Joe’s TOP 40 Blogging Tips

Top-40-Music

Top-40-MusicI think the number one issue people have is getting enough traffic to thier site.  I’m sure everyone can agree that you can NEVER have enough traffic to your site.

With that in mind I’ve put together my list of things that are sure to help you increase your traffic to your site.

Here are my TOP 40 tips to blogging and getting better traffic to your site.

1. Write posts that are current and about whats hot today.
2. Bookmark your site to social bookmarking websites, i.e. stumbleupon, del.icio.us, reddit.
3. Be consistent and post regularly.
4. Join groups in your niche on Google and Yahoo groups, and then include your URL in yoru signature.
5. Share your experiences with anyone you can, be an authority in what you’ve learned.
6. Write posts that are easy scan.
7. Article Marketing, Article Marketing, Article Marketing
8. Have an e-mail signature and put your URL in your signature when contacting someone through e-mail.
9. Join mybloglog, its a great way to socialize.
10. Use feedburner to easily add RSS subscriptions to your blog.
11. Add Lucia’s Link Love plugin – inspire visitors to comment by offering do-follow links after 5-9 comments.
12. Be honest.
13. Be original.
14. Comment on other blogs, not just the top blogs.
15. Make or use a good design.
16. dont ignore questions in your email.
17. Read other blogs and tell others about them.
18. Write about blogging.
19. Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful.
20. Create a lens or hubpage that highlights your best posts.
21. Make content or info product that is worth buying but you give it free this will build a great list.
22. Use original images/photos on your posts and use the alt tags on those images – this will gain you tons of traffic from google images.
23. Share your secrets.
24. Try and become a guest poster on other blogs.
25. Submit to EzineArticles, ArticlesBase, GoArticles, Buzzle, and ArticleAlley.
26. Add tweetmeme to your posts.
27. Never copy posts or use duplicate content.
28. Work on your SEO and make it as good as you can.
29. Create a WordPress Theme, and submit it to the WordPress directory. Don’t forget to include with your link credit.
30. Comment in forums.
31. Add a sitemap, This helps search engines index your site.
32. Use pingoat to ping your blog after every post.
33. Target keyword phrases in the titles of your posts.
34. Write eye catching blog post titles.
35. Spell check and grammar check your articles and posts.
36. Use YouTube to promote your blog.
37. Admit your mistakes.
38. Take one day and dedicate it to building more traffic to your site
39. Write long, definitive posts.
40. Be patient.

Do you have tips of your own that you use? Leave me a comment and let us know how you get traffic to your blog!

Creating Your Own Information Products

laptop-grass

laptop-grassThere are several ways to generate income online.   Creating affiliate niche sites, advertising, and info products are just some of these ways.  Having these multiple streams of income into your business is how you maintain stability and consistence.  You never want to be dependent on any one method of income generation. Especially if, say you Google de-indexes all of your sites.  If all of your income is coming from Google your business will fail.

One way to ensure at least part of your business is not be dependent on someone else, is to add information products to your revenue streams.

Lately I’ve been focusing a lot of my time on information products.  There are three ways you can implement info products into your business.  Each depend on how much time you have to devote to this new business model.

Roll Your Own

The first method is of course to create your own information product. Write an eBook yourself on a subject you know well and are passionate about.  This will take the most time but if you have the time, this can be  a veery inexpensive way to get a new income stream going.  The big key is to do your market research first!  Don’t go off half cocked and write an ebook if you don’t know if it will sell or not.

Pay to have it written

Another way to create an info product is to have a ghost writer or someone else write it for you. This method is a little more expensive but you can have creative over sight into the product.  The product is still 100% yours, its unique, and you save tons of time and get it to market quickly.

PLR Content

The last way is to use PLR content to jump start your Info Product revenue streams.  Good quality PLR content that is not over sold is a fantastic way to jump start your own info product.  You can easily re-write part or all of an eBook (or have it re-written for you), add new graphics, and give it your own flavor to then have your own product very quickly.

No matter which way you choose getting started can be a little daunting.  Knowing where to start and what steps to take can leave you feeling lost.

Two resources I’ve used that have been extremely helpful to me has been Josh Spaulding’s Info Product Success Formula and Niche Profit Classroom.

Info Product Success Formula

This is an amazing eBook.  In typical Josh Spaulding fashion he lays out everything you need to do in an honest, cut-to-the-chase way.  He takes you down two paths, of either writing your own or using PLR content,  to show you how to setup an effective info product business.   Its a great read and a must have for anyone who is considering selling information products.

Niche Profit Classroom

Like the name states, NPC is a university or classroom style web site.   Breaking each step down into lessons,  NPC really holds your hands and breaks everything down into very small steps.  Every lesson is a series of video’s design to teach you a particular subject.   They have an extensive amount of video’s too and each lesson walks you through exactly what you need to do next.  NPC is a recurring monthly service currently priced at $67.  Each month you get two high quality PLR niche products that you can promote.  Each product come complete with ebook, sales page, email mini-course, graphics, and keywords. They even include the market research for each niche to show you how they chose the niche and why the market is good for this particular subject.  They even have an introductory price of only $1 for the first 7 days so that you can give it a test spin.  Check it out at Niche Profit Classroom

Unfortunately both products do cost money, but if you are wanting to start creating your own information products, both will help you immensely.  Either way, you owe it to yourself to include information products into your revenue stream for your business.

Until next time — I wish you the best success!

Joe

How to Test Your Website On An iPhone (with out owning one)

test pattern

test patternTHIS IS ONLY A TEST

In my last post I discussed using WPtouch to optimize your website for mobile devices like iPhone, Blackberry or Android (google).  But what if you don’t own one of these devices, like an iPhone? How can you test to see if your website looks good on an iPhone if you don’t own one?

Designing web content for a particular device can be tough.  Especially for cell phones.  And the coolest ones out there aren’t cheap!!  Today everyone wants an iPhone.  And I have to say I understand why.  It is the coolest new gadget to be invented this decade.  I love my iPhone.   But even if you don’t have an iPhone, there are millions of people (many who maybe your customers and readers) who do own one.   What you need is an iPhone Browser simulator.

And yes of course, Shaun Sullivan at Blackbaud Labs has come to our rescue and created a really cool iPhone browser simulator … and best of all he has made it available to download for free!

To install the iPhone browser emulator you need to have Safari installed first.

Next simply cruise on over to Blackbaud Labs and download the iBBDemo iPhone Browser Simulator and run it.

Its that easy.  You can now test out your web site layout and designs for the iPhone …

Then again you could just use it to pretend you have an iPhone.  Tell your friends you have connections at Apple and are testing the new “soft iPhone”  from Apple! See how many people you can fool!

How to Set Up a Membership Site.

membersonly

membersonlyHey everyone. This week I WAS going to write a post about setting up a membership site using some pretty nifty wordpress plugins.  But just as I was going to hit POST on my blog I got an email from Yaro Starak…

Now Yaro is an amazing blogger and marketer.  He is someone I often look to for my own tips and advice. If you haven’t visited his blog Entrepreneurs Journey you should check it out.. it’s really good.

The reason I bring this up is because Yaro is giving away a free report starting today telling you how to setup a membership site! I was really blown away with the timing of this. And the report is just fantastic in itself.

His report is called the Membership Site Masterplan and as you would guess, it is a step-by-step guide for launching a profitable online membership site.

You can download the report from here:
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/go.php?offer=joesbans&pid=3

In the report Yaro explains how he was able to make $250,000 from just one membership site and then goes on to lay out a plan so you can launch your own membership site and earn at least $100,000 within the next 12 months.

Now we are talking an established blogger and marketer so its no doubt he has made $250k last year… but to promise he will help me make $100k is pretty gutsy.  Of course this report is the teaser as he is getting ready to launch a new Mastermind Membership Site product.  I will tell you many people highly recommend his courses (including Caroline Middlebrooke), though I have NEVER attended one.  His courses aren’t cheap  which is why I haven’t tried any.

The report however is FREE and is full of great tips and advise for those wanting to start a membership site.

Many of the topics covered in his report were in my original post.  Which is why I chose to re-write this to tell about his report.

MemberWing

One thing Yaro does not cover is a really cool WordPress plugin that is an alternative to Amember called Memberwing.  Memberwing does much of what Amember does but it is FREE!  It installs very quickly and integrates with paypay easily.  There is also a paid version that adds even more functionality such as more payment processors like, 2Chekcout, Clickbank, etc. and recurring subscribtions.  Memberwing also has a great way to simply add premium content to your site!

My recommendation is to check out Yaro’s report.  It has a lot of great info in it as well as some of his trials and troubles setting up his first membership site.  It’s a very good read and remember it’s FREE  Then go check out Memberwing and setup your own membership site!

If you do the numbers a membership site will really add a great revenue stream to your business.  If you can get just 200 members overtime paying $20/ea per month… you have $4000/mo of recurring income!  Not bad for just one site.  The key is to OVER DELIVER on content so that you have very happy members!

Again you can download Yaro Starak’s report from here:
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/go.php?offer=joesbans&pid=3

I would love to hear what you think about membership sites and any issues you ‘ve ran into setting your own membership site up?  What questions do you have about setting up a membership site?

Photo credit: Ikonic

How to Format Your Website for Mobile Devices

iphone-wptouch

More and more mobile devices are hitting the web.  With the advent of the iPhone and the 3G cellular network, browsing on the Internet with your cell phone is almost as fun and easy as from your laptop or p.c.

But what does this mean – should you optimize your website for mobile devices?

Here are some things you should consider about going mobile with your website:

  • How does your website look on a mobile device?
  • How do you do optimize for mobile devices easily?
  • How fast does it load on a mobile device?
  • Can your reader get to all of the information you are providing?
  • Are you loosing money from mobile readers(adsense clicks)?

This all reminds me of the browser wars back when Microsoft and Netscape were battling it out for readership with the differing browser technologies. Webmasters always had to optimize for both major browsers.  It was a pain!!

iphone-wptouchLuckily today we have WordPress and a great new plugin from Brave new Code that will make sure we don’t go back to those dreary old times.   The plugin is called WPtouch and it does an awesome job of automatically optimizing your WordPress website for mobile devices. Oh and did I mention it’s free? (donations gladly excepted of course!)

As simply and easy as a WordPress plugin can be, WPtouch allows you to install it quickly and have your website ready to go for iPhone, Blackberry and Android browsers. It is truly amazing.

It basically works on the idea of themes and installs a new theme for your website the will only show for browsers(user-agents) matching mobile devices.  Don’t get me wrong,  its more that just a theme.   It also provides a way to add google adsense, ad customize icons for your content, and you can choose to include or exclude certain content not suited for mobile users.

So far the only issue I’ve seen with the plugin is that it has a bit of trouble working with caching or caching plugins.  So website with things like WP Cache, WP Super Cache, ot W3 Total Cache may or may not allow the mobile theme to display properly.  Most of these issues can be resolved with some simply tweaks to your .htaccess file.

With this aside, WPtouch is a really cool way to easily add a unique experience for your mobile readers that will entice them to return and read more frequently.

How to Move (or Flip) Your WordPress Blog in 20 minutes

moving

moving

Here it is!  Step by Step instructions for moving a WordPress blog to a new hosting provider.  This is extremely helpful if you ever sell a blog, buy a blog, flip a blog,  or just decide you don’t like your hosting provider and want to move all your sites to a new home!

Many thanks to Forest Parks who originally showed me the light!

  1. FTP to the site that you want to transfer.  Copy everything in the wordpress wp-content folder to your desktop.
  2. Login to your Cpanel and go to PHP My Admin.  On the left, click on the name of the database for your blog that your moving.
  3. Click on the Export tab within PHP MyAdmin.  Export the database as SQL (should be the default) I normally leave the settings as they are.  At the bottom make sure “Save as file” is checked and click Go.  Save file to your desktop
  4. Change your DNS. Login to your domain management and set the nameservers to that of the new host. With GoDaddy propogation is normally done in 3 or 5 mins.
  5. Go to your the hosting provider and set up the hosting account.  Login to cpanel and use Fantastico Deluxe to install a new version of wordpress (You can also install it manually if you need to)
  6. FTP to the new host.  Copy your wp-content from your original site and overwrite  the installed wp-content.
  7. Login to the new PHP My Admin.  Find the new wordpress database (this was created when you installed WordPress on the new site) Open the wordpress database, select all the files inside and select the drop option.  The database should now be empty.
  8. Finally, Import your saved database into the now empty database.
  9. (Optional) – Take a break – have a beer – you deserve it!

How To Find The Name of Your Database

  1. If you have trouble finding the correct name of the database that your WordPress blog is using… you can find it this way.
  2. FTP to your site.
  3. In the root directory of your web site there is a wp-config.php file.
  4. Open this file with a text editor. (be careful – editors like Windows Notepad may add hidden characters to your file) I use Notepad++ it’s free and won’t mess with your files.

Look for the following lines in your wp-config.php file

define('DB_NAME', 'myname_mydbname"');    //  <-- The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'myname_myuser');     // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');    // you won't need to change this

The first line shows you the database name you need to work with.

And that’s it!  Let me know if this has helped you in any way.  Also visit Forest’s website and give him some thanks too!

Control How Posts are Displayed with Custom Query String

custom-query-string

I can’t tell you how many times I bang my head against my computer trying to make WordPress do something or display content in a way that it just doesn’t do straight out of the box.  For example, displaying the number of posts on a page.  This is an all or nothing situation.  Sure I can set this globally (meaning I can set WordPress to display 1 post per page or 5 posts per page – but this is for every page on my web site)

What if I wanted to display the top 3 news posts, or wanted to display one post on my home page and then display 10 post excerpts on the category pages?  I think you can see my point.

Well today I ran across a handy little plugin from Matt Read called Custom Query String.  This cool little plugin for WordPress now gives me the freedom I’ve been needing and allows me to better customize my web site pages for a better user experience.
custom-query-string

With Custom Query String I can easily change just about any way a post is displayed.  I can change the number of posts that are displayed on my my home page, or change my category pages, or change how the order of posts are displayed.

Installing the plugin is super easy.  It is installed like any other plugin, simply drop the custom-query-string.php file in your plugins directory and activate.

Once it is activated you will still need to create a “Condition”  and an associated “Result” .  This may look a little strange and seem a bit intimidating to beginners, but once you create your first condition it will be clear.

The easiest way I found to test this plugin is to create a condition for your home page.   First this you need to add a new condition.  In the Add New Condition section, click the drop down box under  Condition and select “is_home”.    Then in the same row add the number of post you want to show on your home page.  I left everything else default and clicked “Add”.   This allowed me to show two posts on my home page.

One thing I would love to see is the ability to edit Current Conditions.  Right now, if you want to change a Current Condition you have to delete it and re-create. Not a big deal really because creating the conditions is quick and easy,.

This is an awesome  little plug-in.  Custom Query String unlocked some needed functionality I’ve been needing in WordPress and I hope it helps you too!