2008 December

I’m setting up registration of this blog with Technorati which is the largest blog registration directory online, I think! Many people use Technorati to search for blogs on specific topics so it’s a good place to register your blog to help it get found and receives some additional traffic.

Seems to be a fairly simple procedure, but it includes having to publish a bit of code on your blog long enough for them to verify that it is there. Just a way for them to verify that you actually own the blog, if you can add the code on it.

Another benefit may be in linking with Technorati since they have a Google pagerank of 8, we’ll see.

So here’s the code they want posted to check on –
Technorati Profile

This is just one more brick in building the ‘house of success’ here with this blog, easy, you should do it as well.

John

For a couple of weeks now a group of students mentoring under Alex Jeffreys has been building a community of blogs to both help each of their business’s as well as help each other as a group. This blog is one of those blogs. The system of blogs is building larger and larger as the 500 people taking Alex’s training are gradually get their blogs set up and running. If you don’t have a clue as to the potential power of such a group of people blogging together, stick around!

As a group we are putting up vast amounts of useful information not only about setting up blogs, but about all aspects of running a successful online business. We are interacting with each other gradually forming relationships which will lead to business associations. We are explaining and defining what we are doing while following the guidance of a proven online success. We are helping each other to succeed in many ways, from technical ‘how to’ to motivation. The power of many blogs linking together in various random ways will benefit everyone with their site traffic.

But here’s the thing, this group of blogs is not only a benefit to the coaching students but to anyone who gets involved. Think about it, what is the power of watching and following an already proven success formula? For those in the coaching group, I hope you see what you have developing here. If you participate you will get pushed up with the group through the ever increasing traffic.

And for those not in the coaching – I hope you see the potential here for you as well. Getting involved with this blog group will benefit anyone participating through the traffic flowing throughout. You can find details about what everyone is doing just by circulating to the various blogs, it’s almost like getting the coaching. If you want to know generally what we are doing you can get Alex’s free list buiding report on the plan we are following, of course the more detailed video version is offered as well which will just broaden your understanding and clarify exactly how it all works.

This is not a closed group, we openly accept participation from everyone, in fact that’s what we want, as should you if you want to build a presence online. Ad links, make comments and help out as you can, and you will see reciprocation. If you think success modeling is beneficial, if you think a group of like minded people is valuable, if you think building a list is critical, and if you think getting ‘well connected’ is powerful – this is the place.

Stick around – watch, learn and participate.

As with anything, this resource must be used to be of value. Information really only has potential value, it’s only when purposeful action is applied, based on the information, that the power is released.

Yesterday daughter Julie and I traveled from California to Arizona, near Phoenix to my daughter Jens house for Christmas. With the travel, which eats up a half a day even with the short distance, and then picking up some gifts I had ordered online, I still did some blogging and Twitting. My goal is to keep it up everyday – well, we’ll see on Christmas day.

Have been blogging around the blogs of other members in Alex Jeffreys coaching program and doing some twitting as we, working on getting more interaction and traffic, but the holiday activities gobble up much attention – as it should. The family stuff is important to queeze in amungst the work efforts.

Some of the other students are getting some great products put together. I just downoaded Gary Simpson’s “Time in Motion Action Planner“. It’s a really nice planning tool, but also great for helping to identify where you are wasting time . . . don’t we all! This is a powerful feature as we need help un-doing what we don’t want to do just as we need assistance training ourselves to do what we do want to be doing. Seems simple, but the most effective things are.

Wasting time is an obvious distraction from doing what you want But once identified, one must look into why they are doing time wasting activiies. May be just an innocent habit, or could be supported by some deeper feelings, perceptions or beliefs. Take the time to identify your timewasting activities, only then can you address why and do something about it.

It’s well worth checking out and picking up our free copy, it’s worth way more than what he is charging for it!!! If you use it! – http://motivationselfesteem.com/talk/

Well, of to the store, Julie needs to pick up a few more things before they all close today.

John

Tellman has a couple of really hot offers going right now that are worth looking at.
On Mark Luciano’s blog he talked about the Perpetual Marketing Machine System offer which is a hot deal. Tellman gives away his entire program that he previously sold for several hundred dollars. This program is not a beginners program, it primarily teaches how to succeed with tele-seminars. There is an upsell (shocking!) once you get to the free materials – buy it or don’t.

Now if you are not ready to start doing tele-seminars you may be more interested in his other hot holiday deal where he is offering a huge batch of his more beginning programs for a ridiculously low price. You can barely buy a cheap ebook for what the price is. These programs are all of his “My First” programs (about 35 videos and just as many written items) plus his $497 Ultra Marketing Marathon set

He says it’s about $1100 worth of great stuff. I had purchases some of these items when they were full price. Again, there is an upsell, at $67, so you decide. This package more suitable for set up and development of all aspects of an online business is called the Secret Stocking Sale

Tellmans products are good. He is similar to Alex Jeffreys in the sense that he rose up to huge success very quickly about 2-3 years ago and still rising, he is worth watching and learning from. My thinking is, the people who are rising fast right now are the ones to follow, they are doing what is effective now.

I will address how this is done with wordpress blogs, as that is what the people in Alex’s coaching group are using.

To start, what are ‘Trackbacks” and ‘Permalinks”? They are used when you want to link to a post I another persons blog in your post on your blog. This is another way to set up a permanent link with another blog. It is also a great way to come up with ways to get ideas for content for your site.

Now this should not be done in a trashy way, only if you have something more of value to add to what you read on the other blog. If you are not adding value for other readers, the readers and the other blog owner would see this as spamming.

It is also the accepted protocol that when you do a ‘Trackback’ which places a note on the other blog, that  you must put the ‘Permalink’ in your post to lead back to the other blog post. Both ways, not just one way to your blog from theirs.. I hope you get this, otherwise other bloggers will see you as a spammer.

First
The link you want to use to refer from your blog post is called the ‘Permalink’ which is the full URL of the separate page that the article is on, in the other blog. Don’t link to the main page URL of the other blog, as the articles will always be changing. Just copy this from the bar on your browser showing the URL of the full article page.

• In your ‘Write Post’ page where you enter your post, you can “insert a link” to some text that you have entered there.
• Just highlight the word or words you want to hyperlink to the other blog post page, then click o the ‘chain link’ symbol in the text editor.
• A small window will come up.
• Then, on the line, “Link URL” add the ‘Permalink’.
• Note, get rid of the ‘http://’ that will already be there, the link you copied for the other blog post.
• Then paste the URL link on that line.  You don’t need to do anything with the other lines, just click ‘Insert’ at the lower right corner.

Second
You will need to make sure your blog is properly set up for WordPress to automatically do the ‘Trackback’ with the other blog.

• In your WP blog control panel,
• Click on ‘Settings’,
• Then ‘Discussion’
• In the ‘Default article settings’ section make sure that the box is checked at, “Attempt to notify any   blogs linked to from the article”

This function works if the blog you are linking to is also a WordPress blog. There is a slightly different method to use if the other blog is not WP.

Third
Make sure that you allow ‘Trackbacks’ to occur on your blog. This is part of the fairness protocol in dealing with other bloggers. If I allow your ‘Trackback’ you should allow mine.

• In the same place you just were above,
• the ‘Default article settings’
• check the box in front of  “Allow link notifications from other blogs”
• Go to the ‘Write/Post’ page
• Down near the bottom of the page
• At ‘Comments & Pings’
• Check – “Allow Pings” This way each post you do is set to allow ‘Trackbacks’

That should do it.

If you then do a ‘Trackback’ and nothing shows up below the article on the other blog, they have not set their blog to allow this, as you just have. Contact the blog owner and ask them if they will check their settings to allow your ‘Trackback’ because you want to link to their blog post in one of yours.

You can refer them to this article so they can see how it is done.

Happy, happy, happy

John

I see now that I want to be able to do very specific ad tracking, even to the level of individual keywords. The CPV advertisers have scripts that can be added to the pages totrack whick keywords convert. I have been using a combination of things to, like unique URL redirects and the adtracker through 1Shopping cart.

It would be nice to find one service or software that I can use for everything, that way there is one place to look. I need to look inot  the Google Analytics to see if it can accoomplish all this. We’ll see.

Suggestions are welcome on this.

Thanks,

John

There is something nice from the big G – – Google that will save you money. Here’s a speed dial number worth putting in your cell phone or your home phone: 1-800-goog411. This is an awesome service from Google, and it’s fr*e*e. Especially great when you are on the road. Don’t waste time or money on information calls and dialing numbers.

Example: I am driving along in my car and I need to call the Golf Course
and I don’t know the number. I hit the speed dial number for Goog411. The voice at the other end says, “City & State.” I say, ” Thousand Oaks, California”. He says, “Business, Name or Type of Service.” I say, “Los Robles Golf Course.” He says, “Connecting” and Los Robles answers the phone.

This is nationwide and it is absolutely free! Click on the link
below and watch the short clip for a quick demo.
US only right now I think.

Goog411

http://www.google.com/goog411/
 
Google is making so much with advertising, I guess they felt they can do this without charging -we’ll take it.

For a few days now I have been driving traffic with in two ways.

I wanted to get started now before Alex starts going into traffic with the coaching group.

First I am doing some ‘blaster’ ads, which are mass emails – these are permission based not spam! These are not really effective but just a way to get going. They are cheap but do require a little time sine you must enter your ad data in each one separately.

Second, I started some CPV advertising. This is where you pay as your ads are viewed. You whole page comes up when someone types I a keyword that you have bid on. Keywords can be words or URL’s. The rates are much less than pay per click ads, usually .01 to .05 cents. 

I’m using Zango and Traffic Vance. Although Zango is not actually running yet, setting up an account seems to be dragging on! In this regard it is similar to Adwords, get an account set up, a campaign, and keywords – then wait for account approval and keyword approval – it’s been 4 days now!
I’m getting sign ups to my list right away through Traffic Vance with my List building with Alex page, cool!

Have you heard of Armand Morin? He’s one of the most successful internet marketers around and is well known for his “Big Seminar”.

He has just launched a newsletter he swears is not going to be a bunch of rehashed marketing junk. The interesting thing is that the newsletter is free. Yes, free! Knowing Armand,the quality sould be quite good, but we can certainly expect that there will be plenty of upsell opportunities.

But, hey – this is internet marketing – stuff is for sale! There should be lots of good quality stuff available for free though as Armand certainly understands the value of providing good quality at no cost before offering an upsell. And since he is very well conected with most of the top successful marketing experts he will certainly have many of them contributing to the newsletter.

Another benefit for hanging around, getting the newsletter, is the value you gain by observing what Armand does with his newsletter. You can learn a lot from watching successful people. What are his strategies, his buisiness model and how does it all work? Watch a master at work.

I like to watch . . .  you can too, checkout his latest online marketing program — Internet Marketing Newsletter   — a free newsletter and more.

This is really not very difficult. Here is a general rundown of what to do to get a basic blog up and running.

You Own URL Is Best
First you will want to get your own URL to put the blog on. It is better for your blog to be on your own URL rather than using the WordPress URL. This way you are building traffic and an identity for yourself uniquely. In being hosted with WordPress your blog is a file extension of their domain. You also have more flexibility with your own url in terms of other things you may want to do with your site.

WordPress Blog
The most recommended blog program is WordPress for a business blog, because of its ease of use and multitude of either built in features or readily available ad-ons. The other choices are mostly either very basic or more complicated than most people have the ability to work with alone

Easy Installation
Most hosting accounts, such as c-panel have a program called Fantastico. This program installs various other softwares on your site automatically. There is a choice as to whether you want your blog to be as the main URL or an extension. This means, will it show up with www.xa-y-z.com or www.xa-y-z.com/blog.

If your hosting account does not have Fantastico or any other installation tool, you another easy way to go about it, although it does require you to do the install. WordPress has their “famous 5-minute install” that is quite easy to do. Their instructions are fairly clear for most people, just carefully follow their instructions.

Changing Themes
Once you have this up, then you can change the way it looks, the basic theme is not too pleasing. The theme is easy to change. You can find many free theme templates online, just search for ‘WordPress theme’. You can certainly also pay for a theme as well, if you want something more specific. Upload several themes if you are unsure of which one to use.. You can turn off one theme and on another as often as you want from the control panel and this does not affect your content. Try each out for a while to see how you feel about it.

One thing to be careful of in choosing a theme for the look and function of your blog, don’t let it be too busy looking. The cleaner the look generally the pleasing to the eye it is. Remember that you want people to feel comfortable visiting there. Some themes look really cool but they don’t lend themselves to a professional looking business blog. It must be easy to read, remember some people don’t have super good eyesight so dark lettering on a dark background is not good.

Changing Header
You can with most themes change the header to something of your choosing. However, some themes are easier to do this with than others, it depends on how the theme was coded. If a theme you are looking at using say in the description something about changing the header, they have set it up to be done easily. Otherwise you will need to carefully find out exactly what to take out to get rid of the original and add in the new one, which you will need to have code for.

Watch out about using a header graphic that is too busy, it could distract form the pleasing look of the page. You don’t want a design that overpowers the rest of the page. It can be helpful to look around at other blogs and identify the ones you like and dislike so you can pinpoint the features and look you want for yours.

Plug-ins
You can change and add to the features and functionality of your blog is with plug-ins. These are small programs that are built to add into a WordPress blog to perform a specific function. Just search Google for ‘WordPress Plug-in’, and you will find out there all kinds of plug-ins that do so many different things. I would suggest beginning it fairly simple, then as you go along you will discover a need that a plug in may solve. Some blog themes come with some plug-ins already installed in the blog code. There is a way that you can turn them on and off in the WordPress control panel.

Widgets
A widget, also called a “sidebar accessory”, is another add-on feature now available for WordPress blogs. These are usually add on for the sidebars that are visible on the blog, similar to a text box that can hold certain text, ads, gadgets, images and such. These make it a bit easier to add blog features without having to get into the coding. Many blog themes now come either with widgets installed or widget capable. You can usually turn them on or off in the blog control panel.

Get Familiar
Once installed, just take the time to look around in the control panel to familiarize yourself with the controls and features. Try doing things and then seeing what the results are, in a short time it will be easy.

There’s Help Available
When you need additional help with working with blogs, there are many videos available online not that you can access for free. Just Google what you want like, ‘wordpress install video’, or ‘changing wordpress header video’. Just add ‘video’ to your desired search.

Just Do It
Well, that’s that basics. Should get you up with a running blog. Most all things that you would want to change on a blog will not affect the content, so don’t worry about thinking that you need to figure everything out up from before posting. The important thing is to get posting as soon as you can. Changes and fine-tuning can be done along the way as you discover what you want and need.