www.fastcompany.com12/3/11

Micha Kaufman, who with Shai Wininger co-founded Tel Aviv’s Fiverr.com, a site where people sign up to do odd jobs or services (called “gigs”) for five bucks a pop, remembers receiving a package at the company …
THE DEVIL WEARS FIVERR | WSO Shop

www.wsoshop.com5/21/11

This WSO is designed to show you a system that is right in front of your nose (and that some people have hinted at… but never expanded on) but most people aren’t using. I can’t wait to see how you implement it once you understand what’s …

Networked Politics » Blog Archive » Can Fiverr Help You?

www.networked-politics.info12/8/11

Have you heard of the internet site Fiverr? Fiverr is a site that is established to help individuals earn fast and easy money. Providers submit advertisements for services that they’re prepared to do quickly and for five dollars. …

WriteAndCorrect.com » Will Fiverr Work For You?

writeandcorrect.com12/8/11

Have you ever before visited Fiverr? Fiverr is a client/provider site that has been designed to help people earn quick money. People post what exactly that they can do swiftly and are willing to do for just a few dollars. …

Making Money Using Fiverr | doartchina.com

www.doartchina.com12/7/11

Want to make money but don't know how? Here is one simple way anyone can make money: Fiverr.com Fiverr is actually a site where you are able to offer all kinds.

Here is Blog Tyrant’s review of Pop up Domination. I think all marketers need to understand how powerful this type of plugin can be from a list building perspective. I think pop ups in general have a reputation of being spammy, going all the way back to late 90′s and early 00′s. You remember what I am talking about all of those pop up ads that would begin to pop up on your desktop, usually after visiting a more then questionable web page. Anyhow as you will see in BT’s blog post below Pop Up Dominiation is not spammy, it has a very polished, refined look, it is easy to close not to alter user experience too much and it doesn’t pop up on anyone’s desktop after they leave your website or anything like that. If you do not understand anything else about the potential of this plugin, please grab ahold of the increase in subscribers that he received due to this one plugin. He received around 2000 new subscribers in 2 months, in case you are wondering that has the potential to bring any marketer a quite significant residual income!

 
photo credit: JD Hancock

So I’ve been using Pop Up Domination here on Blog Tyrant for a few months now and decided it was high time I did a review. A lot of people ask me about how well it works and whether I would recommend it to my readers.

Let me start by saying that in the last two months the pop up ad you see on this site has landed me 1663 subscribers. Nothing to laugh at.

In this review I am going to show you how Pop Up Domination works, its features and tools and then tell you what I really think about pop up ads on blogs.

NOTE: This is not a paid review. I have never done and will never do a paid review on Blog Tyrant. I only recommend things to you if I really believe in them. The links in this post are affiliate links so if you purchase after clicking here I will earn a small commission.

This is a screen shot from my Aweber account that shows you the stats for the pop up ad that is displayed on this site. Now, this is actually not as accurate as it could be because I reset the stats quite regularly. In truth the pop up normally performs a lot better.

So, you can see the pop up has been displayed 63,813 times and been submitted (meaning someone signed up) 1663 times.

The next number is 2.6% which shows you the conversion rate. Normally that conversion rate is between 6% and 10% making it one of the highest converting forms on Blog Tyrant.

Let me also remind you that these stats are only for the last two months since I rest the stats and changed the form copy.

ANOTHER NOTE: I blanked out the other stats for two reasons. Firstly, to emphasize the relevant pop up one and, secondly, because I am publishing a huge article about the rest of those stats and how to increase conversions early next year.

Pop Up Domination is a plugin that works on WordPress blogs and HTML websites that allows you to create beautiful pop up ads that you then use to capture more email subscribers.

Let me start by showing you a few of the features that you get with this plugin:

1. Super simple, beginner-friendly set up area
The first thing you will notice about this plugin is that there is no coding or anything like that. Once you install it you get a little editor area where you can add your text, eBook images, choose your theme, etc. I was actually quite surprised at how easy this thing is to set up.

2. A bunch of themes and colors to choose from
The next cool thing about this plugin is that you get a bunch of well designed pop up ads to choose from. You don’t have to do any designing yourself, you simply select one of the ones that are built in and away you go. Here are a few screen shots of the designs that you can choose from.

Sign up area on the right with an image of your eBook. Dot points work well for attracting interest.

No eBook image but a smaller and more streamlined design.

Sidebar sign up area but no eBook image.

My weapon of choice! A super large pop up area with the eBook and a lot of room for information.

Once you select a design template that you like you can then change all of the text, images and even color scheme. For example, on Blog Tyrant I use a gold color because it fits in with the branding of my scepter and headings.

3. Works with Aweber and Mailchimp
One of the big questions people ask me about Pop Up Domination is whether or not it works with both Aweber and Mailchimp.

Now, as you know I am a big fan of Aweber and use them to deliver my free eBook as well as all the blog updates and newsletter items. Recently, however, I had to use Mail Chimp for a client and found it totally amazing, fun and easy to use. I fell in love with their service. I finally see what all my readers were on about!

So yes, Pop Up Domination allows you to use your sign up code from either services. No dramas at all.

4. Ability to schedule the pop up
Now, this is the most important feature in my opinion; the ability to tell the pop up when it is and isn’t allowed to appear to your readers. This is so important if you don’t want to piss everyone off.

Basically what it let’s you do is choose a time delay for how long a reader has to be on the site before they see the pop up. I have chosen 10 seconds for this because I like to let first time readers see a bit of my content before I whack them with the advert. Some bloggers, however, like to set this to appear straight away. Darren Rowse over on DPS has it set to almost 30 seconds I reckon. He says it works well.

You can also tell the pop up to appear again after a certain number of days if they didn’t sign up the first time. I like to set this feature to 30 as I think the pop up can become annoying if it is shown every week or even twice a week. The point here is that you have the ability to change and test all of these settings for yourself.

5. Inbuilt statistics
The latest version of this plugin also has inbuilt stats that let you see a whole bunch of data about what is working and what is failing with your pop up design. This is really important to me because, like I have said a million times, the money is in the mailing list. The more people you can capture with powerful tools like this the greater chance you have of making that full time living from your blog.

6. Ability to show different ads to different pages
Now this is where the word sexy really isn’t strong enough. As a group of budding young internet marketers I am sure you will appreciate this feature.

You can show different pop ups to different parts of your site!

This gives you the ability to tailor your messages to the audience at hand. For example, if you have a popular page about mailing lists you might want to give a free eBook about growing your mailing list on that page. However, on another page about Aweber you might want to give away a free eBook about Aweber.

This is a feature that will truly skyrocket your subscribers.

I thought I would make a quick video tour of the WordPress dashboard area of the Pop Up Domination plugin. This might give you a slightly better idea about how it all works.

This is actually a tour of the old Pop Up Domination area – the new one released this week (December 2011) has a lot more cool features.

photo credit: rhodes

Okay so this is the part you have all been waiting for. What does the Blog Tyrant really think about pop up ads on blogs?

I love them and I hate them.

I love them because they work so well
Here’s the thing that really kind of annoys me about Pop Up Domination – it works so damn well. Part of me wishes it didn’t work at all so I could turn it off and go back to my old beliefs about pop up ads being annoying.

But I can’t.

This simple plugin as brought me almost 2,000 subscribers in the last two months alone! And in that time do you want to know how many complaints I have had about it?

Zero.

Not one single person has told me that it pisses them off.

I hate them because…
So what do I hate about them? Well, I guess I hate it when I see them pop up on other sites that aren’t my own. But as I write this and think about my experiences with pop ups lately I realize that they don’t really bother me that much. I think it is one of those things that you hear about as being annoying and then sort of tow the party line (so to speak).

I think what annoys people is when they are set to be invasive and annoying. We all know those pop ups that are impossible to close and that pop up again and again as you try to leave the site. Those thing suck. But a beautifully designed pop up ad like is being offered here is totally different; especially if it is designed to be part of a good user experience.

Whatever you think about them, its worth testing
Whatever you think about pop ups (Jen I know you aren’t convinced) it is really worth giving it a shot. This pop up will cost you around $50 and potentially make you hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of its lifetime.

And if it doesn’t work for you the guys at Pop Up Domination are offering a full 100% money back refund. So, if you purchase this plugin and it doesn’t increase your subscriber rate they will give you all your cash back straight away. That is the type of risk-free offer that really works for me.

You can buy Pop Up Domination for $47 for this week only.

I wanted to end this article by giving you a few tips on how you can get the most out of this plugin. If you know of any other tips please drop a comment.

As I mentioned, this pop up ad usually converts at around 6% for me. If you can get anything higher than that I would really love to hear about it.

So what do you think about pop up ads on blogs? Will you give this one a go or are you still to afraid of annoying your readers? Lastly, have you had any success with a pop up advert on your blog? Please leave me a comment and let me know.

Subscribe by email and get a FREE copy of my eBook on how to increase your email subscribers by 120% overnight. These are my very own strategies.

View the original article here

I came across this article online and just had to share. Lisa brings up several excellent points in this article. First of all the best and most effective affiliate marketers are those who have repeat visitors coming to their website. The reason being is that before someone buys a product they typically are exposed to it 7 to 10 different times. That is mind blowing, however it just goes to show that concentrating your time and focus on one website with the aim of providing quality content for your visitors will always pay off more then making 10, 20 or even 50 affiliate websites that people only visit one time because of a lack of incentive to return. The next outstanding point is something that really gets under my skin. I am tired of looking for honest reviews of products online only to find hundreds of websites from biased affiliates trying to make a comission off of the product in question. Lisa mentions that it is good to add a few cons in your reviews, because not only does add tons of credability but it also helps the customer make a completely informed decision. Trust me a customer will respect you much more and will be twice as likely to buy an affiliate product from you again if they know you are honest and have given them the best information. Otherwise, if you just make this new widget sound like the magic bullet, but it is anything but the magic bullet you are likely to lose a customer and a subscriber to your blog.

Most people never buy the first time you introduce them to a product.

It takes an average of 7 to 10 exposures before someone converts and that’s assuming you’ve done everything else right (built credibility, PREsold effectively, promoted a relevant product, etc.)

It’s important to mention products on several different pages of your website so your audience gets used to seeing them over and over again.

Many bloggers struggle with affiliate conversions because they mention a product in their post once and never write about it again.  Since most posts get lost in the archives over time, the exposure is limited.

One reason 2 Create a Website performs so well with affiliate marketing is that the static, logically organized layout makes it easier to reference the same content and products over and over again.

With my blog, I have to be more conscious of multiple mentions of products I am affiliated with because of the default layout and posts getting buried over time.  (That’s when creating WordPress pages and interlinking posts/pages comes in handy.)

I noticed my affiliate checks for AWeber have gone up quite a bit in the last couple of months, and that’s because I’ve been mentioning the service in more posts recently.

Multiple exposure is key when it comes to conversions.

When I first started as an affiliate, the Internet was still in its infancy stage.  People were more guarded when it came to sharing personal information.

I remember when displaying something as simple as a photo was considered risky and even unheard of for some.

Boy, have times changed!

Thanks to social media, people are a lot more comfortable displaying photos and sharing information about themselves.  Without a doubt, some people take it too far, but I do believe that anonymity can be a big disadvantage today.

People take much more time to investigate and verify information that bloggers and Webmasters dole out.

They Google you and check for About Me pages so they can learn more about what makes you such a credible source on [Topic X]. This is especially true if your site is about making money or any topic that breeds skepticism.

The more personal and transparent you are, the easier it will be for people to trust and buy what you recommend.  And when I say “transparent” I’m not suggesting you give out information you are not comfortable with.

I just mean that it’s important to share your journey and why you created your site.  This can do wonders for your credibility.

My About Me page is not overly personal, but it at least shows you that I’m a real person with a story.

I rarely promote products I don’t own.  If I do, it’s a product that has been highly recommended from a very trusted source and I’ve done a lot of research.

I can usually tell when someone doesn’t own the product they are promoting.  The review is usually very generic and there’s no mention of any personal experience.

Others just slap up a banner and hope for a sale.

If you want to create a compelling, believable review, show that you actually use the product by sharing details on how you use it.  And if possible, take it a step further by creating a video showing yourself using the product like I did in my first Thesis video.

This video helped me generate over $600 in affiliate commissions the first month I promoted Thesis.

No one wants to visit a website with sales pitches everywhere. What a turnoff.  Unless you have a shopping website, keep your selling to a minimum.

One reason I like affiliate marketing over MLM (multi level marketing) and other more direct methods is that it’s a lot more casual.

Rather than writing an entire sales post dedicated to AWeber’s features, I prefer to compose a helpful post about my newsletter strategy with a subtle mention of the service in the copy.

This contextual strategy has always been the #1 way I’ve converted sales with affiliate marketing.  I’ve never been one to write direct sales pieces for products I promote.

I’m just not a salesperson.  In fact, I hate direct selling.  If I am ever forced to make a living that way, heaven help me!

But I do love teaching.  Fortunately, affiliate marketing has given me the opportunity to teach what I know and subtly recommend products and services that relate to what I’m writing about.

Many affiliates are scared to say something negative about a product because they believe it will hurt their sales.

To be honest, the negative comments will turn people off, but you’ll gain something much more valuable…

Credibility.

Here’s an excerpt from an e-mail I received last week…

Hey Lisa, just wanted to tell you that I bought Site Build It this morning.  What’s ironic about my decision is that it wasn’t the positive stuff you had to say but it was when I saw you on your forum talking about what needs to be changed/updated.  It was actually the first time I’d ever seen an affiliate saying something semi negative/constructive about a product they were promoting.  You won my trust right there.  I wish more affiliates were this honest.

So yes, negative comments about a product will definitely turn potential buyers off.   But as you can see from the e-mail above, this can actually help win over trust with some people.

And even if you turn off potential buyers with your honest comments about one product, the next time you write a glowing review for another, they will take your recommendations much more seriously.

The net effect of giving honest reviews is always going to be positive in the long run.

One benefit of owning most products I promote is I can create very unique, personal landing pages that PREsells the product before the visitor goes over to the company’s sales page.

This allows me to show that I actually use the product and I can mention any relevant benefits that I know my audience will value.  My Artisteer page is an example of a strategy I often use with affiliate marketing.

I see a lot of affiliates just throwing up banners and linking right to the sales page, but I like creating an intermediate page with a video or personal review to make my content more credible.

Try this.  I guarantee it will impact your conversions in a positive way.

I’d like to give a special shout out to Mr. Ken Evoy for writing Make Your Content PRESell.  This free book changed how I conduct myself as an affiliate marketer and opened my eyes to many things I was doing wrong.

SiteSell gets a lot of criticism today because they don’t teach you how to blog.  It’s a shame that’s the measuring stick people use to judge them.  It overshadows the hidden gems they provide.

The marketing lessons I’ve learned from Ken Evoy are invaluable.  It’s why I continue to promote SiteSell and I have no intention of stopping — despite any criticism.  My loyalties to SiteSell goes far beyond any affiliate commission.

Bloggers often brag about how easy and flexible WordPress is, and I must say that I agree.   The WP themes are getting slicker (Have you seen the newly updated Headway theme?) and the plugins are becoming more powerful.

However, many people still struggle with building a real online business and converting sales.  SiteSell gave me that education years ago that I still use today.

Putting up a site today is easy, but converting sales and making money is another story.  All the WordPress plugins in the world are not going to teach you how to convert traffic into income.

Ken Evoy taught me how to become a more effective, ethical affiliate marketer, and he is a big part of the reason I am able to do this full time.   Thank you, Ken!

You don’t need Site Build It! to become successful online, but any serious affiliate marketer should read Make Your Content PRESell at least once.

What about you?  What lessons have you learned about affiliate marketing?

View the original article here

I couldn’t resisit I had to post this. I think those of us who make their income online can all agree internet speed is an important matter. Many of us would go to great lengths just for a little more bandwith. As I went through the list some of these I was familiar with but many of them I did not know about. I am sure if you are interested in the topic of Internet Speed you will find this quite informative.

photo credit: thrig

Recently my area got upgraded to ADSL2+ and with it my speeds increased quite a lot. And you know what else increased? My productivity.

I was really surprised at how much the speed of my internet increased the amount of work I could get through; whether it was sending files, downloading and uploading images to blogs, or just loading new pages to read. And more importantly, I was shocked at how much extra speed I could get through my line by tweaking a few things around my house.

In this post I am going to show you a few ways you can increase your internet speed. These are things you might not know about.

The first thing you will need to do is test your current internet speed. This will let you know whether or not you are getting a lower rate than you should be. You can do this by going to SpeedTest.net and running a test. Here are my results. Post yours in the comments below.

Now, this won’t be as fast as some people. A lot of European and American cities have super fast cable internet. And with Australia unvieling the world’s most expensive National Broadband Network, we should be getting speeds of up to 10GB per second. Yes, 10 GIG! Currently the maximum you can get on ADSL2+ in Australia is around 3MB.

So, back to the point, I managed to speed up my internet to 11Mbps from around 9Mbps. It made a significant difference to me. I’ll show you how in a minute.

NOTE: If you want to test your speed in MBps then go here and go right click > save target as and observe the download or transfer rate.

Okay, so, some boring but important stuff here. People often say megabytes when they mean megaBITS. And visa versa. But there is a big difference.

MBps = megabytes
Mbps = megabits

So, if you refer to my speed test above you will see that I am getting 11.53 Mbps per second. To find out how many megabytes that is you just divide by 8 which equals 1.44 MBps.

Now, 1 MB is equal to 1024 KB (kilobytes) so if you want to know how fast you are going to able to download a song or movie you should refer to the KB or MB per second rate as that is usually what they are measured in.

For example, if you are downloading a 50 MB file at 1 MB per second it will take you just under 50 seconds. Got it?

photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar

Now let’s dive into a few ways that you can improve your internet speed.

Some checks to make
There are some things you will need to check before we try to speed things up.

Once you know those things then we can move on towards getting your speed increased up towards it’s potential.

1. Check for on-system interference
Sometimes your virus scanner or other programs can interfere with your internet speeds. This is really frustrating but you can figure out by simply switching things off one at a time and then running a speed test again. Please note I won’t be responsible for any viruses or spyware you pick up whilst doing this. You should always have good virus protection.

2. Scan for viruses
The next thing you need to do is make sure that no virus itself is causing you to slow down. Sometimes viruses can live on your computer and suck resources away from what you are doing thus slowing down your speeds. I usually recommend AVG as a good free anti-virus software.

3. Test a different modem/router
The biggest cause of slowed down internet is a bad modem. For ages I was using a Billion modem that I thought was absolutely fantastic. I was having frequent internet drop outs and blaming them on my ISP. Finally I changed to a new NETGEAR N150 modem and speeds went up and the drop outs stopped. The problem? The old Billion modem wasn’t equipped for ADSL2+. Rookie mistake. Make sure your modem is suited to the internet plan that you are on.

4. Check your filters
If you have your internet connected to a phone line that also has a telephone on it then you will need to make sure you have good quality filters installed on your line. These are little plugs that you attach to the phone line and they help filter out the disturbances. Here is a photo of one of mine.

Now, these also need to be different for the different types of internet. If you have ADSL2+ or cable make sure you have the appropriate filter.

5. Try getting rid of your cordless phone
Some people disagree with this but I have found that cordless phones slow down or interfere with my internet even with filters. It is worth doing an isolation test by removing your phones and replacing them with different ones (borrow a friend’s) and see whether you get better results.

6. Plug in
Wifi is nice but wireless internet is often a tad slower than if you plug in to your modem. Try getting that chord out of the box and plugging straight into the modem, especially if it is your desktop computer and you don’t need to move it around very often.

7. Check for external interference
I bet most of you have an iPhone, iPad, sound system and at least one other form of electronic device in your modem area. Am I right? Well, if so, then you need to check to see whether these things are causing electromagnetic interference. Try moving speakers out of the way and getting other electronic devices out of your modem space.

8. Check for Foxtel or other types of TV
Old Foxtel boxes can cause interference for your internet, even if you aren’t using them. If your net speed is slower than it should be and you can’t figure out why, it might be an idea to go for a walk around your house and see if you have a Foxtel (cable TV) box that you didn’t know was there. It could be from a past owner. If so, call up and make sure it is disconnected totally.

9. Shorten and replace cables
The length of your cables and their structure can affect speeds. Try replacing old phone cables, sockets and lines and instead use shorter and newer ones. This can often make a big difference.

10. Have you tried turning it off and on again?
The last suggestion is often the most powerful one. Turn off your modem for one minute and turn it on again. It is called power cycling and can often flush out a bunch of problems that affect your speed. If you are really brave you can even reconfigure your modem with a new password as this can often refresh your settings at the end of your ISP and refresh connections.

Do you know any other ways to increase your internet speed? I would be really interested to hear them. I’d also really like to know what speeds you are getting and what country you live in. Please visit SpeedTest.net and let me know your results in the comments.

View the original article here

Well here is an interestng article on 3 of my favorite things: SEO, Web Design and of course he mentions my ultimate fav, WordPress! I tend to agree with Syed about not teaching yoru clients SEO it is kind of like shooting yourself in the foot. Also it takes years to really find your way in SEO if you do something stupid with a brand new site on a brand new site you can wind up getting your site de-indexed by Google. I like the insight he has about web design and the fact that WordPress makes everything easier. It is refreshing to hear Syed talk about WordPress in this light, I have talked to web designers locally who have no clue about how much of a game changer WordPress actually is. I found this to be a quick good read that gives some good insight.

You see the internet is filled with more then enough successful people and finding those people are easy if you just visit some of the top blogs out there. This is how I ran across my good friend Syed Balkhi, and if you don’t know him then you will after this interview.

Syed Balkhi is an guy who have came along way, and he have made his mark on this online world and is doing good justice for big companies and the avenger Joe. Syed specialize in web design and seo, the two most important things when it comes to online marketing.

So without further interruption…here’s the interview.

Q. I see that you are an busy guy who have just taken website designing to an new level. I just wanted to know were did the passion come from to start designing website?

A. My passion to design websites came from my passion of art. In the beginning, I used to design my desktop wallpapers, forum avatars and signature, and that hobby overtime evolved into a full-fledged web design business.

Q. Since your start back in 2002..has website designing changed much over the past 8 years?

A. Web design has changed tremendously over the past eight years. We have moved from those ugly flash websites to more of Web 2.0 and now 3.0 development. Websites are a lot more cleaner on the front-end as well as on the backend. Designers have moved away from coding in tables and have shifted to coding with divs and now we are on the verge of entering HTML5.

Q. Have WordPress made life easier as an developer?

A. WordPress has been a game changer for us because it allows us to create sites ten times faster, and hundred times more user friendly for our users and search engines. With WordPress, our clients can make the minor changes themselves making our job easier.

Q. Syed I see you have done web design for some big names out there like Crazy Eggs..I wanted to know what percentage of websites you design are blogs versus the traditional site..and why?

A. Majority of the websites that we design are blogs because we specialize in WordPress development. Among the big brands, we have established credibility, and a very good reputation through our site WPBeginner.

Q. Is SEO something your company teach your clients?

A. We do not teach SEO to our clients aside from showing them how to work with All in One SEO plugin in WordPress. SEO is something that cannot be thought, it is a skill acquired overtime through experience.

Q. I see that you have taken pictures with some of the biggest player online…so I wanted to know is networking something you recommend to any company who want to grow to the next level.

A. Networking is something that I recommend to everyone who wants to get to the next level. I have made tons of great friends, and I am on a first name basis with a lot of web celebrities. Email contacts are great, but meeting face to face is a whole different level. Even if you have to spend few grands to get to Vegas, I think it is worth spending the money and time.

Q. I know UZZZ is your other company..and you guys focus more on the SEO part of marketing..so I wanted to ask you your views on why SEO is so important to the growth of one’s business.

A. SEO is crucial for growth of any business because everyone looks at Google when they are trying to find something. So ranking higher than your competitors is very important for one’s business. For most of the sites, Google account for the largest traffic source, therefore I think SEO is a must for every site.

Q. Finally what goals do you have for yourself and your companies in the next five years?
I have plans on launching two new companies in the coming year. Our goal for Uzzz production is to continue expanding and getting more clients. The goal for WPBeginner is to make it the best resource in the WordPress community.

Q. Plus can you leave some good words of encouragement to a beginner blogger?

A. Everybody starts out as a beginner. Motivation and Dedication are the factors that set the few that makes it apart. So don’t give up, and be persistent. If you are blogging for the sake of money, then don’t do it. Blog to fill a much need voided within your industry.

Now you can understand that hard work pays off and if you are looking to become successful online then you must put in that hard work and begin to network with like minded people.

Syed Balkhi is an awesome guy, and his web design company wpbeginner is changing people lives with their remarkable website creations. Plus his other company Uzzz is making seo part of their clients everyday lives.

Leave Some Comments..

Let me know your views of Syed Balkhi and do you put much effort into your web design and seo?

Share Your Food…

Please share this page with your readers so they can get to know Syed Balkhi…links are at the top and bottom of this page.

About the Writer - Antonio Coleman is the Founder and Creator of TrafficColeman.com. Antonio have took his online marketing experience of particularly in Making $20,783.98 Online in 5months by marketing and networking.. Follow me on Twitter @TrafficColeman but not too close.

 View the original article here

Guest posting is one of the most popular ways of getting traffic to your blog. First of all you will receive traffic from the readers of the blog that you are guest posting on and you will get SEO traffic because in essence you are trading an article for a backlink. I already understood these benefits of backlinks, but I think that you will find that Eugene has a little further insight on the subject and this article is a worthwhile read.

Controversy? It works…

I’m sure that you have read countless posts about how guest posting on other blogs is a great source of self-promotion and traffic.

And it’s true, guest posting is a great tactic – just look at Danny Iny who has skyrocketed to internet stardom with guest posting as one of his main marketing methods.

But this isn’t going to be a general “you should be guest blogging” lesson.

A recent guest posting experience on Triberr-head-honcho Dino Dogan’s blog taught me the value of a controversial post.

I don’t mean controversial in terms of offending people. I mean controversial in terms of a divisive topic that will sure to spur a lot of back-and-forth discussion.

In this particular instance, I wrote a post criticizing the Occupy Wall Street movement. I knew that this was sure to get people on both sides of the argument chiming in to create a pretty good discussion.

After all was said and done, the post attracted 95 total comments (at the time of me writing this post) – good for fourth most in the history of Dino’s blog.

So how does this relate to self-promotion and traffic building?

It’s simple really, but something I didn’t realize until I experienced it myself…

Many bloggers display a list of most popular posts in their sidebar.

There are several benefits to this. You get some link juice to your individual posts, and it provides an extra navigation item for visitors to take a look at……

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Last Saturday, October 29, 2011, I presented about Viral Content Marketing at Mastering Online Ranking Conference. MORCon is one of the most awaited yearly SEO conferences in the country, as several of the country’s top-gun SEOs unite to share their knowledge (and some of their secrets) about the online marketing industry to our small local community of Internet professionals.

I was lucky to be invited to present at this event and definitely fortunate to receive a lot of positive feedbacks about my presentation, given that it was my first ever speaking gig. My slides from MORCon are below, and I might also upload a video of my presentation (though it’s in Filipino) in the coming weeks. Any questions about the presentation, feel free to drop a comment below.

My Presentation

With Benj Arriola, SEO Director of Internet Marketing Inc.

With Xight Interactive

I was awarded with a plaque of appreciation by Org president Whin Clores.

Q&A Panel with other speakers.

With Benj Arriola at the after event gathering

Discussing Conversions with PPC Expert Juanito “Cell” Jacella of Cellconversion

With SEOWall owner – Zaldy “Major” Dalisay

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to my feed and follow me on Twitter @jasonacidre.

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In search marketing, when you are competing with the bigger brands, you get mostly tied up with limited strategies to fight back, as these brands are willing to spend a lot to take preemptive actions and dominate the SERPs, which sometimes lead the smaller ones to resort to desperate measures (like web spamming).

Another disturbing thought in the Internet industry is that webmasters are now more aware of how to profit from their sites by selling links (paid reviews, paid guest posts, etc), which locks down the opportunities of gaining great links for smaller commercial/business websites.

However, there is one misconception about SEO that people usually reckon as a basis for winning – the size of your budget. Yes, it does matter, in some areas, but in this generation of link building, it’s not the big that eats the small anymore, but rather, it’s the fast that overtakes and eats the slow (got that quote from my big bro). In this age of marketing, time and creativity is the key to be successful.

So how can you size up your links when you’re in a highly-competitive space?

Homepage is where your brand is.

Most websites that are already active in the search game commonly use their homepages to target their most important keyword (industry/niche keyword), and I have nothing against that, but these days, focusing on branding techniques in optimizing the site’s front page is more capable of returning greater results, I believe, given that it causes curiosity and brand awareness to your visitors.

Using online branding methodologies such as using your brand name as anchor text when linking to your website from your distributed content like guest blogs, interviews, author profiles, web directory listings and community-based interactions can help in:

Increasing search volumes for your brandAcquiring sitelinks for your site’s search engine listingImproving your homepage’s search and social visibilityAttracting natural brand mentions from other websites/social networks

Power keywords for power pages

A powerful keyword that will help your campaign draw huge amount of specifically targeted visitors will always need a powerful content to host it. Powerful pages in your site may come in a form of viral content/link bait and comprehensive resource articles/case studies.

Your site’s important landing/product pages can improve its own search rankings when surrounded by these types of powerful pages, especially if these pages are able to receive massive social signals and natural incoming links.

Putting a solid content as a front for your requests will also increase the chances of getting high quality links, as the rarity of the information stored within the content leverages the value proposition of your link placement requests – which means building more robust deep links to these inner pages (with your targeted anchor texts) is much easier than requesting for links to direct to your homepage.

Several ways to build links to your power pages:

Cite them as a resource when participating on online conversations (forums, blog discussions, Q&A sites)Contextually link to them on guest blogs, interviews and press releases.Search for industry links/resources pages and request for a link placement (have higher success rate when you’re offering a highly resourceful page).Incentivize linking like embeddable badges/infographics/videos, or by offering a free report/whitepaper in exchange of sharing the content via social networks (can be automated if you use Cloudflood).

Blog posts for your long tails

Blog posts are certainly the best way to target long-tail keywords for your campaign, since this type of webpage seems to naturally rank for unsystematic strings of search queries, particularly if your site is already recognized as a trustworthy site by major search engines (high domain authority).

Several ways to empower linking to your blog posts:

Social media promotion, where you can amplify your content’s visibility through the conversations you’ve built in your social networks. Linking to industry influencers from your content can also help in establishing conversations and getting social shares from them.Request links from media curators in your industry (search for weekly/monthly blog roundups happening in your sector).Promoting content on Commentluv-enabled blogs. You can use commentluv’s exclusive search engine to find blogs in your niche that use this WordPress plugin.Citing your blog post as a resource when contributing on community-based websites like forums and Q&A sites.Slowly build your site’s domain authority by diversifying your links’ sources and links’ destinations – since having a strong domain authority will make your blog posts’ listings (even the recently published ones) show up more prominently on search results.

Guest blogging is probably the most effective link building technique of this generation, and at this time, it’s already being excessively used on almost every industry, which dries up the chances of smaller websites to have their submitted content approved (whether because the submitted content sucks or the subject is too common).

Today’s web is oversaturated with content, and many of them are just rehashed work, though, there are still some that can really stand out.  Everything in this industry is a remix, where most great creations always draw its soul from a deeper influence.

Getting content ideas from other industries that might haven’t been created or overly used in yours can be a good approach to catch up with your bigger competitors. Here are some methods that you can use in generating ideas for your guest blogging campaign:

Content Exploration

Utilize Stumbleupon to find interesting topics in your industry or even in other industries that you can use, draw inspiration from and/or recreate for your own campaign. Take note of all the interesting content that you can correlate or recreate in your industry and list them in an excel sheet.

Some examples:

“keyword” in 100 pictures – then submit it as a guest post to an authority photoblog, or an influential media in your industry. You can easily build this content by collecting great images and compiling them all in one post, and then giving link attributes to the owners of the photos. “keyword” in “location”(ex: 20 Best “SEO” blogs in “Manila”) – submit it as a guest post to a regional blog or news site. You can also create different lists for different locations where you might be targeting traffic from, as this can also help you develop relationships (through conversations) with the sites that you’ll be including on your list(s), which can also result in securing more link opportunities.

Recreate News

There are many blogs that infrequently update their postings (2 – 3x a month), and you can certainly find many of these in any industry. Being updated with the current news in your industry can help you penetrate good content from these blogs, but of course, you’ll have to make your content more unique than what the original source of the story is providing. Here are some tips on how you can use this for your guest blogging campaign:

Follow news sites in your industry.Remake interesting news articles that you’ll find and include your tips and takeaways (make the post useful and informative).Contact industry blogs who might be interested to publish your post (most likely blogs that don’t update regularly).Link back to your website through the “about the author” section.

Interviews and Crowdsourced content as guest blogs

Interview popular personalities in your industry and offer the finished content as a guest blog. Typically, the output of this content is very useful, knowing that it gives answers to industry-related questions.

This method will also allow you to scale link opportunities to your site, since you will be able to establish/build relationships with the people that you’ll be interviewing, which you can use in the latter part of your link building campaign.

Curated content as guest blogs

Gather the best content in your industry, compile them into one post and then offer it as a guest post to authority blogs in your industry. This approach has a high approval rate when submitted as a guest blog, knowing that it saves the target blogger’s time of creating the resourceful article.

Some of the best samples of this method as a guest blog:

Kinetic Text Typography

Converting your articles or audio files (podcasts, etc…) into a video in kinetic text typography can extremely grow your site’s incoming authority links as well as natural links/citations, particularly if you can disseminate the video by using it as a front in submitting your guest blog entries, in which you’ll just have to provide several unique introductions (with the video embedded within the submitted content) to be able to offer it to various authority blogs in your niche.

Focus on selling your brand’s edge or its primary identifier through your externally distributed content, as this methodology will help nurture your site’s identity within your industry. Allocate conversion-oriented content contributions to influential media/blogs in your sector to propagate your projected image, such as putting emphasis on your area of expertise to establish your brand as the authority in that extent of the industry.

You can use Citationlabs’ outbound link scraper and contact finder tool in building a list of specifically targeted link prospects where you can distribute your content. One reason why this is the best tool to use in this particular method is that it can speed up your process of gathering the right targets for linking, as the process’ foundation is based on other list pages (ex. list of best blogs in a certain industry) – these are basically the sites that you’ll really need to acquire a link from – and the tool will do the rest, automatically, in collecting important data from these pages.

Using the tool:

Search for pages that list the best/authority blogs in your industry. You can use search queries like “best [keyword] blogs”, “top [keyword] blogs” and/or “list of [keyword] blogs”.List all the URLs of the list pages in an excel sheet or notepad that you’ll find from your search and you can then start using the tool’s outbound scraper feature.Paste the URLs of the list pages that you’ve found in the outbound scraper feature.Download the report for the scraped outbound links from the list pages.The exported file will look something similar to this:Go to the contact finder feature of the tool to extract the contact details of the link prospects that has been generated through the outbound scraper.Paste all the URLs extracted by the outbound scraper feature for the tool to automatically search for the target link prospects’ contact details (this will normally include the target site’s contact page, about page, email address and/or contact form).Wait for a few minutes for the results and you can then export the list of URLs with their contact details.The exported file will look something similar to this:

Citationlabs offers affordable packages to gain access to their tools:

250 MB of bandwidth (equivalent to 10,000 requests) – $10 per month500 MB of bandwidth (equivalent to 20,000 requests) – $15 per month1,000 MB of bandwidth (equivalent to 40,000 requests) – $25 per month2,500 MB of bandwidth (equivalent to 10,000 requests) – $50 per month

Once you have generated your list of prospects with their contact details, you can then start producing content that exemplifies your expertise in the field and will somehow be very interesting to your prospects’ followers/readers. You can also start engaging your link targets through your outreach campaign.

Brand building through industry and community-based discussions is one of the most efficient and inexpensive ways to fortify a website’s online marketing campaign. Conversation participation amplifies branding in such a way that a business entity is able to make actions and contributions to its target market through relevant discussions.

These community contributions are then able to make your brand’s authoritativeness more apparent to its target audience, and sends out signals that can create awareness and advocacies.  Several methods that you can use to improve your brand’s ability to engage its audience are:

Strong presence on relevant forums, blog communities and Q&A sites.Constant content distribution on key and influential media in your industry (authority blogs and news sites).Authentic involvement on social media through conversations.Expanding your sources for link opportunities by seeking through conversation threads (from authority forums, blogs and social media pages in your industry) and from sites linking to pages that are ranking for your secondary keywords.

Create the “best” content in your industry that can withstand time – evergreen content – as these types of web pages will be highly capable of constantly attracting natural links to your site for a long time (as long as the content is seen useful by its targeted audience).

Developing a robust page in your site that can prove itself as the best content about a certain area in an industry and will stand as one of the domain’s pillars have high acceptance rate when requested/pitched to other sites for a link. These pages can definitely improve a site’s domain authority, brand presence and traffic conversions.

Elements of a powerful linkable asset:

Useful and/or highly informativeVisually attractiveComprehensiveEvergreenCapacity to target multiple types of audiencesHave a strong call to actionTargets a high search volume keyword

Several samples of linkable assets:

Rich media content like infographics, kinetic text typography, slide presentations and/or high quality videos.Annual blog awards.Crowdsourced content that aims to answer an industry-specific question.Industry conference/seminars’ landing page (which you can always repurpose).

Promoting your linkable assets:

Social media promotionEmail link/blogger outreachPaid advertisements (PPC, Facebook ads, Stumbleupon ads, Buysellads.com, etc…)Citing it as a resource when building informative links through forums, guest blogs, newsletters, whitepapers, Q&A sites and/or blog discussions.

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter @jasonacidre.

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Tell me you found an easy and quick link building technique, and you’ll have my full attention.

Tell me that technique will generate high PR, Dofollow links back to my blog for FREE, and I’ll get to work right there and then.

That’s pretty much what happened when I heard of this link building strategy using Tumblr.

But first things first.

Tumblr is a free micro-blogging platform that allows you to post video or audio files and images in addition to text.

If it’s too long to tweet, but too short to write a substantial blog post about, it’s perfect for Tumblr.com.

It’s similar to Posterous, but simpler to use. Some might say it’s even more powerful than Posterous.

So what?

Great, you say, yet another thing to add to my to-do list, Ana.

Allow me to explain what makes Tumblr such a good addition to your link building strategy.

1.  PR8 website.

Which means that it has a lot of authority to pass to your blog and other web properties.

2.   Dofollow.

All the links you post to Tumblr are Dofollow.

If you are not sure what Dofollow means, take a look at this post.

3.   Self-publishing platform.

You can pretty much publish whatever you want to Tumblr, as long as you don’t violate their Terms of Service, of course.

Let’s compare that to any article directory, say EzineArticles.com.

With EzineArticles, you submit an article, then wait and hope that it passes the moderator’s “inspection”. Additionally, they have strict backlinking rules that limit you as to where to add your links, how many, how many keywords in your anchor text you can use, etc.

No such problem with Tumblr.

So you can pretty much treat it as your personal article directory that gives you just as much, if not more, link juice as any traditional article directory – without the hassle.

4.   SEO-friendly.

I’ve seen many Tumblr blogs rank very highly on Google for some very competitive keywords.

These are some very simple, effective, and quick techniques I can implement within minutes.

1.   Publish summaries of my blog posts.

Just a few sentences will do with a keyword-rich link or two back to my post.

2.   Use OnlyWire.com or Ping.fm

Both of these free services allow you to bookmark your posts to several social media/micro-blogging platforms at the same time.

Tumblr is one of them.

3.   Import your RSS feeds.

Tumblr used to have an import RSS function, which allowed you to connect your Tumblr blog with your WP blog, Twitter account, etc.

A couple of months ago they quietly did away with that feature.

However, where there’s a will, there’s a way, right?

There are some WP plugins you can use to connect Tumblr with your WordPress blog, but most of them are not very well suited for the job. For instance, Tumblrize will cross-publish your entire posts, which will create duplicate content issues and render your backlinks worthless.

The best solution I found is TumblRSSApp.com.

It allows you to add several RSS feeds and is entirely free.

Notice the last drop-down box in the image above that says “select post type“.

You’ll have 2 choices here: text or link. I suggest you choose “link” for your blog RSS feed and “text” for your Twitter link. I had to experiment to learn this essential piece of information.

Of course, I saved the best for last.

In this video, I’ll show you how to get dofollow links from high PR pages on Tumblr within minutes and with minimal effort.

Brief video summary:

Originally, I learned this tactic from SEO Experts Academy – the best course on how to generate a flood of SEO traffic I’ve ever seen.

This Tumblr link building strategy is only one of many they teach you in the course. If you are finally ready to get a grip on your search engine traffic, SEO Experts Academy is definitely the way to go:

Easy, breezy, beautiful – Tumblr link building.

Love it or hate it? Comment to show me that you’re alive!

Ana is the founder of Traffic Generation Cafe and wants you to know that her 7 Steps to Complete Search Engine Domination free SEO report = SEO Made Simple. Don’t forget to pick up your own copy today – just click on the link above!

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We have a number of websites and they are all structured in different ways but one of our favorite formats at the moment is to use a static page as the home page rather than the regular blog type structure. It works quite well for product based sites like our Amazon sites as it makes the site look less like a blog and more like a regular website. It also opens up a myriad of opportunities for adding different types of content to that home page.

When you create a static page for your blog what you are doing is essentially replacing the basic blog post format on the home page to just one single page. For instance, this blog’s home page has a list of blog posts listed down the page and that is what most blogs look like. However, if we decided to create a static page for our home page here, the blog posts would no longer appear and it it’s place would be one page of content.

Technically speaking it will work on any type of WordPress blog but that doesn’t mean that it will actually suit every type of WordPress blog. This blog for instance has a community feel to it and readers leave lots of comments, so in this instance we prefer to have the blog style remain on the home page. We wouldn’t change it to a static page.

However, for some of our product sites using a static page is a much better option as we generally don’t get a lot of comments on our product blogs and not a lot of repeat visitors. For product sites, the blog style can be limiting in some ways especially if you really want to promote some of your best reviews which you can do extremely well with a static home page.

WordPress have made it super easy to create a static home page. It’s just a matter of point and click. However, you still have to add your content of course but we will go into that a little further on in this article.

Here are the steps for creating a static home page in WordPress:

1. In your WordPress dashboard go to Pages –> Add New.

2. Create a page called Home Page (you can actually call it whatever you like). Add your content (refer below for more info on what to add) and Publish the page. (Note that you can create a full-width page if your WordPress theme provides you with that option).

3. In your WordPress dashboard go to Settings —> Reading and click the Static Page option and from the drop-down field next to it select the Page you just created in step 2.

4. Click Save Changes and go to your home page on your site and your new page will now be displayed.

Now you all might be thinking where has my blog disappeared to if it is no longer displayed on the home page. In order to display your blog again you simply need to take the following steps:

1. In your WordPress dashboard go to Pages –> Add New.

2. In the Title field enter the world ‘Blog’. (You can call it whatever you like but Blog is the most appropriate title.) Don’t enter any content on the page. Leave the content field completely empty.

3. Click the Publish button to publish the page.

4. Go to Settings –> Reading and from the Posts Page drop-down box select the Blog page you just created in step 2.

5. Click Save Changes.

Check out your website and you should now see a Blog option in the navigation bar. When you click on that you will be taken to your blog. If you don’t see it then it is probably because you have created a custom menu so you will need to go to Appearance –> Menus to add the Blog page to your main menu navigation bar.

You really can add whatever you like to your static home page. Here are some options:

1. A Welcome box -  A welcome section is a great way to introduce yourself and your website. Add your photo and a short blurb about who you are and why you started the website. This can work particularly well for product review sites as most people gain a sense of trust when they see a photo of a real person. Here’s an example:

Welcome to my Cordless Drill Review site. My name is Paula and my goal with this site is to provide the best cordless drill reviews for all the major makes and models including Panasonic, Makita, Black and Decker, Dewalt and more. I hope you enjoy your stay and if you have any questions feel free to contact me.

2. The top reviews on your site – If you have purchased the Amazonian Profit Plan then you will know that we suggest that you start by creating five reviews for your website. You can promote those five reviews by linking to them from the home page. This is just a suggestion but you can create a heading called ‘Most Popular Reviews’ and under that add a thumbnail image of each product and next to each thumbnail add a short blurb about the product and a link to the review on your site. It might look something like this although we did use the Flexsqueeze theme to make it look as good as it does with the star ratings and the More Info button but it is simply a table which you can create in WordPress without the need for Flexsqueeze.

3. A directory menu linking to key posts/pages on your site. You can see an example of how this works  on our Affiliate Reviews HQ site. If you go to the home page of the site you will see that it uses a static page and on the page is a simple directory with two menu headings – one for the latest reviews and one for the latest comparisons. We don’t have to manually add the links to that directory each time we publish a new post or page. It all happens automatically for us because we use a free plugin called List Category Posts.

5. Videos – You can add your own video or grab a video from Youtube to add to your static home page.

6. Widgets – This one will only work if you have a theme that allows widgets on pages and not just in the sidebar. We recently reviewed the Catalyst theme which has this feature. If you read the Catalyst theme review on our Affiliate Reviews HQ site you will see how we managed to create a home page on one of our test sites purely with widgets. This makes creating a home page extremely easy because you don’t have to play around with tables which often don’t always work very well. Being able to drag a widget onto your home page has to be one of the easiest ways to make a professional looking page.

7. Content – Google loves content so ensure that you don’t just have a home page that is only full of video and images.  Add a few paragraphs that include some of your top keywords.

These are just a few examples of what you can do with your home page. If you have any other ideas please let us know in the comments below.

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