I read a great post the other day. It was talking about blogs in the make money online niche and how some of these blogs sell too much while others don’t sell enough. It was an interesting post to me – I totally enjoyed it. That is, until MY name came into the conversation!

Do Make Money Online Blogs Annoy You?

The author of the post I am referring to was talking about a blog that belongs to a friend of his. While the author really likes the person who ran the make money online blog in question, he also doesn’t approve of how his friend is running his blog.

Why?

Simply because he feels that the blog owner is trying to SELL more than he is trying to HELP.

Worse yet, according the post author, is that his friend is using every blog post as an attempt to sell something…. anything.

“How it upsets me to see how he is attempting to lure people into purchasing products that — and without any hope — falsely claim that they help people learn or perform in a way that will enable them to make money online.”

It made me stop for a moment… and made me really think about make money online blogs…

Are we “Make Money Online Bloggers” wrong for trying to make sales from our blog posts? Are we doing a disservice to those that read our blogs? On the flip side, are we (the bloggers) doing ourselves a disservice by not trying to sell enough thru our blog posts?

I think this is a very interesting topic….one that should be discussed.

Why Make Money Online Blogs Make Money…and why they don’t

After some thought, I realized that there is a balance that a make money online blog reaches. When I first started this blog, I had this concept that all I need to do is make a post about some random product and I would make sales.

Well, ya see…. that does NOT work.

But then I flipped to the extreme opposite of that a few months later – I decided I wanted each of my blog posts to help as many people as I could possibly reach. I wanted the ultimate goal of each post to be that each person who read it felt better than they did when they got here.

FEEL Better? Have I Lost My Mind?

Now WHY in the world would someone who blogs about ways to make money online have any sort of goal that relates to how someone FEELS after reading it? Shouldn’t I focus on teaching and giving away my knowledge.. and selling stuff?

Yes…and no.

Yes, I DO teach things I know…things I have learned (because you see, I was once new, too…lol). But, when you learn something, or something “clicks” in your mind, don’t you FEEL better? I know I sure do!

Sometimes, I focus completely on how I think a lot of you are feeling. Working online at home can be lonely and sometimes it can be frustrating as you are trying to get your head around things. I know from my own experience, that at times, I don’t care what knowledge someone has – I just want someone to tell me that I WILL get this… that this DOES work.

And I want that “someone” to be someone I trust.

Trust

Isn’t amazing that somehow, in this HUGE wild, wild web we work on, that we come across people from all corners of the Earth that we TRUST. People we have never met, but for some reason, we trust their knowledge, their words of encouragement, and their recommendations.

How does this happen? Seriously. It’s hard enough in the “real world” to find folks we really trust – how do we end up trusting someone we have never even looked in the eye?

Just like in the “real world”, trust is EARNED online.

If your make money online blog is NOT making money – perhaps you need to evaluate the trust your readers have in you.

Trust = More Sales?

Does having the trust of your readers mean you can sell more stuff online? Well, in my opinion, yes…and no.

How’s that for a non-answer? haha!

When your readers trust you, respect your knowledge AND respect your accomplishments, they naturally want to know what YOU know. For me, this was a huge hurdle to jump. I found that people emailed me WANTING to know the products I’ve used and read…. what I use now…what I’ve tried.

What an honor!

I make no secret of the fact that when I started all this “hi-honey-I’m-gonna-make-money-online” stuff that I was a frickin’ IDIOT. I knew nothing…made ALL the newbie mistakes and blunders. It seemed the only way I could manage to CREATE something online was to BREAK it first! (well, I’m still that way a little…. OK – a LOT….lol!!)

I’m not ashamed of that – not even a little bit. Each of you needs to hear from someone who was once a total num-nut when it came to all this stuff….and we each need to hear that it DOES get better. It CAN be done. Sorry for this next part, BUT…

You Need To Hear That You CAN Change Your Life.

And there is one little quirky woman in Atlanta Georgia who totally believes in YOU. She knows it is possible – she has done it and she wants YOU to do it, too! She knows you CAN.

I think there are some blogs you just feel good being on…and feel better when you leave. I find I feel that way on the blog I was reading the post on that I was talking about earlier.

Who Do Make Money Online Bloggers Trust?

Ever wonder, who do the make money online bloggers trust? If we’re teaching things to others, well, we better not be new. We better know what we are talking about, right? So who do WE trust?

Garry Conn is a fellow blogger that got my attention from the git-go. As most of you know, I was invited to do a guest post on his blog not too long ago.

He is not only a good guy, but does REALLY well with niche blogs and he totally kicks a$$ with AdSense earnings. The more I read of his, the more I realized that I wanted to know what he knows.

No, I NEEDED to know what he knows…now!

(And I got to learn a good-sized chunk of what he knows yesterday I’ll tell you about that in a bit)

Garry was the one who wrote the post that brought this whole topic to my mind. What’s funny tho, is that the comments that followed his post were even MORE interesting to me.

The comments start off with another wonderful blogger, Mark Mason , making a comment fearing that Garry was talking about HIS blog (gee Mark, got a guilty complex? LOL!)

Garry comes back in his reply comment and reveals that no, it was NOT Mark’s blog he was referring to in the post. In fact, the blog in question was actually owned by a WOMAN.

OMG! Oh $#%%^$, a WOMAN?!?!?!?! Was Garry talking about MY blog here at PotPieGirl.com????

(Gee, Jen, got a guilty complex? hahahahahhahahaha!)

Was PotPieGirl.com The Offending Blog?

But then I kept reading Garrys follow-up comment. No, he wasn’t talking about me – nor did he reveal the offending blog in question – but….. my name DID get mentioned.

Y’all….just read what he said about lil’ ol PotPieGirl:

“I’d like to take this moment to direct people to Jennifer’s site, PotPieGirl.com. Now, in my opinion, this lady has class. Jennifer (aka PotPieGirl) in my strong opinion is someone who I would personally recommend that anyone follow who wants to clearly start from the ground up and learn the true and honest business, of INTERNET MARKETING.

She breaks barriers in this business and has also proven that Internet marketing can and should be a business that is based and founded on a trust relationship among followers and readers. She is a lot like me — in female form of course. The line of difference between her and myself is that she is more into Internet marketing, while I am more into building my own internal private network of niche sites.

Earlier, when I published her guest post here on my blog it generated explosive results in sales. It also allowed our two separate networks to fuse a connection. Many of my readers were able to connect with her readers and vice versa. That one guest post on my blog, I believe created quite a few new friendships among the community. And in my opinion, that’s what it’s all about.”

I can’t begin to tell you how absolutely blown away I was. Speechless…. tears… the whole she-bang. I know, I know… I’m such a GIRL! haha!

Getting Traffic TO Your Make Money Online Blog Via Trust

Ya know, someone recently asked in a forum what the BEST traffic was to get online. There were answers of social networks and organic traffic and all the other standard stuff.

My answer was the same answer I had while in business in the “real world”… The absolute best traffic to get is traffic generated by word of mouth.

Online… Offline… it’s still all about people. Behind every forum thread, every blog post, every comment and every email is a real, live PERSON. Once you begin to focus on the people and helping them… earning their trust because you are trustworthy… they naturally give you permission to market to them. No, not any ol’ latest-and-greatest guru product, but the things YOU use – the things YOU know – the things YOU genuinely recommend. The money is just a natural side-effect of this trust relationship.

I Want To Thank Garry Conn

Yes, I want to stand up tall here on my little soap box and thank Garry Conn for such genuine and touching words about ME.

But… I need to thank him TWICE. Remember how I said that he was one of those bloggers that I wanted….no, I NEEDED to know what HE knows? Yeah, well he let loose with some of it yesterday.

Garry makes niche blogs – and not only does he do that VERY well, he also teaches others how to do it very well and very unselfishly. I have the utmost respect for that.

So, yesterday when he popped off with the fact that he made a 60-minute video that lets you literally watch over his shoulder as he makes one of his special niche blogs with WordPress, well buddy, I was ALLLLLL over it. I didn’t hesitate for even a second.

Now, I make a LOT of niche blogs with WordPress. I think my current count is somewhere around 70 or so individual niche blogs. I also teach others for free how to get started using WordPress to build their own niche blogs at 6StepNicheSites.com. But I jumped on that video like I’d jump on a brownie if it was anywhere in my proximity =)

It was AWESOME. One of the best things I have bought online video-wise. In fact, I spent an hour or two building one of these niche blogs today….and I have 4 more lined up to build tomorrow.

How To Build a Niche Blog

If you are even a little bit into building niche sites with WordPress, I strongly recommend this video from Garry Conn. He takes you from start to finish…literally. From watching him pick a domain name, editing his theme, how he monetizes….the whole thing.

If I had to stop everything and pick just ONE business model to make money online – I would pick niche blogs. Owning your own websites is the key to long-term passive and residual income. My goal is to get as many of my readers to owning their own sites as possible. Yes, many of us will start off with One Week Marketing because if you are like I was – no money in the cookie jar to pay for domain names and stuff AND I didn’t know ANYTHING about making money online- but One Week Marketing will get you to where you CAN afford to do that and to where you DO know plenty to get you to owning and building your own sites.

If you’re already there and creating niche blogs- watch Garry’s video. There is a free 10-minute intro video that will help you decide if this is something you want to learn or not.

As Garry says in the video, if you don’t want it, no hard feelings. We are sharing and offering knowledge. that’s all – And yes, he will prove how much he makes with these niche blogs, too =)

Check out Garry’s video here.

Ok, that’s PLENTY out of me tonight. I can’t believe I just typed ANOTHER 2000+ word post. Thankfully, niche blogs do NOT require this much rambling….lol!

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Does Your Make Money Online Blog Make Money?

I don’t think it is any secret that PotPieGirl loves to make niche sites. I have a good bit of them and they are a source of consistent passive income for me each month. By passive, I mean that I did all the work on the front side, kicked them out of the nest to fly on their own, and now they bring me money each month…and I don’t have to do a thing. Are you interested in seeing a great way to get profitable ideas for your first, or your next, money-making niche site?

The Things People Just Give Away!

I found a real gem today. Through a weird process of steps…errr… clicks, I ended up on a fantastic blog. And on this fantastic blog was a link to a even MORE fantastic video. I want to share that with y’all today…but in just a minute.

Many of you are familiar with my 6StepNicheSites.com website. If you aren’t, it is a totally free tutorial website focuased completely on the topic of how to create money-making niche sites using WordPress.

I take you from the very beginning with topics like how to pick a topic, getting keywords, buying a domain name, getting a hosting account, installing WordPress on your site , etc… and we keep on all the way thru promoting your blog… and then kicking it from the nest so you can build ANOTHER niche website.

Now, one thing I don’t talk about in depth is how to choose keywords if you plan to monetize your niche site primarily with AdSense ads. There is SO much information out there about sub-quality ‘made for adsense’ sites that it is almost a negative thing to talk about now. I certainly didn’t want to come across as someone who was endorsing those kinds of sites.

What I wanted to teach others was how to create small, optimized, laser-targeted websites that have high-quality content..and I wanted to teach them how to use WordPress to accomplish this.

WordPress is…. well, it’s just awesome when it comes to creating a website. In all seriousness, if you can type email, you’ll be able to manage using WordPress. Gone are the days when you need high-tech HTML and coding skills to create a website. WordPress makes is SO SO SO much easier.

The Secret To Profitable Adsense Niche Sites

However, when you are creating niche websites, AdSense is a very common monetization option. In fact, with the right topic/keywords, you can make some good money each month just from the AdSense clicks.

But – How Do You Know WHICH Keywords Will Make Your Niche Site Profitable?

I have my own little way of getting an idea of what keywords will bring me more money with AdSense. Naturally, you can’t know for SURE, but you can definitely get a good idea. I thought about making a little pdf or video to show you what I do, but with all the craziness since One Week Marketing launched, I just never got to it.

So, that brings me back to today and my wandering on the wild, wild web (that IS what www stands for, right?)

I Found a SnowBall GoldMine

I came across SUCH a great blog… just a fabulous resource for those trying to make money in the blogging world. I read on that site for a long time… great info!

Then, I tripped into a goldmine.

Yes, an absolute GOLDMINE for snowball builders…

And…

IT WAS FREE!

This wonderful man links out to a 25 minute video he made that shows exactly how he goes about picking topics for his niche websites/blogs. He shows you, for FREE, exactly how he finds keywords that have the best opportunity for high paying AdSense clicks.

Right there… for free! I couldn’t believe it!

I want to share what I came across with you. I know, whether you are interested in AdSense for money-making niche sites or not, that you will get a lot out of the entire system as you get to watch and listen as he goes thru his process. It’s really good stuff!

But, we’re gonna make a deal first.

My readers here at PotPieGirl.com are awesome. Seriously! Y’all are some of the best people I have ever come across so I know this “deal” won’t be an issue – but I need to say it out loud anyway.

This blogger has gone thru a lot of effort to offer not only his video, but all the incredible content on his blog. He is GIVING AWAY this info to anyone and I imagine he is a bit like me when he hopes that maybe… just MAYBE….someone will follow through and DO what he shows.

So, I’m going to give you the link to the site, and you are going to do nothing less than leave this generous man a comment on his blog thanking him. If you do MORE than that, GREAT! I have NO DOUBT that it will be totally appreciated.

I will tell you that sometimes being a “helper blogger” can be…. well, it can be…. Odd – I’m at a loss for the right word. (TOTALLY unlike me to be at a loss for words! haha!)

Lonely. It can be lonely.

The SnowBall Effect

You see, we type and we give and we try…and sometimes it feels like we are talking to ourselves. Sometimes we feel “shunned” if we try to do anything but GIVE AWAY our info and learning for free. Sometimes we feel like no one puts any value in what we DO give away for free (because it was free) and no one just TRIES the method or tip or suggestion or idea.

While I can only really talk for myself, I will say that without sales of some sort, I couldn’t afford to be a “helper blogger” anymore, ya know? Being able to help others is a perk of my accomplishments, but sometimes it can feel as if it is a requirement.

I hope that makes sense? I certainly don’t want to sound like I am whining…. I just want it to be food for thought. I can promise that I am NOT whining – I LOVE what I do and I am incredibly blessed to be able to do it (and incredibly sleep deprived….hahahaha!)

I am a help-a-holic by nature, most likely from birth – it’s just how I am. It is just REALLY nice to come to place in my life, by my own hand, that I can afford to help.

I am so driven by my belief that ANYONE can do what I do. I started all this with nothing but a computer and internet connection, and I turned it into THIS.

If I didn’t think I would get arrested or booted from my community for being “that weird woman”, I would stand downtown at our town square (small Southern town. Yes, we have a town square…lol) and I would stop anyone who drove by and ask them two questions -

• 1. Do you need more money?
• 2. Do you have a computer and internet connection?

If the answers were “yes” and “yes” – Well, do I have an idea for them! It’s not about having resources – it’s about being resourceful. You don’t need a lot of money or a lot of time to do this, you just need the determination to DO IT. If you have faith and take the time to build the little snowball in your hand, you can then set it down and give it a shove downhill.

And it grows. It snowballs.

And… I am totally on my soap box again. Ugh! Bless my little heart! I’m sorry. I just REALLY believe in all this and I also believe there is room for EVERYONE. If the economy is pinching you – PINCH BACK! :::stepping off my soap box::::

Back On Topic

Part of the reason I can afford to help is because I am a BIG fan of money-making niche sites. I also would venture to guess that the reason Garry Conn can afford to help is because of his love of money-making niche sites. His blog is targeted to help others learn how to make money blogging - and the man does an amazing job of it (that said from one help-aholic to what looks to be another…lol)!

So head on over and read his post and watch his video on how to build a niche blog. You’ll like it =)

And I HOPE you’ll tell him thank you. He deserves it for putting that kind of help and free info online for all of us.

You can watch his video here.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Money Making Niche Sites – The SnowBall Effect

Google came out and offered some inbound link advice yesterday. Google mentions how links TO your web page are one of the many ’signals’ to Google that decide on the importance of your site (or web page). Also included in those “signals” is the actual content found ON the web page. Ok, got that. Content and inbound links…. Not really a newsflash there…but ok. But then the Google blog post talks about WHO is linking to your web page. They don’t want links TO a web page from “spammy sites“. Okayyyyyy… I have some questions about that.

The Importance Of Links TO Your Web Page

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I love Jason Lee Miller’s articles over at WebProNews. His writing style is amusing and interesting to me and he usually has a unique view point of the topic at hand. He manages to offer me at least one valid point and one much-needed giggle in each article.

Anyway, last night I read one Jason’s latest articles at WebProNews talking about Google’s latest advice on inbound links. I was a bit excited as I began reading his article with the hope that Google would at least hint at some answers to questions many of us have about links coming into our sites, web pages, lenses, etc.

I was disappointed. Turns out, it was a great post full of non-answers. In fact, the post didn’t ANSWER a thing for me, but it DID leave me with MORE questions.

What Does Google Say About In-Bound Links?

According to this recent Google Blog post by Maile Ohye (Developer Programs Tech Lead) -

“Inbound links are links from pages on external sites linking back to your site. Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are merit-based and freely-volunteered as an editorial choice, they’re also one of the positive signals to Google about your site’s importance. Other signals include things like our analysis of your site’s content, its relevance to a geographic location, etc. As many of you know, relevant, quality inbound links can affect your PageRank (one of many factors in our ranking algorithm). And quality links often come naturally to sites with compelling content or offering a unique service.”

Ok, Google likes links made TO a web page that are voluntary. They like good content. And, as “many of you know”, relevant quality inbound links can affect your PageRank. These things combined effect how our page comes up in the Google search returns. Content and links. Got it?

Well, ya see, while this may be a new concept to some reading this, reality is, this “advice” is NOT news to many of us that have been around for awhile.

Content Is King – But Who Is The Power Behind The Throne?

It’s been said ALL over the internet – “Content Is King!” – meaning that all good rankings START with the content found on your page. Now the term “quality content” is deemed by Google’s analysis of your page, not by Google’s opinion of your content or whether you made Google laugh when they scanned your page.

So Google analyzes your page and decides its relevancy by a computer algorithm – there is no opinion about it. It is all based on specific metrics. Google counts on in bound links to that web page to give the opinion side of “importance”. Based on this, it is quite possible that opinions about a web page can improve the ranking of a web page even more than the algorithm can, isn’t it?

Google may deem your web page not that “important” to a search query, but if ol’ Queen of Links comes into play, she can push King Content to the top.

Women are the heartbeat of everything, aren’t we? =)

Now, read what the Google blog says NEXT about inbound links:

“Let’s say I have a site, example.com, that offers users a variety of unique website templates and design tips. One of the strongest ranking factors is my site’s content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources — however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.”

One link is from a “spammy site”. Google doesn’t WANT links TO a page from a “spammy site”.

At first glance, that makes perfect sense. Who DOES want a link to their web page from a “spammy site”??

But upon further reflection, I have to ask….

What IS A “Spammy Site”?

There is an algorithm that determines quality content, so what is the algorithm that determines a “spammy site”? Is a “spammy site” also considered even MORE “spammy” by the links TO that site (or lack of)? Now, we all have our opinions on what a “spammy site” is – but what are the Google FACTS that determine this?

Anyone?

And more importantly…

Google, Please Answer Me This -

How in the WORLD can I STOP a “spammy site” from linking TO me? If “spammy sites” link TO me, then those non-important “spammy sites” have now BECOME important because they link TO me? In turn, this makes MY web page LESS important?

Uhhhhhhhh…. Your Honor, I Object

I know this has been re-hashed over and over again, but doesn’t this reconfirm that there is real power to game this ‘advice’ on inbound links and really hurt your competition?

Wow, lookee there, Joe Competitor’s site is now ranking higher than me. Hmmm… better go find or go build some ’spammy sites’ and link to Joe’s so Google sees his site as less important.

Does anyone else have a problem with this?

Did Google just tell us that “non-important sites” really ARE important?

Why do “spammy” sites even get an opinion?

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Gee Google, Thanks For The NON-Answer

I posted this in the Wealthy Affiliate forum tonight. Thought I’d share it here at PotPieGirl.com, too. Can’t wait to hear what you think of this story! Once upon a time, there was this 18 year-old in his college dorm room surfing the internet. He came across a now famous blogger who displayed a picture of himself holding a LARGE Google AdSense check. The 18 year-old thought, “Damn! I want to do that too!!!”

So, like many of us sparked by big numbers and pretty paychecks, he came into the internet marketing world. Two years later, after fumbling around with some other ideas, he decided to start a blog about something that really interested him. He created a financial blog with Wordpress and had a ball creating it and interacting with his readers. The blog became popular…was getting great rankings for financially-related keywords. He was making a little money, had an apartment, ate his favorite Subway sandwiches….drank beer with his buddies on the weekends….Life was good.

But, life was about to get MUCH better.

Flash forward two years…. present day. The blogger is now 22. His blog is getting a good bit of attention, pushing some corporate big gun’s websites out of the way in the search engines…and he is having a good ol’ time.

One day he is contacted by another website owner in his market. They offer to buy his blog.

A month later, the 22 year-old is an EX blog owner.

He sold that blog for FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLARS!

Ladies and gentlemen….this is a VERY true story. The articles at WebProNews that talk about this story are a great read. Tons of hints about why branding and relevancy online are so important, if not MORE important than ever before.

And wait til you SEE the blog that was bought for 15 million buckaroos. Expecting flash and coolness? Expecting to say “WOW, now THAT looks like a 15 million dollar site!!”

You’ll be shocked because it is NOT flashy or “shiny”. It is a simple WordPress blog that is FULL of -

a) Great content that is relevant to the topic of the site
b) An incredible amount of user-interaction.

I hope you will take the time to read these articles outlining this story…and maybe read between the lines some like I did

1. Size Doesn’t Always Matter, Relevancy Does -Part One of the sale of this blog

2. The Journey To A 15 Million Dollar Blog Sale – Part Two – story continued

3. This Cesspool We Call The Internet – A follow up story that interested me very much.

So, if you get a chance, read these articles… I’d love to have some conversation about it.

Amazing isn’t it? A one-man blog selling for 15 million bucks! Nice.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

15 Million Reasons Why I Love Blogging

I do a good bit to keep an eye on this blog. Like many of y’all, I work hard on my content and posts. There is nothing recycled here – it is all the unique musing and insights from inside THIS odd little brain =)

When I used to find sites that completely copied/scraped a post of mine, it used to drive me insane. There is always a chance that another site can rank higher with my content than I do…and get me dumped down to the ‘we have omitted results’ filter area on a Google search.

If you’re a WordPress blogger, what can you do about it tho?

Making Scrapers Your Friends

I found a wonderful little plug in that has helped make RSS scrapers into my content syndication team. It’s very simple to install and use, and it doesn’t interfere with the readers experience at all.

Yesterday, I found this post of mine on the internet. Now, I am not posting a direct link to it, but you can find it here:

pkpk8.net/article/auto/2623.html

Take a good look… it is a complete RSS scrape of my original review post for SquidooCashMachine.com. Yes, they kept the links and didn’t strip the HTML, but the links are the same color as the text…

You’d think that made me mad, right? Wrong! I love when these little sites grab my stuff now.

Scroll on down to the end…

See this part?

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

New Squidoo Marketing Guide – SquidooCashMachine.com Review

There is a link back to my blog AND to the original post. That is done with this simple little WP plug in. By using this, I am claiming ‘ownership’ of my content and the original location where it belongs. IF/when Google reads that scraped post, they will see it.

RSS Footer WordPress Plug-In

The free little plug in is called RSS Footer and can be found here. Simply download, extract and then upload to your plug ins folder. Go into your admin area and activate it. Then simply set the two fields to do what you want them to do.

This footer only shows on full RSS feeds of your posts, but not on the posts themselves. It is a great little plug in that gives you just that little piece of mind of one less thing to worry about.

Check out RSS Footer.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Learn To Love RSS Scrapers – I Do!

Increase Blog Traffic with Squidoo

 
While I recently talked about using blogs to promote your Squidoo lenses, this post will be the opposite – using Squidoo to promote your blog. Folks, I’m here to tell you that traffic from Squidoo.com is high-quality traffic. True, there a lot of my posts here on PotPieGirl that are about Squidoo, so there is a common tie between my Squidoo traffic on my lenses and those that click through to my blog. However, I also use Squidoo to push traffic to many of my niche blogs, too – and it is still just as wonderful.

So, for all those that have heard of Squidoo, but have no clue what it is and how it works… and for all those that have blogs, and have Squidoo lenses, but don’t know the best way to tie them all together… this post is for you.
 
 
 

What Is Squidoo?

 
Squidoo.com is a web site that allows users to create a free account which allows them the access to create as many individual pages on the Squidoo site that they want. A user on Squidoo is called a ‘lensmaster‘ and a page on the Squidoo site is called a ‘lens‘.

You can compare a Squidoo lens to a camera lens in the sense that both focus in on a subject. High-quality lenses will have unique content, images, RSS feeds, and yes, even affiliate products and merchandise that all center on a single topic. Most users catch on to making these Squidoo pages fairly easily and then learn to fine tune and SEO optimize their Squidoo lenses for better performance in the search engines.

Squidoo is VERY user-friendly and has a fabulous team and community behind it. Squidoo also will pay you, the lensmaster, a little bit each month as a co-op share of the revenue earned on the entire site from AdSense and other advertisements. (If you are new to Squidoo and would like to learn how all this works, feel free to check out my Squidoo Profit System.)
 
 

How Will Squidoo Improve My Blog?

 
There are two wonderful ways that utilizing Squidoo in your blog promotion can really help your blog.

1) Increase your blog traffic - Every time you get another exposure point on the internet for your blog with a link to your posts or home page in it, you increase your chances at more traffic fro your blog.

2) Generate Back Links to your Blog - The Squidoo.com site is currently a PR7 and each individual lens (Squidoo page) will develop Page Rank of its own. This alone, can provide you with very valuable back links to your blog which, in turn, can greatly improve the Page Rank of your blog and your rankings in the search engines.

Aside from these two reasons, because of Squidoo’s high Page Rank, these individual pages (lenses) you create have an opportunity to rank very well in the search engines on their own. Instead of having one or two pages of your blog ranking for your key terms in the search engines, you can increase your exposure with lenses you have also made – and end up having 3-4 positions covered for a search.

Squidoo is free. Squidoo pays YOU. Squidoo is powerful. Got it?
 
 

How to Improve Your Blog Using Squidoo

 
Blogs have a wonderful little option attached to them called a RSS feed. On any, or all, of your lenses, you can put the RSS feed on your lens for a big boost in exposure for your blog. If, for example, your blog is about cars – you could make a lens about blue cars, and red cars, and green cars, and new cars, etc etc, and each of those pages can include an RSS feed of your blog. Not only will this help your search engine exposure for each individual ‘long tail’ keyword, you have also just greatly improved the exposure of the content of your blog to people who are LOOKING for that kind of information. As I said, QUALITY traffic.

I am also now testing adding the RSS feed for my comments here on PotPieGirl.com. If you go to the browser window while here on PotPieGirl.com and click the orange RSS button, you will see in the drop down menu an option to subscribe to the comment RSS feed for this blog. I added this RSS feed to my lens and presto-chango – the recent comments from PotPieGirl are showing on my lens.
 
 

How To Get a RSS Comment Feed Option on a WordPress Blog

 
Some blogs themes come with this option pre-installed, however many do not. All it takes is a simple piece of code added to your header file for WordPress blogs and you’re done. This post right here tells you how to do this.

I’ve added this comment feed to my Squidoo Help lens (feel free to take a peek). My hope is that this additional feed will generate more interest to this blog based off what my READERS say. Also, my readers gets some additional exposure for their blogs simply because I use ‘Comment Luv’ on this blog. Comment Luv will try and locate the last blog post from someone who comments here and link to that at the end of their comment. Nifty little plug in!

Now, here is the thing about RSS feeds that are found on Squidoo lenses. They do NOT create backlinks to the web pages listed in the feed. Google cannot read them. (read this post from CaptainSquid about common squidoo mistakes).

If you already have a Squidoo lens that has an RSS feed on it using the RSS module, go ahead and Google the url for your lens. Now, take a look at the ‘cached’ version of your lens. You will see in that cache Google has that the RSS feed areas all render with the little spinning wheel icon and the words “fetching rss feed… please stand by”. Apparently, these RSS feeds load after the Squidoo lens does, and Google can’t read them.

Just for fun, look at this Google search for “fetching rss feed… please stand by”. Yup, looks like quite a few web pages get indexed for this term… haha! The Squidoo “Ever” lenses are very popular for ranking for this useless term.

RSS feeds from the RSS module on Squidoo are for your humans… not for the search engines. These RSS feeds give your readers unique and updated content to look at – but Google has no idea they are there. Don’t be fooled into thinking that these type of RSS feed are providing fresh content for your Squidoo lens at regular intervals.
 
 

Using Squidoo to Build Back Links to Your Blog

 
Ok, so if the RSS feeds for our blogs doesn’t generate back links, how can we get good links from our lenses to our blogs?

There are four main areas that are great for generating backlinks from your Squidoo lens to your blog.

1) Your Bio Box - This is a powerful little space on your Squidoo lens – please don’t leave it that old default of “hello world, this is my bio I can edit it later” or whatever it says. That is some prime real estate on your lens. Get your links in there! Also, keep this in mind, even tho your bio area may be larger than the space shown on your lens, Google still reads the whole thing AND the first four lenses listed on your lensmaster page. Be sure to utilize that bio box!

2) Your Intro module - Yet another powerful area of the Squidoo lens. As we discussed in how to SEO optimize your Squidoo lens, the intro module is also your meta description. I believe that a well optimized link to your blog from within the first words of your lens intro is good stuff.

Text links to your blog from within any text area on your lens are good. (Don’t know how to make a HTML text link? Read this post on how to make live links.)

3) Guestbooks - These links appear to be accounted for in Yahoo as a back link to a web page. Here’s the thing about guest books on Squidoo, tho. Many lensmasters are not happy at all about ANY text links in their guest book (even those that point to another Squidoo lens) – and even more aren’t nuts about text links that link to a page OFF the Squidoo site. As far as I know, there are no official rules about genuine lens comments that include a text link, it is more of a personal preference from lensmaster to lensmaster.

My preference? I really don’t care….lol. If you take the time to interact on my Squidoo lens and leave a genuine comment – link your heart out. Remember, that is MY personal preference and I speak only for me. (Also, don’t forget that when you are trying to get Google to index your lens, be sure to NOT link to your lens on other Squidoo guest books until AFTER your lens is in the Google index. Read this post: Getting Google to find your Squidoo lens..and How to Screw it Up.)

4) Automatically Updating BackLinks to Your Blog - Yes, there IS a great way to get constantly updating links back to your blog. To do this, you will use the Google Blog Search module. This little module is either hidden away, or I am just not seeing it easily. To find it, go to “add modules” from your edit/workshop mode, then choose the alphabetical search function. Choose “G” then add a “Google Blog Search” module.
 
 

How to Use Google Blog Search for Back Links

 
Google DOES read these regularly updating feeds and they do count as back links to your blog. To use this function, you first need to make sure your blog in found within the Google Blog index (not the normal Google.com search). Just go here to the Google Blog Search Engine and search for your blog. If you’re in there, great! If you’re not, no problem – you just might need to wait a bit to use the Google Blog Search module on your lenses. (If your blog is NOT listed in Google’s Blog Search Engine, go here to ‘ping’ your blog and get Google in there).

Making this module work for you on your Squidoo lens can be a bit tricky. Sometimes, I have to really fool with it to get it to show what I want. Sometimes the url of your blog is enough of a search term to get this module to return what you want…. sometimes its a pain and it doesn’t work. At times, I’ll try my blog name without the www or the .com…. sometimes some exact text from my blog as the search term for this module works, too. Other times, the name you use to post on your blog could do the trick. (Hint: When making new blogs, try and pick a unique admin name that you post under… it could save you some hassle later on)

After doodling with the module’s search function and getting the results you want, be sure to set -

- Your module title (and some content, too if you want)

- How many posts to show (max 4)

- How often you want the posts to update

- Whether you want the title of each post only, or title with a little content from your blog post.

When these four areas of your Squidoo lens are optimized for your blog, you can offer some great content for your readers AND gain valuable back links in the process.
 
 

Squidoo and Blogs Go Together Like Peas n’ Carrots!

 
Ok, sorry for the Forrest Gump reference, but seriously, Squidoo and blogs are made for each other. The traffic I receive to this blog from the Squidoo site accounts for about 38% of my traffic. Naturally, organic traffic from the search engines is my biggest traffic source as well as all you wonderful return readers.

Also an interesting stat is that out of all the traffic that got here from Squidoo the past 2 months, over 72% of those folks were here at PotPieGirl.com for the first time! Now THAT is great exposure!

I mentioned ‘bounce rate’ earlier, but didn’t define that term. When you have a blog and install Google Analytics to get some sweet stats for your blog, one of the stats is referred to as “bounce rate”. Basically what this refers to is visitors who come to your site and only look at one page. Now, from what I can see, one visit to this blog that reads one page and leaves counts for a 100% bounce rate. However, I have some stats when one visitor looked at two pages and stayed for a total of 6 seconds… and it was only a 50% bounce rate for that visit. The lower your ‘bounce rate’ the better. You want visitors to find what they came for on your blog AND read more of your blog.

Naturally, with any blog, you will have regular readers who will come when you post something new, read that one page, and then leave. That’s the nature of blogs, so don’t obsess that much about bounce rate. I mainly look at bounce rate as it applies to new visitors from various sources. I like to know which traffic sources are sending me ’sticky’ traffic that sticks around… and which sources send me ‘one hit wonders’. Squidoo sends ’sticky’ visitors =)
 
 

Bottom Line on Blog Exposure With Squidoo

 
If you have a blog (or many blogs) get to Squidoo and make some lenses! Just think, if ONE little Squidoo lens might bring you 20 new visitors a day…. what if you made TWENTY Squidoo pages? I’m telling you – It is a win/win situation all the way around! (And it sure beats PAYING for traffic!)

Want to see what the search engines see when they crawl your lens? Try this Spider Simulator – it is very enlightening!

Want to see some real stats from a Squidoo/Niche blog experiment I did? Look at these Squidoo stats for ONE lens linking to ONE blog!

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Blog Exposure with Squidoo

Niche Blog Sites for Beginners

First off, my apologies to any readers that already have this figured out. This post is aimed at those that are slightly baffled by this whole ‘own domain’, ‘own hosting’, ‘let BlogSpot host it’, etc statements that are made across the web about niche blogging. My terminology will be VERY basic and I don’t intend to go deep into the subject. If others have additions to add to this post, please feel free to say something in the comment area.

Sometimes, one or two seemingly irrelevant things we say or post can REALLY help someone – so let’s help someone today!

What You Need For a WebSite

In order to have a website you need two things – a domain name and a hosting account. In order to make this more understandable, I am going to relate websites to cell phone service.

When you want to have cell phone service, you need two things other than an actual cell phone. You need a phone number (relate to a domain name) and you need a cell phone service provider (relate to website hosting).

Your cell phone number, just like your domain name, is uniquely yours. You can take that cell phone number and transfer it to new service providers and that phone number is still unique to you. However, that cell phone number is worthless unless it is activated and live through a service provider.

Domain names work the same way. You can buy a ton of domain names, but no one will see anything unless you get website hosting. Your domain name is unique to you – your hosting gives you the ability to be ‘live’.

Niche Site Blogging Options

When it comes to blogs you have options:

1)

You can get a free domain name with free hosting from sites like Blogger and WordPress.

These sites will assign you a domain name you choose and will make your blog live for you at no cost. Your domain name will most likely be a ’subdomain’ of the main site (ie, YourChosenName. Blogspot.com or YourChosenName.WordPress.com )

Pros:

You can have a blog up and running in minutes.

There is no cost to you involved.

Both Wordpress and BlogSpot are very easy to use and a great way to learn about blogging.

Cons:

Your domain name is an off-set of another website (a subdomain)

While it is ‘your’ blog, it still belongs to either Blogger or WordPress.

Both of these sites have their own rules and TOS, and for any reason, your site can go ‘POOF’. Being that it is not YOUR website/blog, you have little recourse.

This would be like a company giving you a free cell phone number and free service. While that is great, they can turn it off on you or take it away at any given time for any given reason. “Free” has strings, of course.

2)

You can buy a domain name and then let Blogger’s BlogSpot host it for you for free.

This is not difficult to do, and in fact, I have a few sites left that are still operated this way. The domain is unique (TheNameYouChose.com) but actually redirects to a BlogSpot blog.

Pros:

Only cost is the yearly price of a domain name (expect about $8-$9 a year for a .com)

You have a unique web address for your blog.

Cons:

You still don’t own that site. Yes, you own the domain name, but since the hosting service is free, you can still be booted offline for THEIR reasons.

3)

Buy your own domain name, have your own hosting, and install the WordPress blogging software onto your site.

This is the best way to go in my opinion. I have had (and DO have) niche sites on blogs that are set up in all of these 3 ways. In fact, this very blog (PotPieGirl.com), started out as a free blog on Blogger’s Blogspot, then I bought my own unique domain name and had it hosted by Blogger, and then in January of this year, I moved my Blogger blog to my own hosting and started using WordPress.

Pros

It’s all YOURS baby! YOU set the rules for what you can and can’t do on your own site.

Installing WordPress on your own hosting is easy to do, and once installed, having your own WordPress niche site on your own hosting is just as easy as using the free option of WordPress.

Cons

This costs money. Domain names (a .com) will run about $8-$9 a year, and hosting will cost you anywhere from $5 a month and up. Many hosting accounts now let you host MANY websites on one hosting account for that price. Without getting too technical, I’ll just explain it this way. Yes, again with the cell phone comparison. Having a hosting account that allows you to host many websites (different domain names) is similar to having a cell phone service company that allows different phone numbers to share minutes.

While I could go MUCH, MUCH deeper into this topic, I won’t right now. I want this to be very basic and just enough information to get the lightbulb to go off over a few heads. Then, you will be ready for deep details.

How Do You Get WordPress on a Domain Name You Host Yourself?

This is another popular question – how the heck do you get the WordPress blogging software on your own domain name that you host on your own hosting?

It really is very, very easy. When choosing a hosting account, make sure they offer something called “cpanel” and “Fantastico”. I know those terms mean next to nothing to many of you, but that’s ok!

Cpanel is kinda like the settings option on your cell phone. This lets you go behind the scenes and make changes to how things work. You can do all kinds of things from your Cpanel, but the cool thing that relates to this post is the use of a tool called “Fantastico”.

Very simply, you go into your Cpanel and you click on Fantastico. From that dashboard, you choose “WordPress”, pick which domain you want to put WordPress on, and then click ‘install’.

Presto-chango – the WordPress blogging software is on your site (on your domain name) and you can now dress it up with a new theme if you want, add great WordPress plug ins that make your blog SO much better… you can do whatever you want because it is all yours (as long as you pay your monthly hosting bill… just like with your cell phone…lol)

Which Hosting Service?

I use HostGator. They have proven to me their outstanding customer service lately, they have Cpanel and Fantastico, the price is right, I can pay monthly as opposed to 6 months or a year in advance, and well, it all works great for me. There are other low cost and reliable domain hosting services out there (that link is a review of 5 hosting services), so feel free to shop around and do what is best for you.

How To Make WordPress Niche Sites?

This is a lesson for another day. In fact, I will soon be unveiling an entire website I have created that walks you thru the steps of creating simple WordPress niche sites (yes, the kind that make money…lol). The entire site will be free and hopefully, it will get a lot of you up and running with LOTS of your own profitable WordPress niche sites.

I hope this post was helpful to some and helps you get your head around this whole Blogger, WordPress, free vs paid niche site options. I have used all the options above so feel free to ask any questions you may have.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Blogspot, WordPress, and Niche Sites

My Surprise Email From HostGator

I think I’ve only needed the customer service department at HostGator once. It was fairly uneventful – issue solved quickly. Tonight, however, something BAD happened. Worst part is, I didn’t even know something bad happened. Worst yet, it wasn’t just with not just one of my sites, but FIVE of my sites!

I was working on a different post for y’all when I happened to decide to take a break and check my email. There was an email from HostGator.

It read:

“This message is to advise you of a temporary block placed on your database.”

Then went on to tell me that my something was using up too much of something else… and then a whole long list of log code or something.

Say HUH?

I quickly went and checked a few random sites I have hosted there – and the ones I checked appeared to be fine. I was TOTALLY confused. I am not web-hosting-server-stuff savvy… not even a little bit. I also have 30 or so sites on that hosting account with HostGator so checking them all would waste valuable time in fixing whatever the heck they were saying was wrong.

I’m good at breaking things (it’s a gift…lol), so I thought hard about all I’ve done to my sites the past few days. I’ve built two new sites in the past 3 days. Also, today, I had tried to upload a file via FTP to my server, and something weird happened (it timed out or sumthin…heck if I know). I also had recently upgraded my version of WordPress on a lot of sites..but my sites seemed fine.

How Do You Explain That You Are A Tech-Idiot?

So, I emailed back. I expressed my confusion to the HostGator rep-in-waiting. Then, I continued to explain to this nice customer service person that I am a total tech-idiot, that he would need to speak s-l-o-w-l-y … and use little words. I tried to explain the few recent changes I’ve made to my sites and also mentioned the FTP weirdness from earlier.

The response email came VERY quickly. The customer service rep explained that about a half dozen of my databases had been blocked and gave me the database names … which still made my eyes squint and cause me to reach for the Advil cause I know my sites by NAMES, not by database numbers…..

However, he went on to explain that something was making an unacceptable strain on the server – some kind of automated process.

An ‘Automated Process’?!??!? Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The fog lifted a little and I started checking sites I have that receive automated content via a WordPress plug in. They were down, Down, DOWN. All the sites that were down had the same plugin installed. Perhaps this was the issue? Nothing like a tech-idiot diagnosing their own ailment… lol!

However, I thought this could be the issue so I went thru FTP and deleted the plug-in on one of the sites. I emailed back explaining what I thought the problem was. I was prepared to beg for mercy and offer my first-born if needed, but please don’t tell my son!

The next email I received from HostGator was a different customer services rep (Mary, I believe). She clearly explained that yes, this plug-in was the issue and she put that one site back online. She continued, in plain s-l-o-w English, that if I deleted/stopped the plug in on the other sites that she would take the block off them, too.

I went thru and deleted the plug-in from all the sites that had it (even tho not ALL were blocked) and emailed back saying Mission Complete.

Thank You, HostGator!

Within minutes, all my sites were back online. If it wasn’t for HostGator, I may not have known these sites were even down (probably until I started to question why my AdSense earnings were dropping…lol)

Thank you, HostGator, for being proactive, for being polite, for being so quick to help me through this… and for speaking s-l-o-w-l-y!

If you are looking for web site hosting, HostGator gets my ‘Thumbs Up’ and the PotPieGirl Seal of Approval (and appreciation!)

Just a note: If you are using the UAW plug in to receive content to your site, please check your site. This is the plug in that was causing my issues, and I’ve also noticed that their site is down for just about the same reason mine were.

Now, in all fairness, this could easily JUST BE ME. Or, I missed an email that explained that the UAW plug in was not compatible with the newest version of WordPress. Heck, for all I know, it was MY sites that caused UAW to go down (shhhhhhhh…. don’t tell anybody).

To be on the safe side, go check any sites that receive content thru the UAW plug in… just in case. Better to be safe than sorry. This way, if you need to work with your hosting company, you can get it done much faster.

Hopefully, you’re with HostGator

Just another note: Looks like you can get the ‘Baby’ package (same hosting package that I have) for $7.95 a month through my links – with NO CONTRACT, either. Just a simple month-to-month billing. I just checked and it says $7.95…. which means I need to email HostGator customer service back and ask why I am paying more….lol

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Hats off to HostGator!

Using Twitter to Increase Traffic to Your Blog

Twitter is THE thing lately, but if you’re anything like me, you’re a bit clueless as how to capture and utilize the power of this super web 2.0 tool. Twitter is a BIG source on traffic for your blog or website – IF you use it properly. Now that Squidoo has added a Twitter Follow module, the potential of traffic generated from Twitter is unlimited!

I’ve admitted that I am a twit when it comes to Twitter and I knew I needed some way to tackle the learning curve. While I am a big fan of learning everything I can for free, I am also a REALLY big fan of saving time.

Learn Twitter CHEAP

Today, I came across some wacky sale for a 36-page How To Twitter guide. It’s good.. really good. It also comes with a second ebook on learning to harness the power of MyBlogLog (another great source of traffic for all you bloggers). Using social sites is so important these days. Whether your blog has good organic rankings or not, social traffic can be a virtual goldmine.

Just How Cheap is this Twitter Guide?

This is crazy, but you will see why I’m all fired up about sharing this with you today. You can get this Twitter guide AND the MyBlogLog guide for the great, big price of….

$3.95

Yes, less than four dollars. Total no-brainer in my book!

Here’s the thing… the distributor offers a crazy sale each Wednesday so I have no clue how long this great deal will be available.

If you want to learn Twitter and learn about MyBlogLog, you better go take a peek and see if you’re interested.

Click this link for special price on this Twitter Guide.

$3.95…. haha… that’s just sick.

Have a great day!

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

How Do You Twitter? Finally, I Learned How to Use Twitter

Affiliate Article Marketing or Traffic Generation – or BOTH

In my opinion, article marketing is the most UNDER-used free resource we internet marketers have. Why? I imagine there are a lot of factors that keep fellow marketers from effectively using this simple process.

One- Article Marketing IS simple…. and yes, it is also boring. Effective? Yes! Exciting? Uh, not even a little bit…lol Article marketing takes discipline and a big dose of “stick-to-it-ness” in order to really work for the long haul. In the past, I have found myself dreading writing a small article to syndicate all over the internet. I would find myself doing anything to avoid writing that article… even doing laundry – yuck!

Two- Article Marketing is not a get rich quick type thing. It’s just not. You can submit an article and it could take weeks…months…to see the real benefits.

What Are The Benefits of Article Marketing?

Effective article marketing can lead to more traffic to your blog, higher rankings in the search engines, increased affiliate sales, and more back links to your site.. It’s all win-win with article marketing!

Thing is, there is a right way and a not-so-right way to perform effective article marketing. Article marketing means that you write an informational (non-promotional) article and then submit it to many article directories. The beauty of these articles is that at the end of the article you can add your author bio area/resource box. In this bio area you can offer links back to your blog. When readers want more information on your topic, or are interested in your service, they will click these links to get to your blog. Simple, right?

Yes, article marketing IS simple.

But yet, we all put it off.

My Autopilot Article Marketing Strategy

After seeing my own serious case of procrastination when it came to my article marketing efforts, I decided to set up a system for myself that really works. I researched others systems, read many articles that others have submitted, and have analyzed the results of my trial and error for my own system.

I also realized that most of us were making article marketing harder than we have to.

I read the best post on another blog called How to Write Articles That Convert Like Crazy. That post was some serious straight talk about article marketing!

One of the most interesting parts of the article is this:

“This is a trick I’ve tried and tested repeatedly, and in MOST markets….it works like a charm. I almost hate to share it – but here it is anyway. Write VERY short articles. And lots of them. Keep the articles UNDER 320 words. Under 300 for Ezine Articles ( the granddaddy of Article directories) is best. But…here is the trick. Create one LONG resource box that you save in your author account. Break it up into several paragraphs, each paragraph has a link to your offer page as above. ( Ezine will accept two links in the resource box as a matter of policy – I’ve found that more often than not – they’ll take three without complaint if you are a solid contributor to the community) Your resource box in this example should be a STRONG close….and should APPEAR to be part of the article – ie – almost no transition between the preceeding short article and the saved resource box. As you are allowed to “sell” in the resource box area…this simple approach will seemingly extend the article with a strong sales message, live links, and solid close, in EVERY article you submit on this topic, as this is your default signature file for each. This works tremendously well for me, and I attribute a lot of my article marketing success to this, and this alone.”

Wow – write articles UNDER 300-320 words? Really? I went and double-checked the editorial guidelines for EzineArticles, and sure enough, there it is…

“ARTICLE BODY:

1. Must be a minimum of 250 words and no more than 5,000 words. For us, an ideal article size is 400-750 words.”

Fact is, I think most internet marketers think they have to submit a 1,000-word article masterpiece, when in fact, 300 words or so is plenty!

But… I Still Have To Write The Article!

Yes, whether it is a 2,000-word article or only 300 words, you still have to do the writing. I’ll be honest, sometimes my brain just doesn’t feel like writing – especially when it’s a topic I am not overly familiar with. This feeling goes for not only my article marketing efforts, but also my niche blog content creation and Squidoo lens creation.

Even tho I was SO excited to do this post for my blog traffic series, I had to wait until today to do it. You see, I have been very lucky to be able to test a software program while it was in beta and today, it was released to the public. This amazing, wonderful, awesome, super program takes SO much workout of my article writing and content creation. I could go on and on about just how fantastic this tool is, but I know that just one browse through the information page and you will get it – no doubt! Check out the just-released article creation wizard – you will LOVE it! It truly has been a life-preserver for my article marketing efforts.

Ok, time for me to stop rambling and just tell you how I do my article marketing.

My Article Marketing System

Here we go…

1. I use the article creation wizard to write my article. Not a long article, but effective enough to offer information and hopefully cause the reader to want more information from my blog.

2. I submit this one article to EzineArticles. Within a day or two, the article will be live.

3. I then follow the guidelines and submit my article to this service. I love this service, too. This article marketing service will submit UNIQUE versions of my article all over the internet to many, many article directories. Best part is, I can also have UNIQUE author bio boxes attached to each unique article, too! What does that mean? That means that I can a) change up the anchor text I choose to link back to my blog and b) I can change what pages I link to from an article. Kids, this is POWERFUL stuff! This service also allows you to choose how many articles you have submitted each day. You can choose to have 100 unique articles submitted… or 20 articles… totally up to you.

4. Another powerful feature of this article submission service is that I can also get unique versions of my submitted articles for my own use. When I’m ready to make a Squidoo lens to generate traffic to my blog, I go get a unique version for the content on the lens. When I want to promote with Zimbio, I go get a unique version for the content. Perhaps I want to create a niche blog to promote my main blog….and I will need content, right? Right! I just go get more unique versions of my articles. It’s magic.

I have seen a tremendous improvement with traffic generation, higher ranks in Google and other search engines, and affiliate sales since I started routinely using my little autopilot article marketing strategy. It just plain WORKS.

If you are one of the smart marketers who use this proven WordPress system, you will totally get how this all fits together. While article marketing in itself is free, having an very inexpensive virtually autopilot article marketing system is PRICELESS!

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Autopilot Article Marketing Strategy to Increase Blog Traffic

When it Comes to Twitter – I’m a Twit

I’ll have to be honest about all this social community stuff tho – I am so far behind regarding what it out there and available that it’s not even funny. Put me in a room with 100 people and I can ‘twit’ like crazy. In fact, my husband would call me a Super Twit – I LOVE talking to people. However, when it comes to Twitter, I am just about completely lost.

The toughest part for ME regarding Twitter, and all these other social communities, is simply keeping up. I don’t like to ‘use’ social communities for my own needs. To me, that feels like a form of abuse and I do not want to offend the users. On the other hand, knowing myself, I could get lost in a social community (or ten) and not get the work done that I need to be doing. I am interested in participating in social communities that further my work – not blur my focus.

Learning Twitter

I’ve been doing some research on Twitter as I try and learn and get comfortable, and I’ve found some good reading about the Twitter service.

ProBlogger has a great post about 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers that has helped me a lot. He mentioned a service called TwitterFeed which interested me enough to sign up and learn how to use. TwitterFeed is a service that allows you to have your RSS feed announce any new posts you make directly and automatically to your Twitter account. In my past post, we learned that your RSS feed has great potential to increase blog traffic. TwitterFeed is one more way to use your RSS feed and social communities in one application.

Twitter has gained an amazing amount of publicity and popularity lately. Seems EVERYONE is Twittering (Tweeting?). The official blog for Squidoo posted about using Twitter for your Squidoo lens promotion recently. This blog post also leads to a SquidU forum post where Fluffanutta gave some great tips for using Twitter.

I am PotPieGirl on Twitter – please feel free to follow me. However, lately there is not much to follow…lol!! I’m sure there are other great guides and blog posts out there regarding Twitter. If anyone knows of on, PLEASE share!

BlogCatalog

Ever since Jackies guest post here about BlogCatalog, I’ve been back in the social community trying to learn all about it. I have to admit, BlogCatalog is pretty darn cool. On my profile page at BlogCatalog, you can see a short description of me, a list of my blogs and latest posts, the other blogs I read and a bit about those that read my blog. There is also a place where other users can leave me a message and an area that shows my latest activity online (things I bookmark, Friends I’ve added, discussions I participated in, etc). Also, BlogCatalog lets you add a snazzy widget on your blog showcasing other BlogCatalog users that have visited this blog.

I’ve seen additional traffic from BlogCatalog and love the extra exposure. I also really like the exposure it gives to other blogs that I normally may not have found. While I don’t sign in near as often as I should, BlogCatalog is one social community that is on my list to pay more attention to and make part of my daily routine.

Online Social Communities – Summary

I have only listed two of many, many, MANY social communities online that you can participate in and increase not only exposure of your blog, but also increase your traffic, too. Social communities also allow fellow bloggers to form working relationships that can benefit both bloggers and increase traffic to both blogs.

All social communities are good and offer many benefits when used properly. However, I don’t think using ALL of the available social communities is good for any one blogger. I am trying to pick two or three that I participate in actively – and that’s it. As with business in REAL life, networking is good…..too much socialization is bad. I can see myself getting too distracted with each social community I become involved in.

Try and pick social communities that enhance your business. Surround yourself with people that you not only enjoy, but also have similar interests and blog topics that you have. You can feel comfortable that you are not only sharing information that the community will find useful, but you can also learn from fellow bloggers and enjoy their topics, too.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

How to Increase Blog Traffic with Social Communities

Today, as I continue my series on How to Increase Blog Traffic and Improve Search Engine Exposure, let’s take a look at RSS feeds and how they can bring more visitors to your blog.

What is RSS and How Can It Help My Blog Traffic?

I have found a great site that explains all about RSS – www.RSS-Specifications.com. Just reading a little bit about RSS will help conquer the fear of the unknown and help you realize what a powerful traffic generation tool you have.

According to RSS-Specifications.com :

“RSS is becoming increasing popular. The reason is fairly simple. RSS is a free and easy way to promote a site and its content without the need to advertise or create complicated content sharing partnerships.”

Honestly, folks…that’s all you need to concern yourself with unless you really, really want to know how RSS works. In a nutshell, RSS is like another web address to your blog that provides readers with another way to read your blog. When this RSS address is put into an RSS feed reader, your blog posts are shown (either just the title, partial, or full content). These RSS feed readers automatically update each time you post.

Where is the RSS Feed for My Blog?

The basic RSS feed for your blog can be found right in your browser window. Look up at the address in the browser right now… see the orange RSS icon? Click it and you will be taken to a window with what your current feed will look like, and the address in the browser is your RSS feed address. A simple copy/paste is all you need to get started with RSS.

There are programs out there that make syndication of your RSS feed even more cool. FeedBurner.com has some amazing features, among them is the ability to allow your blog readers to sign up to get your posts by email. This works like this…. a reader signs up for your email RSS, you publish a new post, Feedburner picks up this change in your RSS and emails all of your subscribers a copy of your post (or a summary…your choice). Feedburner also tracks subscriber counts and stats as well as MANY other handy features. Now, this is just a very basic description of how all this works. Naturally, it can get much more involved than this =)

What Can I Do With My RSS Feed?

I have had great success by simply adding my RSS feed to my Squidoo lenses. If you have a blog and you have even just ONE lens on Squidoo, you need to have your blog RSS displayed. If not, you are missing out on potential traffic and exposure. Let’s put it this way…. Say you get 10 click thrus from one Squidoo lens to your blog via your RSS feed display per day. That’s not overly special, is it? Now, what if you have TEN Squidoo lenses and each display your RSS and each average 10 click thrus per day. Now we’re talking 100 additional visits to your blog.

Now it’s getting special, isn’t it? =)

Best part is – this is ’set it and forget it’ blog promotion. Each time you post, every single one of those RSS feeds on your Squidoo lenses updates, too. Fresh content for your lens…..increased exposure for your blog. Win-Win!

How Do I Add My RSS Feed to a Squidoo Lens?

Adding your RSS feed to a Squidoo page is easy, easy, easy. Go into ‘edit’ mode for your lens. Choose to “add modules”, and right there you will see “RSS- Add Your Own Feed”

Click to Add a RSS module, then click save.

Now, when you are back in the edit/workshop mode for your lens, look for your new RSS module. Open the module to edit, and fill in the needed information.

Fill in like this:

Now click ’save’ and you’re done!

Do this on all your lenses. Remember, when trying to get traffic to your blog, the best way is to generate exposure everywhere you can. Every visitor helps. And who knows? One visitor might tell a friend, and they’ll tell a friend, and so on and so on….

Where Should I Submit My RSS Feed?

For a long list of places to submit the RSS feed for your blog, also visit this page on RSS-Specifications.com.

To learn more about how to use RSS feeds to improve blog traffic and search engine exposure, visit this section of W3Schools.com and learn all you could want to know…and then some!

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

How To Increase Blog Traffic With Your RSS Feed

The Importance of Good Blog Content

For now, when I refer to “good blog content”, I am not talking about optimization, or keywords, or any other type of SEO. For this post, ‘good blog content’ means… good words, interesting reading, and your online ‘voice’.

When we get a reader to our blog, do we want them to read one article? Or read many articles? When we get readers to our blog, do we want them to visit once? Or make a point to come back and continue to read what we write?

You Can Lead a Reader To A Blog, But You Can’t Make Him Read

Or maybe the right saying is about leading a horse to water…. Same difference. No matter what blog traffic generation techniques you’re using, you can tell very easily if the content you have on your blog is serving you well. Look at your blog stats. (Hopefully, you have no less than statcounter.com installed on your blog to track your readers path TO your blog, and THRU your blog.) If your average reader reads one post on your blog and then leaves, that is not a good sign. What you want to see is visitor paths through your blog that go many pages deep. Readers will have read the first piece of content on your blog that they were brought to and want to read more of what you have to say. If you have a WordPress blog, I recommend installing some sort of ‘related posts’ plug-in. Giving your readers options to more similar content you have at the end of each post can really help with getting readers to read more.

How Do I Know WHAT To Blog About?

If you’re like I am, there are days you can think of a hundred topics to blog about…and then other days when your mind goes blank. I get great ideas from visiting related forums and reading what forum members WANT to know. Same with visiting other blogs. In the comment areas, blog readers ask wonderful questions that are almost sure to inspire me.

Do not limit yourself, or limit your blog, to only things YOU want to know about your topic. Listen to others and tell them what THEY want to know. Check your stats and look at the words your users are typing into a search engine to find you. Those words are BIG hint as to what you need to blog about…or blog MORE about. Look at what your readers are reading right before they clicked through to you. Can you expand on that topic? Can you make that topic more interesting?

I have a wonderful little analytic script installed on my blogs from HitTail.com. This free tracking software keeps record of your blog hits, the words used to find you (your keywords), and then makes you a great list of ’suggestions’. Yes, HitTail will tell you what you need to blog about and what title to give your post. It takes awhile (depending on the volume of traffic coming to your blog) for HitTail to get a good picture and start making suggestions, but the wait is well worth it. Check out HitTail.com (opens in a new window).

Remember, The Secret to Blogging is Giving, Not Taking.

Blogs generate more traffic with every bit of good information they give away. The worst mistake a blogger can make is TRYING to sell. I remember when I first thought about blogging. I thought I could just create a simple blog, write some hyped-up reviews, and make a ton of money.

Wrong!

I learned (the hard way) that the more information I gave away to my readers…the more I shared what I know…the more readers were able to trust me. Earning trust online is NO easy task, but once you have it, it’s wonderful. Now, when I find a product that I truly love, I can talk about it….or even hint at it…and my loyal readers have enough trust in me to take a peek at what I am talking about. There is also accountability that comes with earning online trust. I have accepted this responsibility and hold myself accountable for the products I suggest to my readers.

Stop selling. Start giving. Earn Trust. Creating good content on your blog really is as easy as those three things. Think about the blogs YOU like to read….Why do you like to read them?

HOW Do I Write My Blog Content?

In my opinion, blogs are more personal that an online article or information website. I believe your blog should reflect YOU. Whether you want to believe it or not, YOU are an interesting person. Let YOU shine through your posts. Talk TO your readers, not AT them. Let your personality show, show your silly side…just be you!

For those that read my blog regularly, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we met in person and you felt as if you already ‘know’ me. I try to write to my readers just about exactly as I would talk to them if we were both sitting in this office.

Be Genuine. Be Quirky. Be Remarkable =)

Speaking of Being Remarkable

I keep referring back to Seth Godins theory of being ‘remarkable’ because it really resonates with me what it takes to be successful online (or in any business for that matter). When it comes to blogging and captivating an online audience, I feel that you also need to be ‘curious’.

If you are a curious blogger, you come across a new term, a tough question in a forum, or a problem that YOU have and explore it further….then you share it with your readers. If you don’t have a curious nature, it can be difficult to explore something unfamiliar and dig deeper. It is much easier to click the back button, isn’t it? However, when you challenge yourself and look deeper into an issue or topic that is out of your comfort zone, a wonderful thing happens. You learn. After your learn, you now have knowledge to share…things that others want to know.

Be curious!

On this same topic, I’d like to share with you a wonderful and insightful video from Seth Godin. If the video does not show for you here on your browser window, click here to watch it on Seth’s blog. It’s no wonder Seth Godin is well-respected as one the best marketers around! He has such a unique view on the world and amazing insight. Heck, who else could have thought of Squidoo?

Final Thoughts On Blog Traffic Generation with Good Content

The number one way to increase blog traffic is through the very content you put on your blog. If you don’t create content that is worth talking about or worth linking to, no one WILL talk about it or link to it. Don’t be over-whelmed by this concept. Instead, use that to inspire your writing. Each time you find in your stats that someone has linked to your blog or talked about your blog, pat yourself on the back!

Content worth talking about IS talked about.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

How To Increase Blog Traffic With Your Blog Content

Increase Traffic To Your Blog and Improve Exposure on the Search Engines

Since this is such a large topic to tackle, I am breaking this down into a series of posts. Each traffic generation method is rightly entitled to a complete description and “How To’ instructions. Plainly put, a one or two paragraph answer won’t be a REAL answer…so what would be the point of talking about it?

Each technique I list below are traffic generation methods I not only use, but I see results from when used to improve traffic to this blog. While I am focusing on how to increase blog traffic, these methods can be altered and used for traffic generation ideas for any web page, not just a blog.

In addition to blog traffic ideas, I will not only explain how I increase traffic to my blog, but I will also explain how these same methods improve my exposure within the search engine result pages. Increased exposure and improved exposure (yes, they can mean two different things). However both lead to better visibility in the SERPs which leads to….. yup, more traffic to your blog.

Please note a few things about these traffic generation techniques I will be discussing. First off, I do not always use each of these techniques for every blog post I create. Secondly, I will never advocate the abuse of any of the systems that are detailed.

Increase Blog Traffic AND Get Paid For It

Yes, it’s true, some of these traffic generation techniques are via platforms that pay me to use them. How cool is that? No, you will not get rich quick off of any single technique….and probably not by using all the techniques combined. Possible? Sure I guess…. I suppose it is also possible that I will finally scratch off the winning combination on a million dollar lottery ticket, too! However, I’m not holding my breath on that one =)

Blog Traffic Generation Techniques – My Favorites

As time goes by each of these ways to increase traffic to your blog will be linked out to it’s corresponding post. As it stands right now, I have 17 ways I get traffic to my blog. Knowing me, I will end up adding some more. If I do, it will be noted so you don’t miss out. To keep up-to-date with this traffic generation tips series of posts, go ahead and sign up to receive my posts via email. That way, I come to YOU and no one misses a thing!

17 Ways to Increase Blog Traffic

Also (knowing me), I may not be posting on each topic in the order they are listed below. Bear with me, when this is all complete, each technique will have a link to detailed information.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Content

Article Marketing

RSS Feeds

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social Communities

Squidoo

HubPages

Associated Content

Forums

Other Blogs

Blog Interaction

eMail

Guest Bloggers

Personal Requests

Statistics

WordPress

If you have any specific questions and/or requests, please feel free to email me. I do requests

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

How To Increase Blog Traffic and Improve Search Engine Exposure

You may recall Jackie when I did a SEO Squidoo Lens Review on one of her lenses that was having some issues. Jackie is an incredible lady… work at home mom, has her own business… keeps many blogs delightful and informational…Just a great woman, great PERSON, all the way around. You can find Jackie Lee at her work at home mom internet marketing blog or at her business site where she offers affordable writing services to small businesses.

Ok – time for me to hush and let Jackie talk. Ladies and gentlemen….Jackie Lee.

Who are the People in Your Blogorhood? Find out at BlogCatalog

The more I use Web 2.0 resources the more fun I have, the more people I meet, the more traffic I see and the more money I make! It really shouldn’t surprise me anymore, but sometimes it does, the more fun I’m having the more success I experience.

I was inspired to go get an account at BlogCatalog, and when I got there I realized I had already been there. A long time ago, before I knew anything about internet marketing. It’s happened to me a few times lately, and it’s kind of funny.

What is BlogCatalog?

If you aren’t familiar with BlogCatalog, I recommend you run on over and look around. It is just what it says. A huge catalog of blogs. As you know though, behind every blog is a blogger. There are some amazing blogs at BlogCatalog, and some amazing people.

You can list your blog(s) in the catalog. Which is great, and as with any Web 2.0 community you have the chance to meet new people, make “friends”, join communities and have a good time.

It is well laid out and easy to negotiate through the catalog. You can search the catalog by keyword, which is nice. It is pretty easy to find some really good blogs. In fact, I found almost all of my favorite blogs by browsing through BlogCatalog.

I have found other mom blogs and it’s been nice to have other mom bloggers to “socialize” with.

There are a couple reasons why I think it’s a good idea to find other blogger friends, and keep an eye on other blogs in your niche.

1. The blogosphere is a community. The more people you meet, the more chances you have to make new friends. The more friends you make the more you increase your chances of having someone recommend your blog, the more recommendations you have the more traffic you get. It’s a community, play with others, it’s useful and very fun!
2. Keeping an eye on blogs in your niche is a great idea. It allows you to keep up with what’s going on in your field.
3. Backlinks. If you have some favorite blogs you regularly read, it doesn’t feel like work to leave comments and a backlink.
4. The more link-love you give to other bloggers, the more link-love they are likely to give to you. Never worry when linking to another blogger that there aren’t enough readers, there are more than enough readers for everyone, so why not recommend your readers go check out a blog you love. Readers love a good recommendation. By sending them to a useful or interesting blog you are gaining trust with your readers.

One other thing I love, and this is kind of silly, but I do love it; at the bottom of your BlogCatalog profile page you can see recent visitors, and there’s a picture of everyone who has recently stopped by your page. It’s fun to see who has stopped by, and to go check out their blogs. (oh, look there, more traffic) Take some time, submit your blog, and cruise around and visit your neighbor bloggers. Your cute little picture will show up on their page, and they’ll probably stop by, check out your blog and say hi to you.

Your masterful content and wit will keep them While you’re at BlogCatalog, stop by and say hi to me!

See ya ’round the blogorhood!

Jackie Lee

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Who are the People in Your Blogorhood? Find out at BlogCatalog

I was scared to make the move from Blogger to WordPress… What if I lost everything? All in all, it turned out to be a very painless experience and is quite simple to do.

For anyone thinking of making the move from Blogger, let me tell you how I did it.

First, let me just clarify that I had my own domain name (www.PotPieGirl.com) that was being hosted by Blogger. I wanted to move PotPieGirl.com AND all it’s content (posts and comments) over to my own hosting where I would be using the WordPress blog platform.

Moving a Blogger Blog to WordPress

1 – I went and changed my DNS to point to my hosting account

2 – While waiting for the DNS to ‘take’, I went into my cpanel and added PotPieGirl.com. I then installed WordPress with Fantastico.

3- Next, I uploaded the theme I wanted and any plug-ins into their respective folder in wp-content.

4- I then went into the wp-admin side of my new WordPress blog and activated the theme and the plug ins. I made some more personal preference adjustments and I was ready.

5 – Time to move the blog over to it’s new WordPress home on my own hosting. This part is simple – really! Go into wp-admin. Click ‘manage’ and then click ‘import’. You will then see a list of options – one of which is “Blogger”. Click that and follow the rest of the directions. It is fast… and painless.

I got all my instructions and info from here.

Painless… simple… fast.

What to Do with Old Blogger Blog

However, I now realized that I had a Blogspot blog and my new Wordpress blog out there on the www … and they both had the exact same content. Now what?

I thought about deleting my old Blogger blog, but there are a ton of images that Blogger has hosted for me. It will take a while to move them over, but if I deleted the Blogger blog, they would all be gone ::poof!:::: I knew a 301 redirect was not possible being that we don’t have .htaccess ability on Blogger hosted blogs… so, what to do?

I ended up finding good solutions here and here. I did it.. it works fine (or at least appears to do the trick). I know I will lose some ‘link juice’ since the urls of my posts didn’t transfer exactly (Blogger urls end in .html).

I did use Googles WebMaster Tools to help me tho. I got my url in there and submitted a new site map. Just 2 days later, it seems Google has already gotten the majority of my the new urls indexed.

Thats all there was to it!  Moving from Blogger to WordPress was much easier than I thought it would be.

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Moving Blogger Blog to WordPress

Hmmmm…

How about transmitting your blog into outer space?

That’s right, you can have your blog transmitted into outer space for free. Pretty cool concept, isn’t it? For many, many years now, TV shows and news programs have been transmitted into outer space. Why? In the event that there is some sort of intelligent life beyond our solar system, we are offering them information about us and about our world.

Why not offer them your blog?

BlogInSpace is a somewhat quirky and fun way to promote your blog. Free to use – and you get some cool badges for your blog to display when your blog is transmitted. Blog in Space is also yet another very clever viral marketing campaign…that was/IS very successful. MarketingSherpa added Blog In Space to their 2006 Viral Marketing Hall of Fame. You can read a complete over-view of this marketing campaign here.

Brand New to Internet Marketing? Read my four-part blog series – How to START Making Money Online

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Blog In Space – Out of this World Marketing for your Blog

What is a Niche Blog?

A niche blog is a simple blog (that can be a free blog) that has content and monetizing actions based on one topic, or “niche”. If the niche blog is about gardening, all the content will be geared towards the reader who is looking for gardening information – and you won’t start posting about playstation games or BMWs. A niche blog stays on topic. It is an “authority” site on a given topic.

Here is an example of a niche blog I’m working on: Puppy Training Tips. (Go ahead and look, the window should open in a new window.) As you can see, this blog is all about puppies, puppy training, new puppy care, etc, etc. This niche blog is also still a work in progress. Something VERY important is missing on this niche blog…Can you tell me what is missing?

Why Use a Niche Blog?

If you are making money online using all free and low-cost methods, you most likely do not have your own web site. However, internet marketing strategies require that you have a “landing page” that is NOT an affiliate site. Your niche blog is the heart of your affiliate marketing efforts. This is where your Squidoo pages will lead viewers, your article marketing bio boxes will point to, your forum marketing will point to, and all the other great and FREE methods of advertising will direct to. This is where your visitors…your buyers LAND. Got it?

What Should be on Every Niche Blog?

Your niche blog is not only your “landing page”, it also needs to be your “squeeze page”. A squeeze page is where your build your list. There should be an opt-in box to join your free newsletter, get a free ebook or ecourse, or something of value to the reader in exchange for their name and email address. The list – you must build your list for every niche you work in. This way, when a viewer leaves your blog, you can still have contact with them – and build a relationship with them.

FYI – if you guessed that my Puppy Training niche blog is missing an opt-in form, you are correct!

What is the Best System to Learn Niche Blogging?

In a previous post I mentioned Niche Blog Affiliate Profits. This is an excellent system that is over-loaded with info. The system itself has six modules that include:

- Affiliate Programs for your Niche
- Niche Blog Automation
- Free Blog Traffic
- Choosing a Domain for your Niche
- Longtail Niche Keywords (excellent!)
- How to Find Hot Niches

From the site:

” Now you can start generating multiple affiliate commissions from ClickBank, Commission Junction, ClickBooth and more using this killer blog system!

No Pay Per Click Costs
No SEO Skills needed
No HTML Knowledge
No Customers To Deal With

Create… Profit… Duplicate! “

Create, Profit, DUPLICATE

Couldn’t have said it better myself =)

Niche Blog Affiliate Profits is a steal for only $4.97 (Yes, I’m serious…less than $5). This system also comes with a TON of bonus products (one of which is Easy Blog Traffic which is terrific). If you are interested in owning Master Resale Rights (MMR) to this system, it will cost an additional $9.97 (total of $14.94).

Just a note: I had some readers tell me they went to order and the Paypal screen showed $14.94 when they were only wanting to buy for $4.97. Look carefully and you will see there are TWO payment button options on the info page – one for product only, one with rights – make sure you are clicking the right button for your choice when you purchase.

Brand New to Internet Marketing? Read my four-part blog series – How to START Making Money Online

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Niche Blogging- Making Money Online Starts With a Niche Blog

First off – Let’s talk Squidoo. Squidoo paid out, and boy oh boy is it CRYSTAL clear that the so-called “Squidoo Slap” was very, very real. It appears that while this “Squidoo Slap” didn’t effect me all too horribly, it sure must have hit the Squidoo site as a whole pretty dog-gone hard.

My Squidoo payment in August was $61.64 – which was quite good considering that was 54 lenses and just about all of that payment was from Squidoo adsense co-op revenue.

The payment I just received in September (for July Squidoo revenue) was for $35.81.

YUCK!!!!!!

I wasn’t impressed. However, I imagine that some lensmasters on Squidoo took a much bigger hit than I did. Besides, its “free money” so my over-all opinion is… “Oh well”.

It WILL be better next month.

Speaking of Squidoo… I have a lens that is being featured on the Squidoo homepage! My home energy lens has been there for a few days and man, has traffic taken off for that lens! It was funny in a way, too. That lens hadn’t really done anything, then suddenly I noticed traffic to that lens was going thru the roof on my stats. I couldn’t figure it out! Then I just happened to really LOOK at the Squidoo homepage, and there I was! Cool beans! Thanks, Squidoo!

For all you Squidoo-doers out there, there is a cool new site for Squidoo lensmasters out on the web now. This is like a luxury version of your Squidoo dashboard. From this site, you can access your stats, update, lensroll, bookmark…and even ping with one little click. It is AWESOME (and FREE). Check out SquidUtils. SquidUtils also makes getting those amazon links/images on your lenses possible now that the iframe option is gone (for those that use their personal Amazon links). Definitely a must-see for Squidoo users.

Associated Content has also updated their page view bonus threshold. Content Producers used to have to hit $15 (10,000 page views) before a payment would be sent. This threshold has now been lowered to $1.50 (only 1,000 page views)! This is a great change and helpful opportunity for those with lower page view counts to get paid much more quickly. Thanks Associated Content!

I’ve got some articles on AC that are really taking off. It’s like a game to me to try and find those illusive little keywords that bring in major traffic. I found a little golden nugget of a keyword that brought in almost 6000 page views in less than 3 weeks….another article that has almost 20,000 page views, too! Considering I joined AC in late May, I am quite proud of my Clout Index of 7 – and very happy with the little revenue stream I now have coming in regularly.

Speaking of hidden “golden nugget” keywords – my love of the niche finding game is also showing in my Clickbank account, too. I’ve made some Niche Blogs last month and traffic (and SALES) are really picking up and showing some promising results.

Even my Adsense earnings from blogging have improved drastically! It’s amazing what can happen when you learn to do something the right way… ha!

Brand New to Internet Marketing? Read my four-part blog series – How to START Making Money Online

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Breaking the Rules with an UNfocused Blog Post – I’m Such a Rebel!

I have really gotten into niche blogging this month. I have found a really super system that makes it simple enough for me to create and maintain. Actually, I don’t do a whole lot to maintain my niche blogs.

As I’ve been (not-so) patiently waiting for Squidoo to announce our latest payment amounts, I’ve spent some time finding a better price on the system I’ve been using for my niche blogging efforts. The other day I found the same system for less than $10 and I almost sent all you wonderful readers to that link. I sure am glad I didn’t! Today, I found the whole system PLUS a TON of great bonus products for $4.97.

I admit, it made me a bit distressed to know that I certainly paid more than $5 for MY copy of this niche blogging system, but that’s ok. I wasn’t patient enough to wait. Not only was I not patient enough, I also bought a product for $7 that is included for FREE in this niche blogging package. Ugh!

Anyway…

This huge niche blogging package will teach you things like:

choosing a niche market

how to choose (and find) a niche affiliate marketing program for your blog

how to target the right long-tail keywords This part was so helpful for me. I created one of my niche blogs last week (sorry, can’t tell ya what niche..lol), and I wrote ONE article to promote it…that darn article has gotten almost 1000 hits in a week…and about 200 click thrus! Trust me, this makes my Clickbank account happy….and that makes ME happy! That one little niche blog is responsible for over $100 in Clickbank commissions in just a few days! One little blog… I am amazed at what a difference it makes when you combine the right niche market, with the right niche product, and put it all together properly on a free niche blog.

I can’t wait to see what happens when the real traffic starts!!!

Ok, I’m rambling…sorry. Back to the point of this post…

:::start sales pitch:::

This niche blogging package is awesome and it is a steal at $4.97.

:::end sales pitch:::

Click here for complete details of this niche blogging profit system.

Brand New to Internet Marketing? Read my four-part blog series – How to START Making Money Online

Post from: PotPieGirl.com

Blog For Profit – How Do I Start Blogging Niche Marketing Style?