Becoming a Pro-Blogger Part 1: StumbleUpon

What can you do to become a pro-blogger?

stumble upon puzzle

Well, you need to get a lot of traffic to your blog.

And now you thinking….’I already know that, but HOW am I going to do it? I have some trade secrets to let you in on. By using these trade secrets, you too, can become a pro blogger.

Today, you are going to learn some great tricks of the trade to grab the attention of StumbleUpon, and use their platform to set your blog on fire. These tips and tricks will get you anywhere from the hundreds up to the thousands of StumbleUpon visitors each day.

stumble upon

StumbleUpon does lean toward some niches more than others, and you need to use this to work for your advantage. You will find that StumbleUpon can be one of the greatest viral marketing tool out there. So here are some tips:

  • If you do have a niche that is lacking in the mass appeal, StumbleUpon will be a great boost for you where the others won’t. Digg uses a broad forum which keeps their power from weakening in traffic. StumbleUpon works a bit differently by creating more specific categories, providing a more targeted audience.
  • Write posts that appeal to the particular social media, if you go for the general appeal, you are going to lose your followers. For instance, Del.icio.us likes anything that their users prefer, Digg likes the appeal of the masses. You have to have content that is going to get thousands of hits, or you won’t become a pro-blogger.
  • When you are writing for StumbleUpon, you don’t need to worry about pleasing the masses, matter of fact, you benefit more by sticking with your niche, yes, even your small ones, and this will bring you some highly targeted traffic.
  • So, write your content for your niche, not for the general public. By doing this, you will increase your chances to your post will be submitted to receive more traffic in a more specific category.

In another blog, I will go into the types of posts you should and should not be making. I will go into the types of content and the things you can do to make your blog more appealing to StumbleUpon.

Please Write your Review and Stumble My Blog HERE – Thank You 🙂

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Are There Any Disadvantages To Pay Per Click?

Pay Per Click Advertising Does Have Some Disadvantages…

adwords forumla

As I have written in an earlier post, PPC is considered to be of the best and most affordable forms of advertising on the search engines. You can use Pay Per Click advertising to bring in targeted traffic and generate leads and sales in your particular niche. You will use this type of advertising to lead traffic to a website landing page in order to obtain immediate sales, or gaining future clients. This is a multi-million dollar industry and will continue to grow. There are however, a few disadvantages and pitfalls. If it were perfect, everyone would be doing it, but as it stands right now, there are are many who don’t.

What Are The Disadvantages?

Let’s start off by first explaining that keywords are bid on by marketers to use in their ads. The Pay Per Click Company will display the ad when somebody enters in the keywords, which will link the browser to the marketers website.

As the user enters the keyword into the search engine, there will be an ad showing up along with other sites in order for the user to choose from. If the ad is clicked on, they are taken to the website and the marketer then pays for that click. The marketer only pays when the ad is clicked on, not just being viewed.

As you are choosing your Pay Per Click advertising, be picky in the companies you use. There are so many companies to choose from, and as with anything, some have greater advantages than others like some of the smaller companies.

The reason the smaller companies may not be as advantageous is they may not have the exposure that the larger companies may have. You want to put your ad where there will be a lot of exposure allowing your keywords to be in the forefront of those looking for your product type.

There are also some of the Pay Per Click companies that are not equipped to operate like the larger companies are able to. The top runner of all the Pay Per Click companies that dominates the Internet is Google Adwords.

Don’t be one of the many who have lost tons of money on Pay Per Click ad. The reason so many have lost out is because they have not had a clear picture and aware of the complex issues involved.

You need to take the time to learn the bidding process, be creative in your ads, make sure they are relevant to your campaign. Be prudent, this is crucial to your success in anything.

Just imagine finding out after you have bid for keywords, that there are numerous other Pay Per Click marketers who already have these positions in place. You do not want to end up on the bottom of the search engine pages, and you don’t want to spend all your money trying to outbid your competitors.

There are other methods that work just as well, sometimes if not better, than Pay Per Click.

According to some recent studies, it has been shown that the Pay Per Click conversion rates are actually lower than other methods such as article marketing.

Let’s say for instance you get 50 hits on your landing page through your PPC ads, but you only made one sale. What does this tell you? Do your homework, compare your PPC advertising to your article marketing, how many hits turn into sales.

The biggest disadvantage to Pay Per Click advertising is the time you need to dedicate to learning the complex methods it involves. This is not something you want to jump into without your research and knowledge of how it works. You will end up spending a lot of money with no returns.

Pay Per Click is something that you need to venture into slowly, carefully, with your eyes wide open. Have an alternate method in place, and test this out slowly, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

You will be well on your way to successful marketing when you know all your options. Test it, then do it!

Check out the Posting Contest I have running: Click HERE to learn how you can win $100!

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Myspace Ads – Now Open To The Public

Myspace is the largest social networking site in the USA and along with Facebook, one of the largest in the world.

So when they launch a brand new ads module that is now open to the public, it is worth standing up and taking notice. Whilst they have a tonne of traffic and a huge market, they also have the ability to target the users your ads are shown to.

Myspace Ads works on a CPC module and min bid is 25cents. Here is a chance to get a lot of traffic, fast for decent prices. 25 cents a click may sound a bit expensive, but surely it’s worth a test, some of the keywords you can get will be much cheaper then you would pay on adwords.

This is big news for anyone that does PPC marketing as it creates a chance to capture a lot of leads into your sales funnel.

Don’t know what a sales funnel is or how to set one up? Don’t know PPC marketing, niche marketing or Facebook ads? Please be sure to signup to my RSS feed as these are topics I will be covering shortly.

Check out the Posting Contest I have running: Click HERE to learn how you can win $100!

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Do You Use Information That You Purchase?

So my new purchase arrived today. I buy most of the ‘big ticket’ courses that are made, I go through some of them, but many sit and collect dust.


Some courses I did go through and found great success with are 7FigureCode and also ButterflyMarketingManuscript (Can get it free now, click to find out more) so it is time for me to set aside an hour a day to start going through all the other courses I haven’t used yet, starting with stomper. I will review it later once i have gone through it.

Question:

Do you make use of and take notes on info products that you buy?

Check out the Posting Contest I have running: Click HERE to learn how you can win $100!

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Social Networking – Get On It!

What Can Social Networking Do For You?

Build Your Brand and Develop Some Great Business Contacts

We live in a solution based world, trying to solve our own problems, or the problems of others. These are the goals of most businesses, and the best way to accomplish this goal is through a network. This is where Social Networking comes into play, or should I say, work. When you are using sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, you have the ability to really reach out and make some great new business contacts.

As you get started, you will find that you spend more time and effort giving to the community than you are getting back. You will find it a bit challenging to keep your personal connections separate from your business connections.

There are three network sites that are great to begin with; Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. These are the leaders when it comes to reaching across several interests.

For a more targeted market if you are in the online business niche, along with 2 partners my new site, ViralNetworks is in prelaunch and is about as targeted as you can get. (shameless self plug!)

Social Networking Advice

Take the time to create a warm and inviting profile, providing all the public information including your current employment to your job history. You want to portray yourself as someone who is thorough and complete in everything you do, and this includes your profile.

Don’t create big spam profiles just filled with links and imitating a Splog (Spam Blog) with a bad case of the runs, be sure to keep it decent sizes, accurate, well written and with correct grammar.

Be Reachable! Provide many ways for others to contact you. Some examples are your IM address, email address, Skype username, Twitter name, as well as a phone number. Create a number of keywords that associate with your niche product, and tie it all closely to your blog.

How Important Is Your Email Signature?

This is very important and will provide value in your networking efforts. In your email signature, include your contact information, links to your blog and LinkedIn profile, making it easier for those to find you.

(Shameless Plug Take Two:) ViralNetworks has a Signature File in your profile, you enter your text in there (make it compelling, make people want to click on it) and then it hyperlinks to your chosen site. This Sig is used on guestbook comments, on the forums, on video comments, so can lead to MASSIVE exposure. It is VERY important to write a compelling Signature, as you are not allowed links ‘in post’ with most sites, including ViralNetworks

If you have any profiles that are currently inactive, clean them up and make sure they are professional. Do a search for your name on Google, Zoominfo, and Spock and see what is out there, delete anything that is not proper or inactive.

From this moment forward, be careful as to what you post, including photos, blog posts, and articles. Anything that can be linked back to you, needs to be professional and easily seen. You will also be seen by subscribing to a site application such as FriendFeed.

You will find benefits of social networking through many of the services available. You will learn how is using these services, and invite them into your network.

Next, you will invite your contacts by email to join your social network, but be careful how you do this…you do not want to become a spammer.

Take advantage of the Social Networking sites, get your name and brand out there and build up your own network. If you want to follow me on Twitter, please click here.

Check out the Posting Contest I have running: Click HERE to learn how you can win $100!

Please DIGG This Story – Opens In a New Window – Thanks For The Support

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Is Outsourcing Right For Your Business?

Let’s Talk About Outsourcing…

One of the biggest blessings to SEO is the ability to Outsource from doing everything yourself. You may be a one person business or a small company, either way, you can greatly increase the growth of your business. You can obtain many of these services through specialized websites. Some of the tasks you may want to outsource are;

  1. Directory submission
  2. Link building
  3. Search engine Optimization
  4. Writing content for websites
  5. Article writing
  6. Keyword analysis
  7. Competitive research
  8. Website analysis

You will find that outsourcing will provide many benefits, leaving you more time to work on the things you enjoy and do best. Also, outsourcing allows you to put your focus on the business end of things rather than the many little things that take up so much of your time.

As you know, Time is something that seems to slip away from us so quickly. We as Internet Marketers have had to learn how to budget our time wisely since we are working on our own schedules without having to punch in a time clock.

There are many Internet Marketers who have been able to build great success by focusing on the important tasks of generating income. You will outsource different tasks, hopefully having them completed in a timely manner, making your business run smoothly.

When using SEO Outsourcing, you need to make sure you do it correctly, and there are some limitations, as there are with anything. You will find that you will have certain expectations, but in the real world, not everyone will meet those expectations. Plan for the bumps in the road, give yourself some time for ‘corrections’ or ‘do-overs’.

You will notice that SEO Outsourcing in on the rise which is due to the ongoing growth of Internet Marketing. More and more marketers and companies are outsourcing different jobs, and therefore, there are more specialty companies or persons who are offering their services online.

Once you find a great Outsourcing help, hang on to them, they will help your business grow and let you put your time where it’s really needed.

Someone I use for outsourcing and highly recommend is: Annette Jensen

Other options are: Guru, Elance and oDesk

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Setup Aweber To Work With Feedburner

I have had people ask me how you setup Aweber with Feedburner, so I decided to write a Step-by-Step post on how to do it but first lets quickly review why you should do it:

Why Use Aweber with Feedburner:

* Scheduling – Aweber allows you to choose the time and how often (day, week, month) to send out your blog broadcasts
* Designs – You can design your template for your blog broadcasts
* Post Count – You can setup how many new posts before it sends an email with a link to all the posts
* Build a List – You can email your newly established and growing list about anything at any time
* Can-Spam Compliant – There is a link in every email for a subscriber to be removed, fast & easy, so good for your readers
* Now Counts Towards Feedburner Count – Better Than RSS subscribers as it counts them every day, even if they delete the email without reading it. Having a high feed count is very good for getting advertisers, growing your blog and of course increasing your blogs value!

How To Set It Up:

It really is quite simple once you know what you are doing, but to save you some time, here is a step-by-step on how to get Aweber configured to handle your email blog subscriptions and reflect in your Feedburner counter.

First: you need to have an Aweber account, so if you don’t you should open one up. The cost is $19.95 per month.

Second: Create a new autoresponder for your blog:

Aweber1

Third: You click on ‘Messages’ then ‘Blog Broadcast’, from there you click ‘Create Blog Broadcast’:

Fourth: Fill out the form entering your feed, configuring your template and title. Here you also choose how many posts are made before it sends, I have mine set to 2. Also, click on ‘Automatically deliver’ so that it starts sending without you needing to log into Aweber and approve it first each time. (maybe leave it manual for the first few to get the design right):

Fifth: Save your settings then go to ‘List Settings’ and then click on ‘Web Form’. Setup a form and then confirm it. (maybe only use email if you don’t want first name. On my email feed I have first name configured too. Then update setting’s and click on ‘html’. Take the html and paste it into the site where you want to have your form:

Sixth: Your site is now ready to grow you a list with Aweber and communicate your subscribers stats via feedburner. The next thing to do is configure your thank you pages and also the personal email sent for the member to confirm.

To see how you can set it up, why not sign up to my email update service and see how I have done it.

Author:
Colin Klinkert