Today I added another 30+ pages and even more videos to my free multi-media guide, “How to build your own profitable blog in 45 minutes”.

I’ve added chapters and videos on “choosing the best niche”, “finding those crucial keyword phrases”, plus step-by-step detailed instructions on how to add all the ‘must-have’ plugins.

The whole free guide is now over 100 pages and to celebrate I’m hosting my first ever contest.

Prizes:

There will be nine winners selected and the first one will get to choose their prize from the list below. Then the second winner can choose, then the third, then the fourth, then the fifth and so on.

Prize #1. The WordPress Thesis (1.6) Theme (single license value $87) will be given as first prize. You can read more about the Thesis theme by clicking here: Thesis Theme

Prize #2. Tim Grice, the search engine optimisation Consultant and owner of www.seowizz.net will provide 3 hours worth of consulting including keyword research, full competition analysis, on page optimisation and link building advice, value $320.

Prize #3. The WordPress Flexx Theme installed on a domain name of their choice (value $79.95) You can read more about the Flexx theme by clicking here: Flexx Theme

Prize #4. A personally branded header banner by quixoticmedia, value $60. This prize has been kindly sponsored by David Alexander who offers a variety of services including graphic and blog design.

Prize #5. Domain name and hosting for one year supplied by HostGator (value $59.40)

Prize #6. Keyword analysis research, picking the best 6 – 8 keywords for your blog, value $50

Prize #7. Submission of your blog post to 40 Social bookmarking sites, submission of your blog feeds to 30+ RSS directories, value $40

Prize #8. 30 Day 125×125 banner ad on WebTrafficROI, value $20. This prize has been kindly sponsored by ZK owner of the Web Marketing Blog

Prize #9. 30 Day 125×125 banner ad on myblog2day value $30. This prize has been kindly sponsored by Lee Ka Hoong owner of the blog that shows you How To Make Money Online.

Entry Rules:

Download my updated free report by completing the details below: 5 entries of your name/email go into the ‘hat’.

You can’t win if you haven’t downloaded my free report.

FREE
Guide, Build Your Own Profitable Blog In 45 Minutes

I hate spam as much as you. I will never rent, sell or otherwise share your information with anyone! You can unsubscribe at any time.

If you’d like to increase your chances of winning you can gain extra entries of your name/email into the ‘hat’ by completing the following tasks:

Retweet this blog post by simply clicking the retweet button at the top of the post (3 extra entries)

Add a comment (2 extra entries)

Digg this blog post: Digg (3 extra entries)

Promote the contest on your blog (5 extra entries) (Please email me when you have, andrew at webuildyourblog.com)

Time Frame:

Thursday November 5, 2009 until Friday November 13, 2009 at 12noon EDT (click here to see current EDT time)

Winners Announcement:

I shall randomly pick the winners from the ‘hat’ and they will be notified immediately after the contest has closed and have 48 hours to claim their prize.

Winners will be posted here as soon as they have chosen their prize.

IMPORTANT:

You must download my free guide to qualify. The additional tasks will provide extra entries but you can only win one of the prizes.

Thanks and good luck.

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Free Contest Giveaways including Premium WordPress Themes

I know you may not want to hear this but it’s very close to another year finishing and it’s nearly 2010!

What did you achieve in 2009? Everything you wanted to?

Will 2010 be any different for you?

Now is a great time to start reflecting on 2009 and then invest some time on your plans for 2010.

What are you going to achieve in 2010?

Are you going to make it your best year ever?

Soon individuals will be thinking, “2010 is the year for me. I’m going to do something with my life”.

Some will be thinking, “No longer will I be at the beck and call of someone else. I shall start my own business.”

Some will go on to be more precise and say, “I shall start my own on-line business”.

And I applaud everyone who wants to make changes for the better.

So how do you start making changes?

First you need to have a definitive goal. A goal of what you want to achieve.

Three years ago I wanted to leave the 9-5 corporate world. That was my goal. It took me 2.5 years to achieve my on-line business, which enabled me to leave the 9-5 and become my own boss.

Then once you have your goal defined, break the goal down into bite sized tasks.

For instance, if your goal were to have an on-line business, this month you could research on what niche you’d like to enter. Then learn about blogging and get your first blog set up.

Then next month find out about how to monetize your blog and get visitors to your blog.

Then the following month, create your first product.

And so on.

Each morning (or night before) make a list of tasks you’d like to achieve today, all of which take you one step towards your monthly goal.

Not All Tasks Will Be Good

Not all your tasks will move you towards your goal. Some might move you away from achieving your goal but remember you are learning a totally new activity and making mistakes can be good.

Some of the tasks will help you to achieve your goal.

However, no matter what you read on the internet, an on-line business is not just a blog and a product.

There are many who start an on-line business, create a product, have a successful launch and you never hear of them again.

They have a successful product, they make a few joint venture partners, make some sales and they think that’s their business.

That’s not a business. That’s a one time product creation and launch.

An on-line business involves having a customer list you sell multiple products and services to regularly.

You have multiple ways that prospective customers enter your lists and you have multiple items you offer them at different times.

Make 2010 Your Best Ever

Are you going to make 2010 your best year ever?

Share your goals in the comments below for others to see.

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Want to do something different?

However there is one issue…

Very often, especially on those very popular blogs, by the time you get to comment you could be the 30th or 100th person to comment.

You still get the backlink (assuming they ‘do follow’) but you won’t get any traffic. Who reads all 50 comments?

Not many.

Myself, I tend to read the first 5 or 6 and that’s it.

If you are going to comment, you want to be one of the first few who do. That way everyone else reading the post will see your comment and that will increase the chances of them clicking on your link and visiting your blog. Even more so, if the comment adds value and doesn’t just say “nice post”.

Oh, I hate those type of comments.

How do you get to be one of the first to comment?

I’ve been using the FREE tool, Comment Sniper for the past few months and it works a treat. As soon as my favourite bloggers publish a blog post, I am immediately informed. A little pop-up box appears in the bottom right corner of my monitor.

I go to the blog, read the post and decide to comment or not. If I do, I am normally the first or second to add a comment and that brings me more traffic (plus the backlink).

How to install Comment Sniper

Step 1. Download Comment Sniper by going to the website and sign up.

Step 2. Wait for the email to arrive. It takes a minute or two. The email contains the link to download the tool and your free license key. Then download the tool. A new file on your PC is downloaded called cs-setup.exe.

Double-click on the ‘exe file and you’ll see a screen like this:

Click ‘run’ to start the installation.

Register the tool once installed and launched using the license key in the email, otherwise you will continue to see the trial screen and be limited to receiving 10 notifications only.

Step 3. Make a list of the most popular blogs in your niche that consistently have a lot of comments on every post. You will need to have RSS feed domain URL for the blogs you want to monitor.

On the blog somewhere will be the RSS icon, something like this:

Just click on that icon and you will be given the RSS feed domain URL for the blog.

Configure Comment Sniper by using the set-up guidelines: How to use Comment Sniper

Step 4. Comment Sniper will now monitor the blogs you have added.

Step 5. Wait and watch out for those screen pop-ups that tell you someone has posted a blog on your favourite blog.

Step 6. Click on the pop-up. Your browser will open the blog post…read the post and add a valuable comment.

Please note, to see good results and a lot of traffic you have to comment on a number of relevant blogs on a regular basis. Over time this can bring loads of traffic to your blog.

I hope this works for you. Please let me know what you think and comment below on your results.

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Increase traffic and backlinks with this free tool

There are many free blogging platforms to choose from like www.blogger.com, www.typepad.com and even the mighty www.wordpress.com.

These free blogging platforms are fine for those individuals who just want to blog and NOT make any income.

You get to choose different layouts, different header banners (i.e. the photo or design, right at the top of your blog).

You can also choose what you’d like in the sidebars as well.

These are excellent if you just want to share your thoughts and opinions.

However, more and more people are turning to the web and blogging to make a blog income.

Some want to remove themselves from the 9-5 rat race and blogging can be one way to do that (like I did – see the 50 things you didn’t know about me). Others have suddenly found themselves unemployed and want to start something new, fresh and it’s their next journey in life.

Others simply want to carry on working the 9-5 and just want to supplement their income.

Housewives and househusbands want to work part-time from home and blogging can be a way of making some extra income.

So for those who do want to make a blog income, I don’t recommend a free blogging platform.

Using a non-free blogging platform will dramatically improve a blogger’s ability to earn money blogging.

These are the reasons why I don’t recommend you use any free blogging software:

Monetization and Advertisements: Many of the free blogging platforms do not allow you to include advertisements of any kind and by advertising you can make an income.

Customization: The free blogging platforms provide few options to change the design of your blog and a limited amount of internet space. The options to choose layouts, headers, etc as I state above are good but they are still restrictive.

Technical Knowledge: The free blogging platforms require much more technical knowledge than the non-free platforms and if you don’t want to get into the technical side, then ignore them.

Plugins: With the free blogging software you are restricted with what plugins you can use. Plugins are ‘add-ons’ that add functionality to your blog and there are thousands of free ones to choose from. Some will make your blog load faster. Others attract visitors, allows you to add photos, videos…the list is almost endless.

Here are some of my recommended plugins: The Top 111 WordPress Plugins

If you want to make a blog income, I recommend you go with a non-free blogging platform like Wordpress.

Hold On! I said WordPress was free!

There are 2 different versions of Wordpress. Let me explain…

The WordPress software from www.wordpress.com is free. They provide everything, the domain name, the hosting and the software but I do not recommend you use them.

Why?

As well as the reasons I mention above about free blogging platforms, if you were to use WordPress.com you don’t own the blog, WordPress does and that means you are very limited in what you can do with the software.

The other WordPress software from www.wordpress.org is the one I recommend.

One more reason:

Google loves WordPress.org: Google has come out and stated that Google loves WordPress. WordPress makes it easier to gain more traffic and visitors to your blog. Here’s a video with Matt Cutts (the face of Google) explaining why Google loves WordPress. Click here: Matt Cutts video

Here are the small costs involved to set up your own blog:

1. A domain name and hosting. Check out my blog post on “How to choose a website name”

To make things simple you can buy the domain name and the hosting of the domain name with the same company. They do everything for you and it just makes things easier.

When you purchase hosting, you are basically buying some space on the internet for you to load your blog. That’s hosting in real simple terms.

A domain name and hosting for one month will cost as little as $4.95.

I use the following hosting providers for my clients and myself and they are excellent.

One more reason why I use one of the following is that two of them offer a facility called Fantastico and the third offers a facility called ‘Simple Scripts’ to automatically install WordPress in seconds.

Click on the link to find the best deals:

LunarPagesHosting (uses Fantastico)

HostGatorHosting (uses Fantastico)

BlueHost (uses Simple Scripts)

And that’s it.

You DON’T NEED to purchase anything else. You now have your own on-line blogging business that’s going to cost you approx. $60 per year.

Of course, just buying the domain and hosting isn’t going to make you a blog income, but I’m just talking about the set-up costs here.

These are some extras that I would recommend:

A Premium WordPress theme.

There are numerous WordPress themes to choose from. Here’s my previous post on the “Top 11 Premium themes”.

Why do I recommend a premium theme?

Mainly because the free ones are a little poor in their design, take time to understand on how to change things and the support if you have problems can be non-existent.

The premiums themes do cost but they save you huge amounts of time and the support is excellent. Expect to pay anything between $50 and $100 for a premium theme.

The two I use for my clients and myself are:

The Flexx Theme

The Thesis Theme

BIG HINT: By downloading my free guide “how to make a profitable blog in 45 minutes“ you could win one of these themes. The details are in this link: win the Thesis theme for free

A Header Banner

Some blog owners like to have a personally branded header banner

SECOND BIG HINT: You could win a free personally branded banner in my free contest, click here

Having your own personally branded header banner makes you different from all the rest.

The price for a unique header banner can vastly range, anything from $30 to $1000.

As you can see in my contest, quixoticmedia would charge $60 for a banner.

In summary, to make a blog for a blog income, the minimum cost is just a domain name and hosting ($60 per year) and if you want a premium theme ($80) and a personally branded header banner, that’s an extra $60.

In total $200 for your first year on-line costs. Then don’t forget in the second year you would only have the hosting costs of $60 per year.

That’s the cheapest business you’ll ever set up.

What’s your view on the set up costs for a blog? Which hosting or extra purchases do you recommend? Please share your ideas in the comments below.

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

To start a blog, how much does it cost?

I love coaching, helping, advising and creating information products best.

Perhaps it’s the ‘Management’ side of me coming out. Before starting my on-line business I was a Manager for 30 years managing big teams in big corporate companies.

Before that I was a petrol pump attendant. Remember the days when someone used to put your petrol in for you, check your oil levels and wash your windscreen. That was me!

Nowadays sharing my knowledge, doing interviews, producing videos, coaching and creating products is what I love to do and the beauty of the on-line, especially blogging business, is anyone can start with very little outlay.

To start blogging all you need is a domain name and hosting from some supplier like HostGator which costs $4.95 a month. That’s it. You can start blogging!

After a while you may wish to invest in a premium theme but that can be a few months down the line.

HINT: Enter my contest and win a premium theme, click here:  Free Thesis Theme (and other prizes)  contest

Then you want to start thinking about creating your own information product. It’s quite easy to create.

You could write a 50 page report, interview an expert in your niche, or create a few videos. That may take a few days from start to finish but once it’s complete, that’s it.

You could get some fellow bloggers promoting it as affiliates and guess what?

You now have a product that you have created and you’ll get paid for it for the rest of your life.

I am making all this sound easy, aren’t I?

Well it is and it isn’t.

Parts of the process are much easier than others.

Getting a domain and hosting and setting up a blog is fairly easy. My free multi-media guide will show you every step of the way. It includes loads of screen images and videos. And numerous individuals who have never been on-line have done exactly what the report sets out to do: Build your own blog in 45 minutes.

Just fill in your name and email address here:

FREE
Guide, Build Your Own Profitable Blog In 45 Minutes

I hate spam as much as you. I will never rent, sell or otherwise share your information with anyone! You can unsubscribe at any time.

Now where was I?

Oh yes, creating your first product can also be easy. Spend a few days finding out what people want in your niche and fill the gap. You can do that in a few days.

But it’s the income side that can be hard.

Selling your product is not as easy as some of the gurus and sales letters tell you.

You may have created the product once, but marketing the product never stops.

You can put  a banner or text link, write a few reviews, and share some of your product for free – all on your own blog.

Depending upon how much traffic you get on your blog will determine how many times you sell your product.

Want a rough estimate of sales per visitor?

One sale per 1000 new visitors.

So if you are getting 100 new visitors a day to your blog, you’ll make a sale of your product every 10 days. I am assuming your first product will be in the low cost range of $5 – $50. So $50 every 10 days isn’t going to pay all the bills, is it?

You have to find others – affiliates – to sell for you. You have to create all the extra materials like flash banners and emails and that takes time and investment.

I’m not trying to put you off. As I said at the very beginning, I love this on-line business but it does take commitment. It does take persistence. It does take patience.

I suppose what I am saying is don’t be deceived by some of those sales letters and gurus out there.

The information business is an incredible business, but creating your product is only the beginning. Most of the hard work is creating the systems necessary to have the product selling for you every single day.

What’s your view on selling your products?  Share your best product selling tips in the comments below.

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Create a Product Once, Sell for Ever

Hope you enjoy some of the pictures (and the music!).

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Our Kenyan Holiday Slide Show

My wife, Joy, and I in kenya

Thought I’d have a bit of fun today and share with you 50 things you just didn’t know about me:

1. I met my wife on a blind date

2…I proposed on Valentines day 4 months later

3…we got married 7 months later

4…and we argued almost every day on honeymoon!

5…and we celebrated 25 years marriage this year

6. I was born on a council estate in London

7. I like to cook in my spare time

8…and my favourite dish to cook is a roast dinner

9 When I was 15 while playing football, I twisted my knee and the knee cap went right round to the side of my leg…

10…. numerous Doctors surrounded me because they had never seen anything like it before!

11. I love chocolate and Belgian beer

12. I have one tattoo. My wife’s name “Joy” in Hindi on my forearm

13. My wife and I are learning to ballroom and latin dance

14…We can dance the Waltz, Quickstep, Jive, Tango, Foxtrot, Samba, Rumba

15. I started my on-line business 3 years ago while working full-time

16…and left the 9-5 corporate world earlier this year

17. I also blog about self-development and Management: Manager Skill

18.I dropped out of university after one year – I wanted to earn money

19. When I was 17 I had 4 part-time jobs as well as being at school

20. I managed my son’s football team for many years and we won several cups

21. My favorite band of all time is Earth, Wind and Fire.

22…and I always go if they tour the UK

23. I am a Pisces

24. I go for a walk for 30 minutes every morning

25. My wife and I have 2 children

26. I say “no worries” a lot

27. I’d love to be able to sing but I am actually useless

28. I don’t particularly enjoy writing yet I write almost every day for this blog and other blogs. In fact, English was my weakest subject in school.

29. I love buying books and have stacks I never get round to reading

30. I adore food especially puddings like apple crumble and custard

31. I love getting up early and working – sometimes 4.30am

32. I don’t watch too much TV but I do like Strictly Come Dancing

33. My wife and I play badminton every week

34. I have 2 brothers and sisters – all older than me

35. Mon nom, Rondeau, est français

36…but I can’t speak French

37. My first car was a Mini

38…and now I drive a S-Type Jaguar

39. I recently gave up my $250k corporate job

40… to become a full-time internet thingy

41. I have only ever lived in two places – London and Worthing

42. I love wearing striped shirts

43…but sometimes just wear shorts to work

44. I love making lists

45…and crossing things off when completed

46. I’ve been a Chelsea football fan since I was 5

47. My dad was a scrap metal dealer, and in the early days I went out with him on his horse and cart

48. I am hopeless at spelling

49…and my wife proof reads all my written work

50. My favourite film is BIG with Tom Hanks. Here’s the trailer. Bet you have to laugh!

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

50 things you just didn’t know about me

In most cases, it’s not money. You don’t need much money to do this.

In most cases, it’s not time. Everyone has the same amount of time in the day. If you have a couple of hours a day to invest in your business, you can do this (stop watching too much TV or whatever else you do with your time).

In most cases, what’s holding you back is fear.

You’re afraid it won’t work. You’re afraid people won’t buy your first product. You’re afraid they won’t like your article.

Get over it.

Some people won’t like your blog post. So what?

Some people won’t like your product. So what? Refund them.

Some people won’t like your writing style. So what?

Why don’t you submit some of your blog posts to other bloggers to publish?

FEAR.

Why don’t you start writing to others to help promote your products as affiliates?

FEAR.

You’re afraid people might be offended by you. Or you’re afraid they will say no and you are rejected. Most won’t even respond. Others will and say “no”.

So what?

Running a blogging business means you have to develop thick skin, FAST!

You are opening yourself up to the world and for everyone to comment and send emails.

I’ve had people send me some really personal email that just rubbish me. So what?

Simply ignore them.

You’ll also get emails of real kindness, thanking you for all your advice and efforts.

Back in April of this year, I completed a talk to some local small business on the subject of “building websites”.

Public speaking is already fearful but when someone asked a question almost immediately and I didn’t know the answer…that was scary.

This is how it went:

“In the world of e-Commerce today, it is crucial businesses have a presence on the Internet, no matter how small they are…”, I started.

I was interrupted…

“What is e-Commerce?”

I was taken aback.

I didn’t know what the ‘e’ stood for?

I thought “Oh no, here we go. Some horrible feedback”.

But I was stunned by the amount of people who came up to me afterwards and said, “They loved it”.

How do you deal with FEAR?

You have to face it, head on.

You recognize the fear and take action in spite of it.

Most people, instead of confronting the fear, will make excuses.

“Well I don’t have time.”

That’s the biggest lie most people tell…that they don’t have time. We all have 24 hours a day. And you have time for whatever is important to you.

Eliminate your excuses and confront your fear.

Everything you do in your blogging business is a test. Begin thinking of that way.

This banner ad you’re getting ready to run is a test.

This new product is a test.

That blog post you just wrote is a test.

Writing to another blogger asking for a guest post is a test.

It is all a test.

It takes some of the pressure off when you have this attitude.

What holds you back from taking your blogging business to the next level of success?

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Eliminate the Fear

The first day was an early start at 5am.

We were picked up in an ‘old’ Nissan van. There was to be 3 couples and the driver. We were first on and sat in the front seats.

The next couple were LATE!

We started to get a little frustrated. “Where are they?”

They arrived. We looked at each other and nodded. It was now 5.30am.

The next couple we picked up at 6am and we were on our way. The Mombasa rush hour was already in full swing.

There were hundreds of people walking around, starting their work.

It took us another 4 hours to get to the first Kenyan National Park. A bumpy and dangerous ride in silence. We were still waking up.

We entered the park. Cameras in one hand, videos in the other and binoculars around our necks.

All of us!

We looked at each other and laughed. That broke the ice.

“Right where are the animals?”

Ali, our driver, was good. He knew where to go but we didn’t see anything for the first 30 minutes.

We were getting disappointed.

Suddenly, there was a giraffe about 100 yards away.

CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK

We ‘clicked’ our cameras like we were obsessed.

Then around the corner, some Zebras about 50 yards away.

CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK

We were really awake now.

Then elephants. Then a male lion. Then Water Buffalo.

Then more giraffes, zebras, buffalo, elephants – all really close.

Then hippos, cheetahs, more lions and hyenas, crocodiles…simply amazing.

We didn’t get to see a Rhino.

But we stayed at some amazing lodges, the other couples were brilliant and we loved every minute.

Here are a couple of our best videos – if looks could kill. I hope you like them as much as we do (it was a windy day so sorry about the background noise):

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

The Kenyan Safari

CLOSING DEADLINE IS TODAY

Let me state right here at the beginning, I am a member of this course and I am recommending the course as an affiliate as well.

If you are planning to build a sustainable online business but you are not sure how to put all the pieces together, I recommend you take advantage of this coaching course (click this link):

Membership Mastermind

Yaro Starak’s Membership Site Mastermind is for you if you want a very simple system for setting up near-passive income streams from the Internet, using the membership site model.

It works like this:

1. You find a need in the marketplace where people are suffering from something and they want to fix it (for example – losing weight, or improving your golf score, or how to get pregnant, or how to make money on the stock market, etc)

2. You create an information product that teaches how to solve the problem, which you deliver in steady increments, for example one lesson sent via email every week

3. You charge people a monthly fee to go through the program

The formula is simple enough, but obviously you are going to need to help, which is exactly what Yaro’s training program is for.

He will teach you:

* How to get traffic so you have hungry buyers ready to join your membership site

* How you can launch and start making money with only 10% of the content for your membership site
finished

* How to find topic ideas if you are not sure what to base your membership site on

* How to get other people to create your content for you

* And what simple technology you can use to deliver your membership site automatically

…plus so much more.

If you want to see exactly what is inside the program, watch the video here -

Membership Mastermind

CLOSING DEADLINE IS TODAY

I don’t want to rush you, but the doors to this program close tonight (Friday) at midnight EDT US Time.

You should take a look at the sales page and video, decide whether the program is right for you, and join today if you like what you see.

Already over 400 people have taken this course and Yaro’s ready to work with the next group,
starting now.

If you want to be part of this amazing community of people all working to build real sustainable and profitable Internet businesses, join today or you will miss out. This is the last time the course will be open this year, so this really is a
big deadline.

Membership Mastermind

Winners are action takers, so if you want to start winning – take action today before the deadline ends.

There is a full 60 day refund period for this course, so even if you are not sure I recommend you join this program and try it out for yourself.

If you decide it’s not what you want, email Yaro to cancel and get your money back. There’s no reason not to try it, go here now and sign up -

Membership Mastermind

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Membership Site Mastermind closes today

They’re working together to raise money to support breast cancer research through the Susan G. Komen foundation. To raise money to support this wonderful organization, they’re creating an e-book which they’ll then sell, with 100% of the profits going to the Susan G. Komen foundation.

Well the book is now out and live.

For any size donation (but please give generously), you can get 2 e-books:

1. Blog-4-Cause

This is the collective effort of over 150 writers from throughout the world (including me!). The 150 writers have contributed a favorite article to be included in the e-book and the finished product is a wonderful collection of stories.

Stories of inspiration, personal growth, fitness, food, humor, and more.

I just purchased it (well made a donation) and the stories are simply inspirational.

2. Don’t Ask Stupid Questions?

An e-book by Tim Brownson. Tim’s inimitable writing style and clarity of thinking make it an absolute pleasure to read — but the questions raised will challenge you to take a good hard look at your life.

So go to Blog 4 Cause see all the details and make a donation and get yourself 2 great e-books.

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Blogging For A Cause e-Book live!

“Hi it’s XXXX on behalf of Mike Filsaime. It’s your lucky day”

“Why is it my lucky day?”

“Well, Mike Filsaime wants to work with you”

“Am I supposed to be impressed with that? Who the heck is Mike Filsaime? Never heard of him. Is he a spiritual leader?”

Of course, I’ve heard of Mike but I’ve been on the end of these types of phone calls before, so I thought I would play with the guy.

“You know Mike. He’s the biggest online guru around and he wants to work with you. Coach you.”

“Why?”

“Because he can make your income grow by at least ten-fold. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

“No”

“Wow – no? Your on-line aren’t you?”

“Yep”

“You making lots of money, Andrew?”

“Yep”

“You don’t want to make more?”

“Nope”

“You gotta wife Andrew?”

“Yes”

“She’d like you to earn more money, wouldn’t she?”

“Don’t think so”

“Now, Andrew. You got some credit cards?

Now he’s getting frustrated! He wants to see if I have some credit on them.

“No, don’t believe in credit cards. They are for losers”

“So you are not interested in Mike helping you?”

“No thanks”

“What about more traffic, you’d like that?”

“No, not really. Look I’m happy. I don’t need any more help”

“So you don’t feel sorry for me, sitting here not making a sale? I wish I was like you doing what you like, feeling happy but I’m not. I’ve got to ring people up and try and sell them stuff. Will you help me out and buy something from me?”

“Sorry but I don’t need anything from you”

“So what do you suggest I do, Andrew?”

“Do you personally know Mike what’s his name?”

“Mike Filsaime, yes I do”

“Get him to coach you and you’ll be rich”

The phone call ended.

How’d they get my number?

Assuming the guy as genuine, by purchasing one of Mike’s products in the past they got my contact information and then try to sell me the “backend” coaching program.

I don’t know if he knew Mike or not but my advice to anyone who receives such calls is check everything out and don’t dive in and buy straight away.

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

The Dreaded Sales Phone Call

You are very proud of what you have written and now you want the whole world to see it.

You now want to increase blog traffic with your blog post.

Here are the top 15 proven ways to ensure your perfect blog post gets as much exposure as possible:

The first 7 ideas are tasks you should have set-up for your blog.

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Before you post your perfect blog post:

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1. Do some keyword research to find the best and most appropriate keywords to use within your post. I can thoroughly recommend Market Samurai. This tool is free to download and use for keyword research. Once you start using it, you will wonder how you got by without it.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Some of you who downloaded Market Samurai have stated the owners have asked you to purchase the product. If you only want to perform keyword research using Market Samurai you can ignore the requests to purchase. The free version of Market Samurai allows you to perform as much keyword research as you wish – you do NOT have to buy the full version. That may change in the future but for now that functionality is free.

Here’s a short video of me using the tool:

The tool I use for keyword research

Once you have found the best keyword phrases for your blog post, how should you use them for best effect?

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2. Install the WordPress plugin, All-in-on-seo

The “All-in-one-SEO” plugin is one of the most popular plugins to use because it helps bring traffic to your blog, for the rest of your blog posts life!

When you first install this plugin you change the settings for your blog. You add a relevant title, description and you add all your best keywords (6 – 8).

Here’s my short video of how I set up the All-in-one-SEO plugin:

How to use the All in one SEO WordPress plugin to your advantage

When this plugin is installed, you can also add ‘alternative’ titles and descriptions and tags when you publish your blog post.

For instance, the title of this blog post, “How to increase blog traffic with your blog post” included the keyword phrase “increase blog traffic”.

When I published this post, I gave the blog post an alternative title using the All-in-one-seo plugin. The alternative title, “How to get blog traffic with your blog post” and included a different keyword phrase, “get blog traffic”.

That way I am providing the search engines with 2 titles and 2 primary keyword phrases that help boost the blog posts rankings.

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3. Whenever you add a new post, WordPress will automatically use “Update Services”

Update Services are tools you can use to let other people know you’ve updated your blog. WordPress automatically notifies popular Update Services that you’ve updated your blog by sending a PING each time you create OR EDIT a post. People browsing the internet have more chance of seeing your post.

See I have put the words “OR EDIT” in capital letters and in bold. That’s because we DON’T want WordPress to send a PING each time you edit a post. That can come across as ‘spamming’.

We only want WordPress to ping when we create and publish the post.

To do this I install the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

By installing the FREE “MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer” plugin, when you create a new blog post, your blog will ping and notify all the ping services that the blog post has been created. This encourages search engines and different blog directories/services to index your updated blog properly. What it doesn’t do is notify them if you were to EDIT your blog post.

After installing and activating you have to register the plugin to make it work.

Click on the link under “settings”, called “MBP Ping Optimizer” and register like so:

Enter your name and email address and click on the ‘Register’ button.

You will receive an email that you will have to confirm. Once confirmed, the plugin is registered and working.

But we want to make some changes to this plugin, to make it even more effective.

Click on the link under settings, called “MBP Ping Optimizer” and you’ll see a screen like this:

Inside the box, it has the web domain, http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ (you may have more).

We are going to add more website domains to this list. Copy and paste the following into the list (ensuring you still keep http://rpc.pingomatic.com/) :

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.twingly.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.bloglines.com/ping
http://ping.feedburner.com/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://www.octora.com/add_rss.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://bblog.com/ping.php

Once you have added the complete list, click on “save settings”.

Now each time you create and publish a blog post, all those “update services” will be informed.

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4. RSS feeds are a great way to generate continuous traffic to your blog. By submitting your blogs RSS feeds to different online Feed Aggregators you create one-way inbound links, get each new blog post quickly indexed in the search engines, and create a steady stream of organic traffic.

Submit your blog RSS feed to some (if not all) of the following:

www.feedagg.com

www.rss2.com

www.feedage.com

www.rssmountain.com

www.myrss365.com

www.postrank.com

www.weblogalot.com

You can also add all your blog category feeds (click on your category link and then add /feed – by doing that you have your RSS category feed).

You don’t want to add all these RSS feeds in one day. Just submit your main blog feed to all the sites on one day, then a couple of days later add one of your category feeds, then a couple of days later, another category feed, etc.

You only have to submit your feeds once.

The good thing about the RSS Directories is that you can add your feeds from your twitter account, Facebook, Ezinearticles and numerous other sites. That way you are building a huge network all linking back to your blog.

You can submit all your feeds manually but if you want to speed up your submissions and save loads of time (like I do!) I can recommend this tool: RSS Submission.

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5. I like adding images to my posts and if you do, you should add the plugin SEO Friendly Images. SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according to the options you set.

This helps with the search engine optimization of your blog post.

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6. Add a Social type plugin to allow your visitors to submit your post to the different social bookmarking sites.

The ones I recommend include:

TweetMeme Retweet Button.  See the green button at the top of this post which says ‘tweeted’ and a number. Click on it and you’ll see the number increase by one. Why? Because you have just ‘tweeted’ my blog post – thanks! Isn’t that simple? It’s a must have plugin.

Both plugins Sociable and Share This make it easy for visitors to “vote” for your posts.

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7. Add the plugin Twitter Tools. This plugin will automatically inform Twitter of the blog post you have just published.

So a little bit of work to be carried out BEFORE you post your blog.

Please note, apart from keyword research, all of the previous ideas only have to be completed once, NOT per blog post. Just install the plugins and submit your feeds and that’s it.

Then publish your blog ensuring you use the best keywords when creating it.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Here’s the post publishing activity that generates even more traffic:

_____________________________________________________________________________________

8. Twitter

As per point 7 above, the plugin Twitter Tools will automatically inform Twitter of the blog post you have just published.

A couple of hours later, tweet about your blog post again. You could always use the alternative title you used when publishing your blog post with the All-in-one-SEO plugin.

You may wish to see these Top 10 Twitter Tools to increase your Twitter followers.

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9. Send an email and link to your customer email list. Tease them by telling them a little about the blog post and then provide a link to the rest on your actual blog.

If you don’t have a list, start building one NOW!

Provide a free giveaway. Make it unique and valuable to your visitors. Set-up an Aweber account and add the opt-in form on either the top left-hand or right hand side of your blog. Your free giveaway can be an e-book, a series of videos, podcasts. Just make it something you know your visitors would love to have and want.

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10. Social Bookmark your post at the major social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and Propeller. Sign up with www.onlywire.com and you can social bookmark your post to numerous sites with one click of a button.

If you really want to get into Social Bookmarking, here’s another tool I use to spped things up: BookMarking Demon

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11. Ask a few friends to vote for your blog post. Join up with a group of friends who are willing to vote on each others blog posts at certain social bookmarking sites. If you do join such a group, don’t vote every post that comes your way and don’t ask every one of your posts to be voted. We are talking about your best posts and at a maximum of one vote per blog site per social bookmarking site per week.

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12. Go to the forums you are a member of and mention the post. I am NOT saying join forums and start mentioning your blog posts. These are forums where you are already a member. A forum where you already have a presence and are known.

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13. Submit your blog post to the relevant blog carnivals. Again, I use software to do this for me as it only takes a couple of minutes and I get 20+ backlinks to my blog plus some extra traffic from the carnivals themselves. I use this software: Blog Carnival Submitter

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14. Email your blogging buddies and let them know about your post. Depending upon your relationship with them, some may mention it on their blog.

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15. After about a week of the blog post being on your site, submit a version of the post to the major Ezine Directories like:

www.ezinearticles.com

www.amazines.com

www.isnare.com

www.searchwarp.com

www.goarticles.com

www.ideamarketers.com

www.articlebase.com

Doing all these activities will ensure you get great exposure for your proud blog post.

So what do you think? Do you use any of these tools with success? Do you have others to share? I’d like to hear from you. Just type in your comments below.

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

How to increase blog traffic with your blog post

MEGA BONUS PACK IF YOU ACT TODAY

The doors will close on Friday at midnight.

You can join right now at this page (WARNING: it’s a lengthy page, so watch the video instead if you don’t like reading):

Membership Mastermind

There was quite a build up to this opening. Yaro’s report, the Masterplan, was hugely popular and received a lot of great feedback.

Then Yaro hit us with two amazing videos, one explaining his powerful yet simple survey technique that you can use to find out exactly what your people will buy from you.

The second video showed you that it is possible to start building an Internet business in niches that are not about money, by looking at two case studies in two very unique niches (acne treatment and magic illusions).

If you found the Masterplan helpful and the stories of other people enjoying success, people who started off with no Internet business experience, then Yaro’s coaching course is for you.

You even get direct access to Yaro with live coaching calls, so if you want to work with this guru of Internet marketing and get personal support, this is a brilliant opportunity.

Don’t wait, join today and start your journey towards making $10,000 a month from your membership site - 

Membership Mastermind

MEGA BONUS PACK IF YOU ACT TODAY

Yaro’s offering an incredible bonus PACK if you join his program within 24 hours of it opening.

There are five bonuses, including:

* Two live workshop presentation recordings from Yaro (he rarely speaks on stage, so this is unique content from his latest talks in 2009)

* A series of 13 videos of Yaro revealing his techniques to build a successful and profitable blog (this is really comprehensive stuff!)

* An interview and coaching call discussion with Gideon Shalwick on how to create video using a basic PC or Mac computer

* A detailed discussion of advanced conversion tactics with Will Swayne, the man who helped Yaro sell more of his products in 2008

You can see the full list of what is inside the mega bonus pack here:

Membership Mastermind

REMEMBER: You only qualify for these bonuses if you join Membership Site Mastermind within 24 hours of it opening, so you need to be quick!

This is a priceless reward for making a decision to join his coaching program early.

You support Yaro and he supports you with his best resources, so if you’re ready to take your Internet business serious, join here:

Membership Mastermind

I wish you the best with your membership site, enjoy Yaro’s program and good luck claiming the bonus pack before the deadline.

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Membership Site Mastermind is live

Far too many people were adding lens after lens which just talked about affiliate products and gave no advice, whatsoever.

So the inevitable crackdown came. At the time, Squidoo said:

1.    No Spam. This one’s not new!

2.    No more X-rated or Porn lenses

3.    No Junk Topics from our “SquidDon’t” List

4.    A new limit on overly promotional lenses

Back in July, there was a huge amount of positive to come from these changes.

You used to be able to get really good rankings by simply adding a spammy lens on Squidoo.

No more!

Creating a lens now takes more care and more work, which I think is a good thing.

Now for the really big news…

EzineArticles is starting to go the same way.

Submitting some of your articles to EzineArticles has always been a great way of building your brand, your credibility and gaining some extra traffic to your site.

It still is and will be after the changes but it’s going to be a little tougher to get your articles accepted by EzineArticles.

Is that a good thing?

I think so. I already get high ranking backlinks and traffic from EzineArticles, now if the ‘spammers’ and the ‘affiliate type’ articles are removed, it could be even better.

I think making these changes will result in EzineArticles being even more of an authority site.

You can read much more here:

http://stevewagenheim.com/blog/internet-marketing/article-marketing-news-chris-knights-fight-for-sanity-in-an-insane-world.html

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

The EzineArticles crackdown is coming

I try to be as open as possible about that fact and I actually have an “Affiliate Disclosure” page.

But I do have one strict rule. I only recommend products I have tried out and gained something from, myself.

Not too long ago I received an email from someone who invited me to partake in a joint venture for a product that was converting at 12.5%.

The email went on to say:

“Finding the right offers to promote can be tough, since most of the stuff out there is junk. That is not the case with my product.”

All you have to do is copy and past the profesionally written promo (wich is written to sound like it is foming from you), and send it out  to your list.”

(I left the spelling mistakes in, so you could see!)

The email was all fairly standard stuff but I was intrigued by the 12.5% conversion rate. That rate is very, very high. 3% is thought to be a great conversion rate.

So I had nothing to lose. I wrote back and explained I don’t recommend anything unless I’ve seen, used and benefited from the product.

The owner kindly gave me the link to download the product, which I did.

How do I say this without being blunt…oh I can’t:

IT WAS ABSOLUTE GARBAGE

There were a few bonuses but the main product was a PDF report.

There was no intro. There was no information about the owner. There was no structure to what I was reading.

50% of the report was recommending I purchase even more tools using his affiliate link!

Obviously I will not be recommending the product.

But some blog / website owners would. They would be taken in by the 12.5% conversion. They would think that’s an easy way to make a blog income.

They would send out a promotion email to their list. They would blog about it. They would recommend it even though they haven’t even seen the product.

And, yes, they would make some sales.

And some won’t even open the product. You know the ones, buy everything and never do anything.

And some would use the product – perhaps even like the product.

But this is a poor product and, personally, if I purchased it, I would be asking for my money back.

The blog owner’s reputation would be shot to shreds if they promoted such a product.

Many of their customers would never trust them again.

So if you are in the affiliate game and promote other peoples products, make sure you have used and benefited from the product first…otherwise you run the risk of your credibility going down the pan.

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Do you know what you are recommending?

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Contact

Yeah, I’m pretty skeptical too, and that’s why I like this video.

In the second half of this video Yaro Starak takes you behind the scenes of two case studies of people who are using his online marketing principles to build businesses in unique niches:

- Fran Kerr is helping people treat acne with alternative methods

- Jay Jay is a professional illusionist and magician, who teaches people his tricks using online video

You can see how they are building their lists in the video here -

The Slide Show

The start of the video is really inspiring, as Yaro takes you through a slide-show from his 8-month trip around the world.

During his trip he conducted two different membership site launches in two different countries. One of these launches alone generated $211,969 and the other resulted in a $20,000 a month income stream.

Yaro did this all while living in a different exotic city each week, traveling and running his business. Doesn’t that sound like an awesome lifestyle?

The membership site model can grant some amazing lifestyle freedoms and I’m excited by what Yaro is teaching. I like learning from people who are actually living the life they teach is possible.

Watch this video and I know you will be excited by the possibilities too:

The Slide Show

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

A video to inspire you to take action

If you are on Twitter, here are some Twitter tools that will help you manage your tweets and bring more traffic to your site.  Enjoy!

1. TweetMeme Retweet Button

This has got to be one of the best tools around for encouraging visitors to tweet your posts. See the green button at the top of this post. This TweetMeme Retweet Button plugin simply and easily adds that button and visitors can easily retweet your blog post.

2. SocialOomph

With SocialOomph you can:

Schedule tweets: You can spend as long as you want creating Tweets and schedule when you want to tweet your tweets!

Auto Follows: This will auto follow anyone that follows you

Auto Un-follow: Simply un-follow those who un-follow you

3. TweetDeck

Takes all the information from twitter (tweets, mentions, direct messages…) and shows it to you in one organized screen. Saves hours especially if you have more than one Twitter account.

4. Twitter Karma

This application fetches all your friends and followers from Twitter when you click the “Whack!” button. You can bulk ‘un-follow’ those who are not following you and you can bulk ‘follow’ those who are following you. It helps you get through the 2000 Twitter followers bottleneck.

5. Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. You can actually:

Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post

Create a blog post from each of your tweets

6. Twitoria

How many friends are you really following? Twitoria finds your friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time so you can give them the boot!

7. Twitter Keys

Enhances your Twitter conversation by enabling UTF8 symbols.

8. TwitterLink Comments

This plugin will add an extra field to your comment form so a user can add their Twitter username. A user configured ‘follow me’ link is then displayed along with their details on all their comments.

9. Twitrans

Translates your Tweets into different languages.

10. Twellow

Helps you find fellow Tweeters in the same niche as you.

So which ones do you use to gain more followers?

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This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Increase your Twitter following with these top 10 Twitter Tools

Yaro created a short video that reveals a very simple technique to find out what people want, so your next product will be a best seller.

It’s called the Blue-Sky video and you can watch it here -

The Blue Sky Video

The technique is easy.

Yaro uses this simple idea each time he launches one of his membership sites. It’s useful because you can find out what people are actually willing to pay money for, rather than waste all that time creating a product and then finding out no one wants it.

Simple ideas are often the best, and this is definitely the case here.

Go watch now:

The Blue Sky Video

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Stop guessing what your customers want

No. That is, it is not possible to keep such a quality level that leads to an increase of traffic, there’s just not time for that. Probably it’s possible to build a successful blog from zero for a single author, but once the blog has reached a good audience it starts another story…

Since early February, I’ve been wanting to personally check if it was possible for a one-man-blog to overcome the physiological traffic peak of his website increasing the post frequency and move to the next level. I made this test on the Italian version of Ikaro that counts almost 3500 daily visitors.

I almost got crazy, suddenly the number of published daily posts varied from 2 to 5 in a month and a half’s time.

Photo Credit: solarseven

Here’s a summary of the advantages and disadvantages I found.

Social networks implications

As your presence is felt more often, users seem to interact more actively in the conversations initiated by you. There’s also a slight increase in the number of followers, but that is only normal due to the making more noise status. It is well explained in Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore.

Traffic and visitors

An increase of 10% is perceived, coming almost totally from social networks. Search engines seem apparently not to feel the extension of the publishing frequency, as you can see in the graphic below.

The main portion of the blog remains the one formed by older posts that, as years go by, have created an unattackable trustness.

Traffic monetization

Completely irrelevant, although I must consider that the test was applied during times of crisis. So, we’d better skip that point.

Posts Quality

It has dropped. It is impossible for a single blogger to write more than one relevant post a day. It’s not much about writing the post itself, but it takes the time out of the production and after publishing stages and that’s what the success of the posts depends on.

Perhaps this is the major reflection to consider:

As far as time is concerned, I could write three good posts a day, but then I wouldn’t have time enough for formatting and as long as sharing it in social networks, searching for inspiration and new ideas for the next articles.

In short words, practice has only confirmed what I suspected: a one-man-blog can keep a high level of depth and quality by writing, tops, one post a day.

Conclusions

I begin to have a clear feeling that Google, somehow, associates the level of a website trustness with certain characteristics. Authority blogs famous for writing in-depth content such as Masternewmedia or  Problogger will hardly get benefits from publishing more often, and the so-called news aggregation websites will have a hard time expecting an increase in traffic different from the peaks generated by recent news. In all cases, that is, of course, just an idea.

As Ikaro belongs to the first group, when I began putting out more than one post a day, there was a strong feeling that Google was watching and thinking: “So? Who do you think you are? Mashable?!”

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Blogging: Does Post Frequency Affect The Traffic?

WordPress qualifies this update as a Security Hardening one as many changes have been done to further improve the security of WordPress as well as to fix some previous security holes.

I know many individuals WordPress blogs have been hacked recently, so if you are on WordPress 2.8.x, I would recommend an update now.

WordPress say, “We would recommend that all sites are upgraded to this new version of WordPress to ensure that you have the best available protection.”

Simply backup you database and click the button at the top of your dashboard, entitled “Click Here to Automatically Upgrade WordPress to latest Version 2.8.5.”

After the upgrade, check your plugins are still working!

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Wordpress 2.8.5 Available – Upgrade Now

Well, now Yaro has written a great free report 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:

Free Membership site report

Yaro’s a great teacher and writer, and whenever he releases a report people always eagerly await what he has to say.

His gift is the ability to take complex subjects and make them very easy to understand. As you will see in this report, Yaro makes the process of setting up and profiting from a membership site so easy, anyone can do it.

The Masterplan doesn’t disappoint, and once again Yaro has not held anything back. This is a report that is full of CONTENT, it’s not some hype-filled document just designed to sell a product and not really teach you anything.

In the Masterplan 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.

In the report Yaro takes you through the following process:

- How to find topics for a membership site

- How to develop preeminence, which means people choose to join your membership site over all the other options

- What sources of traffic Yaro uses to bring members to his site and build his list

- What technology Yaro uses to deliver content (this is so simple, anyone can do it)

- How to make money from a membership site BEFORE you create the content for it

- How to fill your membership site with hundreds of new members in a matter of days by conducting a powerful, yet simple, launch campaign

- and much more…

Download the Masterplan here:

Free Membership site report

Of course Yaro hasn’t put all this work into the  report for nothing. He’s launching a training  program next week and this report is designed to  introduce you to his teachings.

That being said, this report is a complete  document – no matter whether you decide to join  Yaro’s program or not, you will benefit greatly  from this report, I know I did.

If you’re thinking of selling something online, a  membership site is definitely the top choice. A  product that you sell once, yet continues to  deliver income month after month, is by far the  best business model.

But listen, I don’t need to convince you of this,  read the Masterplan. Yaro has put together a very  compelling story and followed it up with a very  detailed plan so you can do it yourself.

Go get your copy now -

Free Membership site report

Good luck with your membership site!

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

A step-by-step guide to launching a membership site

That should be the first stage of your affiliate marketing strategy.

In this article we shall cover how we approach strangers!

Writing to strangers hoping they will sell hundreds of your products is EASY.

Writing to strangers hoping they will sell hundreds of your products and getting a great positive response is HARD.

Just because you are offering a high percentage doesn’t mean they are going to be on board and start selling for you.

First of all every potential affiliate is thinking “What’s In It For Me?” when they read your email.

That means they don’t care about how much it will help you for them to promote your product. They are only interested in what’s in it for them.

The prospective affiliate has three concerns (in no particular order):

1.    Will their customers thank them for recommending such a great product

2.    How much will they earn

3.    How much effort is needed in order to sell this product

The email you write has to succinctly cover all 3 areas.

If you write and simply only talk about the money, then it might attract some affiliates but not many.

Similarly if you write and only talk about the little amount of effort required or their customers will thank them.

The email has to be persuasive, believable and to the point.

You often hear some ‘Internet Gurus” say you must tell them “how wonderful their site is”, or “how much you like their site and how much you loved their blog post entitled xxxx”.

RUBBISH!

If someone writes to me like that, I know they are just sucking up.

Get to the point. If you want me to sell your product, don’t try and butter me up first. Just tell me how it is.

So don’t ramble on and on. Get to the point, fast!

After testing what works and what doesn’t work here are my rules for ‘cold calling’ affiliate emails:

1.    Personalize the email. Use their name in the subject line and in your opening.

2.    Keep it short. Cut out all unnecessary ‘flannel’. Only keep the sentences that earn their place in your email. You’re writing to busy people, so keep it short and simple.

3.    Get to the point, FAST!

4.    Use specific numbers when possible. What conversion rates has your site tested at?

5.    Remember the three motivations. They want more money, they want to look good to their customers and they want to do it with as little effort as possible. You need to mention all three points.

6.    Include a free copy of your product. Any good affiliate marketer will always want to see your product before recommending it to their list.

7.    Mention the tools. Banners, emails, ads and offer to work with them and write bespoke emails if necessary.

8.    Provide contact information. Make it easy to contact you.

Now you may be thinking that’s quite a lot to cram into an email. We want it short, to the point but mention all these points.

How?

Here’s an example:

Subject: Name, Affiliate Proposal

Hi (Name):

I noticed on your site that you promote XXXXXX type of products.  (XXXXX is the type of product)

I’ve just created my brand new product, PRODUCT TITLE at SALES PAGE DOMAIN NAME. This product is totally unique in the marketplace because of XXXXXX.

I am running the program through ClickBank and the sales page is currently converting at 3.5% and for each sale you’d make 75%, which is $30.

I think your list would love it. They get a great deal, AND they’d thank you for recommending such a product.

You can download the product here: DOWNLOAD DOMAIN NAME

You can get your affiliate link and affiliate tools including banners, emails and text ads right here:

AFFILIATE DOMAIN NAME

I’m more than happy to work with you to write specific bespoke emails, etc for your list.

Please let me have your thoughts.

Andrew

http://www.webuildyourblog.com/

When a ‘cold’ Affiliate proposal email doesn’t work…

No matter how good your email is, the vast majority of your ‘cold’ affiliate proposal emails will simply not work.

If you have no relationship, then your chances of a positive response is low.

It’s similar to the response you may get from your sales pages. Are your sales pages converting at 2%? Expect similar with your cold affiliate proposal emails. For every 100 emails your send out, expect only 2 to reply. If you get more you can ‘jump with joy’.

How can we boost our results?

It’s simple. If you want a higher conversion rate you must build a relationship.

You could start by commenting on some of their blog posts. Become a regular blog commenter.

Start Tweeting their blog posts.

Offer to provide a guest blog post.

Do whatever you can to build that relationship.

That way, you are bound to have a much more positive result when you ask them to help sell your product as an affiliate.

What tips or advice do you suggest and have worked for you?

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Want to make even more money selling your products?

So what’s happened this week?

The ‘UP’ Times:

The Digital Archives Shop

For a while now, I’ve wanted a ‘shop’ on my Digital Archives blog. My professional business writer partner has written hundreds of great quality articles and we thought we would package them up and sell them for just $1 each.

So, over the past few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of research on shopping cart plugins and eventually I invested in the WordPress eStore plugin.

A great investment. Once set up, you can have your products and services for sale within minutes. If you are looking for shopping cart functionality on your blog, I can recommend, the WordPress eStore plugin.

And if you want content for your blog, have a look at our article packs. A maximum of only 10 packs will be sold and each article works out to cost only $1.

Here’s the link for the shop: TDA Shop

Autoresponders

I’ve started the process of moving my opt-in service to Aweber. I got fed up with too many emails not being delivered from my existing company.

I outsourced the set-up of my autoresponders and the coding in Aweber plus the changing of the HTML code for the actual opt-ins. It felt really good to hand over to someone else, a piece of work that would just take up too much of my time.

The first few ‘lists’ have now been transferred.

The issue I now face, though, is transferring the individuals who have already signed up with the ‘old’ service. I have to transfer them and get them to opt-in. I know I am going to lose quite a few off my list in transferring but I’m looking forward to being with just one service provider, Aweber.

Guest posts

As a result of the Problogger.com forum, I am building more and more blogging alliances and getting some of my articles posted as guest posts that are helping with traffic.

Traffic

Just a quick note to say, my traffic jumped by 20% this week, mainly due to the post, Are these the top 11 Premium WordPress Themes?

So I’m pretty pleased!

The “DOWN” Times:

A second week of no “downs”. Fingers crossed it continues!

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Last weeks Up and Down blogging times

Guest Post By Gerlaine Reliford

You are here at this post, because either you were intrigued by the magnetic headline or you are really interested in how to write a better blog post.  One way or the other in the next few minutes you are going to learn how to write a more effective blog post.  By effective, I mean a post that gets the reader to read past the first paragraph and possibly peruse your blog further.

Focus on Your Reader

Read that topic heading again:  Focus on your reader.

When writing a blog it is easy to get carried away in your own thoughts and experiences.  You become the narcissist that we all are and get to rambling on about “I” and “me.”  For your loyal readers, this is okay.  To new readers, this type of writing may not be so appealing.

When writing a personal blog, it is all about “I” and “me,” but when writing as business, the point is to provide value for your readers and engage them in conversation.

While writing your post you should be asking yourself two questions:

1.    Who am I writing this post to?   (i.e. Reader Profile)

2.    What am I trying to tell them?

You want to focus on your reader for a better blog post, because these are your customers.  They will converse with you and they will be the ones buying from you.  So your writing must be focused on them.

Use the K.I.S.S. Method

Keep It Simple Silly

Remove Fluff– Using filler words that are just used to take up space and make the post a bit longer, is totally not necessary to engage the reader.

Minimize Clichés– Cute as words can be (spoken by a true word-monger), blogs are a displayed on the “world-wide web.”  Everyone will not understand your clichés, and this will subtract from your post rather than add to it.

Magnanimous Words (i.e. Big Words)–  ← If you have to do that at all, do it very little.  I don’t care if half of your readers understand the word ‘magnanimous.’  For everyone one who does know the ‘big word’ remember that there is another person who does not.

Explaining the word with the Latin ‘i.e.’ can teach your reader a new word, but used too many times it may convey that you think your reader is stupid.

Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation

A few years ago, you could type up a blog post and press publish.  Then put up some Google ads and make some money.  Today, you must take more care of the process before you click publish.

There is a very good spell check in Microsoft Word on your computer.  If you don’t happen to use Word (like me) then you need another method of checking your posts before you click publish.

I can publish a Word document on my computer, but the document is created from a program that doesn’t have a grammar check.  So, even though I can check my word spelling, I cannot check word usage.

Here are a couple of sites where you can check grammar as well as spelling in your posts:

http://www.veditor.net/

http://www.spellchecker.net/spellcheck/

I have used these multiple times to check my college papers and have found that they are great tools for checking grammar usage.

Click Publish Now

Once you have made this thorough review of your blog, you can publish it without fear.  Yes, there is more to writing a better blog post than just these few steps.  But in the spirit of keeping it simple, if you take these tips back to your post writing, then you will have a better blog because of it.

About the Writer

Gerlaine Reliford is a personal development writer and international radio personality from the US.  Writing is her number one passion.  You can find her at http://www.gerlainetalk.com.

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

How to Write a Better Blog Post in 15 Minutes or Less

It was awesome and you can see some of the highlights on some of the posts on this blog.

We took hundreds of photos and videos.

This past weekend, we watched the videos. We plugged the camera into the TV, cup of tea in hand, sat back and watched.

I was shocked by what I saw!

Shocked by what?

How fat I looked!

I know they say TV adds 10 pounds to you but, boy, I really looked over weight!

You see not that long ago, I used to walk at least 2 miles a day, walking to and from work.

I’ve given up the corporate world and no longer have to walk to work.

Well, in fact, that’s a lie. I do walk to work. From one bedroom to another (my office). Takes all of 5 seconds.

I’d turn on the pc.

Check and read all my emails.

Check my blog visitors’ stats.

Visit the forums I am a member of and answer some questions, perhaps, post some of my own questions.

Scan my Twitter accounts.

Check my favourite blog sites to see if I’d like to comment.

That could take up to an hour.

Then I’d walk downstairs, make my first cup of coffee, walk back upstairs and back in front of the PC. Back to work…writing blog posts, marketing, learning new blogging ideas, creating products…all the normal things.

No daily exercise!

I purchased one of those pedometers to check how many steps I was doing in a normal working day.

Approx 250!

That’s about 500 meters!

Don’t get me wrong, my wife and I go ballroom and Latin dancing twice a week. We play badminton once a week. I also, normally play tennis once a week, so I am getting some exercise.

But it’s the walking to and from work that I’ve missed and that’s what I am blaming my weight explosion on.

So now, instead of turning on the PC and checking my emails…I go for a walk.

I pretend I am walking to work and walk a couple of miles before I start.

Now I aim to reach 6,000 steps on my pedometer each day. That way I know I am walking 3 miles each day.

If I don’t reach it my 6pm, I go for another walk until I do.

It makes me do that little bit extra exercise.

What do you do before staring work?

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Life is not just about blogging, is it?

They’re working together to raise money to support breast cancer research through the Susan G. Komen foundation. To raise money to support this wonderful organization, they’re creating an e-book which they’ll then sell, with 100% of the profits going to the Susan G. Komen foundation.

To make this a reality, they need your help.

All it takes is for you to choose a favorite post from your site. That’s it!  Your post can be on any subject at all from a favorite story, workout, recipe, quote, idea, whatever! They’ll include the article you select in the e-book with a link to your site.

Simple!

But hurry, the deadline for submitting your article is very fast approaching.

Click here and see the full details.

P.S. I’ve been greedy and submitted two!

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Blogging For A Cause

It educates children from the ages of 2.5 years all the way up to 17 years.

We met the head teacher, Mary.

She says she’s 64. She looks 50!

Here’s some of the youngest children at the school:

Lovely Mary. All smiles. Loves her work, loves the children.

Mary tells us that some of the children live at the school, some come from afar, travelling for 1.5 hours just to get there.

School starts at 8am and finishes at 6pm.

With 1.5 hours travelling each way, for some of the children their school day starts at 6.30 am and ends at 7.30 pm!

We visit the youngest class. Twenty-five children aged 2.5 years and they all stand to attention, when we walk in.

Twenty-five pairs of beautiful eyes staring at us.

They start to sing.

My wife and I wanted to cry!

We took some sweets to hand out and they lined up one by one.

More classes were visited….

And more children singing the ‘Doctor’ song:

The children were proud. They were brave and eager to please.

We also took some pens, paper, pencils and t-shirts for the school. They were so grateful.

We loved the school and the children.

Next we visited a local village. Bacari was the CHIEF.

Bacari wasn’t what I expected.

I expected a big muscular man with his face painted, a loin cloth and bones through his nose.

Perhaps I’ve been watching too much TV.

Bacari was small, dressed in t-shirt and ‘puma’ shorts.

He showed us around his house – a mud hut.

He had a sitting room, and a bedroom and lived with his wife and 5 children.

The whole house was smaller than my bedroom, back in the UK.

Then we met the Witch Doctor!

He made his potions and medicine from the local natural ingredients.

He didn’t speak. Bacari did all the speaking. Bacari explained that the Witch Doctor could tell what was wrong with you by just looking at you.

He could ‘x-ray’ you and then cure you within 3 days, no matter what you had!

Here’s Bacari and the Witch Doctor:

Then the Doctor showed us his home brew. Coconut wine. We all tasted it. It was foul! Like milky vinegar.

Then we were treated to a village dance., Kenyan style. We joined in. It was energetic and fun.

The village dancers – I just loved the ‘trumpet’ sound:

We purchased some trinkets and gave a donation.

It was a great time. Nice to see a local village and how they lived.

Ten minutes later we were back at the hotel.

We had lunch, some beer and a dip in the pool.

That night, my wife and I slept in the largest bed you’ve ever seen. Almost as big as Bacari’s whole house. We had air conditioning. We had a personal chef who cooked exclusively for us.

A different world to where we were just a short time ago.

We told everyone what a wonderful time we had. It was one of the highlights of the holiday.

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Ever visited a Kenyan School?

How do you determine a great theme?

Here are some few suggestions of high-quality themes.

Feel free to check these.

1. Flexx Theme

This is a very amazing theme. It is tagged to be the most powerful theme but easiest to use. The theme offers a lot of customization right into the dashboard. It has built-in SEO features, easy to plug-in graphics and backgrounds and other incredible features that is time efficient.

This blog is built on the Flexx theme.

2.    Thesis Theme

This is an incredible theme. It is easy to use, customizable, SEO-optimized and very flexible.  Worried about coding? Worry no more because this theme has an option panel that allows you to command with ease. It has a revolutionary layout generator for column layout combinations and a pinpoint font controls for font variation. This theme would be a great investment and worth every penny.

3.   Magazine News Premium WP Themes

This theme is specially made for a site that has a lot of content. It is widget-ready, adsense-ready and plugin ready. The bonus is it has Free Install Support and Free Updates forever.

4.    Thick Premium WP

This theme is available as 2-for-1. Meaning Buy 1 and getting 1 COMPLETELY FREE! You can choose from a variety of clean and grunge themes or light and dark themes. It has widgetized spaces for a bunch of customized widgets.  Plus it has two alternative headers for you to play with.

5.    Geometric Premium WP

This theme is a hybrid of blog + portfolio theme. It has a custom home page that is fully widgetized. You also have the choice to interchange left and right sidebar. It is great for it has a space to publish all your social profiles so that you can easily link to your friends.

6.    Convergence Premium WP

This theme is best for your community site. It has exemplary features that will suit your need. It is integrated with Feedburner, it is sidebar- widget ready and it is compatible to all major browsers.

7.    Mimbo Pro Premium WP

This theme has a first class HTML and CSS that is making an edge to all the themes out there. It is already optimized for search engines so you don’t have to hire SEO gurus to the job.  It also includes a comprehensive control panel for editing and updating the theme without touching the code. It is also equipped with WP-125 plugin for random captcha in the contact page.

8.    Arthemia Premium

Running an online magazine or corporate site? This is the ultimate solution for you! It auto-thumbnail your old posts so you don’t have to do the time-consuming manual thumbnail.

9.    Sofa Pressword

This is a very clean theme. It is 3- column and widget ready. Best thing is it is packed with two Flash plugins- RSS Reader and RSS Forecast and also two ready-made advertising PHP pages included: ‘advertSidebar_narrow.php’ and ‘advertSidebar_wide.php’ for your banner needs.

10.    Executive 1.0 Premium WordPress Theme

Executive is an elegant business theme.  The theme is packed with  4 custom page layout options, the ability to display images or video on the homepage, built in SEO for posts/pages a theme options panel and more.

11.    NewsWire WordPress Theme

NewsWire is a CNN inspired news / magazine theme.  The theme includes a backend control panel, auto-sized thumbnails, advertising management options and more unique and awesome functionalities.

What’s your favorite premium theme?

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Are these the top 11 Premium WordPress Themes?

You have created an awesome product.

Your sales page is emotionally brilliant.

But you are just not selling the thousands you were expected to.

Why?

Because it’s only you who is selling the product.

If you want to sell many more copies of your awesome product then you need to allow others (know as affiliates) to sell your product for you, in return for a commission.

You can set up your product for affiliates to sell on your behalf by using websites like ClickBank or PayDotCom.

So assuming you have set-up the functionality of allowing affiliates to sell your product, how do you find affiliates?

Well the first thing you do is make sure you have an affiliate link on your sales page.

They are normally found at the bottom of the sales page with a link to a separate page.

Click on this link and check out the bottom of my product, How to write articles.

See the affiliate link at the bottom of the page. Clicking on that link takes you to this page: How to write articles affiliates

What’s the first thing that grabs you on the affiliate page?

The high percentage?

If you want affiliates to sell your products, you do have to offer a high percentage. I would recommend at least 60%.

So if you are selling a product for $20, the affiliate gets $12 and you get $8 (less any fees). Now you might think it’s not worth it but what if that affiliate has a client list of 5000 and 2% buy your product, that’s another $800 in your pocket for no extra effort.

As well as offering a high percentage, you want to make it easy for the affiliate to promote your product by supplying text ad and email examples and banners.

So that’s the first thing – have a separate page advertising your product for affiliates.

This way the affiliate has to find you and you will get some who sign up, but not many.

The second approach is to find affiliates yourself.

How?

By contacting them!

Firstly, your existing web marketing / blogging buddies. Over time you have created relationships with fellow bloggers in the same niche. Perhaps, they’d be interested in selling your product for a high commission.

As you already have some sort of relationship with them, you can simply contact them, ask if they would be willing to write a review of your product, in return for x% commission and include a link so that can download the product.

Offer them the product for free.

Here’s an example email you could use:

Hi xxx,

Andrew here.

How are things? I hope you are doing well.

I’ve been busy spending the last few months
on a new product, which I am just about to launch.
It’s called ADD PRODUCT NAME.

During the pre-launch, the product is receiving
rave reviews.

I value your input and I would love to have your
feedback on the product.

Here you can download the complete package, tell
me what you think:

DOWNLOAD LINK

By the way the official launch is on ADD DATE and
if you are interested I do have an affiliate program
in place.

Please let me know what you think.

Andrew

I’ve used this email template a number of times and it works.

Remember this is with my blogging buddies, i.e. I already have a relationship with these guys. This is not a “cold” email to someone I don’t know.

In the next article, we’ll discuss how we approach total strangers to get more affiliates selling our products.

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Want to sell more of your own products?

So this is what happened this week:

The ‘up’ times

Outsourcing

I decided to employ someone and ‘outsource’ some of the administrative and everyday tasks associated with my online business.

I was spending so much time doing all the things you have to do to keep several sites up and running, that I was finding no time to create any more of my own products.

So, this week I have been handing over work to my new employee.

I’ve been creating videos to help her quickly come up to speed and I must say, the early stages in the ‘partnership’ are turning out pretty well.

So far, so good.

I shall keep you posted.

Product Creation

Over the last few weeks (and while on holiday – naughty, naughty!), I’ve been putting together a high level outline of my next product. It’s going to be a weekly course on blogging starting off right from finding the best domain names through to building your blog, building lists, traffic, marketing, JV’s, copywriting, squeeze pages, affiliate marketing and, of course, outsourcing. Basically everything I’ve learned from the past 3 years on making money on-line.

As when I started several years ago, there are still many individuals who would just love to blog and make a blog income from their efforts. But they work full-time and only have a few hours to spare.

My blogging course will be structured and give them weekly small baby steps to follow and assignments to finish. Each week will follow on from the previous week.

That way, individuals won’t be overwhelmed.

I know when I started I was. I didn’t know where to start, so I’d like to share my experiences and what works for me.

And now I’ve outsourced some of my daily work, I’ve got the time to create the course – well that’s the theory!

So watch out for the launch!

Adsense

I re-added Google Adsense to a couple of my ‘back burner’ sites this week. Back burner because I don’t do much with them. I set them up and let them run on their own. Other people tend to add articles and blog posts to them, so they just simply tick over.

Well, I made $7 this week!

I can’t retire on that but if it carries on like that, it will easily pay for the monthly hosting costs and I don’t have to do anything!

Comments

I’ve received a decent amount of comments this week – so thank you to all those who took the time out to drop by and comment. I really appreciate it. Getting comments makes you feel good, so please comment and keep coming back!

The ‘Down’ times

None! Brilliant!

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Last week’s Up and Down blogging times

the hotel pool

The welcome at our hotel was great. Everyone welcomed us with big smiles and an ice cold cocktail!

A simple check-in and we were in our room. It was immaculate. Three minutes later our suitcases arrived.

We unpacked. We showered.

We walk excitedly towards the pool. It’s 27 degrees C. Lovely!

Loads of free empty sun beds.

We settled down and enjoyed the sun.

Literally within minutes, a smiley waitress appears.

“JAMBO!”

“Drink?”

Drinks by the pool, followed by lunch by the pool.

Then a little siesta under an umbrella.

A cheeky monkey having a drink right outside our hotel room:

That night we had drinks in the beach side bar and a beach bar-b-q.

During the beach bar-b-q, some Masai Warriors came through the bar-b-q in their beautiful distinctive outfits, all in red, pointing big sticks at the eaters and shouting warrior type commands.

The big sticks are properly known as rungu.

Rungu’s are typically about 18-20 inches in length with a long narrow shaft for a handle and heavy knob or ball at the end in the manner of other “ethnic” cudgels such as the Irish shillelagh.

It was part of the entertainment but also quite frightening.

The Masai warriors came and danced for us. It was great fun.

Then they rolled out their goods to sell. We all looked and several purchased.

One last nightcap and we walked, hand-in-hand, slowly back to our hotel room under the clear sky and stars.

Paradise! We had another two weeks!

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Arriving at our Kenyan Hotel

In this article I’m going to discuss the merits of having a customer list in the first place, especially if you want to make a blog income.

Your blog business is made up of your blog posts, your visitors, the products you sell and the services your offer.

But the most important part is your customer list.

That means your free subscribers list and your list of customers who have purchased something from you.

There is a huge difference between the two types of lists and I recommend you keep them separate.

So what’s the difference?

FACT: The vast number of your free subscribers will never buy from you.

FACT: A high percentage of customers who have purchased products from you will buy a second, third, fourth…product from you.

But you should still ‘wow’ all your lists.

You should give them value. You should build a relationship. These customers, especially the ‘buyers’ list can be the main source of your income.

Everyone says, “The money is in the list.”

That’s not completely true.

The money is in the relationship you have with your list.

For instance, if you had 1 million subscribers and all you did was try to ‘sell, sell, sell’ to them, the vast majority would never buy from you.

Why?

Because they don’t know you from Adam!

But if you had a much smaller list of 10,000 who liked you, knew you, trusted you – that list is worth a lot, lot more than the list of 1 million.

You want to build a relationship with your lists, not just a high number of subscribers.

Well, to be honest, you want both don’t you? Build a relationship AND have a huge list!

How many lists have you ever joined?

Maybe 20 or 50 or 100?

How many lists are you currently on?

A lot less than you signed up for, I bet.

You unsubscribe from most of them because when you joined they ‘promised’ great value and huge benefits but all you got was offer after offer after offer.

There are a lot of people signing up to numerous lists everyday.

Why?

Because they are wanting a new life. They want to get out of their mundane life and be happy. They want to remove themselves from the rat race and start their own business. They want to education themselves and improve their skills. The reasons are endless.

So if your free giveaway can help them in their lives, they will sign up.

Then you want to provide real value and exceptional service to your customers so they stay with you forever.

If you do that, your income will increase from one year to the next.

Your list will grow, as very few customers will unsubscribe.

As I have said before, I use Aweber to manage my opt-ins, my Autoresponders and lists.

Recently, I am setting up new bloggers on Aweber almost weekly. It’s easy, it’s simple and very reliable and the ‘live chat’ support is excellent.

What’s the best opt-in you’ve made?

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Why you must focus on your list

Our hotel awaits us!

To successfully get through the Kenyan customers, we had to complete 5 different forms.

Five!

Each one of them asking for similar information including passport number and place of stay while in Kenya.

But it didn’t actually take that long to get through the customers. It was pretty efficient and within an hour we were on the coach with our suitcases.

But I must tell you about getting our suitcases on the coach.

No exaggeration!

Ten meters before the coach, a holiday rep took our cases, handed them to the driver and said, “Give me tip”.

The cheek!

The courage!

I gave him a tip.

“And for my friend” he said referring to the driver who took the cases from him.

“Share the tip”, I replied!

We sat on the coach and watched the reps.

Without fail, ten meters from the coach, they take over your suitcases, put them on the coach and put out their hands for a tip.

They must have made a fortune.

The trip to the actual hotel was 90 minutes but it went so fast.

We enjoyed the hustle and bustle of Mombassa town.

Watching the people, watching the traffic. It was great even if it was 8am and we’d been travelling for 15 hours or so!

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

Arriving in Kenya

This could be the answer to your problem. Gone are the couple of hours searching the web thus letting you save time and effort.

Below are meaty blog posts that will provide you substantial information on what are the most common downloaded plugins (as you would expect there are some duplicates) plus some brief descriptions about it.

Taking advantage of these nuggets of wisdom would surely boost your blog’s ranking and make your life a little easier.

Another 10 Great WordPress Plug-ins
By Heart Internet
http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/blog/2009/09/another-10-great-wordpress-plug-ins/

10 Wordpress Plugins That You Should/Must Install
By Team DW
http://www.devilsworkshop.org/10-wordpress-plugins-that-you-shouldmust-install/

15 Essential Plugins For Your Wordpress Blog
By Lisa Barone
http://smallbiztrends.com/2009/08/essential-wordpress-plugins.html

Why I Use 22 Wordpress Plugins Today
By Ari Herzog
http://ariwriter.com/why-i-use-22-wordpress-plugins-today/

9 WordPress Plugins to Make you ‘Happy Go Lucky’
By Alan Hamlyn
http://www.wuup.co.uk/9-wordpress-plugins-to-make-you-happy-go-lucky/

10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins
By Quick Online Tips
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2009/08/must-have-wordpress-plugins/

Best 5 Social Bookmarking Plugins For Wordpress
By W3Mag
http://w3mag.com/2009/08/30/best-5-social-bookmarking-plugins-for-wordpress/

10 Essential Wordpress Plugins For New Wordpress Installation
By Web Design Booth
http://www.webdesignbooth.com/10-essential-wordpress-plugins-for-new-wordpress-installation/

20 Most Commonly Used Plugins on Wordpress Blogs
By Chris Spooner
http://line25.com/articles/20-most-commonly-used-plugins-on-wordpress-blogs

This is a post from: We Build Your Blog

The Top 111 WordPress Plugins

Why?

Because anyone can sell on-line. Anyone can create a product, build a sales page, start promoting, start selling and that product could be rubbish.

And many of them are. I know, I’ve purchased quite a few over the years.

But I always try the product out before I ask for a refund.

And nowadays I know that if the seller isn’t offering a guarantee then the product cannot be worth buying.

By offering a guarantee you are making the potential customer feel secure, safe and relaxed at the same time.

Of course, some people will buy without a guarantee but some won’t (like me!). Maybe, those that buy have yet to purchase a ‘bad’ product without a guarantee!

So a guarantee is a must. And the ‘persuasion’ experts say offer as long a guarantee as possible. Not just 30 days, if you can offer up to a year, do so.

The longer your guarantee is, the more powerful and compelling it will be and the more sales it will make.

Plus make the refund policy non-conditional.

I have seen some sales pages say things like,

“You have a full years guarantee. You have up to 365 days to get a refund. Simply prove to me, the product hasn’t doubled your sales figures and I’ll give you your money back”

“Prove to me!”

How?

Give you a copy of my accounts?

This type of guarantee is almost worthless. Who’s going to bother to ‘prove’ their sales figures?

But even more scary is the ‘seller’ thinks they are providing a great guarantee and that will make more people buy.

Believe me it won’t.

You are better off just simply saying, “You have a full years guarantee. You have up to 365 days to get a refund. No reasons needed. No hassles. Simply let me know you’d like a refund and I’ll give you your money back, instantly”.

Based just upon the guarantees, what sales page are you gong to buy from?

Of course, the second guarantee is much more compelling and powerful.

But whatever length of or compelling guarantee you offer, you will always get some ‘returns’. That’s life. That’s just part of being on-line.

Your product will not suit everyone and that’s fine. As long as the sale page describes the product as best it can, there should be few refunds. Expect anything between 0% and 5%.

But there are some customers who will buy the product already knowing they are going to ask for a refund.

They are out to scam you, the seller. They come along like the look of what you are selling and abuse the refund guarantee.

I had such a customer yesterday.

They purchased the product at 11.12 am. An inexpensive product – 3 PDF’s. Over 200 pages of content.

At 11.16am I had an email from them asking for a refund.

It must have taken a couple of minutes to download the product.

So in 2 minutes they looked at over 200 pages of content and decided it wasn’t for them. Oh and within the same 2 minutes, they had written an email to both me personally and ClickBank asking for a refund.

Idiots!

A typical scam buyer!

So bear in mind when you offer a guarantee:

-    Offer as long a guarantee as you feel comfortable with
-    You will get customers who genuinely don’t like the product and ask for a refund

-    You will get customers who are out to rip you off

-    Expect a 5% return/refund rate

-    Don’t take it personally

What are your experiences as a buyer and a seller?

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How good is your guarantee?

But let’s talk about the ‘up’ times:

This week I joined the newly formed Problogger.com forum. It’s a great forum where you share your experience and ask for advice from other bloggers, as well.

I have already started collaborating with quite a few people outside of the forum and we’re going to see how we can help each other with traffic, visitors and sales. So watch this space!

One word of warning if you do decide to join – it can eat into your time. There is so much information and advice, you can literally spend hours within the forum. So, yes, join but be disciplined with the amount of time you spend there.

I finally got the “Retweet button” plugin working. In a previous ‘up’ / ‘down’ post, I was saying I couldn’t get it to work but after a refreshing holiday and a new approach I got it to work. Too early to say what difference it will make to my traffic numbers. So will you retweet this post?

“Down” Times:

My traffic stats for September compared with August were 15% down. I should have anticipated that as I was having almost 3 weeks off on holiday. But it was still a bit of a surprise. Just shows you how much social bookmarking and Tweeting has an effect.

But back on it now and with my new collaborations from ProBlogger.com, I’m hoping the traffic will begin to rise again.

Catching-up

I still feel in catch up mode.

I’ve several outstanding product reviews to complete which individuals have asked me to carry out. I shall complete next week and let you have my thoughts but I do feel bad that people have asked and it’s taken me weeks to get around to completing the reviews.

I’m a few weeks behind with Jimmy’s Affiliate marketing course. Again I must catch up and get back on track but I think that’s going to take me at least a couple of weeks, as the course is pretty thorough.

So that’s it for me, this week.

Had any ‘up’ times this week?

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Up and Down blogging times 2 October

Your blog or website visitor enters their name and email address and they are automatically added to your subscribers list.

Once they have opted in, you decide the type of follow up emails they receive.

I’ve used several autoresponder services and now I recommend Aweber.

Why?

Well I tried several others and Aweber provides the best value for money. The ease of use and support is excellent.

I’m in the middle of transferring all my opt-ins to Aweber.

During your automated email sequence you are wanting to do your best to build a relationship with your customer.

Using the automated email sequence, you want to provide extra advice and free content plus recommend related products for sale, so you make some income!

Personally, I only recommend products I use myself. The last thing you want to do is offer a tool of some course or service and it turns out to be rubbish. Your reputation and credibility is shot to pieces, so, my advice, ONLY recommend products to your customers you have used and like.

Powerful tip: You must have a balance between free advice and recommendations. I know you want to make some income but if you just send out recommendation after recommendation, your list are going to quickly click on that ‘unsubscribe’ button or even worse, report you as spamming.

So, what’s a good balance between free advice type emails and ‘sales’ type emails?

Firstly, try and over deliver. Your visitors sign up for something in return. It could be a free e-book or e-course or audio – whatever it is make sure that is delivered first.

Then a couple of days later provide something else for free. Maybe another e-book or audio or education video. Surprise them!

By giving more than they expect, some of your customers will be delighted.

So is there an ideal sequence to build trust and credibility, so that customers will eventually buy from you?

I think so.

This is mine:

Message 1 – instantly after sign-up – A ‘thank you’ email with access to the free give away product.

Message 2 – 2 days later – a following up email asking them if they could download the product OK.

Message 3 – 2 days later – a surprise bonus. Another free quality giveaway.

Message 4 – 4 days later – another free quality give away.

Message 5 – 4 days later – a promotion type email recommending a tool or product

Message 6 – 3 days later – free advice or content

Message 7 – 3 days later – free advice or content

Message 8 – 3 days later – free advice or content

Message 9 – 4 days later – a promotion type email recommending a tool or product

Then repeat message 6, 7, 8 and 9, so you are sending out 3 free advice type emails per each promotional email.

By providing so much free advice, you will get fewer customers who unsubscribe.

Of course, you will always get people who unsubscribe. I get customers who sign-up for my free report and 5 minutes later they unsubscribe. At first, I used to think, “How dare they? I’ve put a lot of effort into that quality free product and they just sign-up, take it for free, and go”.

But one piece of advice. Don’t take it personally. There are people going round all the different web sites picking up the free stuff, all day every day. I no longer take it personally.

I hope you see the point of the above sequence. You start off by continuing the customer relationship and hopefully building on it. Then you begin offering other related products or services.

That, for me, is the best way to set up an automatic email responder.

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Set up your automatic email responder like this

Now you want some visitors, don’t you?

And you are thinking, I’ve got to write hundreds of articles and I must start commenting on other blogs, and what about all those backlinks. Back-linking is all the rage and you don’t want to miss out, do you?

You just don’t know where to start and you start to sign up for all these free reports on ‘traffic building’ and they all recommend different things.

You start to feel overwhelmed.

Am I right?

If so, don’t feel bad. I’ve been in exactly the same position.

When you first start out, you want a simple plan of activities.

A plan of just a few activities, you can stick to.

Now in this post I am going to talk about ‘organic’ traffic. That means free traffic. Traffic that just comes to your site naturally (as the name implies – organically).

Getting organic traffic via the search engines and links from other sites can be free and it only involves your time and effort.

Sometimes, there are tools that are worth investing in, that improve your productivity, but it can all be completed for no cost.

Now at this stage, I must reiterate the activity of keyword research.

It is a must.

You can watch my videos here to see how to pick the best keywords for your niche.

So, I shall assume you have picked your best keywords.

Then install the All-in-one-seo pack Wordpress plugin – see this video here.

Ping your site using PinGoat.

Pingoat is a service that pings or notifies a number of services that keep track of weblogs and publishes them. By pinging, you let the services know that your blog has been updated and hence, they crawl and index your site, publishing your blog’s content, thus increasing your blog’s popularity.

RSS Feeds

Now, before you start blog posting, you want to submit your sites RSS feed to several online RSS Feed Aggregators.

If you have started blogging already, it doesn’t matter. Submit your sites feed to the RSS Aggregators NOW!

So what does submitting your sites RSS feed to the aggregators do?

In simple terms, every time you add a blog post, your RSS feed automatically updates on the feed aggregators.

So what?

Well, millions of individuals sign up to the feed aggregator sites and monitor the feeds.

That can bring you traffic.

But as important, each RSS feed will give you a “backlink” to your blog.

And, even better. You only have to submit your RSS feed once to each of the aggregators. Once submitted, everything is automatic. You never have to do it again.

There are many feed aggregators to submit your RSS feeds to, and below are just some of the more popular ones.

http://feedage.com

http://feedagg.com

http://feedraider.com/

http://feedfury.com/

http://www.feedbase.net/Add.php

http://www.feedsubmitter.com/

Powerful tip: Not only can you submit your sites RSS feed. But each of your categories has its own RSS feed as well. Submit each of your categories RSS feed to the aggregators as well.

Another powerful tip: And it’s not just your sites RSS feeds you can submit. Did you know your Twitter account also has an RSS feed and your YouTube account some article directories and so on?

Imagine having all those feeds automatically being updated every time you added a blog post or a Tweet or a YouTube video.

That could create some serious traffic and backlinks and all for some work and effort that needs to be completed once and once only.

If all this sounds rather manual and too much effort, you can invest in a tool like RSSBot. A one-payment tool that you can use time and time again. It automatically submits your feeds to over 30 RSS aggregator directories in seconds.

Here’s a video of the tool in action: RSSBot in Action

Web Directories

Submitting your site domain to the web directories used to be a must. Nowadays, Google, it is believed, doesn’t put so much emphasis on free Web Directory listings.

However, I still do submit the sites to the Free Web Directories. As far as I am concerned, the effort it takes is quite minimal and, it only has to be completed once and you still get more backlinks.

So I recommend you submit your domain to various Web Directories.

Again, I use tools and services rather than manually carry out myself.

I can recommend DirectoryBot and Directory Maximizer.

Social Bookmarking

Let the big Social Bookmarking sites know about your site. Sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit.

It all helps in getting your site indexed.

I personally use Social Bookmarking Demon. It’s one of the best automatic social booking tools around.

Now you have completed a lot more SEO type actions than the vast majority of other blogs.

And everything is in place.

Now you can concentrate on building up your content. I would suggest adding a blog post, at least 3 times a week.

Remember each time you add a blog post, add it to one of your keyword phrase categories only and all those RSS aggregators will automatically be updated, creating traffic and backlinks.

If you add a new category, don’t forget to add the category feed to the Feed Aggregators.

Submit some of your blog posts to the main social bookmarking sites.

The final say…

Getting your fair share of organic traffic is about having the correct keyword phrases in place and getting your sites links out there in the websphere.

By using the free facilities of RSS aggregators, web directories and social bookmarking, you are doing exactly that.

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How to Promote your new Blog and gain free Traffic

And what a video to start with…the myth of duplicate content!

Greg starts with saying that Google DOESN’T penalize sites for having duplicate content but it can have a negative impact on your rankings.

Is that not being penalized?

He goes on to say that website owners THINK they are being penalized because their content is being omitted from Google’s results.

We’ve all seen the message:

“In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 20 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.”

Greg says the content may be being omitted just for that query.

“What’s actually happening, is that we’re looking at the query that the user’s doing, and we’re saying that we want diversity in the results we’re going to show a user,” says Grothaus.

He says those who think their content is being omitted because it is duplicate, will likely find that if they adjust their query to more specifically reflect the missing piece, they may just find that it shows up in results after all.

There are some duplicate content subjects and resolutions Greg covers in the video…you can see it here:

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The Duplicate Content Myth straight from the horses mouth

My wife, Joy and I. Our first night in Kenya.

I have mentioned a few times that this year my wife, Joy and I are celebrating 25 years of marriage. Well some of you have noticed I have not been blogging as often as normal over the past few weeks and that’s because my wife and I have just had our celebratory holiday!

We decided to go to Africa. Kenya to be more precise and include a safari.

We booked the holiday in February this year. The 7 months to the actual holiday soon passed.

As it got nearer and nearer the more excited we got but also the more apprehensive.

What shall we take with us?

How much money do we need?

Will the kids (well adult kids – 20 and 22) be OK without us?

Will the house still be here or trashed when we return?

We booked “all inclusive”, so we didn’t need to take much money with us.

We looked on-line to check what was needed for the safari trip.

And we told the kids to behave themselves!

And what about our on-line business?

I was working even longer hours to fit everything in and keep my blogs active while on holiday.

The departure date arrived.

We packed.

We were ready.

We took the train to Gatwick. We were on holiday!

We checked in.

The holiday company gave us free access to the ‘first-class’ lounge. That was nice of them.

A nice comfy lounge. Free snacks. Free drinks. It was a great start to our celebratory holiday.

The flight was full.

A nine-hour flight ahead of us.

Now before I go much further, I want to tell you how much this holiday cost us. $10,000. Just have that in mind.

So we get on the plane.

The seats are bigger than normal and the legroom is good.

We have these little TV screens in the backrest of the chair in front of us.

We get settled. We try and relax but we are excited.

First thing the air hostesses do?

Try and sell us a drink.

$5 for a coke.

$6 for a coffee.

They want us to pay for drinks!

I just paid $10k for this holiday!

Next thing. Would you like to upgrade your film choice on the TV screen?

Another $10

“No thanks”

Three hours into the flight. It’s now 11pm.

At last, we are served our in-flight dinner.

I cheekily ask, “Is it free?”

“Of course! Chicken or beef?”

“Chicken or beef what?”, I ask

“Don’t know”

“You don’t know?”

“No, we were just told ‘chicken or beef’”

My wife and I both chose chicken.

It was OK.

We also had a free coffee!

WOW!

Then they come around and try and sell you duty free goods.

Then breakfast.

The breakfast boxes were just dumped on our flight tables.

No smile.

No eye contact.

Where’s the customer service?

They need training I thought.

Unless I can help it, I’ll never fly with this company again.

I can tell you the holiday got much, much better!

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The start of our Holiday

Who’s the number one blogger in the world?

Darren Rowse (some will argue he’s not)

What’s the most popular blog site about blogging?

ProBlogger.net by Darren Rowse

What’s the best value for money guide on improving your blog?

31 Days to Build a Better Blog by Darren Rowse

Would you like 50% off the current price?

To get the discount you need to use this coupon code – ‘probloggeris5? when prompted to add a code during the buying process.

This sale ends at 8pm MST (US Mountain Time) on 24th September.

Go here: 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

Would you like a sneek preview?

Then watch the video…

To get the 50% discount you need to use this coupon code – ‘probloggeris5? when prompted to add a code during the buying process.

This sale ends at 8pm MST (US Mountain Time) on 24th September.

Go here: 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

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50% off 31 Days to Build a Better Blog by Darren Rowse

This is the big one for homeworkers, isn’t it?

I think we all procrastinate to some extent. You put off something which you know you’ve got to do at some point, and which actually you could do straightaway. You put off to try and make more pleasant, but often end up making yourself feel stressed and guilty instead. There are many ways you can procrastinate and some of them masquerade as being helpful.

Do you recognise any of these?

• You carry on researching and gathering material long after you should have started on the task. You tell yourself this is vital background information but in fact you are just putting off the evil moment.

• You start to obsessively clean and tidy your immediate environment, well beyond necessity’s sake. You can’t start that job until you have absolutely the right equipment, furniture, computer, reference materials etc.

• Suddenly all sorts of other jobs take priority – the car needs cleaning, the washing line needs fixing, your shoes need polishing. That might be all useful activity but underneath you know very well it’s not getting you any closer to achieving that dreaded task.

So why do we Procrastinate?

There are many reasons for putting things off. In the simplest instances, it’s because you find the job boring or perhaps you don’t quite understand what is required.

If that is the case, there are simple practical steps you can take to rectify the situation – get somebody else to do it, for example! Particularly when you are running your own business, it really does pay to concentrate on your strengths, which bring in the money, and pay someone else to do the bits you hate and never get around to.

Doing the books is a prime example, and you can also get other people to deal with correspondence, chase payment of invoices and make sales calls.

Sometimes there are more insidious reasons which stop your progress and it might help to think whether any of these are applicable.

Just identifying them can help you to start overcoming them.

• Maybe you’re feeling overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of work you have to do, and the worry makes you unable to focus on making a start.

• You might be afraid of failing – ‘I’ve never been any good at this sort of thing. What if I make a mess of it and show myself up?’ Or you may actually fear success – ‘What will happen if I do really well in this? Will people still like me? What else might I have to do?’

• You suffer from perfectionism or unrealistically high standards. You might want to read everything you can find on a subject before starting to write it up, and keep finding new material.

• You might be expecting your first attempts to resemble the finished product, and get put off when your efforts look amateur or inadequate.

Tackling Procrastination

Don’t wait until the situation is desperate and you’ve made yourself miserable before you get started. The following suggestions should help you to deal with any of the above reasons for putting something off.

• You know that horrible sinking feeling when despite yourself the thought of that long-postponed task slips into your mind? Sometimes actually getting down to it can come as a relief. Try turning it round in your mind – ‘Today I will do that thing and it will be a pleasure because then I won’t have it at the back of my mind any more.’

• As long as cleaning and tidying your office isn’t one of your ways of procrastinating, having a good old clear up can be a way of kick-starting the brain. Making space in your physical environment can somehow make a space in your mind for new ideas to flow into.

• Remember that the most difficult moment is the first moment. If you can just get started, you begin to build up momentum and the further you go, the greater the momentum, until you are carried along almost without volition.

• Break the job into a number of small, easily achievable chunks. Do the first and then reward yourself by making a coffee or having a look at the paper. Continue like this in short bursts and you might find the magical momentum building up.

• Or you could start with the job you find easiest or like the best. Maybe it’s not the logical place to start, but if it gets you fired up, you can slot it into place later.

• A report or piece of written work can be hard to make a start on, as you already have the finished piece in your mind’s eye, and it’s difficult to know where to start. Have a brainstorm and write down all the ideas you associate with the subject. Group together the points into categories and you will begin to see how to develop your argument. The hard work is done; now you can concentrate on expressing your ideas.

• If you’re feeling overwhelmed – take a deep breath, sit down with a piece of paper and list all your jobs in order or priority. Start with the most important and work on it until it’s finished or you’ve done as much as you can. Then go on to the second most important job etc.

How do you overcome procrastination?

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What can you do about Procrastination?

Here’s how…

Click here and check out the Flexx theme

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How to change the layout and colors of your Wordpress blog in seconds using the Flexx theme

make a list?

Time management is one of the buzzwords of recent times and there is an infinite amount of information out there, in books, on the net, and in training courses. But it’s very simple – when you think about it, you can’t manage time at all. What you can do is manage yourself and prioritise the demands on your time. There’s a famous story about this. The details vary depending where you read it, but the basic principle is the same.

The best-paid Time Management tip ever?

In the 1930’s, Charles Schwab was the head of Bethlehem Steel, America’s largest independent steel producer. He asked a well-known management consultant, Ivy Lee, how to increase efficiency in the company. This was Lee’s advice:

1. Write down all the jobs you want to do tomorrow, and list the five most important in order of priority.

2. As soon as you start work tomorrow morning, start on the first item and don’t give up until it is complete, or as complete as you are able to make it.

3. Then start on the second item. If other jobs arise during the day, only deal with them if they are more important than the one you are already working on. If not add them to your list in order of priority.

4. When you have completed the first five jobs as far as you can, make another list of the next five jobs. It’s not a problem if you can’t do everything on the list – at least the most important jobs will be completed.

Schwab agreed to ask his managers to put this advice into practice for a month and then pay Lee whatever he felt it was worth. A month later, he sent Lee a cheque for $25,000, equivalent to almost $300,000 in today’s money. Schwab later said that it was the single most useful piece of information he had ever received and he believed it was immensely significant in the success of the company.

Give it a try and you will find it does work beautifully.

You have to be very disciplined if the top things on your lists are tasks you hate doing, but I guarantee it does pay off.

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While working from home make the most of your time

Check out this video and let me explain…

Click here for your free extract of “How to write articles for maximum effect”

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How to use Article Directories for great exposure

Check out the Flexx theme by clicking here

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Change your wordpress blog header in seconds with the Flexx theme

working from home allows me to walk along Worthing seafront

Following on from my recent post regarding the focus needed to work from home, once you understand what makes you tick and what your preferences are, you can design a workable structure for your day.

The way you organise your day may be dictated by commitments relating to children or other responsibilities, so start with considerations like the school run, and build your day around them.

Using a Diary

As a homeworker, I find it is essential to have a diary, whether it’s the traditional book and pen, a program on your computer or a hand-held gadget. Putting all work and domestic commitments into your diary as soon as you make them will avoid arrangements that clash.

I use the simple pen and book method.

In that previous post, I spoke about what I do each working day but what about…

Break Times

If you are anything like me, you may get so focussed on work, you simply lose track of time.

If I have an important phone call or activity that has to happen at a certain time, I set myself an alarm.

You might even want to set an alarm to remind you to take a break.

It is tempting to think you can just keep on working, but you will become less and less productive. Bear in mind the human brain is apparently only able to concentrate for 20 minutes at a time!

Getting Out

When I worked for a corporate company, I was often out and about. Going from one location to another. Travelling across the world.

Now working from home, I can be in a 4m x 4m room for up to 12 hours (if I were to allow that to happen).

I find it essential to get out of the house at least once a day, even if it’s only to pop down the road for a paper.

Working from home, means my ex-office-bound friends are envious of the luxury and opportunity of being able to do what I want, when I want.

I can now combine business and pleasure. If it’s sunny, I can take my laptop into the garden.

After a business meeting, I can meet a friend or join my wife for a stroll along the seafront.

It’s all too easy to forget there’s a whole world going on outside your workroom door.

At the end of the Day

You may like to set a finishing time in advance when you are planning your daily schedule, perhaps at around the time that our office-bound peers are logging off and joining the queues of commuters. Their journey home signals the end of the working day, but you may need a similar routine to your morning one – perhaps another walk with the dog or a bike ride – to emphasise that the business of the day is done and domestic concerns can now take over.

Getting out of the house and putting some physical distance between you and your tools or the computer can really help you to switch off from thoughts of work.

So if you find yourself working form home, make sure you have a routine and have time for yourself.

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Design a workable structure for your day

See for yourself how flexible the FLEXX theme is by clicking here.

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How to change the structure of your blog using the Flexx theme