Don’t order “31 days to build a better blog” by Darren Rowse. It is a waste of money!

Surprised! Are you?

Don’t worry, I am not an anti-problogger or, a Hate-Darren-Rowse activist. In fact I respect Darren Rowse and his ProBlogger blog very much. Darren has been a source of inspiration for me and my blogs. I learnt blogging from Darren’s blog and his tips. He is one of my mentors in addition to Yaro Starak.

If that is the case, then why is it that I said that you should not order “31 days to build a better blog”?

Just peep into your computer and count the number of PLR articles, ebooks and software that are resting somewhere in the corner of your hard-drive. Just how long has they been sitting in there? Don’t remember! You had downloaded these with some objective but none of those have been fulfilled.

Ask yourself a question, why?

Inaction!!

95% of people dreaming of making money online and starting and internet marketing business, fail because of inaction. Either the expectation is so high that they just crumble under the pressure of “Zero results” or, they just don’t want to work because for them Internet Marketing is a get rich quick scheme.

If you are going to buy the “31 days to build a better blog workbook” and then let it rest there in your computer’s hard drive, then there is no point in buying it. This workbok is for people who are ready to take action.

I implemented the teaching of Darren Rowse in one of my niche blogs and saw my subscriber count increase by about 315% in just a month.

So, if your decision in ‘INACTION’, then don’t even attempt to buy the workbook. Else the “31 days to build a better blog workbook” is just the thing for you.

At a price of about $19.99, the book is a steal of a deal. The book has 94 pages of content and includes a lot of new material which was not featured in the original challenge. Darren also has some kind of an offer with another excellent e-book. You can check it out at his blog.

I lost my pagerank!!

Did this happen to any of you out there?

It was shocking to see that my website lost the pagerank that it had gained in the past 2 months, all of a sudden. I had worked quite hard to get the pagerank up there and suddenly when you see that you have lost it, it is quite heart-breaking.

It seems Google is busy working on some tweaks and tricks. A few days back we saw quite a few changes – that too, drastic ones, being applied to Adsense. In fact these changes helped my income from Adsense go up from about $3.00 per day to about $35.00 per day from one website.

When I am crying for my pagerank, I should also say that one of my other websites which is focussed on a particular niche suddenly gained 2 pageranks in the past week or, so. So if there is sorrow on one side, there is joy as well on the other.

Similar is the case with online businesses. Every sorrow that you face today will come with joy that is multiple folds tomorrow. All that is required is “Keep working – hard and harder”.

But don’t start working, hardly.

Be persistent and keep providing quality content to your readers and visitors and you can make a really good business online.

Photograph courtesy MrGoose.

How to get the most of Adsense? A couple of days back I was browsing through a blog that I frequently visit and I found a very interesting entry about “Adsense earnings”. The entry was bout the decreasing earnings from Adsense PPC ads placed in blogs. There were quite a few commentators who felt that they had also seen a decrease in Adsense revenue over the past few months. This was indeed an observation that I too had. I feel that recession has had its toll on Adsense as well.

Nevertheless, whatever the impact of recession, the revenue from Adsense is still the sole income on which a lot of blogs and websites thrive. I have never actually focused on Adsense revenue myself, though a couple of my niche websites give me a good amount of revenue from it. There are a few other bloggers that I know of who has consistently been earning $7,000 – $8,000 only from Adsense revenue.

But is it wise to rely solely on Adsense? Absolutely not. In one of my earlier posts I had mentioned about the need to decide on a monetization strategy for your website and blog. This has to be a combination of Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Ads, other paid advertisements etc.

Google  and its Adsense team is very particular when it comes to Adsense. The term that I should use here is rather, “Nosy”. First of all, Adsense only permits 3 ad-blocks in a single page. If you add more than this, then the ad-blocks will show white spaces without any ads. Also Google has a very strong system in place to monitor invalid clicks and arbitrage.

Tips to get the most out of Adsense:-

Having said all that Google Adsense is still one of the easiest way to monetize you blog or, website. The following 3 simple tips can help you get the most out of Adsense.

Choosing the most optimal ad, ad color and ad placement:-
Google provides a heat-map to show you the best ad placement areas on a website. This map has been made after serious analysis and studies. Hence it is always wise to place your ads according to the heat-map. In addition to the placement of the ad, you also have to ensure that you are picking the best ad-size and ad-colors.

Google claims that their rectangular ad-blocks, mainly the 336×280 and 300×250 ad units are the ones that get the most CTR (Click-Through-Rates). Hence try placing you ads in such a way that your website design is able to accommodate one of these sizes.

There is quite a bit of debate on the color-scheme to be chosen for your ads. Some people feel that contrasting color schemes are what work well whereas others prefer blending color-schemes. Whatever the color scheme you choose, just ensure that you place image-ads if your website or, blog has too much of text-content and vice-versa.

Place AdSense advertisements near the site’s existing navigational links. The eye is naturally drawn to this area of your pages, so it’s more likely the ads will be noticed with this placement. Google suggests placing ads along the right-hand side of the page for optimal performance.

Competitive Ad filter:-

Google Adsense has a feature called as “Competitive Ad filter”. Head over to Adsense in case you wish to learn more about it. In a nutshell it is a technique to prevent ads of your competitors from being displayed on your websites. Imagine a situation where you have a blog that is promoting a membership course on fishing and an ad gets displayed on your blog for a competitor who also has a similar course. Since your ad placements are focused on inducing people to click on it, people would click on it and navigate away from your blog. You would never want that to happen, don’t you?

Competitive ad filter, does just that. Use it wisely so that you do away with such ads. This would get you better results from your advertisements.

Adsense optimized website template:-

Google is very finicky when it comes to accepting websites and ads for Adsense. They are very particular about the website design, the content, the quality of clicks etc. Hence it is always advisable to use a website or blog template that is optimized for Google Adsense. ( In case you wish to know how to optimize your current template for Adsense, just Google it and you will find quite a few search results that will teach you how to do it) If you are new to HTML and web designing, then it is always advisable to use a ready-made Adsense optimized template for your blog or, website. Dosh Dosh has a collection of about 16 different Adsense optimized wordpress templates if you have your blog in WordPress.

The choice of your template would depend upon the strategy with which you are building the website. If your sole motive is to earn money with Adsense then you need to ensure that you have the best template for your website or, blog. Whatever the situation, do not forget that content is the key and only good content will sell.

If you are new to HTML and WordPress, yet want to build a profitable niche adsense website, you might want to check out SiteSell and their excellent Site Build It package, which I have used for a couple of my mini-niche-adsense sites.

Finally, a word on the keywords. What good is it if you earn about $0.05 from your Adsense ads? Adsense has different prices for different keywords. So if your site focuses on keywords that are low-paying then you need to get huge amount of clicks if you are to earn a substantial income from it. So it is important that you decide on the appropriate ads for your website. If your blog is content oriented and the content is not amongst the high paying adsense keywords, then you might want to consider using the space for some other monetization options. Whatever the choice, just ensure that it is in line with your monetization strategy.

Have you heard of somebody teaching you to be as successful as he is for free. “Free” – There is nothing free in this world, might be your response. Even if somebody is offering something for free, he would never help you be as successful as he is. If these are your thoughts, then I would not want to disagree!

But, indeed there are somethings that are free. If you don’t believe me, then just browse over to this link and see for yourself.

It is highly unlikely that you have not heard of Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker, and his blog. His story is there all over the internet and is a talked about story amongst bloggers. Bloggers like me respect him and dream of being like him. He was a broke, credit-card debtor with nothing called as success in his life. And today his websites and blogs are amongst the highest revenue earners and are quoted as examples in Internet Marketing.

Will you want to learn to be successful in internet marketing from Jeremy? I would certainly want to and I am ready to pay a price for it. But what if Jeremy says that he will teach you absolutely free of cost? You would be surprised as I am. But it is true. Jeremy is teaching you to be successful in Internet Marketing business, absolutely free of cost.

Everyday when I check my blog stats, I find that there are quite a few people checking out my “About Me” page. I too did this a few years back. The reason why I did it was to see the profile of the person owning the blog – if he was successful or, not. People are keen to learn from successful people. But no successful person would teach you without charging you anything because that is how he is making money. So when you hear that there is something that comes free of cost, you smell something fishy in it. But there is nothing fishy in the course that Shoemoney is offering. It is pure knowledge and support.

Take a look at the details of the course.

1. Week 1 – The Beginner’s Guide To Internet Marketing
2. Week 2 – Affiliate Marketing 101: Everything You Need To Know To Start Promoting Products
3. Week 3 – Market Research: How To Crush Your Competitors And Discover Hot Niches
4. Week 4 – Pay Per Click: How To Earn Cash With Each Click
5. Week 5 – SEO: How To Rank Higher And Increase Traffic
6. Week 6 – Site Creation: How To Build A Site With Zero Programming Knowledge
7. Week 7 – Content Creation: How To Create Articles That Attract Users And Increase Sales
8. Week 8 – Marketing: How To Use Social Media To Spread Your Brand
9. Week 9 – Make That Cash: 10 Ways To Monetize Your Site And Increase Profitability
10. Week 10 – Testing & Tracking: How To Optimize Your Site & Make Sense Of The Figures
11. Week 11 – Building Your Team: How To Network With Others And Find Long Term Partners
12. Week 12 – Launch Day: How To Kick Start Your Business And Manage Your Projects

I have about 5 niche blogs and a few of them are very successful. But I am not earning as huge as Jeremy. I am an affiliate marketer and that is my core source of income. A couple of my niche blogs are doing well and give me a good extra income, thanks to the guidance of people like Jeremy, Yaro Starak and Brian Clark. I have learnt blogging, reading their blogs. So when I found that Shoemoney has a free course to offer, I jumped straight into.

You too might want to, if you are serious about making money online. Nothing worthy comes free of cost, but, today there is something. It is time for you to grab it.

You can sign up for the course here.

Photograph courtesy “Demordian“.

You have not made a dime from your internet marketing business since you started out on the journey. Is that you?

Frustration is creeping into the mind and you are wondering as to what is it that needs to be done so that you earn that first dollar from the internet marketing business. Is that you?

95% of all Internet Marketing journey ends in a disaster. Don’t panic at this statement. Your success is a coefficient of your choice. In this respect, I would want to quote a statement from one of my favorite movies – The fantastic four: the rise of the silver surfer.

Every situation in life has a choice. No situation has just one option. You always have two choices. Your success or, failure depends upon the choice that you make – right or, wrong.

So if you are frustrated and are wondering as to how to succeed in making money online, then here is the mantra.

• Choose a good mentor for yourself.
• Do the right things – (Read the 80-20 rule by Yaro Starak)
• Choose the right tools.
• Continue doing the right things even if there is no result. (Wondering, till when. Then read this post here)
• Tweak if necessary.
• Be persistent.

Internet Marketing businesses, especially, blogging has to be given some time till you start seeing results. Throughout my blog, you will see this advice, because that is how I am, where I am today.

What are the right tools to make money online? Are they free or, do you have to pay for them? There could be quite a few questions in your mind when you think about “choosing the right tools”.

The 3 most important and indispensable tools to make money online in an Internet Marketing business are as follows:

SEO Tools -
What are SEO tools and why do you need them? There is no debate to the fact that the most economic and the highest contributor to the traffic to your website is “Organic Traffic”. If you do not know what organic traffic is, then

Organic traffic is the traffic that comes from search engines, from people clicking on the search results that appear on the search engine results page for various keywords that people search for.

Let’s take an example of Google. When you search for a term on Google you will find that there are about 10 results that are displayed on the first page of Google results page. It takes quite a bit of effort to rank in one of these results. The people searching on Google seldom go to the 3rd, 4th or, the 5th page on Google. So if you wish to see your website featured on the first page of Google, you need to optimize your website for search engines and this process is called as “Search Engine Optimization”.

You need not be a wizard to optimize your pages for search engines. If you are running a blog, especially on WordPress, there are quite a few plugins that are available for SEO. In addition to these plugins there are certain other simple tools that are required to get better results out of your SEO objectives.

These tools are required for backlink building, backlink analysis, Content and text optimization, outgoing link analysis, keyword density analysis and so on. If these things sound like jargons to you, just search with each of the terms mentioned above on Google and you will get quite a bit of material to read and learn (Don’t get into it so much that you have to do a doctorate on SEO. Remember the 80-20 principle).

There are not too many free tools available for this, though you could find some if you search the internet. But one very good collection of tools are available at Shoemoney-tools. If you do not who Shoemoney is, then search the internet again. For your information, Shoemoney is the blog that has made millions to its owner Jeremy Schoemaker and Jeremy is a genius in making money online.

PPC Tools-
PPC is “Pay-per-Click”. It is unlikely that you would not know what PPC is, because every internet marketer starting his quest to make money online burns his pockets in the first few days at PPC campaigns. When I started, I lost $2000 in an hour at PPC.

PPC advertisements at Google is one of the most expensive way of gaining traffic and customers. But it is also true that Google PPC campaigns are the ones that give you the best results as well, if done wisely and correctly. PPC is going to be the second biggest source of traffic to your site. But be cautious when you get into PPC.

You would need a lot of tools if you are to succeed in PPC. These tools will help you better you ROI and ensure that you are profitable. When you do PPC advertisements, you have to find profitable keywords, check competition for these keywords, create ads that sell and manage these ads.

While there are a lot of free tools like Google Keyword Tool available on the internet, they would not do everything for you. You need to supplement it with some other good tools. Keyword Elite is one such tool that takes care of most of these things, but learning and using the tool will require some dedication and time of yours. Micro Niche Finder is another such tool, though I would not recommend it if you are not into mini-sites and niche marketing. (You can read more of this tool in my post here.)

Shoemoney tools also has a collection of the very best PPC tools. Their collection of tools would help you do all of what I had mentioned above.

Link Building Tools -
In order to rank well in search engines and to get organic traffic it is very important to build links. Backlinks and link-building is one of the most important aspects of SEO. But building backlinks is not very easy. It takes quite a bit of effort and at times this could consume so much of your time that you find yourselves short of time for other moe important and relevant activities.

Hence it is always advisable to outsource SEO activities. But since finding a genuine SEO expert is not that easy again, I prefer setting a time-table for myself for all my SEO activities so that it does not interfere with my other activities. Link building and analysis can be made easy if you have an appropriate tool for this.

Shoemoney tools again is one of the best place to find all of these tools. When I joined Shoemoney tools, I found a complete package for all the above things for one small price.

If you are to go about buying each of these tools or, subscribing to sites that offer such services, individually you might end up paying a few hundred dollars. But Shoemoney makes all these tools available at a single price.

You can send an email to me in case you face any difficulty with any of the above activities and I can help you. No fees or, charges. Don’t worry.

A simple tip that could give your blog a new identity – have you come across one till today. No? You are right, because there is none.

The success of any business depends upon how you and your product is identified by your customers. When the competition is fierce as in Internet Marketing business, an “Identity” makes all the difference. But how will you create an identity of you own, especially in blogging and more so if you are in a niche that has a lot of competition?

What constitutes identity? What are the ingredients of identity?

The distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity; individuality.

How do you identify McDonalds and Dominos from a mile away or, Ebay while you are browsing the internet. It is their identity that distuinguishes them from their competitors. If you are to be asked as to what was it that helped you distuinguish these brands, I am sure the first answer is “The LOGO”.

A logo is something that helps identify a brand, even by a kid. So it is important that any business has a unique and good logo that is in line with its individuality.

In addition to a logo, there are certain other things that form a constituent of “Identity”. These are as follows:

• A unique design.
• A unique punchline.
• A Brand Name.

If you are new to the internet marketing business or, have been around with little or, no success, it is time for you to evaluate you individuality.

Hugely successful blogs like Problogger, Copyblogger etc. have a unique brand name. Whereas a blog like that of entrepreneurs-journey is a brand because of the author Yaro Starak and the authors name is the brand there.

It is not uncommon for people to misinterpret a brand name. Just bear in mind that all you need to have is a unique name that people can remember and will identify you or, you business with.

But that is not the case with a logo. A “Logo” just cannot be your name. It has to be a well-designed, meaningful graphic that is identifiable with your business. If you are good at designing, take some time out to design a good logo. But if you are not a good designer, it is always advisable to get one designed from a professional designer.

In case you are not able to find a good deal, I can get a logo designed as per your requirement, from a very close friend of mine who runs a designing business. He will give you a discount of 50% on designing a logo and will get it designed for as little as $70.00.

Just sign up for my newsletter and send me a mail at [email protected] mentioning the email address that you used to signup and I will send you the details.

“The Money is in the List” – How many times have you heard this? Innumerable times! Is there frustration in your voice when you answered? You sound like me. It is the same frustration that I saw months ago when I was reading some good blog post on list-building, like you are doing today.

Read any blog authored by the gurus, buy any e-book on affiliate marketing tips or, Internet marketing, there is one common statement that you will find in all of those – THE LIST. That is where you start getting frustrated because you know that a list is important but, how would you build a list? When I first started my affiliate marketing business, I was so frustrated with the results that I almost quit. The reason – My sales were so low that my PPC expenses were also not being recovered. In fact I was spending almost 3 times of what I was earning.

If you are facing a problem with building your list, then don’t panic. You are not the only one. Everybody starting off on the internet marketing arena faces the same problem. So let’s understand the ways in which you can build a huge list.

1. Squeeze Page – When I started affiliate marketing, I had no method of capturing email addresses on my landing page. In the beginning there was no landing page at all and all the traffic from my PPC ads were being re-directed directly to the seller’s website. So I got a lot of clicks on my PPC ads but they would all got directly to the seller’s website who would then capture these emails. So it is important that you have a good squeeze page in place where you can capture the details of visitors to your website.
2. Optin on Blog – A blog is one the best ways to capture subscribers. Yaro, quite authoritatively emphasizes the need for a subscriber optin form above the fold in his Blog Profit Blueprint e-book. This works wonders if done right. I saw a jump in susbcriber optins by almost 35% after I put my optin form above the fold.
3. Autoresponder – I used to get at least 10 emails on a daily basis recommending one or, the other autoresponder. Cost-effectiveness was something that I was bothered about. Consequently, I joined at autoresponder that would only charge me about a $10.00 a month. I built a list of about 700 subscribers with the help of this autoresponder and one find day, when I try to login to my account, I find that the company is gone. No autoresponder and no website. I had a backup of the list, so I thought I would use it with a new autoresponder. I joined AWEBER and imported this list into it. But I could only get about 10% of the subscribers to confirm their subscription. I lost the rest 90%. So it is important that you choose the best autoresponder around. Go for Aweber, who has a known presence in the market. Their reputation itself speaks for them.
4. Valuable Content – Provide value to your visitors and they will become subscribers. Buy a good and valuable MRR product, which you can giveaway to your visitors in return for them subscribing to your list. Spending $39 – $40 will not hurt you when you see your list growing by thousands. So don’t compromise on the quality for the price of the product.
5. Treat with respect – Treat your subscribers with respect. I was so annoyyed with the mails that I used to get that I stopped opening the emails after some time and I would delete them, unread. Treat your subscribers with the same respect that you expect from anybody. They would then stay as subscribers and would look upto your advices and would buy from you.

I still remember the days when I read posts full of ideas and suggestions like the one above. After reading through the post I would wonder – All said and done, where would I get the traffic from?

The difficult part in all of these is actually getting a few people to visit your website. How will your build your list, if there are not enough visitors to your website?

You can still build a huge list. Wondering how? The following are a few of them, which if followed judisciously can help you build your list.

1. Giveaways – Giveaways are an effective method to build your list. Sign up for as many giveaways as possible and upgrade your subscriptions whereever possible so that you can about 3-4 gifts. You will get quite a few subscriptions. I built almost 75% of my list from giveaways. There are a lot of people who feel that the list built through giveaways are not worthy of it because it is made of peopel expecting things for free. I  disagree with this, because people who look for something for free are actually people who are on the lookout for something. If you can sell well to such people, you would be able to sell a few products. You can sign up in the form in the top-right corner to keep up on the latest giveaways.
2. Traffic Exchanges – This is again another controversial method of traffic generation. The debate here is that people using traffic exchanges normally surf websites for getting credits and hence their stay is for only a few seconds. But I still prefer this form of traffic generation. Even if a visitor spends about 10-12 seconds on your website and if you website or, squeeze page is catchy enough to hold attention, there would be some action that the visitor would take when he visits your page. Also when there is some traffic flowing to your website, it helps your website in generating more traffic because of the reputation it builds.

Two very good traffic exchanges are Clickthru and Hitsafari. You can join one or, both of them and upgrade as per your plans, in order to get a good amount of traffic.

A little bit of effort is all that is required and these simple techniques can help you generate a good amount of traffic and can help you build a huge list.

Photograph courtesy morgantepsic used under Creatives Common License

The success of your blog largely depends upon how well the blog is being managed. In one of my earlier post, I had compared Blogger and WordPress. I had also mentioned that WordPress was any day my choice. Though WordPress installation is a cake-walk if you follow the world-famous 5-minute installation from WordPress, there are instances where the installation reaches a dead-end and you are left gasping for breath. What is the reason for this?

A successful installation and maintenance of any website depends largely on the hosting service that you have opted for. A horrible hosting service provider could mean sleepless nights for you, especially if you are online to make money and your website is the medium to make money online. Downtime, installation errors, compatibility issues and the problem could be never ending. All this at an exorbitant cost, could spell terror for the blogger or, the website owner.

So it is always important to choose the best and economical hosting service provider. What is also important is that the hosting service provider serves all of your purpose. For my blogs, I have relied upon once such hosting service provider and I have paid only $25.00 for the service for a lifetime. There are various other packages also available with a complete access to a c-panel control.

You can check out the service here.

In my next post I will show how to install your WordPress blog in less than 5 minutes using this service provider.

Photograph courtesy Eric Setiawan used under Creatives Common License