10 Things About Internet Marketing

What? Mama Never Told You This?!?!

Today at PotPieGirl.com we have a guest post from Jason Tarasi who would like to share 10 things your mama never told you about internet marketing. Jason makes some very important points about the mind set we all need to adopt when trying to make a success of internet marketing – and he’s got a pretty humorous style of sharing his views with us. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Ten Things Your Mamma Never Told You About Internet Marketing

If you have any children near the computer, I strongly suggest you have them hide their eyes…

Now I want you to imagine this frightening scenario – online marketing without PayPal and autoresponders!

Back in the day, we did business online without autoresponders or PayPal, and we liked it! I also walked through a foot of snow to get to school everyday, even in the Summer. Ok, I confess I am only 34, but I have been in this business for well over ten years. Yes, I used to write out HTML code by hand and no, it isn’t as funny as you think.

While I’m not old enough to pull my pants up over my waist and complain about the government full time, I have been making a full time living online since before Pokémon was all the rage. Over the years I have learned a thing or two about what it takes to make it in this business and what you absolutely must do to stick around for the long term.

I know the anticipation is killing you, so let me get right to this life-altering list:

1. Your Name Is Your Brand

Many big companies brand themselves to the public through logos and catchy phrases. When you are marketing online, you want to brand your name as an expert in your niche. You need to focus on becoming someone who is trusted and respected.

Why? Because…

2. Trust Sells

If someone doesn’t trust you, what are the chances they give you their business? About as slim as Jabba the Hut.

Take the time to build trust with your audience, customers, and prospects. The sales and profits will follow.

3. Quitters Never Get Anywhere

I’m going to be brutally honest, I hate quitters. I have seen countless people come into this business and they simply gave up because it took actual work. Who knew!

Never let anyone tell you that you aren’t good enough and never, ever quit on yourself. Success is usually just around the corner for those who are willing to put in a little hard work. This kind of determination will put you ahead of 99% of the competition because…

4. People Are Generally Lazy

Most people don’t want to work hard. They want ready-made solutions handed to them (this is where you come in). Understanding this one concept can make you very wealthy if applied correctly.

5. Max Out Your Ideas

Too many marketers create a profitable product or service, and then quickly move onto their next brilliant idea. They are constantly juggling a number of projects at any given time. This is counterproductive and you are leaving untold amounts of money on the table.

If you find a profitable idea, milk it like a chocolate cow. Once you feel you have maxed out the profit potential with your idea, then and only then should you move on to the next project. However you should…

6. Never Fall In Love With An Idea

If you are in this business long enough, you will find that you have way more bad ideas than good ones. You have to set limits and decide when a project/idea is doomed to failure.

7. Don’t Be Afraid To Take Risks

To get anywhere in this business, you will need to take risks. It takes nerves of steel and even the best ideas can blow-up in your face. It happens. Learn from your mistakes and don’t let failure make you gun shy.

8. Customers Are Like Gold

Treat your customers well and they will return the favor.

9. Outsource, Outsource, Outsource

How many times have you heard the phrase “Jack of all trades, too stupid to outsource”?

Actually, this might be the first time you have heard it, but the point is that as your online business grows, the harder it will be to keep up with your everyday tasks. Learn to outsource now before your business grows too big and spins out of your control.

10. Trust Your Gut

If you have an idea or a gut feeling about something, then you need to trust yourself. You will never make it in this business if you don’t trust yourself enough to make the important decisions for your business.

So there you have it, my big list of what your “mama never told you about Internet marketing”, or maybe she just “forgot” because she didn’t want any more competitors for her new Ebay business!

Discover the little known money making ideas used by the experts in my hot new ebook “Secret Lives of Internet Marketers”. You will discover the successful blueprint seven famous marketers used to become financially independent and how you can easily apply it to your own online business! To download my FREE REPORT instantly, follow the link below:

http://easyebookrights.com/mmi.html

Thanks, Jason! Great article that makes some very important points about working online.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Internet Marketing Success

Three Success Factors To Think About -

One of the toughest things for me personally when it comes to teaching others how to make money online is when I hear someone say, “I’ve spent SO much money – nothing works! I quit!”   To me, quitting is just not an option. If one thing doesn’t work – try another. The internet is FULL of possibilities – and many, many ways to get there.  Above all, nowhere does it say that you have to spend a lot of money to MAKE money online, either. Today, I have a great guest post that talks about three very important internet marketing success factors.

Welcome, Jackie Lee

Jackie is not only a dear friend who runs her own successful internet marketing blog, but she is also the co-brain behind the One Week Marketing Coaching Center. She and Andrea run a truly wonderful resource for OWM’rs!

Jackie knows her stuff when it comes to internet marketing so I am delighted to have her back here at PotPieGirl.com for another guest post to share some of her own experience, wisdom, and inspiration with us.

Welcome Jackie!

Internet Marketing Success Factors

When people start out in internet marketing it can be so easy to get confused, to get on the “guru” lists thinking they are going to give you information about how to make money online. Some people figure it out quicker than others and some never figure it out at all. The Guru lists are just to get you to keep buying products!!

Once you’ve bought a ton of products, spent a lot of money ~ you probably couldn’t afford, and you’re STILL not making any money online one of two things usually happens.

1. You quit.

2. You decide to create an internet marketing strategy that works.

If you’ve gotten to the point of possibility #2 this post is for you.

This post is a compilation of great posts from around the net. People I read and admire and people you can learn from. These posts will help you create not only a strategy to make money online, but a mindset to keep with it when things get tough. This mindset piece is the one people are most likely to blow off, but it’s the piece that will keep you going when things get tough. And things probably will get tough at some point. You will be faced with the desire to just throw in the towel and say forget it. It is the mindset and belief in yourself that will keep you in the game long enough to see success.

So let’s get right to it:

Success Factor #1:

Attitude ~ do you have a plan for your internet marketing career and will you be strong enough to follow it through?

* Here Craig Perrine talks about his own journey with both weight loss as well as making money online. For anyone who has ever tried to lose a few pounds the similarities between weight loss and internet marketing will be astounding.

http://craigperrine.com/are-you-really-following-the-internet-marketing-success-recipe/

* In this post Josh Spaulding talks about the success factor he finally found. Confidence. If someone as successful as Josh Spaulding is facing this kind of stuff there is something for everyone to learn there.

http://ez-onlinemoney.com/blog/internet-marketing/why-it-took-me-almost-3-years-to-really-succeed-online/

* I found this blog only recently, but I include it because Ian has hit the nail right on the head with this post. This one simple thing he talks about this is something that is completely within YOUR control and can change the level of your success in internet marketing exponentially.

http://karmicconsulting.net/crash-cash-creation-coaching-mini-morsels-of-marketing-magic/the-biggest-affiliate-marketing-secret-ever-steal-it-here/

Success Factor #2:

Getting started ~ Figuring out how to get started and within the budget you have available can be a really tough thing to do. But it can be done. Find a mentor ~ someone who you know, like and trust and follow them. Not only follow their blog, but follow their actions. Do what they do, follow their example. These posts will help you figure out how to get started.

* If you need to kick off your business for free there is no one better, hands down, that PotPieGirl to help you do it. She started with no money and has created an over 10K a month empire. It all started using a free little site called Squidoo. Here’s a great post on Squidoo resources.

http://www.potpiegirl.com/2009/02/great-squidoo-resources/

* Nicole Dean is a successful Internet marketer, as well as the affiliate manager for Jimmy Brown. She is a fantastic mentor and provides amazing podcasts from her blog. This podcast is with Danielle Miller. They talk about how to get focused in your business. It is well worth a listen.

http://nicoleonthenet.com/2009/online-success-danielle-miller/

* A huge issue for some people when they are beginning is finding a “niche” or something they want to build their business on. There are many different types of business you can do. You can create a business based on multiple niche sites, or you can create one big authority site. Either way you are going to need an idea, and content. This post shows you how to use plr to not only find content but niche ideas as well.

http://internetmarketingformommies.com/using-plr-to-find-a-niche-and-keywords/

Success Factor #3:

Getting Traffic ~ Traffic is the life blood of any internet marketer, whether you are recommending affiliate products or your own. If you can a get eyes on your page you can overcome a lot of other areas you might not be as strong in. However, if you have no traffic, you have no business, it’s a simple as that.

There are a million ways to get traffic, and you will learn about some of my favorite ways and some ways my favorite internet marketers are getting traffic to their sites in the following posts.

* In this post by Jimmy D. Brown you will find out how to create ezine articles that will have people not only reading your articles, and publishing them, but also clicking through and buying what you are offering.

http://www.jimmybrown.com/how-to-jumpstart-your-ezine-articles/

* This post is at the MaxBlogPress blog. This is a fine example of how it REALLY works in the real world. I grabbed some of their free plugins, which are awesome by the way, and from there I joined thier list, and now I look forward to all their emails. I found this post from an email they sent me, and as always the content was fantastic. They offer a free report on this post. It’s an interview with professional bloggers talking about how they get traffic. I’ve read a ton of these so called interviews, but I actually learned a TON from the sample they are offering for free. I also watched my email and as soon as the product went live I bought it.

You see how that worked? Besides perfectly? 1. They offered me something of great quality for free. 2. I joined their list becuase of the value offered. 3. They offered me more quality information via email. 4. They offered me an awesome free sample of an upcoming product. 5. I watched for the email to go buy the product and I did the day it launched.

That is a sales system that works!!

http://www.maxblogpress.com/blog/214/bloggers-world-download/

Ok, that’s not what this whole post is about, but do grab the free report on how the pros get traffic, it’s chock full of ideas.

* This next one is one of my posts. I get so many questions about Twitter and if it really works, and whether it’s worth the time. I have to say it took me a while to get involved in social networking sites like Twitter, but I have to say I LOVE twitter now. I had to figure out exactly the best way to use twitter, to provide value to my followers and build trust. It also allows me to build a brand for myself, build on the know, like and trust factors, and now when I put out an affiliate link I have a lot of instant traffic.

Here’s the 7 questions beginners need to know the answers to, to make Twitter work for them.

http://www.affiliatemarketingwahm.com/7-questions-beginners-ask-about-making-twitter-work-for-them.html

* Viral marketing with video is one of the fastest and biggest ways to drive traffic to your site. This post outlines a fantastic plan of action to create a viral video campaign.

http://www.marketingbestpractices.com/Articles/viral-marketing.htm

When you are looking at starting your internet marketing business remember that it IS a business. It is something that will take time to learn and grow.

These 10 posts on the 3 success factors of internet marketing will hopefully help you get started on the right foot. They should also help you find some positive people in the industry that you can learn and grow with.

Thank You, Jackie!

Those are some great tips AND some really helpful bloggers to read and learn from!  Be sure to stop by Jackie’s internet marketing strategies blog, or visit her and Andrea at the One Week Marketing Coaching Center.

How To Add a Clickable Image To a Squidoo Lens

Adding a Picture Link To Your Lens -

One of the most common questions I get about Squidoo is how to add a picture that is a link on a  lens.  Adding images to Squidoo lenses is really important – people love pictures, and pictures can add so much more dimension to your online content.  Also, being able to make that image a link to your website or make it an affiliate link to a product can be very effective for your Squidoo marketing efforts.  So, let’s walk thru the steps to take to get a clickable picture link on your lens.

How To Add a Picture Link To a Lens

Since the PotPieGirl house is a little chaotic as we prepare for our trip to see Mickey Mouse, I invited Bryan Kraemer from GetStartedMarketing.com over to do a guest post for us.  Bryan is one of my long-time readers.  He and I agree on most things… except college football.  Bless his heart, he is a Kentucky fan (gasp!)

Above all, Bryan has had great success following my One Week Marketing Action Plan.  In fact, he recently started helping others with their own One Week Marketing campaigns, too.

He is a great teacher and a really great guy (aside from that Kentucky thing…lol).

So, let’s welcome Bryan to PotPieGirl.com and enjoy his step by step tutorial for adding images and clickable images to a Squidoo lens.

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Adding Images and Clickable Images For Squidoo

Hello PotPieGirl readers, this is Bryan from GetStartedMarketing.com and I am extremely excited to get the opportunity to be a guest blogger here on PotPieGirl.com. I have been working online part time for a few years now, quietly building my niche marketing/ OneWeekMarketing campaigns one at a time.

I still hold down a “day job” (for now!) but have been working hard using these bum marketing methods to build a steady online paycheck in the evenings and on weekends. I am married to a wonderful wife (who puts up with my late nights on the computer) and we live in the northern section of Kentucky, near Cincinnati, Ohio.

Like many (or most!) of you, finding a way to pay some bills, increase the savings account, and one day “fire the boss” is my motivation in working online. I have been fortunate to know and learn from great people online for several years now, and I can tell you, the methods from One Week Marketing DO work, and work quite well IF you stick with it and work work work. The rewards are tremendous.

Today I want to share with you something that comes up frequently when I am talking to fellow online marketers, and it is one of the key components that I teach those who are in my coaching program to use One Week Marketing & other bum marketing methods to make money online. That topic is “How to Add a Clickable Image to Your Squidoo Lens.”

A Tutorial on Adding A Clickable Image To Your Squidoo Lens

Adding images is an important part of any lens. Readers love images and they can play a huge role in drawing that emotional response we want to create as online marketers. Adding images that a reader can click on and be taken to an affiliate landing page is even better!

So, pencils sharp – lets get started!

Did you know you are not limited to the images that you directly upload to your lens modules? You can actually insert a picture anywhere on a lens if you know the right html code.

The only catch is you need to host these images somewhere other than Squidoo. There are a few places to host images that are free to use.

I use PhotoBucket.com – it’s free and super easy to use and is what I recommend.

Step 1: Open a PhotoBucket.com Account & Get Your Image on PhotoBucket: Say you want to make your clickable image an ebook cover for a program you are promoting. The easiest thing to do is to upload the ebook cover right from the affiliates page of the website to your PhotoBucket account.

Simply Right Click on the Image you want to save from the affiliate website or photo directory page (make sure it is not copyrighted!), select “Properties” and copy the URL from the properties box:

Right Click – Properties

Highlight and “copy” that URL circled red

Paste that URL where it tells you too on your PhotoBucket page.

Hit Upload Button, and Save. Step one complete!

Step 2: Open up Squidoo and go to your lens in Edit mode. Open your Text Module edit screen and copy/paste the following code into your text Squidoo module:

<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com“><img src=”http://www.yoursite.com/yourpicture.jpg“></a>

Step 3: Replace the “http://www.yourwebsite.com” with the URL of where you want the visitor to go when they click the image. For most of us, this will be our affiliate hoplink. For PotPieGirls One Week Marketing, the code looks like this:

<a href=”http://YourID.potpiegirl.hop.clickbank.net“> (Where YourID = Your ClickBank ID).

NOTE: Sometimes you will need to delete and re-type the “quotation” marks after you copy/paste to your lens. Some copy/paste will make them act weird, and by simply deleting and retyping the “quotes” it fixes the issue.

Step 4: Replace the “http://www.yoursite.com/yourpicture.jpg” with the location of your image on your PhotoBucket account.

PhotoBucket makes finding this information SUPER easy. It is right here on your screen where you image is stored:

Copy and paste that url from the IMG Code Line – excluding the [IMG] at the beginning and end of that code.

Note: You may need to delete and retype the quotes when you paste to your lens, just like before. Its weird, I know.

Your final code will look something like this:

<a href=”http://YourID.potpiegirl.hop.clickbank.net“><img src=”http://i685.photobucket.com/albums/vv211/YOURID/21bFNi1qljL_SL160_.jpg” ></a>

THATS IT!

Save your module, and you now have clickable images in your Squidoo lens! Pretty cool stuff, and a super easy way to add more power to your lenses and One Week Marketing campaigns. You can also add other pieces of custom code to give your image a title, or to align it right, center, or left on your lens.

Important: Make sure you test your image to make sure it works correctly before promoting it!

About GetStartedMarketing.com

I briefly mentioned earlier that I have started offering coaching as well as custom lens creation for anyone who wants to learn more details how to build a lens, get it to rank in Google, get clicks, and if things go right, some sales. I decided to spend my limited time providing help to others because I have had so many wonderful people, such as PotPieGirl, take their time to help me get going.

I invite you to visit my site, GetStartedMarketing.com to read about how I worked with a new internet marketer named David, and before we even got to Day 5 of a OWM campaign, he had his first ever sale! It is a really inspiring story.

Get the details on his experience with me, and check out my offer for coaching or custom campaign creation just for you by visiting here:

GetStartedMarketing.com

A big thank you to Jennifer, and all the great readers here at PotPieGirl.com!

To Our Success,

Bryan

GetStartedMarketing.com

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Thank you, Bryan!

If you need help with your One Week Marketing campaigns or just want some Squidoo lenses made for you, I encourage you to check out Bryan’s services here.

Running PPC to Squidoo: Yay or Nay?

Pros and cons of sending paid traffic to Squidoo

Hello ladies and gents, my name’s Chris Kellum and I’ll be your tour guide today. I recently approached Jennifer about finding a cool way to be able to give something to her readers, and she gave me the honor of doing a guest post about a topic she’s been getting a lot of messages about – Oh, and she’s going to let me give away a free gift to you all as well, but more on that later.

And being a proper guest, I tried to make the beginning of my post as similar to her style as possible so that you’d all feel right at home – short title, and then a subtitle . . . Hey, I tried.

Should You Use PPC To Get Traffic To A Squidoo Lens?

As I previously mentioned, Jennifer’s been getting a lot of messages lately about people wanting to know about using PPC (pay-per-click) advertising to push traffic to Squidoo lenses. Apparently my failing-my-way-into-success on AdWords makes me qualified to speak about this.

All kidding aside though, I find PPC to be the scariest, greyist (no, that’s not a word, but stick with me) area of internet marketing when it comes to trying to find real, solid information – so hopefully I’ll be able to clear up some things for you all, (or “y’all” – gotta remember whose blog I’m on!) and maybe turn on a few light bulbs, as well.

I know Jennifer’s a big fan of Squidoo, and why not? No buying domain names, no hosting, you don’t have to be technically inclined . . . Oh, and they rank pretty dang well in Google, so I think that’s a pretty good benefit. In fact, when it comes to getting started making money online, you really couldn’t ask for more of a perfect storm of benefits!

Using Squidoo As A PPC Landing Page

Unfortunately, I see Squidoo lenses doing a bit more harm than good when it comes to PPC. In the interest of fairness however, I’ll give you the full picture. On the plus side, using a lens as a PPC landing page does take care of one of the hairier aspects of AdWords – Quality Score. With 1.58 million pages indexed in Google, Squidoo certainly meets Google’s standard of not being on the “thin” side (single, or few, pages).

Also, Squidoo does a pretty good job with thematic relevance. On any given lens, they try to match up and supply links to other lenses on the same, or similar, topics. Having this interlinking of related pages is something that Google definitely likes to see on their advertisers’ landing pages.

The way I see it, the way Squidoo is set up lends itself to taking care of some of the things that make Google happy – a lot of pages of content, defined themes . . . but these can also work against you when it comes to funneling your traffic (and not only making your money back on the traffic you’re buying, but turning a profit on it).

Squidoo vs Your Own Site For a PPC Landing Page

Because of all of these other links on your Squidoo lenses, beckoning your visitors to other places besides that beautiful affiliate link of yours, you tend to lose some of your traffic to other Squidoo pages, or to Adsense ads. It’s sort of the price you pay when you’re getting free traffic, but when it comes to paying the almighty dollar for your exposure, you need to make the most of every single visitor.

When you’re sending visitors to a page you “own” (your domain name, on your hosting), you control all the exits (which is hopefully more or less just AN exit to the merchant page!). Also, in order to take advantage of more advanced tracking and testing, you’re going to need to have access to the source code of your landing pages, which is something that Squidoo does not give you.

To look at it another way, when you’re getting natural (search engine) traffic, if you’re not fully optimized (weak copy, bad merchant choice, etc.) or if your target keyword phrase doesn’t convert as well as you’d hoped it would, it’s no fun – but it’s not taking money OUT of your pocket like paid traffic is.

But on the other hand, when you send that paid traffic to a landing page that you have complete control over, you can split test headlines, images, copy, video, different merchants, and even track individual keyword performance. PPC lets you really laser target your marketing efforts and know exactly what’s working, which not only leads to profitable PPC campaigns, but it gives you real, actionable data that you can plug back into your Squidoo lenses and do that much better with your natural traffic.

Look at it this way – if you’re at the point in your online ventures that you’re willing and able to pay for traffic, then you can certainly invest $7-8 in a domain name and $5-10 a month for hosting. Makes sense, right?

If you take action with Jennifer’s techniques and make sales, then at that point you can phase your way into PPC and build your business organically, letting your profits pay for your advertising and overhead (domain names and hosting). As things mature and you begin to move into new markets, you can spearhead your marketing efforts with a PPC campaign and take advantage of that laser targeting and split testing ability, then take what you’ve learned and apply it to Squidoo lenses in that market.

Learning PPC? Perfecting PPC? Get This Free Guide

Now, getting back to that giveaway thing . . .

I wanted to do something special for you all, and it actually happens to tie right into this blog post. Rather than taking pages (and pages) here, trying to fill you up with ways to work your PPC campaigns and make them profitable, I’m going to do you one better and give you all a PPC guide that I wrote – Yes, it currently sells out on the open market, but I want to give it to each and every one of you, and to help you reach success with PPC advertising.

Some of the topics covered include (free) keyword tracking (you absolutely NEED to be doing this if you want to turn a profit on PPC), search query tracking (what people are *actually* typing in when doing a search, not just what “bid keyword” their search fell under), using the almost unknown “embedded match” in order to own your competition on broad match terms, and several techniques to overcome that pesky Quality Score issue.

These are some of the best-kept secrets in affiliate marketing, so I hope you’ll take advantage of my offer and make these tools and techniques your own.

I do want to say thanks again to Jennifer – it’s been an honor and a pleasure, and I hope this clears up the “PPC to Squidoo” issue for you all, and I hope you take me up on my offer and learn the ways of the PPC force.

You can get your free copy of my PPC Success Guide right here.

Chris Kellum

InternetMarketerMindset.com

From Jennifer:

Chris, Thank you SO much for this great guest post! Folks, if you are trying to learn, or are trying to improve on, PPC (Pay PerClick/AdWords) traffic, PLEASE take advantage of this very generous offer from Chris.

His PPC Success Guide is available for sale ($27), but PotPieGirl.com readers can get it now for FREE!

Click here to find the special offer for PotPieGirl.com readers…and get your free copy today.

Have a great day!!!

The Power To CREATE Your Success Online

“My First Sale! THANK YOU, PotPieGirl!”

“I made my first $50 online!” …. “Wow! Only half way thru and I’ve already had LOADS of a-ha moments!”…. “I Already Got 70+ Visits To My Page!” … “My First Sale! Thanks PotPieGirl!”… “Finally! A guide that isn’t for a total newbie….but isn’t over my head!” These are just a small sample of what I see in my email all day long. The feedback from One Week Marketing has been truly PHENOMENAL! I am so humbled and so HAPPY for these people! Throughout all these email exchanges, I have met some amazing people and I want you to meet one of them right now…

PotPieGirl.com Readers – Meet Linda

Linda is such an incredible, amazing, talented, forward-thinking, fun, and beautiful lady. Linda runs her own advertising agency and saw the need to be able to offer her clients something new…something edgy…and something that DOESN’T cost an arm and a leg. Heck, with this economy, we gotta get creative, don’t we?? There also comes a time in business AND in life that we realize that we have to take active steps to CREATE our OWN success…. no one is going to hand it to us, are they?

Linda knew that it was time to think bigger and get out there and CREATE more success for herself by learning something new… affiliate marketing. Thing is, Linda ended up also finding her ‘edgy’ business idea in a little product called “One Week Marketing“. Wait, you say, isn’t One Week Marketing about making affiliate commissions online using free websites and techniques? How would that help someone in advertising?

Yes, OWM IS geared towards helping real people like you and me learn how to make money with affiliate marketing …. but when you think outside the box you just might see how multi-functional this One Week Action Plan really is. Linda thought she was getting something that would help her learn affiliate marketing, but what she found is that she got so much more.

Linda wrote an amazing review for One Week Marketing…and I want you to read it. So now, I hush up and let Linda talk =)

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HOW THE ONE WEEK MARKETING PLAN BLASTED ME OUT OF INTERNET PARALYSIS IN ONE WILD WEEK

I could see it in their eyes when I entered the room for the website meeting. A visual snicker. The young, tech-savvy WebGuru was there, holding court. The client was enthralled with his wisdom. I got through the greeting and seating and the proposed home page was presented. Very nice. Very classy. Very dead. No call to action. No way to find out who was opting in. No way to start building a data base. No way to interact, to link to blogs, success stories.

OF COURSE, WE’LL WANT AN RSS FEED, I said.

Heads turned. I mentioned that I was developing blogs for the client, in which he would be offering a free report, so that we could capture the data. I mentioned that it would be good to have outbound links to the blogs. I mentioned that the articles and blogs should be indexed. I mentioned that we could first offer the report on a Squidoo lens, as a test. I asked why no RSS feed had been set up. Throats cleared as the junior WebGuru agreed those were great ideas. The client looked at me with new respect. My business partner’s eyes popped out. She was thinking “When did you learn all that?”

THE ONEWEEKMARKETING PLAN HAD SAVED MY BACON.

In one week I had gone from know-nothing to know-how. I had certainly had offers of internet business guides before Hundreds of emails from internet marketers came in with subject lines like: “Internet Windfall” “How I Earned $600,000 in my first year” “Complete Guide to Setting Up Your Internet Business” Many times, I bit. I downloaded another ebook and tried to read it. Tried to find an actual plan of action I could understand. But all I found was hype. And then along came PotPieGirl’s day by day, you can do it, action plan, namely

ONE WEEK MARKETING –

I LEARNED IT IN GUESS WHAT, ONE WEEK!

I don’t know about you, but I learn by doing. Other guides left me with my head swimming, and two hours later I couldn’t remember a thing. The One Week Marketing Plan led me baby step by baby step through actions and decisions, until I looked down and realized “No more baby steps! I’m running now.”

BY THE END OF DAY ONE I HAD ACCOMPLISHED 3 THINGS FOR THE FIRST TIME.

1. Found a list of keywords through a FREE keyword tool I had never used before.
2. Had an actual product to offer.
3. Had urls reserved for Squidoo lenses

GUESS HOW MUCH I SPENT ON DAY ONE?
NUTTIN’ HONEY!

OWM gives you live links to tons of tools and sites you can use immediately FREE.

DAY TWO

By Day 2, my little group of Squidoo lenses (really they’re like one page websites)was indexed by Google. Honestly, truly.

I THOUGHT RSS MEANT I WAS REALLY STUPID, STUPID

I never understood who was eating all these RSS feeds I was seeing. Feed who? I asked myself. But I went from complete ignoramus to RSS feeder, by Day Two of the OneWeekMarketing plan. I won’t even tell you what I could do by Day 7, because you won’t believe it, until you get the OneWeekMarketing plan for yourself.

DAY THREE THROUGH THE REST OF MY LIFE

Through the rest of the week, I learned how to write articles, and crosslink them with lenses, and even get a domain name and a website for my new product. In a week!

TRULY A RESCUE SHIP IN AN INTERNET SEA

Yes, I needed to be rescued. I needed to be able to delete a sea of ebooks I couldn’t understand. I needed to get going and get started making some money. PotPieGirl had always answered my questions honestly and helpfully before, so I knew she would rescue me now. That’s why I jumped in the OWM ship, and why you’ll want to as well. You’ll be taking action from Day One. You’ll actually BE in business, instead of just reading about it. And that’s a moneyback guaranteed promise. (Pinky promise, as PotPieGirl would say. )

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by Linda Johnson

President, AdCetera Advertising

http://www.adcetera.biz

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How GREAT was THAT? Thank you, Linda, for sharing your creativity and your honest feedback of One Week Marketing with all of us. You are a shining example of all the many people that have taken their future by the horns and got to work with One Week Marketing to create their OWN success story!

And I have to toss this in, if you are need of an innovative, edgy, and forward-thinking advertising agency, you have just found it in Linda and AdCetera Advertising.

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

Are you a blogger? Are you taking advantage of all the incredible resources to find other blogs and to have YOUR blog found? Hi all! It’s time for my second official guest post here at PotPieGirl.com. Todays guest blogger is one of my favorite online friends – Jackie Lee.

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

Passive Link Building with YouTube from CaptainSquid

Captain Squid is one of my favorite Squidoo bloggers. His Squidoo tips blog always has the BEST information and tools for lensmasters. Naturally, inviting Captain Squid to be a guest blogger here at PotPieGirl was a no-brainer! Today, Captain Squid will be sharing a cool tip about using YouTube to build back links to your Squidoo lenses.

A BIG welcome to Captain Squid!

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Passive Link Building with YouTube

Arrr, This is the Captain here. PotPieGirl asked if I could sail over from Captain Squid and write a little about Squidoo for you. As I think that PotPieGirl is a fine upstanding Squidooer in general and Pirate in particular, I was happy to oblige.

I wanted to spend my few words talking about the YouTube module on Squidoo and how 3 seconds of your time can build multiple high PR backlinks to your lens with zero additional effort.

I know, I know it sounds like a scam… but it really is that easy.

Here’s how:

This is what the YouTube Module edit screen looks like:

1) Set your videos to ‘Let YouTube Pick’ - When this setting is selected a video is picked from YouTube that matches your ‘tags’ (step 3).

2) Show Full Size Video – You don’t want people leaving your lens to watch the video! You just want to get the backlink from YouTube.

3) Enter Tags - Enter tags that are fairly specific to your lens. You don’t want to have a random video that is not applicable popping up. If you keep getting random videos, try searching on YouTube until you find a series of search terms that allow you to return the video you want.

How this Works –

When you have a YouTube module, every time the video is ‘watched’ on your lens, you get a ‘click’ that counts towards a backlink to that video. The top 5 pages in ‘click #’ are linked to by the video.

Example:

This is off of a random PR1 YouTube video where one of my lenses has ‘Star Wars Boy’ in the ‘Tags’ section. As you can see, I have the top two spots and so I get a little link juice from YouTube.

Ok, that explains why YouTube is good, but why is letting Youtube pick the video good?

For this reason right here:

This is a view of my backlinks from Squidaholic (a new SEO tool for lenses that I’m Sure PotPieGirl has told you about and will link to her post right about here ).

As you can see, Youtube Videos are 3 of the top 5 backlinks for this lens. Over time, as YouTube rotates videos because of changes in their video listings, you build up ‘clicks’ on all the ones your visitors see. Not only does this keep your lens fresh for google, it also passively builds backlinks.

See, that didn’t hurt at all now did it? Now go be Piratey and build some lenses! The Captain Says so!

Captain Squid

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Thank you, Captain! What a great Squidoo tip! Want more Squidoo video training and tips? Head on over to www.CaptainSquid.com today.