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Archive for August, 2009

A Guest Post by Pamela Wilson from WriteSmart.

When I was a second-year cadet journalist on an Australian newspaper, my chief-of-staff gave me a coveted assignment. ‘I need you to interview Australian cricket captain Allan Border for a story about daylight savings,’ he said.
 
I grabbed my pen and notebook (both sporting L-plates) and reached for the phone, but in my heart I knew the esteemed Allan Border would never speak to a cub reporter about daylight savings.
 
I made a few phone calls anyway and discovered he was playing in the Sheffield Match in South Australia at the time. I was convinced now; there was no way he was going to interrupt a cricket match to talk to me.
 
Like a dog with a month-old bone, however, I called the Adelaide Oval and was put through to a young guy in the change-rooms. ‘Sure, you can talk to Allan. Here he comes now, he’s just finished batting,’ he said.
 
Picking myself up off the floor and stifling a swear word I promised my Grade 10 teacher I would never repeat, I racked my brain for what to say. You see, I had been so convinced I wouldn’t get to speak to Allan Border that I hadn’t done a scrap of research, nor prepared a single question.
 
Had I done the research I would have known that he was 3-1/2 years into what would be a four-year Test century drought for him, and I would never, ever, ever have said what I said next. (In my defence, though, I could never have known he had literally, 30 seconds prior to taking my call, got out for a duck.)
 
Before I had time to collect my thoughts he was on the other end of the phone, ‘Hello, Allan speaking.’ My brain went numb. I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Ummmmm, how’s your batting going?”
 
The silence was spine-chilling. Finally he said, “Are you taking the p&%* out of me?” So, I had committed an atrocious faux pas and had offended the esteemed Allan Border. But he was so gracious and, in the end, I got the page three lead anyway.
 
But in that moment when one of the world’s greatest all-time cricketers swore at me, I resolved to change my work ethic and my attitude. (But let’s face it, I don’t regret it; it gave me a darn good story that I intend to repeat to anyone who’ll listen until my dying day.)
 
From that one exchange I learned the true value of preparation and planning. These days, as a writer and very eager blogger, I strictly follow the formula touted in the popular business mantra, The Five Ps. There are a number of versions of this mantra, but I like the one that says Preparation, Planning and Practice = Perfect Performance. (I also chuck in a sixth p – passion.)
 
We cannot hope to succeed in any new venture that we attempt if we are don’t plan, prepare and put in the effort to practice our new-found skills. When I first started the WriteSmart blog I was very tempted to just begin scratching away at my computer keyboard on some half-baked post idea. But Allan Border’s dismayed question popped into my head and I took a step back. I began searching respected blog sites; I read for hours about the keys to writing compelling blog content; and I trawled through successful blogs to see how those authors did it.
 
I had been a journalist for 18 years, but I wrote for newspapers, magazines and online news sites. Blogs were a whole new genre with a completely new readership. So I munched on a slice of humble pie and sought the advice and experience of those who had helped blogging evolve into a respected genre all of its own.
 
To that end, these are the top P tips I employ in my endeavours as a blogger:
 

1. Prepare

If you are new to blogging, don’t start sprinting until you have learned how to crawl, toddle and walk-without-falling-down first. Learn all that you can about how to blog well by those who are doing it successfully. You will save yourself a lot of time and, ultimately, create a better quality product from the outset. With respect to writing posts, research the topic if you are not already an expert. Google, go to a library, interview the experts.

2. Plan

Who are you blogging for? Who is your target audience? What sort of posts do you intend to write? If you don’t plan, you may soon discover there is no central theme connecting your posts. Without a central theme, your posts may be relevant to your readers only some of the time. You want your posts to be relevant to your readers all of the time so that they don’t tune out.

3. Practice

Write, write, write. It is no secret that with practice, everyone’s skills improve. As a blogger, your main tool (yes, besides YouTube) is your ability to succinctly string words together to form engaging, creative, funny, informative sentences. So, start writing, keep writing, practice writing.

Passion

If you take to the computer like a kid takes to brussel sprouts, something has to change. You need to inject into your blogging whatever it is that you do love. Perhaps you have started a blog that centres on a topic you don’t particularly like. If so, don’t chuck it in, just change it to something that will excite and engage you. Consider changing the look of your blog to a design that is more appealing to you. Set some goals you can aim for as motivators. You have got to enjoy what you are doing. If you don’t, think about ways to change it so you do.
 
So, when you next sit down to write your blog think ‘Preparation, Planning, Practice and Passion = Perfect Performance’. If you do, you greatly reduce the risk of world-class sportsmen uttering obscenities at you.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How I Offended Former Australian Cricket Captain Allan Border… and Why that Makes me a Better Blogger Today

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You Served is a blog and podcast for anyone involved in, affected or just interested in the military, from current soldiers, and their families to veterans. They have posts on everything from current happenings all around the world to widows jumping out of airplanes.

So if you have loved ones in the armed forces or just want to know what’s happening check out youserved.com

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

You Served – Free shirt Friday

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Coming back from my failed attempted to ride the Canada Line, I noticed a very big 225 feet long boat docked on Lonsdale Quay. A closer look showed the name Attessa on the side. I was confused by this because I know the Attessa and it wasn’t this big. Turns out that the official name for the yacht was Attessa III and it belongs to Dennis Washington, who used to own Attessa 1 and 2. Most yacht people will know the original Attessa as the yacht used in the movie Indecent Proposal with Robert Redford and Demi Moore (it wasn’t call Attessa in the movie).

Attessa III was built the same way Attessa I and Attessa II were. They started out as used boats with another name that Washington bought and had retrofitted and enlarged. In the case of Attessa III, it started life as the Aviva. The Aviva was damaged in a fire when Washington bought her. He sent the boat to his shipyard in Vancouver for a complete makeover. Aviva was gutted, redesigned, rebuilt and lengthen 20 feet to create Attessa III. The end result is impressive to the say the least. The yacht is stunningly beautiful.

Normally, Attessa carries a helicopter on its top deck but it wasn’t there on the day I saw it. Other features include a couple of tenders, jet skis, a glass-topped breakfast bar and 55′x31′ sundeck. Attessa III is ranked number 64 on the list of world’s largest yachts.

You like it? Well, she might be for sale soon. Washington is currently working on Attessa IV. When that comes out, Attessa III will most likely go on the market. Better start saving those pennies!

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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Some weeks ago I came across an interesting post on Blogging Tips titled 5 Quick Ways to Improve Your Blog. It basically lists improvements that you can perform on your blog without spending too much time. Here is the first point:

5. Tweak Your Theme

You might not have the time you need to overhaul your theme completely, but what about tweaking it a bit? Why not see if you can improve your site’s typography, thus making your text easier to read? Maybe it’s time for a better logo?

Check out the original article for the other four points. The weekend is coming, and it could be a good time run some of those small tweaks.

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My name is Johnny Truant, and I am a comment addict.

A large amount of my self-worth as a blogger is defined not by my traffic, or readership, or income, or buzz. It’s defined by the relatively meaningless number below each post that counts the people who fill out a form and click Submit.

On a gut level, I think I’d be more satisfied by a mediocre post that generated 100 fluff comments than a really good one that generated 5 meaningful comments. I like and need that hollow validation. I crave it in the same way I get a charge out of watching my Twitter Grade improve and my Tweet Nuts grow.

The good news? I know how to feed that addiction. In this post, I’ll give you a guaranteed way to get more comments from your readers.

The bad news? Pretty much by definition, it’s going to make you uncomfortable.

Here’s why: you have to confess.

Confessions Get Comments

Making a high number of comments a higher priority than business or genuine interaction is kind of stupid. Any consultant worth her salt should be gunning to kick me in the groin until I came to my senses. By making this confession, I’m opening myself up to looking pretty dumb.

Yet my guess is that I’m not the only person here who feels this way. I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe . . . umm . . . you have the same addiction too? In fact, I bet you’re itching to chime in and confess to your own comment-lust by. . . commenting on this post.

Maybe you can see where this is going.

The problem with most blogs and most bloggers is that they’re playing it safe. They’re just “reporting” on things, playing by the rules of what a person should and shouldn’t say in public. If you can buck that trend and talk about what others are feeling but won’t admit, you’ll draw a reaction. Opening up, especially when it’s uncomfortable, will get you more comments.

Here’s Proof

Let’s take me as a case study. Here are my three most commented-on posts:

• The post in which I admitted I’m really an uncool geek.
• The post in which I admitted that I am intentionally ignorant of all world events.
• The post in which I admitted that I was having some financial “challenges” and was mad, scared, and absolutely out of my head about it.

These posts aren’t entirely appropriate. They each cop to something that a normal person shouldn’t admit, but that nonetheless, a normal person is likely to feel. In other words, they’re nakedly human. And because it’s mainly humans who read my blog, the “human” aspect has some appeal.

How to Get More Comments

So, you want more comments? Here’s how you do it:

1. Think of something that you feel or that is bothering/affecting you, but which you are reluctant to talk about.
2. Ask yourself if other people are likely to identify with it or to feel the same thing, but are similarly reluctant to admit it. There’s little point to confessing to something that only you feel. (So for instance, perhaps you have a deep desire to rub yourself with rats. It seems unlikely that others will share this desire. But maybe that’s me. Maybe I’m out of touch.)
3. Make your confession, showing yourself in full, naked glory.
4. Watch the comments roll in.

This works because everyone has foibles, but most people are too preoccupied with looking “correct” or “professional” to discuss them. By finding and talking about these “elephant in the room” topics, you’re being brave on behalf of your readers. You’re being the first person to say what everyone is thinking, but which everyone is afraid to admit. You’re giving them permission to feel the same way, to discuss it, to admit it in kind.

But Isn’t It Scary?

Sure.

Each time I published one of the above confessions, my first thoughts were, “You moron! What have you done?” I expected to pull up FeedBurner and see my subscriber count having dropped to zero. That’s what you get when you expose your innermost weaknesses, right?

Well, apparently not. Those posts picked up a combined 211 comments, by far the most in the history of my blog. Since then, I’ve also had a deeper, more genuine connection with my readers. Now I can’t imagine going back to everyone not knowing how I feel.

For a medium that’s supposed to be social, sometimes the blogosphere is awfully cold. We feel like we have to puff ourselves up, as if no one would ever read our blog unless they believe we are better than they are. As a result, our blog reads like a corporate memo.

But what people really want, I think, is a friend. Not some know-it-all who pretends to like you just so he can make a sale, but a living, breathing human being who is just as screwed up as you are and isn’t afraid to admit it.

Know what I mean?

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant is the creator of Zero to Business: A ridiculously simple guide to turning your online business from tech headache to profit center and reluctantly confesses to enjoying reruns of Sex in the City.

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Webinar: Twitter for Marketing and PR

Become a Fan on Facebook Get inside info and advance notice of HubSpot’s free marketing webinars, ebooks and more. Click here –>

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Posted by great scott!

It’s a common dilemma: When the engines constantly cry ‘content! content! content!’ you can start to wonder, "just how am I supposed to keep generating all of this unique content?"  A daunting challenge to be sure, especially for large sites with high-volume pipelines to fill.

In this week’s Whiteboard Friday Rand takes a look at the three major content classifications – editorial, machine-built, and user-generated – to help you understand what exactly qualifies as "unique" content, why it’s important to your site, and strategies you can use to generate it. Enjoy!

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Generating Unique Content from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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If you’re in Melbourne Australia (or can get here) on 22-23 September you should check out the Marketing Now conference. I’ve mentioned it previously but since doing so there have been some changes.

Previously this conference was $1000+ to attend – the organizers were going to donate the profits to charity. However they’ve rethought things and have decided to go with a new approach. It’s now FREE – on the condition that you make a $100 donation to charity.

The speaker list is pretty cool and the agenda is one that I think many will find useful.

I think it’s going to be a great couple of days and am really looking forward to being a part of it. I’m also excited that it’s now much more accessible pricing wise and that from what I can see on Twitter the numbers are going to be quite large as a result.

I also think that it’s great that this conference is all about raising money for charity – I’m donating my time to speak and am excited to see the local blogosphere and social media networks joining together to make a difference – whilst also learning from one another.

I hope you can join me!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Aussies! Join Me at MarketingNow Conference in Melbourne [Now FREE]

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A guest post by Andrew Hansen from http://1000NewVisitors.com

If you’re a new blogger, particularly one who’s looking to make money from your blog you’ll know that generating traffic to your blog is, at least initially, priority number one.

But something that gets talked about much less is generating the right kind of traffic to your blog. When I say the “right kind” of traffic, I mean, the kind of traffic that is going to generate revenue. This is one step above “targeted traffic”, this is “money traffic”.

For many bloggers, the thought of trying hard to bring the kind of visitors to your blog that are going to be the most likely to make you money, is a little too “marketer-like”. But as we’re going to see in this post, it’s easy to attract the kind of visitors that are going to make you money while at the same time providing the high quality and value in your blog posts that you always do.

First, let’s answer the question:

What Are “Money Visitors”?

Regardless of the niche your blog is in, it’s likely that it has certain little sects or groups of people that are more likely to buy things than others. (Note that the reason I say this is that whether you’re monetizing your blog with ads or affiliate offers, it’s the people who buy things that are, at the end of the day, going to make your blog profitable.) Identifying those little sects within your niche and occasionally writing something to suit them can unlock hidden profit potential within your blog.

For example, say you have a photography blog. Let’s say some people found your blog online somewhere as they were searching or browsing for pictures of pretty sunsets. Another group of people found your blog while they were searching for a particular model of camera that they were thinking of buying.

In a monetary sense, while both groups represent traffic to your blog, the latter group is more likely to result in income for you, if you know how to leverage it. Those are “money visitors”.

Finding YOUR “Money Visitors”

More or less every niche has it’s “money visitors”. Your job is to locate the sects in your niche, to which you feel like you could provide quality information. It’s by providing information to those money sects, that your blog will become more profitable.

So how do you find your “Money Visitors”?

It starts with a little brainstorming and it helps if the niche you’re in is something you’re interested in personally. Start by asking questions like:

“What do people in this niche spend money on?”, or…
“What do I, as someone interested in this subject, spend money on?”

It’s easier than it sounds. If your niche is dog lovers, they spend money on dog collars, dog toys, dog food, dog beds, dog insurance… and the list goes on.

If the niche is photography, they spend money on cameras, lenses, holidays on which they take photos, and of course plenty more…

Once you have some ideas, you can get into some good old fashion search analytics (not complicated, don’t worry!)

You can take one of the terms you found above (let’s say it’s dog collars) and type it into the search tool at:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

And see what you find. This tells us that people are out there on the Internet looking for information about these dog collars. And in some ways this is representative of the Internet as a whole. I mean if there are 10 000 people searching for “leather dog collar” in Google, we can safely assume that there are at least some people on social networks, dog lover forums, or other blogs that have a similar interest or intent.

So you scan the list of “dog collar” type terms that people are looking for.

If there’s something there that you think you know about or at least, could know about with a little research, you’re in luck. There’s no limit to the number of these little sects that you can find and capitalize on to make your blog more profitable.

Turning Visitors Into Profit

Now that you’ve found these sects of people that are looking to spend money in your niche market, how do you:

1. Bring them to your site; and
2. Provide them value and perhaps make money from them.

First you scan your list of dog collar “sects”.

Is there anything here that you can write about? Is there any existing content you have on your blog where you could include some info on any of these collar terms and provide an affiliate offer? (searching for a relevant affiliate offer is a little outside the scope of this post). If so, you’re in luck again!

Next, you need to go about doing some search optimization around these terms to attract visitors who might be looking for that particular dog collar or some variation of it.

This can be as simple as making a couple of mentions of the keyword in your post, or as full on as writing a new blog post targeted just to that keyword (this might involve having the keyword in the blog post title, using a wordpress plugin like All in One SEO to make sure the keyword is in the description and keyword tags of that post, and so on). You can even make mention of that post in another blog post of yours, linking to the post with the anchor text “leather dog collar” (or whatever the keyword is you’re trying to target) to build internal links to that post with the keyword you’re trying to rank for.

Then it’s just a matter of finding an affiliate program for a shop that sells some leather dog collars, and slot in a text link or a banner to it, and you’ve increased your profit potential significantly.

Scaling It Up

The great thing about this as a blog profit strategy is that it’s very scalable. Once you’ve found some money sects and worked out how to tailor some content to them and have it rank in the engines (like anything good, it’ll take some time and effort) you can do the same thing for new “money sects” as often as you have time.

If you wrote about dog collars one week, you can write about dog food the next week, dog training guides the next week and so on.

You don’t have to be a big salesman on your blog to increase it’s revenue. By throwing a bit of content out every now and then for your “money visitors” you’ll make sizable increases in the profitability of your blog and increase your readers happiness while doing it.

Andrew Hansen is a blogging an affiliate marketing strategist, CEO of Dreamlife Softwares and blogger at AndrewHansen.name. His free report at http://1000NewVisitors.com shows bloggers how to generate 1000’s of new “money visitors” to their blogs every month without spending a fortune in the process.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Attracting “Money Traffic” To Your Blog

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Man I can’t believe the amount of coverage my case study on cash for clunkers has been getting. Its quite humbling. I have been contacted by a number of major media outlets about how the local affiliate program works and have seen the link shared quite a bit on twitter and other social networks. You guys rock!!

MySpace even reached out and asked me if there was anything they could do for our readers. I gave them some honest feedback- Every new user was super grateful for the free $75 they are offering to get started ( code SHOE75 ) but there are a lot of existing users that were disappointed that they could not get free money also to play around with in the MySpace MyAds system.

They told me they have never, ever, given incentives to existing users (and honestly I have never seen any platform ever do this before) but they would be willing to do this for ShoeMoney readers!

All you have to do is email them myads@myspace.com and give them your account name (login), first and last name and tell them you were referred by ShoeMoney and the MyAds team will hook you up with a $50 advertising credit.

They are only making this offer good until this Friday at midnight PST so get on it!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

$75 Myspace Myads Coupon For New Users and $50 For Existing

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