Nor was there a The Week that Was.  For that matter there were precious few posts in February (just 15) and only 2 in the last week!

You know how they say that the road to hell is paved with intentions – and they do.  My intentions were to post on Saturday and Sunday.  Early Saturday morning my trusty albeit museum vintage laptop expired!   Yup!  It just died!  Now I have to admit that this was not as sudden as I would like to believe, for several weeks now Dear Laptop had been giving me clues that it was not long for this world, and after four and half years of loyal service with no breakdowns or glitches of any sort it wasn’t just being capricious, its just that I was  hoping that it could last another month or two – or miraculously six!

Have you ever spent a whole two days without internet?  Addiction is one thing – but the falling behind in everything is another and most frustrating.  The good thing is that I now have an awesome machine that is sooooo much faster, has lots more bells and whistles and my goodness!  Have the prices of PC’s come down!  I had a MAC as my next machine but with a difference of $2000 for the time being I thought that sum would be better put to use for marketing and earning shekels … another time cher MAC!

I have to say that I am grateful that Dear Old Laptop performed well during the two-day workshop I attended on Thursday and Friday.  Matt Astifan from my Monday Night Internet Marketing Mastermind which I mentioned in my Power of Mastermind series put on an excellent workshop on social media (more about that in the future) otherwise I would have been up the proverbial creek!

One thing about brand new computers – it takes time to get used to the new programs, the idiosyncrocies if you will.  On my old computer I had Gadwin for my printscreens.  I downloaded it here so that I could include the screen shots of my February results.  For some reason it isn’t working in the way it did – it captures everything including tool bars at the top and the sidebars.  I am sure there is a way to capture only that which is relevant, but it will probably take time.  So I’ll just give you the results below along with my comments.

#1.  Traffic:  Visits:  475 – up from 360 for January which is a healthy 36.89% .  My goal is to increase traffic by  10% – 20% each month.

#2.  Search engines delivered 5.68% of the traffic.  You may recall in my January report that SE had fallen to below 1%!   So the move up to almost 6% is encouraging.

#3.  Alexa moved up from 404,842 to 307,910.  I know that there are those who put little stock into Alexa rankings, but it is still a measure that is taken into account when the value of your website/blog is assessed – you can charge more for ads, you can sell your site/blog for more, and besides, I accepted Sam’s  Alexa Challenge at Financial Samurai to reach a ranking of under 200K by July.  Remember, with Alexa, the lower the number the better.

Lessons learned:

#1.  Publish.  Publish,  Publish.
For blogs still trying to establish themselves, daily posts make a big difference in traffic.  I have noticed that on the days that I have new content the visitors increase.  Most successful bloggers do not scale back their publishing from daily until they are well established with the search engines and have amassed a good loyal following.  Some stay with the dailies, think Darren Rowse of Problogger

#2.  Carry Inventory
Have a stash of articles ready to publish for those times when other activities (Olympics) divert your attention from your business. Carlos  Velez of Conscious Me wrote an excellent two part article over at Website In a Weekend –  Benefits of Prewriting and he’s also thrown out a Prewriting Challenge.

What’s Up for March?
My focus continues on traffic – that will be a recurring theme not only for this quarter but for the year as a whole.
- Staying within the 20% growth per month, that would be 570 – so I’ll stretch that to 600+ in traffic
- Gee, wouldn’t it be great to reach the under 200K Alexa by end of March?  Lets see how close I can get to that.
- Finally, definitely, increase frequency of posts, in February the trend was 1 for each two days – well if I can make that 1 per 1.5 days it would make a huge difference.
- Put into practice some of what I learned on social media at Matt’s workshop.

That’s it folks!

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

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An Open Letter to Nathan Hangen

Feb 22

Posted by Valentina in Blogging for Money, Internet Marketing, Miscellaneous | 17 Comments

Nathan, dear boy, I love you  – honest I do.

I buy your products and visit your blog often but a recent post of yours  got my hackles up.  In your post of Feb 09 “Where 99% of Bloggers Go Wrong” you pulled no punches and pretty much told those of us who are blogging about blogging to pack it up.  The topic has been done to death and extremely well by uber bloggers who cut their chops on this subject and have entrenched themselves as experts for life.  They hold top positions and rankings with all the major search engines for just about every keyword associated with earning an online income and its not likely that any new blogger can add value or anything new to that which has already been written about in every which way except Sunday.

The “A” Listers have got it in spades and who are we to think that our humble efforts would ever see the light of day or  receive the blessings of Google and rub shoulder with the likes of Darren Rowse , Yaro Starak or John Chow – just to name a few.

Whew!  Nathan, you might be right.

That’s a lot of humble pie to eat.

But not so fast my boy.  At the risk of offending someone I admire – yes, you Nathan  here are my two cents worth, a retort if you will:

I am a “Z”Lister – no, you know what, make that a “Y” Lister (recently promoted myself).  I am a shameless hussy climbing the ladder to success and I notice that there are other aspiring bloggers blogging on blogging who are riders on the up escalator ahead of me.  I notice that they have good rankings of PR3 & PR4, and even PR5 with Alexa’s below the 100K mark.  That escalator is pretty crowded but my faves are:

Glen Alsopp of Viper Chill

Dave Doolin of Website in a Weekend

Gabe Young of Free Blog Help

Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income

Caroline Middlebrook of Caroline Middlebrook

There are plenty more and they all provide some valuable info.  Granted some of the above are not exactly wet behind the ears when it comes to internet marketing, and they brandish some sharp cyber smarts, but for all intents and purposes their blogs on blogging are.

I have learned a lot from these potential usurpers to the number one spot which is not to say that I have not learned from the current reigning kings.  But here are the reasons I like to visit the “new” blogs:

  1. Inspiring.
    I can relate to these dudes.  Yes, they are ahead of me but not so far that I need to genuflect at the altar of their blog.  If they can be where they are in less than 2 years, and in Gabe’s case less than half a year, glory be.
  2. Timely Information.
    Yes.  I can visit the uber bloggers blogs and go through their archives for content that is relevant to where I currently am in my blogging career.  But quite honestly, that content is somewhat wilted by now.   I realize and recognize that the basic info hasn’t changed, but I like the fresh approach that the new lot is bringing to the make money online market.  They are not so far ahead that I have to dig into back issues to understand what they are talking about.
  3. Fresh Perspective
    Did I mention fresh approach?  No matter how grand the symphony a young conductor can infuse it with a new richness, a new energy, show a side that the audience may not have heard in quite that way before.  I also think of the new covers being recorded by no-name artists of the Beattles classics – and you know what?  Great as the originals are, the covers are smokin’
  4. Community
    No offence here but what are the chances that a fledgling like myself would ever be noticed by oh say the likes of Darren Rowse (hey I like the guy and have opted in for the membership).  Those lower down the food chain still have the luxury of being able to mingle with us babes in swaddling clothes and actually helping us – they reciprocate with visits to our sites and leave valuable comments, they private message us with helpful suggestions, they give of their time in a way that the A Listers cannot if for no other reason than that logistics just get in the way.
  5. Potential Alliances
    Just like the A Listers, this new lot is active and aggressive – they have products in the pipeline, we mere PR oners do too.  Can we ride on their coattails?  You betcha!  Can we form strong strategic alliances?  Ditto.  Can we eventually look to joint venture partnerships?  You bet your sweet bippy we can!

I don’t know why the current upwardly mobile bloggers blogging about blogging  got into that saturated niche.  My guess is that they felt it isn’t so saturated after all, that they had something of value to say.  Maybe they’re just an ornery lot who look at the face of impossibility, stare it down and grapple it to the ground.  I dunno know but I thank them.

I do know why I got this market.  Actually I was visiting Caroline Middlebrook one day and noticed that she was just blogging about her experience in blogging, talking about her success and failures and things to fix and so on.  I thought that was rather brave of her – moreover I liked her online voice, felt the sincerity and thought, hey, I can do that too.  Yup!  I quickly appropriated the idea and wrote and told her so.

By blogging about blogging, or at least my trials and tribulations and ultimate small granules of success I have learned things I probably never would have otherwise.  You see, I had been trying to get into the internet marketing arena for some time (well at least two years prior) and took course upon course.  In retrospect some of those courses were damn good, but honestly, I wasn’t fully up to them.  Almost without exception the early chapters were easy (they seemed to get easier with each course) but within a short period of time the eyes would glaze over and the brain would go on strike.

I thought about that and about Caroline and came to the conclusion that blogging would be the best way to put into practice that which I know – and I felt I knew plenty after all the credit card statements supported that feeling.  So I began my blog about blogging.

By applying things I knew I found holes.  Moreover, now that I was writing something, I had to do some checking to make sure that what I was saying was indeed so.  My atrophied internet marketing muscles began to gather strength.  I have laid a foundation, one that I can now build on.  I have launched other “niche” blogs which blush, yes, do bring in some shekels, but it is this blog that I look to as my flagship.  It is this blog that makes the others possible.

From this blog I learn.  It is my practicum.  Along the way I hope that my experiences are relevant to bloggers newer than I, that my content is helpful to them.  Because of my newbie status I still speak in a language that is devoid of blogspeak although I have caught myself drifting that way occasionally.  I am still at that place of my blog career that fledglings can look at me and say “I have a chance.”  And that is all I want.  It is a right of passage – maybe we will never sit side by side with the Darrens and Yaros and John’s, but we’ll have learned a hell of a lot by trying.

Nathan, forever your admirer …………..

Valentina

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