Money will never rain down on you unless you’re a stripper!

Someone asked me for my recommendation as to a 100% guaranteed way to make money online without investing anything other than time and effort. The person asking is a single parent living on social assistance while raising her kids. She’d already spent hundreds of dollars on secret income systems, sure fire money making programs, and get rich quick schemes promising she’d be raking in the riches in a matter of days. Single moms abandoned and left holding the bag are a weakness of mine, so I offered my advice free of charge.

I said, “Do what I do. Set your expectation within the realm of what’s achievable and forget going for a home run your first time up to bat . Home runs may happen, but focus only on hitting the ball to get on base.”

Not a baseball player, nor very bright, I had to spell it out for my student. “Focus on products and services you can promote online that are provided by someone willing to pay you a percentage or flat fee for the referral. It’s called affiliate marketing. Set your sights on what will earn you a dollar a day when promoted through a single blog or website. Build 100+ websites and you’ll have your guaranteed, 100% web based income with only your time and effort invested.”

Her response, “That’s way too much work!”

Her emails now go directly to my junk folder. The moral of this story is, “If you’ll not invest the time or effort to succeed, you’re one of the people welfare programs were set up for.”

The competition for blog readers is growing daily. At one time, simply updating a blog’s contents regularly with quality, search engine optimized post was enough to assure bloggers a level of success. Now however, a blog needs to be regularly updated, properly optimized, and effectively promoted to attract an audience and generate the large number of visitors needed to make your investment of time profitable.

One of the most cost effective means of promoting your blog is through social media networks, such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on. The easiest of all social media sites to use as a promotional tool, and one of the most effective is Twitter. I may not always have time to post updates to Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, StumbledUpon, etc. but I will always tweet notification of my newest blog post.

Obviously, if you have a lot of Twitter followers tweeting a link to your more resent blog post can earn you a lot of traffic. However, even if your reach is limited, Twitter can still boost your traffic count. A quality post relating to a topic of wide appeal can be passed on by your followers who retweet it, making it possible for your blog post to be read by thousands of people.

The following are five ways you can promote a new blog post, get more Twitter followers, and increase the amount of re-tweets, all resulting in an increase in traffic to your blog.

Tweet Blog Posts Selectively

Tweet manually so that it gives you complete control over the timing of your tweets. There are days of the week, times of day, and methods of tweeting that are better for getting clicks on links embedded in tweets. This strategy is explained in, “What, When And How To Tweet“.

The only automation I use to help manage my own and my client’s accounts are TweetDeck and Twitter Unfollowers. The former to monitor my accounts, the latter to manage followers, or more correctly those who do not follow me back or are no longer active on Twitter.

Avoid The Use Of Automated Tools

Time is money, so many bloggers opt for automating as many tasks as possible. Tweeting your blog posts using automated tools is convenient, but may not be as good an idea as it first appears. If you’re trying to connect with new people on Twitter, irritating them with spammy tweets isn’t the approach to use. It takes a mere matter of minutes to log into your Twitter account, type out a tweet and send it, so the argument for needing to automate tweeting it moot.

Another reason I recommend not using automated tools is because they do not respond to interaction with other tweeple when it’s required. If someone replies to your tweet or retweets it, you can only solidify your connection with that person by acknowledging them. A simple reply with “TY for the RT” is enough to pass on your appreciation. It is also all it takes to confirm to the other party that your Twitter account is not automated, a.k.a. Twitter Spam Bots.

Most people serious about promotion using Twitter will tweet followers suspected of being bot driven accounts and delete them if they are. This is because there is no advantage to having tens of thousands of bogus, bot managed accounts as followers because bots do not read tweets, they send them. On the other hand, a few hundred, or thousand real people following you that actually read your tweets and interact are gold. Ironically, there are bot accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, most of which are other bot accounts, resulting in an exchange of tweets that no one ever sees.

Encourage Followers to Read Your Posts

Prompting your Twitter followers to read your posts isn’t easy. There are literally millions of tweets being send out every minute of every day and the vast majority of them are spam tweets. The shear volume of tweets push your message off your followers’ timelines in a matter of seconds.

The solution is to include an incentive for your followers to look for your tweets specifically. Finding a specific Twitter user’s tweets can be accomplished by watching for them on your timeline, by searching for them using the Twitter search function, or by visiting a twitter account directly. I find the best incentive is to add a real value for the follower to read my tweets. Value need not be expensive, but obviously a cash value is the best incentive. However, savings too are considered value. For example, whenever I drive past a gas station with lower prices than anywhere else, I tweet the name, location and price. Saving money on gas is of value to everyone, and if the savings is significant my tweet is retweeted over and over again. Of course I always include “courtesy of MYBLOG.com”. Twitter will always turn anything with a dot com into a hyperlink.

Be creative when it comes to making your tweets the ones your followers seek out. I sometimes offer to create a banner free of charge for one of the Twitter followers that leaves a comment on the post I’m promoting. Whenever I get sent Google Adword coupon I offer them to a randomly selected Twitter follower who either responds to my Tweet offering the coupon or posts a comment where I instruct them to. If you spend some time thinking about what you can offer you Twitter followers, you’ll come up with ideas for offerings that will appeal to hundreds of them. You need not come up with a single offer that will appeal to every Twitter follower you have, which would probably be impossible anyway, unless it were cash. The goal is to have your followers know that reading your tweets will occasionally provide them with something of value, so they ‘ll faithfully read them.

No matter what promotion you come up with, tie it in with your blog. For example, require your Twitter followers to click on a link in your tweet and then comment on a blog post using a specific phrase. Of course first make sure you have comments set to be viewable only when approved so you can delete them once your promotional offer is over and thus they are not seen publicly  I sometimes use a simple reply form buried in my blog where only Twitter followers clicking on the link in my tweets will end up visiting. My goal is to get people using Twitter to visit my blog in the hope some become regular visitors or subscribe to my RSS feeds.

Publicize Your Blog Link

Place a link to your blog in your bio on Twitter. Most people waste this vital resource by putting no link at all in their bio, which appears at the top of their Twitter page. Others who do take advantage of the opportunity to include a back link on their Twitter account page think they’re limited to one link. Actually you can include more links, but it’s recommended to limit it to two. Too many links on your profile looks spammy, and potential followers may think following you will result in them getting even more spam tweets. As a visual example, check out my personal Twitter account @lenbowcott for how I recommend using your Twitter profile to publicize your blog or blogs.

Twitter is also a great platform for publicizing your blog by embedding your link in every Tweet. Of course for this you need a short domain name. That said, I do not recommend using a shortened URL for two reasons; 1. You want to brand your blog domain name whenever and wherever possible. 2. A growing number of Twitter users distrust shortened URLs because they often lead to spam, virus downloads, inappropriate content, or phishing pages.

Summary

I hope you find these four Twitter marketing tips for promoting your blog useful. What I recommend doing to enhance Google page rank, generate more traffic, grow organic traffic, etc. is what I myself do for my own websites and blogs, or do on behalf of my clients.

You may be wondering why I would freely pass on the very same knowledge I make my living with. The answer is simple. My clients do not have the time to personally manage their own SEO or social media marketing, nor do they have knowledgeable manpower available in house to assign to the task so they hire someone. By helping others learn how they can improve traffic to their sites, I’m also stating to potential clients that I know what I’m doing and telling them what I can do on their behalf should my services be engaged.

If you’re seeking someone to assist with, or completely manage your social media marketing, banner advertising, PPC campaign, affiliate marketing program, assist in developing an overall web marketing strategy, or simply offer the occasional consultancy, please contact me at el_jay_bee@hotmail.com.

I felt compelled to comment, and it ended up being much longer than I intended. Tim may not even approve it since it goes a bit against the grain, but what I wrote is what I believe are the only guaranteed ways to make money online. Since I was please with my comment, I thought I’d post it here to share with my readers.

I think most everyone that is first starting out as a web marketer falls for a scam or two. I did. However, I was fortunate enough to claw back what I lost once the credit card issuer finally reversed the purchase. Ironically, the “license to print money system” came with a 100% money back guarantee, but it was worth even less than the information I was sold. This experience soured me to pretty much every “money making system” I have heard of since then, and that was decades ago.

Image courtesy of BloggerJet.com

What’s sad is that there are probably a lot of really good products and tutorials out there that deserve to have my participation, but don’t get it because they’re being marketed to someone who’s already been burned. I assume I am not alone, and that my thinking is shared by many. After all, no one but a fool pats a dog that’s already bitten them, right?

I’m sure I’ve passed on a lot of promising opportunities because I don’t know what the secret is to telling the difference between the scams from the gold. What I do, and have been doing for decades, is avoid anything that smacks of MLM or network marketing, and focus on merchandising my own products and services. I also sell banner ad space on my blogs and websites, usually by the month and for as little as $5, to as much as $20 depending on traffic numbers. I appreciate that doesn’t sound like much, but every site I have generates at least $1 a day, and I have a lot of websites and blogs. Of course I display Google Adsense banners wherever I don’t have a paying advertiser renting the spot. I also promote affiliate programs, but only if people I know to be clever are promoting them on their own blogs and websites, and then only if I find no negative reviews of the company. So, if I were ever asked for a 100% guaranteed way to make money online, I guess I would be recommending doing what I do because I know it works.

If you have a different approach to make money that is working for you, or if you disagree with anything I say, don’t be shy… comment!

Many people do quite well signing up to participate as resellers through the tens of thousands of affiliate programs currently on offer. Well known brick and mortar businesses, such as Walmart, Macy’s, Apple Stores, Target, and Kohl’s, all operate affiliate marketing programs, as do a multitude of lesser known companies. While it’s advantageous to promote products offered by retailers that are household names, you’re just one of thousands of resellers doing so. A less well known retailer may offer the advantage of a less saturated market, but it’s likely consumer trust in the brand is lacking as well. A lack of consumer trust translates into much more difficulty converting your website visitors you send to the retailer into sales, thus costing you money. Plus, no matter whether the retailers’ affiliate programs are recognized brands or not, the amount you earn from each sale is usually in the single digit percentages, meaning you need to make a lot of sales to make your efforts pay off.

Instead of making peanuts for each sale, an ever increasing number of web marketers are choosing to be affiliate marketers themselves. Their goal is to have resellers join their affiliate programs and sell products or services they offer. Of course to be an affiliate marketer you need a product or service to offer consumers. The best way to do so is through product creation.

Most people are not programmers capable of creating a software applications that online shoppers can purchase and download. Most wannabee affiliate marketers aren’t willing to carry a costly inventory of manufactured goods, nor manufacture items to sell either. Thus the first challenge to becoming an affiliate marketer then is to determine what you can create yourself that will be marketable online. Creating an eBook is just such a product.

Your eyes just rolled up because you are not a writer, have no idea what to write about anyway, and even if you did you don’t know how to create an eBook. Not to worry, creating an eBook is easier than it appears to be a first glance.

What topic to write about…

Everyone has something they’re interested in, such as a hobby, sport or pastime  Do you enjoy fishing, cooking, hunting, quilting, or maybe rock climbing?

These are all excellent topics to base a “How To” eBook on. Do you play a musical instrument  Are you an avid gardener? Do you snowboard or ski? Whatever interests you is likely to be of interest to others as well, and those interested people are the market for your eBook.

Another option to writing content from scratch is to use PLR articles on a related topic. PLR stands for Public License Release, which are articles that the authors allow anyone to use. PLR articles usually contain outdated information or are poorly written however, so need to be edited. Even more up to date, or non-time sensitive PLR articles need to either be rewritten or spun to make them unique.

Spinning an article means to run it through a program that reads the content and then rewords it. Also, to take a foreign language article and run it trough a translation program is another way to spin an article. The problem with either article spinning programs or ones that do translations is that neither produce a quality end product. If you’ve ever come across articles on the web that are full of grammatical and punctuation errors, or that don’t make sense much of the time, they were likely spun articles. I personally recommend you manually rewrite PLR articles if you use them. Rewritten they’re a much better read, and you want your eBook to make a good impression or you’ve defeat the purpose of creating it in the first place. To find PLR articles you can simply Google “PLR” or “Public License Release Articles”. Prices vary based on topic, number of articles in a package, or quality. I purchased 125,000 PLR articles covering every topic imaginable for just $5, but all need to be rewritten. However, when I need a blog post or website article having something I can rewrite, compared to writing the same article from scratch saves a lot of time. Also, there are times when I have writer’s block. When I do I open the most relevant topic folder and read a few PLR articles. When I do I immediately come up with a better idea and start to rewrite. Before I know it, my own article is finished.

Sadly, the link I used to purchase the large package of PLR articles no longer works. Fortunately, I have reseller rights to the package of 125,000 PLR articles, as does anyone that purchased it. If you want your own zip file that includes them all, use the contact info at the bottom of this article to let me know, or add a comment to this post. I’ll send you a link to download them for the same $5 I paid. Remember though, I do not recommend they be used without first being read and then updated, edited or expanded upon.

The cost to create an eBook is zero to minimal…

Creating an eBook need not cost you anything if you’re literate enough to write in the language of your target market and have basic HTML and graphic design skills.

If you aren’t fluent in the language of the market your eBook will target, you’ll have to either have someone translate what you write, or pay someone to write the content of your eBook.

Fortunately, it’s possible to hire a skilled ghost writer very inexpensively. On average the cost to have someone write the chapters of your eBook is just US$5.00 for every 300 words, less if you hire them to write the entire publication. It can cost far more to have what you write yourself professionally translated, anywhere from 5 cents per word, to as much as 26 cents US per word for more technical based content. Plus, ghost writers, also referred to as copywriters, will do research if asked. Translators will only translate what you’ve written, meaning you must do all of the research yourself.

I recommend looking at having your eBook content written by a micro job copywriter if you are not able to do so on your own. Micro jobbers are people willing to perform tasks for anywhere from as little as $4, to at most $100, with copy-writing generally available at the lower end of the price range.

Another cost you may or may have to contend with is the design of your eBook cover and any graphics you want to include. Likewise, if you include photos within your eBook that are not your own, you may have to pay to use them. Again, I recommend turning to micro jobbers for affordable graphics. It’s possible to find someone capable of designing a professional eBook cover for just $5.00, and to pay an illustrator just $5.00 for each illustration they create specifically for your eBook.

Depending on how you plan to market your eBook, you may need banners or other promotional graphics to offer resellers as tools to help them sell your eBook. it’s recommended that anyone wanting to be taken seriously as an affiliate marketer, regardless of their product or service, they make promotional tools available to resellers. My reasoning for suggesting this is simple. If the big players are offering marketing and promotional tools as part of their affiliate programs, and you do too, the assumption is you play in the same league they do. If you’re able to create banners yourself, great. If you aren’t I suggest you again look to micro jobbers. Most graphic artists offering their services on micro job sites are willing to create banners for just $5, possibly less if you order a few of the same theme but in different sizes.

For sure you’re going to need at least one squeeze page to sell your eBook. A squeeze page is a single webpage that describes your eBook, explains why someone should purchase it, and includes repeated calls to action. A call to action, also called a trigger, can be as simple as a text link that says “Buy Now”, but whatever the text or image link is, it takes the person clicking on it to a page with a form to be filled out with PayPal or credit card info. Once the form is filled out and the “Pay Now” or “Submit” button is clicked, payment is collected and the purchaser is redirected to another page, usually called a “Thank You Page”. This third page is the last in the purchase process, and includes a link to download a copy of your eBook.

Creating a professional looking squeeze page is vital to converting page visitors into purchasers. The following two pages are not as important, and may even be templates you have to use if you’re going to be marketing your eBook through established affiliate networks like ClickBank. Once again, I recommend turning to micro job sites if you’re unfamiliar with HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), which is the coding that creates what a web browser will display as your squeeze page. Squeeze page creation through micro job sites run anywhere from $5 to $100, and generally you get what you pay for. I’d recommend looking to spend between $25 to $50 for a quality squeeze page. If you are not able to upload script files and configure them within your web hosting account’s cPanel, expect to pay up to $100 for each squeeze page.

Naturally you will need to have a website hosting account, and one that permits you to offer purchasers of your eBook the possibility to download the file. I personally use, and therefore recommend JustHost and HostGator for all your web hosting needs. For squeeze pages you can purchase the least expensive hosting option available. In the event you ever need to upgrade your account to get more storage or bandwidth, you can easily do so.

In total, you should be able to publish your own eBook for under $150.00. Far less if you’re able to perform all of the related tasks yourself. It should cost me nothing but my time to publish an eBook because I’m able to do everything myself. However, time is money so I’ll often pay others to do many of the tasks involve, and as I recommended earlier, those people will be micro jobbers.

Laying out your eBook…

All eBooks follow a similar lay out or format, and it is a very simple one at that.

Page one of your eBook is always the title or cover page. You will create the first page immediately, but if you have not decided on the design, or even the title, leave it a blank page that you can return to and create later. All that is important initially is that the page is available for when you decide to create the design and what text to include.

Page two is always the table of contents. If your eBook is large, it may require more than one page. However, for most eBooks one page is sufficient. This page needs to be left blank until the very end, and to be safe make your content section two pages. You can always delete a page if it’s not needed, and deleting an unnecessary page is far simpler than adding one later.

Starting on page three are the actual pages of content you’ll be writing that make up your eBook.

Your eBook will have to include enough information to make it valuable to the person who downloads it. The reason for this is because to attract both resellers and purchasers of your eBook, it’s advisable to offer a full refund to purchasers who are not 100% satisfied. In fact, to market your eBook through established affiliate networks, such as ClickBank, full refunds are policy. No matter how long your eBook is, make it easy to read, have paragraphs and chapters well spaced, and incorporate bullet text when appropriate.

Your eBook is now finished… but isn’t ready to be published…

Once you’ve finished writing your eBook it’s time to return to your content page to add the sections, and/or chapters, with their corresponding page numbers to complete it. Likewise if you haven’t yet completed the design and layout of your cover / title page do so. Once both are completed, your eBook is almost ready to be offered to the world.

Before you offer your eBook for sale, print off a few copies and give them out to friends, family, and co-workers. Ask them to be brutally honest and highlight anything they find difficult to understand, and anything they think may be a spelling mistake, punctuation or grammatical error, or a typo. You’ll most likely have run your eBook through a spelling and grammar checking program, either as you wrote it or once it was completed. However, no program I know of gets it 100% right, 100% of the time, and often it takes someone else proof reading my own writing to identify areas needing attention. The reason for this is because an author knows what he or she intended to write, and will subconsciously read what they’ve written correctly even though it’s incorrect.

If you don’t want to involve people you know in the proofing of your eBook, which is often the case with the first publication, you can hire a proof reader to do it for anywhere from $5 to $25, depending upon it’s length. The going rate for a micro jobber offering to do proof reading is just $5 per 2000 words.

If after reading this post you’re still at a loss as to how to create an eBook to market through your own affiliate program, or you have questions I left unanswered, feel free to contact me. I live to learn, and I’ve yet to meet someone new I didn’t learn from, even if it was a critique of my posts, so my invitation to contact me is genuine. Posting one’s email address anywhere online is like ringing a dinner bell for spammers, so instead lets connect using Twitter or Facebook.

I used to allow full articles to be posted on the home page, 5 in total. The rest of the posts were either found by clicking on an “older post” link at the bottom of the page, or could be found in the archives or linked to from the side column. I changed to excerpts with a “read more” link at the end of each to be able to have more articles appear on the home page. This blog is an example of what I switched the layout to.

Before long I notices two troubling changes. Firstly, the Google Adsense banners I always place in the side column became far less targeted, often totally irrelevant to the niche. In fact, other than geographically relevant, most were of little interest to readers. I attempted to research this phenomenon, but found little concrete information.

Secondly, and most troubling, I saw a decline in the PR of the home page. However, there was little change to the Page Rank of individual pages.

I suspect the problem to both the irrelevant Google banners and lower PR are a result of the limited content appearing under each post heading. Google’s recent reiterations of it’s Penguin algorithm penalizes websites that contain shallow content. I assume a short excerpt followed by a link to the balance of an article is being interpreted by visiting SE bots as a page containing a jumble of articles, all having shallow content. Worse, it’s possible that because the excepts contain low keyword density, and/or the entire page contains numerous keywords relevant to each of the posts, search engine bots aren’t gaining an adequate understanding of the blog niche to determine how the page should be indexed.

I’m considering various tweaks to help bots determine the best keywords each blog should be ranked for. I have edited the meta descriptions to be much more descriptive and keyword rich. I plan on testing a fixed table containing content at the top of each box as well, which will contain a keyword rich description of the blog’s niche. Hopefully this works to offset the negative impact shifting to excerpts from posts is having.

If you are seeing a similar, negative impact to your page rank and/or the relevance of Google Adsense banner ads, please comment and together we may come up with a solution that helps everyone.

During the recession many low income families incurred overwhelming debts and can not be helped in the short term, no matter how much they make as a blogger or from other home based businesses. They are compelled to file bankruptcy as they do not have adequate resource to pay off their debts. You can take assistance from non profit organizations that help the low income families to manage their debts. Most of the people may not be aware of the bankruptcy help available for the low income group families.

What are the qualification criteria?

There are some of the legal aid organizations that provide free or low-cost legal assistance to low-income families. But you need to qualify the eligibility criteria of different organization. Some of the organizations may require the applicants to qualify for the federal poverty guidelines. A few organizations may focus on regional criterion like Legal Aid of California. The legal help is available to a specific country or region of the state in which the organization operate.

How to find specialized organization?

The income group families looking for bankruptcy help need to find organization that specializes in certain services like Chapter 7 bankruptcy or Chapter 13. These types of organizations may have offices all over the region. Therefore, you need to look for an organization that helps to meet your requirement and provide appropriate assistance.

How to apply for legal help?

Most of the organizations allow online application for bankruptcy help. Applying for legal help from any organization may involve long application procedure. Once your application is approved, the organization may help you while filing petition with the bankruptcy court. These organizations may provide legal advice to the clients and help to file petition with the court on behalf of their clients.

What you need to be aware of?   

In the US, the filers are protected from the collection activities after the petition is filed in the bankruptcy court. Bankruptcy helps to discharge the unsecured assets of the debtors. However, the debt stricken consumers are required to be aware of the negative effect of bankruptcy on the credit score. In reality, filing bankruptcy may blemish the credit report for 7 to 10 years. Therefore, filing bankruptcy can adversely affect your credit report. In this period, you may not get any loan on favourable terms as the potential lenders may consider you high risk borrower.

Therefore, you need to find a proficient lawyer who can guide you through the bankruptcy process. He can also help you discharge your debts without pinching your pocket.

Technorati

For anyone who’s not aware of what Technorati is, it’s an Internet search engine for searching blogs that was founded by Dave Sifry, and is head-quartered in San Francisco, California, USA. The name Technorati is a blend of the words technology and literati, which invokes the notion of technological intelligence or intellectualism.

Technorati looks at tags that authors have placed on their websites. These tags help categorize search results, with recent results coming first. Technorati rates each blog’s “authority,” the number of unique blogs linking to the blog over the previous six months. In 2009, Technorati stopped indexing blogs non-English language blogs and websites in order to focus only on the English-language blogosphere.

I was recently providing one on one, live chat tutoring to one of my many budding affiliate marketer students. The topic of discussion was the set up and monetization of blogs. The question I was asked made me realize I assume the cost of a basic hosting package isn’t an issue for anyone, and I often give a heads up to readers of hosting deals for as little as a couple of dollars each month.

However, in this particular student’s case setting up  any paid hosting was going to be a problem because she had no credit card, no PayPal account, nor did she have a bank account in her own name to set a PayPal account up. To properly answer her question about using free hosting services, I had to do some research. Since being able to have hosting for your blog or website is fundamental to all of my SEO and money making  tutorials, not to mention every article posted on Make Money With Blogs, I’m posting my findings here because the information is useful to anyone just starting out or who may be wanting to keep operating costs as low as possible.

This post will be a work in progress, with me adding free blog hosting services as I find them. I will sign up for each and tinker a bit to be able to give a proper review as well. So bookmark this post and check back for updates.

There are a few different types of free blogs, as well as free blog services that place restrictions as to what content is acceptable. I will break the list into general categories…

Personal Journals

Personal Journals, or personal diaries, have been popular for hundreds of years. In many cases, people who kept personal journals provide us with some of the only accounts of historical events recorded for posterity. One of the most famous personal journals is the diary of Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl who recorded her day to day experiences while she and her family hid from the Nazis during World War Two. Few, if any writings documenting the war from the perspective of Jews in hiding survived. So without Anne Frank’s diary, little would be known of the experiences of Jews in hiding, nor anything of the brave people who risked their lives to help Jewish families avoid the death camps by hiding them.

A journal blog is simply a more modern, online version of a written personal journal. However, unlike written diaries and journals that are not always intended for public consumption, online versions are able to be viewed by anyone on the planet. Something to keep in mind while adding posts.

InsaneJournal.com - is a simple yet very customizable online diary. It’s built on open source software from Danga Interactive.

I created a free journal for myself as a test of the registration and functionality of the service InsaneJournal provides. It took about a minute to register and set up my personal journal, ElJayBee. It took only a couple more minutes to confirm the email address and then to create a profile.

The free journal offers limited design control, although HTML is permitted and there does not seem to be any limit as to how many anchor text links can be embedded. Of course there are banners embedded on each page of your personal Insane Journal, understandable since someone has to pay for upkeep.

My rating for InsaneJournal.com is a thumbs up. I’d have given it two thumbs up had the free hosting version not limited layout options to a rather unattractive looking page.

Themed Blog Hosting

Themed Blog Hosting should be pretty much self explanatory, in that someone can host a blog for free provided it falls within the general theme dictated by the service providing the hosting. What I feel needs clarification is why this is so…

Free blog or website hosting services profit from advertising, and the more targeted the content they host is to a specific advertising niche, the higher the value of their online real estate is to advertisers. Likewise, restricting hosting to specific themes also enhances the search engine optimization of the service itself, and all of the blogs using it. This article is not about SEO, so I’ll just say that you want your free blog to be linked to from a service dedicated to a specific market niche. If you want to learn more about SEO, visit OIRS.ca.

Following are a list of free, theme based blog hosting services and my reviews…

Blogabond.com – Free blog hosting for blogs dedicated to travel. Registering was quick. However, it may just me, but I found the interface to create a travel blog complicated and in the end I was obviously not successful. I first created my profile, which seems to be fine, but I added a sort of bio and I have no idea where is went because it is not appearing in my profile, Plus I also wrote a post entitled “Dracula’s Real Castle, Poienari Citadel” that ended up as a comment, then disappeared.

The link that went missing should point blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?TripID=192753 but what is displayed in the content area of the page is…

Page Not Found
You’ve requested a document that we couldn’t find. If you came here from a link on this site, please let us know which one so we can fix it.

That’s all fine and good, but I wan’t able to find an email address or reply form link to use to let anyone know there is an issue with a broken link.

Navigating the site is no easy task, and there appear to be more empty pages than pages with content. Not a pleasant experience and probably the reason those blogs I did find all seemed to have set up other blogs and placed notices and a link on the Blogabond.com blog that they had moved.

All in all, this free blog hosting site is complicated to set up, lacks any real instructions for new users to follow, with any link to find help either invisible or non-existent, and navigation is far from easy. Not a service I’d recommend at all.

My rating for Blogabond.com is both thumbs down. However, if anyone reading this is a Blogabond.com user and is not having problems, please add a comment and walk myself and readers through the process. Likewise, if someone reading this is involved with the service in a staffing capacity, please feel free to spell out where I may have gone wrong setting up the account I used to review your service. Thanks!

WordPress Powered Blog Hosting

I’m partial to WordPress for blog management. In fact this blog is WordPress powered, though on paid hosting. My reason for paying for hosting is because I have a number of websites and blogs that I prefer having total control over the advertising displayed on them. Plus, the cost per website is just a dollar or two each month. I use HostGator for my hosting and recommend anyone starting out who wants to make the move from free hosting to paid use them too. I’ve been working online since 1995, and I can assure you there is nothing more necessary to success than a capable, cost effective, helpful hosting company.

Blogetery.com – Registration was a breeze, but of course there is the usual email confirmation required. I registered a sub domain, vagabond, to create a pseudo travel blog. My decision to create “A Vagabond’s Blog” is because content is easy to come by, and I enjoy writing about travel, not to mention travelling.

When you log in to your new Blogetery.com blog you will be give two choices of administration areas, an easy admin area for beginners and an advanced admin area for more experienced bloggers.

The easier administration is a simple to use content management (CMS) interface which anyone with any experience with MS Word, Word Pad or similar document creator software will have no problem using. One downside of using the easy admin area option is that there seems to be nowhere to change the template, add links, and so on. The end product will be a rather stark blog, but for anyone starting out the default theme is fine, and there is always the option to switch back and forth between the easy and advance admin area options.

The advanced is actually just accessing the Dashboard most experiences WordPress users will be familiar with. However, since I am often paid to set up WordPress blogs for clients, having the option to go light is an excellent feature. I counted 16 blog templates on offer, but anyone experienced using WordPress would be able to access more. Also nice to see, is that in the advanced admin area are a decent number of plugins and customizing features make a WordPress template your own.

My rating for Blogetery.com is two thumbs up!

Ranking high in Google’s search results can have a phenomenal impact on the success of your business. You can engage the expertise of a Search Engine Optimization company to optimize your blog, or if you have the time do it yourself.

Here are some changes you can make to your blog or have your webmaster make them for you that will improve your SEO.

Step 1: Keyword Research

What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word, for example. “optimisation”, but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferrable. This is because they’re more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for, such as “search engine optimisation for spanish blogs”.

Write down as many as keyword and key phrases as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important, such as “house cleaning Hornsby”. Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20 to 30 keyword phrases.

Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings. If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague nor highly competitive. It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase, such as “wedding catering services”.

Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.

Step 1: Keyword Research

What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word, for example. “optimisation”, but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferrable. This is because they’re more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for, such as “search engine optimisation for spanish blogs”.

Write down as many as keyword and key phrases as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important, such as “house cleaning Hornsby”. Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20 to 30 keyword phrases.

Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings. If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague nor highly competitive. It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase, such as “wedding catering services”.

Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.

Step 2: Web Copy

Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords. The more prominent they are, the better. However, keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.

Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:

• Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;

• Include keywords towards the top of the page;

• Bold or italicise keywords where appropriate;

• Instead of having a link to another page that says “Click here”, reword it to include your keywords. I recommend something like “Read more about our Affordable SEO Copywriting Offer. It’s just $5.00 for a 300 word, keyword rich article on any topic you choose.

An important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML “title tag”. Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or ask your web developer to do it if you’re unsure how.

Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer, FAQs and informative articles about your products and services. If you don’t want to write these yourself, they can be located for free on the internet – do a search for “articles directory”.

Note though, that the articles offered free through article directories are going to be included as content on numerous websites and blogs. This duplication of content is one of the things Google’s search algorithm, Penguin, will flag a website for. It is far better to pay a few dollars for unique, well written content. I recommend you actually to visit and purchase your content from this Affordable SEO Copywriting Offer.

It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines.

If you need to include images, such as photos, graphs of any kind, or a logo, utilize both the image alt and title tags to include textual content bots can read. If you do not know how to do this, ask your webmaster to do it.

Step 3: Linking

Each link from another website that points to your website, known as a back link, is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your site and will improve your rankings.

But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites with a link to yours embedded should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet.

Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organisations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a following up with a phone call is usually required. Do not keep emailing a request to exchange links. By doing so, will be seen as nothing but a spammer, and most respected, and therefore well ranked websites, will not work with spammers. All you will accomplish it having your email address blocked, and possibly end up being reported to your ISP for spamming.

How do I monitor my results?

Monitor your ranking with Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.

I also recomment using Google Analytics, an excellent free tool provided by Google for website owners to track their site’s performance.

The above process can be also be repeated for each page of your website. Remember to keep updating your content, and continually increase the number of links to your website.

As you see your rankings climb you should see a corresponding increase in web traffic and a substantial increase in sales enquiries. Be sure to record the source of your customer enquiries so you can measure the success of your marketing efforts because only if you measure it, you can improve it.

What anyone developing a linking strategy, or who is already committed to one needs to realize is, little changes if you’re playing by the rules.

SEO Linking Strategy Myths

The fundamentals of search engine optimization are based on gaining back links, often called inbound links, and the relevance of the page content to the linked to page or website. This is unlikely to change any time soon. What is constantly changing is the process of assigning ranking.

Back links are so important because when search engine bots visit a page and find links to other websites, it’s assumed the other websites are an authoritative source for whatever topic the content refers to. This is especially applicable if the link is a textual link that’s comprised of a relevant keyword or keyword phrase, known as an anchor link.

What has changed is the level of efficiency Google and other search engines have attained at identifying abuses used to manipulate page ranking based on authority. Abuses that previously worked are now detected and the offending websites penalized, sometimes even banned completely. Such abuses, known as black hat SEO, include techniques such as keyword stuffing, blind text, keyword spamming, purchasing back links, link lists, participation in link exchanges, etc.

What remains the same is that back links placed on relevant pages, especially it they are anchor links using relevant keywords or keyword phrases, are still the best method there is to earn a decent page ranking. Therefore, a key component of any linking strategy has to be getting back link… but the right back links.

Another factor that did not change with the introduction of the new search algorithms is that “content is king”. In fact, content being king is now more of a critical factor then ever before.

The new generation of search algorithms identify swallow content websites and those comprised of duplicated content and punish them by reducing page rank or dropping them from the data base completely. Also, the same downgraded or penalizing suffered by the offending website often carries over to sites with outgoing links.

Develop A White Hat SEO Linking Strategy

SEO is vital to earning organic search engine traffic. Plus, to realize any traffic from search engines your listing need to be high in the search results, so naturally people use every trick imaginable to improve the optimization of their web pages. Many give in to temptation and cheat by using what Google and other search engines consider unacceptable practices, referred to as black hat SEO.

Here are some ways to enhance your website’s PR (Page Rank) and SERP (Search Engine Result Page) using back links as part of an overall, white hat linking strategy.

Improve Your Page Rank

Page Rank is the single, most important factor effecting your SERP, regardless of what SEO practitioners are saying to the contrary.

Google’s Matt Cutts is the undisputed authority on improving PR and SERP placement. He says the easiest way to get your internal pages out of Google’s supplemental index and appear in relevant search results is to earn PR for those pages. You can take it on faith that if Matt Cutts says it is so, it is as far as Google is concerned.

So, just as it always was, Google Page Rank is still relevant. Also, just as it has always been, the best way to earn a higher page rank is to get back links from sites with high PR.

Use Anchor Text

Anchor text is an HTML text link comprised of one or more keywords relevant to the content found on the page the anchor text points to. Just as important, anchor text should be relevant to the content of the page with the outbound link.

If you have a web page optimized for cell phones cases, do not use, “For more information about cell phones cases click here.” Your goal isn’t to rank for “click here”, but that’s what you’ve done. To rank for “cell phones cases” use a more effective anchor text like; “Learn more about our cell phones cases.”

Be A Content Provider

Google’s search engine algorithms are programmed to spot a long list of links, such as navigation arrays, and ignore them. However, if a page contains many links that are not part of a navigation array, but rather a list of outbound links, a bot may ignore those links too. Worse, it may recognize them as outbound links and flag the page as being spammy. Neither of these are situations you want as a back link.

Your link strategy should always be to have your back links within the actual text on a page whenever possible. This means that the surrounding text must be relevant to your page as well. You also want your back link on pages with as few outbound links as possible.

Often the only way be guaranteed you have your anchor links worded the way you want, and placed where you want them, is to write the content yourself.

Here are a few ways to approach providing content to enhance your own SEO…

1. Offer to write content for bloggers, newsletters, ezines, and websites belonging to other people in exchange for a link or two embedded within the body of the text.

2. Maintain a network of secondary blogs and website of your own.

3. Comment on blog posts, news stories and reply to other people’s comments. Few of these types of websites allow embedded anchor text, but most will allow you to add your web address or the URL of a specific page. It is frowned upon to replace your name with keywords, but many will allow something like, “Sam from Futuristic Audio”.

4. Write and submit articles to article archive websites. Most will not allow anchor text to be embedded in the body of the article, but allow them in the author resource box. A resource box is located the end of the article and contains information about the author and always a link or two is permitted.

To have a successful SEO linking strategy, including content embedded links is vital. And there is no better way to assure you get them than by writing the content yourself. Plus, being the content provider, you’re assured the content is relevant and that no black hat SEO tactics have been employed that could negatively effect your page ranking.

Get Back Links From Trusted Sites

The consensus is that trusted sites rank well in Google because they’re trusted, so you want your back links to appear on trusted sites.

Trusted sites rarely link to spammy, shallow content websites. They’re “trusted” to link to quality site containing relevant content. If you can manage to get a back link added to a trusted site relating to your website’s topic, that single link could move your SERP placement higher.

To identify which are trusted sites, there are services that can help. I recommend using Alexa, Google Webmaster Tools, and MajesticSEO.

Relevance Is Important

How relevant the content of the page linking yours is, is of vital importance to the optimization of your site. A key component of your link strategy has to be a focus on getting links from related websites, as well as sites with higher page rank than yours.

Whenever possible, try to get a link on a page that is about the same subject matter as yours. A link to your site found on a related topic website or web page by a search bot enhances your SEO effort. On the other hand, a back link from an off topic page or site can actually hurt your page rank.

Google’s new search algorithms rank links based on the quality of the website they are found on, and the relevance of the content. An outgoing link found on a high PR website about cell phones that’s pointing to a page about online dating may result in both sites being penalized. The assumption on the part of the search engine could be that neither is an authoritative site, even if the dating site had a phone app it was promoting.

Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking will be part of your overall linking strategy because you’ll many time you will not be given a link on a website without adding a link back on your site. Reciprocal links can be risky however…

The risk with reciprocal links is that a link you allow on your website may be pointing to an already flagged black hat SEO site, poor quality website, etc. and your site ends up being penalized. When this happens you’ll see your SERP drop.

As part of your linking strategy, you need to set aside time to monitor websites you link to and that link to your site. You are also well advised to periodically revisit sites you share reciprocal links with and check on the outbound links you find there. If there are dead links, links to irrelevant websites, links to swallow content or poorly built websites, I recommend deleting the link on your site. In all likelihood, the page or the entire website is going to be downgraded at some point, and could pull you down with it.

Links To & From Hubs

No matter what the general subject matter is, all niches have an authority hub. A hub is a network of websites almost every site in that market niche links to. Hubs are usually an eclectic collection of web directories, review sites, blogs, websites, etc.

Getting your link added to one or more of these sites needs to be a key focus of your linking strategy. These hub sites Google already considers to be trusted and authoritative. Simply by having your link found on these hub sites by SE bots assures that the trust and authority is assigned to them is granted to your website as well.

Adding outgoing links to these sites, search engines are able to easily determine the subject niche your website or blog should reside within and index it accordingly. Also, because there are links on your site pointing to a trusted, authoritative site, yours is likely to be deemed trustworthy and authoritative as well.

The Pros & Cons Of Buying Back Links

Google, and pretty much every search engine, dislike the practice of buying back links. The reason is because it skews the rankings given sites based on authority, which is determined by links found on websites bot crawl. In fact, Google severely penalizes sites found to be selling links, known as link lists, and does the same to websites with outbound links found there.

However, the reality is that it is often necessary to pay if you want your link on a high PR, relevant content website. Provided you take care when purchasing links, I recommend doing so.

First off, no one is going to know if you have paid a photographer to add a link to your online camera store. Also, with the content so relevant it will actually benefit both websites, yours for getting another back link on a relevant content site, with a higher Page Rank than yours. The photographer will benefit to because the link points to a relevant website, and if it is an anchor text link adds a keyword or keyword phrase.

That said, do not buy a back link simply because the site has a high PR. It’s far better paying to have your link on a PR2 website devoted to complementary content than it is to have paid for a back link of a PR5 site that has no relevance to your linked to page.

Be Selective

You need to spend the time necessary to assure you get quality back links from content relevant pages, with higher page rank to advance your linking strategy. Websites differ in quality, page rank, level of search engine optimization, trust, etc. so your linking strategy must take this into account.

You need to be selective as to which sites link to yours to make sure any shortcomings they have don’t hamper your SEO efforts. At the same time, you need to assure that the back links you get enhance the page rank, trust and authority of your site.

That said, the contradiction is that the more links pointing to your web pages the better. I recommend you avoid the most obvious black hat SEO sites, link lists, and poor quality websites, but give the benefit of the doubt to some that are marginal. Be sure to monitor pages that are question marks though, to make sure they do not decline in value as hosts for your back links, thereby putting you at risk of being downgraded.

Quality Over Quantity

There are two camps when it comes to linking strategies, the “More Is Better Camp” and the the “Fewer But Quality Camp”. The former stand firm on their belief that the more links you having pointing to your web pages the better for enhancing PR. Then there is the “Fewer But Quality Camp”, equally convinced that far fewer links pointing to quality, trusted sites, with relevant content is better.

I suggest taking the middle ground. Focus on getting links from trusted, authoritative websites that are well built and have decent page rank, but strive to inflate the number of back links you have. At the same time, avoid websites that could hurt your own web presence by linking to them or having your link found there.

Conclusion

A successful link strategy is comprised of a number of components. All are equally important, so must be taken as a whole. To develop a linking strategy based on a single focus, or even a few link building techniques will result in only limited success, if any.