BlogKori http://www.blogkori.com Learn & Earn Money Through Internet Fri, 25 May 2012 14:23:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 blogkorihttp://feedburner.google.com How To Get a Free Master Card From Bangladesh in 3 Steps! http://www.blogkori.com/how-to-get-a-free-master-card-from-bangladesh-in-3-steps/ http://www.blogkori.com/how-to-get-a-free-master-card-from-bangladesh-in-3-steps/#comments Mon, 21 May 2012 06:17:50 +0000 Tamal Anwar http://www.blogkori.com/?p=3762

Do you really want to know How To Get a Free Master Card From Bangladesh? Yes that’s right it’s FREE! You can receive a mastercard sent to you directly through postal mail, absolutely free!

This offer is available exclusively for Bangladeshi users.

You wont need a bank account in order to have a free mastercard.

You will not need credit statement to get a mastercard in Bangladesh.

You can use this mastercard to do online shopping, buy laptops, gadgets, pay online bills, buy domains and use paypal.

You can use this free mastercard to get your funds from a local ATM. Yes Dutch Bangla bank, Janata Bank Q-cash, Standard Chartred ATMs are available too!

You can use this mastercard card that you got in Bangladesh for free in foreign country.

You can use this mastercard in shopping malls.

So How To Get a Free Master Card From Bangladesh? Get your own free mastercard in just 3 steps:

Step #1 – Sign up for odesk

The first step for you to get a free mastercard in Bangladesh is to sign up for odesk.

Step #2 -Apply for a mastercard from the payment options

Go to your payment options page in odesk. Click to sign up for payoneer prepaid mastercard.

Submit your details & security documents. After they have accepted your application, they will send the mastercard in your address in Bangladesh.

Step #3 -Receive & activate your free mastercard

You will receive your mastercard within 30 days. After you receive your card, log in to your payoneer account and add the digits you see in your card. Add the pin number you want. After that your mastercard will be activated!

Loading money to your card

To load money, go to this page and someone who has money in their card can load your mastercard. Someone living abroad who has a mastercard or visa card, can also load to your card. If you work on any merchant services like odesk, elance, then you can load money from those account to your mastercard.

Here is a list of services that allow payoneer payments

Go ahead enjoy your free mastecard in bangladesh! Like, comment & tweet this blog post!

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]]> http://www.blogkori.com/how-to-get-a-free-master-card-from-bangladesh-in-3-steps/feed/ 0 I Went to oDesk Meetup Day Dhaka -2012 http://www.blogkori.com/odesk-meetup-dhaka-2012/ http://www.blogkori.com/odesk-meetup-dhaka-2012/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 07:55:20 +0000 Tamal Anwar http://www.blogkori.com/?p=3739

Few months ago I saw a public voting on facebook. It titled something like this: “Vote to bring odesk in your city” -so I voted for Dhaka. I didn’t expected that odesk would actually host an event at Dhaka.

Last month, I woke up in the morning and usually checking my email, I saw an invitation to register for the odesk event in Dhaka. I just put that email in “Read later” folder. Few hours later in the afternoon I logged in to facebook and saw that one of my contacts posted about this event and suggested that you should hurry in order to reserve your seat.

So I rushed and checked that email and registered. By the time I registered, there were 220 people already registered & I heard that they will take only first 350 attendees.

So this was my ticket:

By the way odesk is a freelance marketplace. If you want to know what is it and how to start freelancing, check out this post.

The event was at Emmanuelle’s Banquet Hall in Gulshan-1. I went to the place on time and it was easy finding the place. I checked the map earlier so it was not a big deal at all.

Around 3PM in the afternoon, the temperature of the city was very hot and I was sweating. Anyways after getting inside it was a relaxing environment.

Let the pictures do that talking:

Emmanuelle’s Banquet Hall

Matt from odesk giving a speech

What made this evening very interesting is the cool people I know from online and finally met in person:

Seeing RZaman on the event was a surprise for me. Had a fun time with this dude.

With RZaman Anik of EncodeLabs

Roni (Delwar Jahan) caught me and it was a fun afternoon with me. We talked a lot about internet marketing, SEO & SMM.

With Delwar Jahan of TechRon & SMSKotha

Eunus & Al-Amin caught me on the spot and again we talked many things about my work and their new startup company DevsTeam. They also asked me when I will go and visit their office.

With Eunus Hossein & Al-Amin Kobir of DevsTeam

I met Foqrul and he introduced me with all of his buddies. All of them who work in odesk, that’s a real good thing. But I didn’t like what he did with his hair (now he is bald)

With Foqrul Islam(further right) & his friends

See ladies! How handsome he looks with his hair?

After the speech & video, we were offered snacks:

RZ having fun with food

UMM GUMM GUM

I didn’t hear anything what Matt said or the other participants, nor the video intro. It was all boring, this must be the reason why they wrapped things up by 5:30PM instead of being 7PM.

The main productive bit was discussing things with each other. I learned how to create a team on odesk from RZ. I was looking for this information for a long time.

Here is a shot where I am discussing odesk and how to get jobs:

Tamal Anwar at oDesk Meetup Dhaka

I also talked about getting video testimonials, odesk SEO and popping video on google search for your name.

When I got back to home I quickly created this short video on odesk SEO:

In the final hour I overheard people saying that this event wasn’t up as hyped and the food could have been better. I agree with this fact but for a first meetup here in Dhaka, the standard was very high.

I am a dumb-ass because I should have done some video blogs at the event, I had so many cool folks sitting right next to me who could provide valuable info for you all.

Anyways there will be many more meetups up ahead this year and maybe next time I will do lots of vids.

What I absolutely didn’t like is that all the people lined to take photo with Matt. It was really a silly thing. Matt must have had a hard time. Replacing this worthless time, interested folks could talk to Matt directly, establishing a connection, not just clicking a profile photo with a foreigner:

for a photo with Matt -silly

And what did your bro Tamal did? Did I took a photo with Matt? Nah I don’t flow with the current.

Matt already taken group pictures with people in every table, so I am already with him and I talked with him during a short span of time. I clearly stated my message to him “Hey Matt, odesk really changed my life.”

Odesk awarded dummy certificates to most odesk hour holders. One dude who was sitting next to me had over 7000 odesk hours. Man that’s crazy! That guy works 40 hours a week at odesk and maintains his study. He also must be superman.

Looking at this I feel it’s not good to hear. Yeah I work on odesk but I came out of that and started my own freelance business, but if you are spending whole lot of time for odesk work, then what’s the main difference with freelancing & a 9-5 job?

Talking about 9-5 jobs. DevsTeam (Creation of Eunus, Al-Amin & 3 others) have their own office and they maintain a real office schedule. I was talking to them about this just before leaving, “Isn’t this a backward step you have taken?”

I mean the whole point of working online is about working at home, when you want and where you want. But if your work again makes you deal with a time table, transportation, buying lunch then what’s the point?

When I started SevenBranding last year I too wanted to look big. I wanted to have an office, incorporate the business, be a tax payer, bank accounts, investors, full time staff etc etc. But at the right moment a wise decision was made and I didn’t went for the hype.

Anyways that was all my 2 cents, DevsTeam -please don’t be offended with my comments, but you need to think wisely on what you are doing. After all it’s your business and you know how to run it better.

Overall it was a great evening for me:

Tamal Anwar at The oDesk Contractor Appreciation Day, Dhaka

On my way to home, it was heavy raining. A cold weather and this also messed up my clothes :(

To see some more photos, head over to my fan page: Tamal Anwar (Look for the album titled oDesk Dhaka)

Share your thoughts with me on comments!

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]]> http://www.blogkori.com/odesk-meetup-dhaka-2012/feed/ 14 How to Get Referrals with Video Testimonials for Starting Your Career http://www.blogkori.com/how-to-get-referrals-with-video-testimonials-for-starting-your-career/ http://www.blogkori.com/how-to-get-referrals-with-video-testimonials-for-starting-your-career/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:12:09 +0000 Tamal Anwar http://www.blogkori.com/?p=3719

How to Get Referrals with Quality Video Testimonials for Starting Your CareerLet me share my secret on how to get referrals (word of mouth clients) in freelance or any business you are in. Quality video testimonials will help you grow in your freelance career or any field you are operating. In this article I will write about how you can EARN quality video testimonials from your clients. This will help you when you are starting your career and teach you on how to get referrals.

I started back in 2009 in odesk and that website has a rating system. A scale from 1-5 stars, that gives a hint about the quality of a freelance worker. The more the stars is obviously better. As a part of the star rating system in odesk clients can write a short testimonial about the contractor (me)

This testimonial/feedback will help new clients to learn about the contractor and get you more referrals. As the feedback system had a positive impact because right now my rating is 4.97 stars (close enough) –it can also ruin your chances for getting work if you are receiving negative feedback.

Here are few tips I want to share for you to get better feedback and how to get referrals. This helped me boost my career as I was getting more and more business through word of mouth. Here take a look at the tips on how to get referrals in business.

Quality – Quality – Quality

This is How To Get Referrals in the First Place

Yes you hear it right. If you provide outstanding results, you will genuinely receive quality feedback. This is my only suggestion for how to get referrals. In my freelance work I focused on going on an extra mile just to provide a better product to my client. In design related work the client needs changes more often and sometimes it’s a bit pain. But if you provide changes (making sure you are not burning yourself) then client will be happy with what you are doing.

Make the Client 100% Satisfied –A Solid Tip on How To Get Referrals

It is impossible to satisfy everyone but so many clients will be if you walk an extra mile, do one last tweak and do something he didn’t even asked for. Some clients provide a list of tasks and after completing each of the tasks when the project is finished you can shoot an email asking “hey is there anything else you want me to do?” –I did the same thing to one client and he replied with a warm message that how happy he was with my work and there is nothing left to do.

Ask For a Feedback & Ask For Referrals

Most people will give you feedback because of the odesk feedback system but if you are dealing directly with a client you have to ask for a feedback. Don’t ask for a positive feedback and don’t even ask for 5 stars. A testimonial should come naturally. In odesk if someone provides a negative feedback you can hide it. Most people will provide positive reviews but if someone does provide a negative one, just talk to them and help them out. This is how to get referrals as you move on.

How To Get Referrals With Video Testimonials

Now day’s people have access to videos. So far I have earned 4-5 video testimonials which are great for gaining new clients to my business. When you complete a project just ask them if they can share their experience with a short video. Video speaks more than just text. Once you have that video you can ask your client to upload it online or you can do it on your channel. Make sure you link to these people and their website or social profile so that general audience can reach and verify them. This is one best way how to get referrals these days. Take a look at this video testimonial I received recently:

Tamal Anwar

See on the bottom of this video I have my name that is a link to this video. This is video SEO which helps the video to rank when people search for my name on google:

how to get referrals using video testimonials

Stay In Touch With Your Clients

It’s a good practice to be friends with your clients and connect with them on email and other social media networks. The more they will see you; they will remember you and they will call you for work when they will need it. This also helps them to refer other people to your services. They will also send their friends to your side. This is how to get referrals in your business for longer. With web design sometimes your past clients will shoot you an email for some help. You can wish to do some small tweaks for free or can charge them hourly for the task.

You liked this article? Please share it on social media sites and tell a friend about me!

 

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]]> http://www.blogkori.com/how-to-get-referrals-with-video-testimonials-for-starting-your-career/feed/ 2 Niche Site Challenge 2 – Niche Selection for my Mini Authority Website http://www.blogkori.com/niche-site-challenge-2/ http://www.blogkori.com/niche-site-challenge-2/#comments Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:27:14 +0000 Tamal Anwar http://www.blogkori.com/?p=3701

Niche site buildingNiche is a market you want to get into. When I started a blog, I had many options to choose and even blogging niche is so broad I could write on many different topics. But when building a mini site I am bound to just one topic because at most I will be writing 20 pages for this website.

A popular belief is to go for the niches that are popular or what we assume sell well. If I just name niche building and affiliate marketing, then the first thing that comes in my mind is the health market or even the weight loss market. Yet so many people dive into the pool and as a result there is so much competition. But in reality, most people I assume don’t know why they are here. That’s why 97% people fail in internet marketing. So that means only 3% of the websites/marketers out there in the weight lose industry that makes the most money.

My Niche Selection Disaster

When I first started niche site building, I went for a random market that I had no idea about. The market was pinball machines. These machines are huge and sell at $4000 price tag and only a few companies online sell them and have affiliate option. Such things are collectible items and about 30 years old. These pieces are grand fathers of arcade games. So I was hoping for a $200 commission per sale. As I had no idea about the product I went out and purchased a few quality reviews. I also spent money for building links. As months passed by I didn’t saw any sale. When I added a few pinball books and mini toys on the site that range $15-40, these sold a couple of times.

So the lesson is learned, offer a product that has a good entry level pricing people can afford.

Again I made another mistake by choosing a market that I have no idea about. Say if I go for a weight loss industry and try to sell product that I have no idea what it does and how to use it, then how would I be able to build a website around it?

I Selected the Web Hosting Market This Time

I found an interesting ebook that has all the money making niches (download it here). It lists roughly 100 niches. From there I decided to go for the niches that are related to internet marketing. Few of these niches are:

  • Make Money Online
  • Freelancing
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Web Hosting
  • Email Marketing

Since I am an internet marketer for 5 years now, I have knowledge over many topics. This will help me to write about the things from my own experience. I choose web hosting niche for one reason and the reason is this a fundamental cost of operating a website. I host my website on hostgator and paying them for 3 years now. I also recommended them to my friends and blog readers here and have earned commissions by doing this. So if I could make money out of web hosting without even directly promoting them, I can make good money building a website (INSHALLAH!)

My Website & the Core Strategy

My website will be about web hosting. It won’t be a traditional web hosting reviews website; it will be like a blog website talking about hosting a website and then sharing about a good web hosting. I don’t want to make a website about hostgator and limit my product to just one. With “web hosting” as the main topic I can put any web hosting link I can in the website.

Web hosting affiliates pay very well. Some sites even pay $100/sign up. Hostgator pays $50 per sale so it is one of the hot markets. From blogkori alone I have made $200 commission for hostgator.

If I would build a site around: “Hostgator Review” or “Hostgator Web Hosting” –then the problem would be:

  • This site will be directly competing against hostgator itself
  • This site will be all about hostgator
  • I cannot change my product in future

But since I will build a site about “web hosting” –then I can choose hundreds of companies that are active and also this is a market that will grow over time. Think about it, everyday lots of people join the internet and they need website. For website they will need web hosting.

So now that I am set, my next step will be doing keyword research and purchasing a domain name.

Stay tuned!

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]]> http://www.blogkori.com/niche-site-challenge-2/feed/ 5 Niche Website Challenge – Road to Passive Income http://www.blogkori.com/niche-website-challenge-1/ http://www.blogkori.com/niche-website-challenge-1/#comments Sun, 15 Apr 2012 11:03:52 +0000 Tamal Anwar http://www.blogkori.com/?p=3695

internet marketingHey everyone its Tamal. How are you? It’s been long time I haven’t been able to update you on what I am doing, so I owe you on this. In recent years I went into many different things and most of them involved me to work with web design clients and also working on personal projects.

Now I want to give you a quick update on what I been up to lately. Recently I have been partnered up with an USA based SEO company. I am building an online music promotion business called: Celebrity SEO. Lastly I am looking for building affiliate niche websites. Now the question is why niche websites? I want to build niche websites, mini authority websites so that these will make passive income on auto pilot.

Why Passive Income?

The reason is simple, I want to make money while I sleep or go on a vacation. In the last couple of years I made a good deal of money being a freelancer. But I soon realized that my income is tied with my ability to work. This is why for a long time I am trying to build passive income systems using internet marketing.

My Failures

On the internet we get to see so many people share their success stories but there is hardly any people share their story of failure. I am pursuing niche websites for 2 years for now and failed many times. One thing is sure, building niche websites require a good deal of cash flow and you will end up paying more money and hardly make anything. As a reason last year I had to face many ups and downs in my online work due to the trial and errors. I will write in another post about my past failures.

The Challenge

I have failed many times in the last 2 years while building these mini sites. This post idea actually came from Pat and Tyrone who started a niche site duel 2 years back. They were successful building niche websites with 2 different strategies. I will be doing the same by publically sharing about my niche site and the exact plan I am following.

I am also sharing this so that I can stick to my plan and never lose my focus. As I am publically sharing my actions, I will be responsible for whatever the result is. It could be a success or could be a failure but only time will tell.

One of my close friends wants to learn step by step for different internet marketing stuff. So I want to share tips as I work my way up on the process.

PS: The niche building strategy that I am following is from the Absolute Biggest failure Craig Mako. He is an SEO whose expertise earns him over $25,000 a month. Check his FastAttackSEO blueprint over here. –The blueprint I am following for this niche site challenge.

So sit back and get ready to join this ride with me! I hope for success so that you can copy exactly what I did and do the same for you. I will be updating regularly on every detail, so make sure to come back regularly or even sign up for the email updates!

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]]> http://www.blogkori.com/niche-website-challenge-1/feed/ 2 How to Offer an Ebook Download Using Feedburner http://www.blogkori.com/ebook-download-using-feedburner/ http://www.blogkori.com/ebook-download-using-feedburner/#comments Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:26:20 +0000 Tamal Anwar http://www.blogkori.com/?p=3673

As you have learned in my last few posts how to create a PDF ebook from a word doc and then where to host your ebook for instant download. Now in this post I would like to share how you can offer your ebook through feedburner.

feedburnerFeedburner is a free blog RSS service and it is a must when it comes to setting up your blog. Feedburner has a free email delivery service and people can sign up for your blog posts through email. We can use this as a method to deliver your ebook and for your ebook you can get more blog subscribers.

So here is what you have to do. Go to feedburner and sign in to your feeds. If you don’t have feedburner, then use this guide on feedburner to set it up. Now go to your blog feed.

You will see a publicize tab on top:

offer ebook in feedburner publicize tab

Then choose email subscriptions from the left (you may need to activate this service):

offer ebook in feedburner email subscriptions area

Now this is the email people will receive when someone subscribes to your mailing list. Just put your download link on the body somewhere and you are ready to go.

offer ebook in feedburner email confirmation message

offer ebook in feedburner download link

In your email subscription form you may write something like subscribe and receive your free ebook to encourage your readers to subscribe.

The only downside of this tactic is that people will get the download link before subscribing. Feedburner has no auto responder service but still it’s good for a free service. In the next few posts I will write about making an email submit form you can put on the sidebar using feedburner. Till then stay tuned and keep commenting and sharing!

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]]> http://www.blogkori.com/ebook-download-using-feedburner/feed/ 1 How to Outsource Your Business Like A Pro http://www.blogkori.com/how-to-outsource-your-business/ http://www.blogkori.com/how-to-outsource-your-business/#comments Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:54:21 +0000 Tamal Anwar http://www.blogkori.com/?p=3653

Outsourcing is a skill to master. So many people get great results through outsourcing their workload and to the contrast so many folks waste precious money, effort and time dealing with freelance contractors. In this guide I would like to outline about the things you can do to make your life easy in online business.

Outsourcing was meant to relax you and lose your pain but most of the times people spend more time by training and giving instructions to the contractor. If you are just starting out and don’t want that pain then continue please because this is the How to Outsource guide that will make your life easier.

Know Your Outsourcing Needs

First define how much time and budget you have. Set a few deadlines that you want to achieve this within a given time frame. Find out how much your time is worth. There are few reasons you may want to outsource your work:

  • You don’t have the time to do it yourself
  • You don’t have the skills to do it yourself
  • You need to get things done faster

Whatever the reason is, you got to find the perfect guy/girl for you. Set a budget for the project and how much you want to spend for this project. Add 40% additional to this budget. Say your budget is $1000, then add an additional $400 to it. This is for the over head cost that may be required in the project.

Set a time frame for your project. Let’s say you want to get this done within 1 month. Then keep an extra 2 more weeks in hand to be on the safe side if anything goes wrong or for the finishing touches.

How And Where To Find The Perfect Guy/Girl To Outsource?

There are plenty of resources to find your match for this project you have in hand. There are companies, agents, market places, freelance sites etc but the best way to do business with someone is to do with them as direct as possible. Most outsourcing companies don’t let you know who is actually doing your work. This is bad both for you and your contractor. The more middle man you have in between, the more time will take to finish your project. Here are few methods you can try to find a freelancer to outsource:

Freelance Marketplaces: oDesk is the number one outsourcing website in the world. You can join, verify your credit card and then post a job for free. After you post your job you will get lots of contractors applying to your job. You can get overwhelmed by odesk very quickly because you will be receiving 100s of inquiries depending on the type of job you posted. By default more than half of the people who have applied to the job will be the ones who cannot complete your job so it’s a bit tricky to filter out the real pros from the noobs.

You can do a manual search on odesk for the contractors you are looking for. In this way you can contact then and start the ball rolling quickly. Another website you can use is Elance. It works just like odesk but has a different standard. You can expect a bit high end contractors over there.

Contest Websites: 99Designs is a website if you are looking for a graphics or logo designer. This website allows you to host a design contest for a prize. For this prize designers will submit their work. You can get to see the completed design and then choose a winner. This type of website is great for you because you can see upfront of your project and then happily pay the best designer.

Internet Forums: Forums are good places to find your perfect contractor. There are many internet forums where you can find people to outsource. Such forum I can recommend is Warrior Forums. This is an internet marketing forum dedicated to the internet marketing community. If you want to have articles writing, SEO, link building and design tasks to be done then check out the warriors for hire section. There you can directly connect and hire your service provider.

Micro Freelancing: Sites like Fiverr has gained popularity because of the $5 price tag. You can outsource pretty much anything and everything from logo to writing to speech and you name it. But for a low price you cannot expect a world class work. Most of the gigs (they call it) are worthless because you will be getting a late delivery and cannot ask for a change in most cases. If you are a serious buyer and cannot afford to lose time and money then keep fiverr for your least important tasks.

Search Directly: You can do a google search for your contractor. Most of the advanced pros have their website setup and offering their service. You can find high quality freelancers through this but let me tell you, it won’t be cheap. Since you will be contacting them to do your work and they are not, it will be your headache and not theirs. I am a freelancer myself and when people contact me, my prices are almost double than what people pay me in odesk but I deliver a great quality work.

Things to Ask Before You Hire a Freelancer

If you hire the wrong person for the job, you will be paying more money and time in order to fix their mistakes at the end. Here are few things you should clarify and be sure about them:

How Much Knowledge They Have Over This Subject?

Don’t count how many years they have worked or how many degrees they posses. It is about how much they know. Does the contractor know more than you or do they know less? Do they know how to handle a project and what they have to do in order to complete it? For an example if you are hiring a logo designer and your website is about medical practices. Do they know what type of colors people usually use for medical logos; do they have good sense of colors?

Do You Work Fulltime or Part-Time?

People who are working fulltime, you can expect a faster turnaround time than them who do it part time. There are many reasons you should not hire someone who is working part time. If your contractor is in school or has office work, then you will have times when you need an urgent update and the guy you hired is not responsive for a while. If your project doesn’t requires an immediate attention, such as you want articles to be written then part time freelancer won’t be a problem for you.

How Many Projects You Have Done Before?

It is important to know what kind of work they have done in the past. Do they have an online portfolio with live links? Do they have testimonials and the people who gave are they real? It is very easy to spot the not if you have common sense. Ask the provider what exactly you did on that project and how long it took for them to complete. If they cannot provide enough evidence of work that leaves you in doubt then consider hiring someone else.

Are You Online? Can I Reach You On Phone/Skype?

You should work with people who are real online. They should not use a fake name or username. You are doing business with them; you will give them money and secret information so you have to make sure they are real. Ask them if they can be found on google, facebook or other. See how they are online. If you can’t find them ask them why they are not. Ask for their phone number or skype name. A real freelance contractor should be easy on passing their contact number/skype ID to the employer. If possible give a call talk to them and know who they are.

What Are The Payment Terms/Options You Support?

If you are using a marketplace such as odesk then it won’t be a problem for you to pay the funds. But if you are working with the contractor directly then ask them what type of payment process they use. Your contractor should support paypal to process payments. If your contractor doesn’t supports paypal then there must be another secure way to process the funds. But since the contractor is offering their services individually they should be able to manage paypal shopping or at least a secure credit card processor. It is good if you purchase a few debit cards just for your freelancing stuff.

When You Will Deliver The Project?

Ask them when they will deliver/complete your project. Don’t get indefinite time frame like few days or few weeks. Get a definite timeline such as by 30th of this month. See how they perform and make sure they keep sending you updates as they complete each phase. Wait for the deadline to come and see what happens. Some contractors will complete your project before time, and some will not. You have to keep an eye for them who are aware of it. If they say “hey I know this was supposed to be completed by 30th but I had to take 1 more week for the final touches.” –these are words of responsibility and you should keep these people in your team.

Some Helpful Tools for Better Outsourcing

  • Skype –free PC to PC video/voice calls and screen sharing
  • DropBox –free file sharing service ideal for transferring files
  • Google Docs –online document to keep track of your tasks and share with your contractor
  • LastPass –free password saving and sharing service.
  • Jing –free screen recording service for instructing your contractor

So there you have it how to outsource your business like a pro. I hope this guide will be helpful in finding the right contractor for your outsourcing needs. If you have any tips to share then feel free to drop them in the comments section, thanks!

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]]> http://www.blogkori.com/how-to-outsource-your-business/feed/ 3 Timeless Link Building Strategy – Building Link & Backlinking Guide http://www.blogkori.com/timeless-link-building-strategy/ http://www.blogkori.com/timeless-link-building-strategy/#comments Fri, 09 Mar 2012 08:20:00 +0000 Tamal Anwar http://www.blogkori.com/?p=3633

Timeless Link Building Strategy – Building Link & Backlinking GuideFor the last few years I am doing a whole lot of SEO & backlinking stuff. Frankly speaking I had no idea about any particular link building strategy. When I first started my blog, I was building link here and there randomly. I kept writing articles and that’s all I did. I am still learning and as I make my way up I will be sharing more on what I have learned. In this article I will write about the timeless link building strategy that will work everytime. In a nutshell SEO boils down to just 3 parts:

  1. Keyword research
  2. On page website optimization
  3. Link building

The last part is the biggest and the most exciting of them all, also the most frustrating one. For a long time I suck in all of the 3 above mentioned things, that’s why I couldn’t see any success in my rankings. I didn’t know what I was doing. I would launch a new site; backlinking randomly here and there and hoping to see a magic in life.

But magic doesn’t happen in reality. That’s why it sucked! So back to the reality I then lost interest to my site and move on to another one and still getting the same ending. As a result I had 20s of websites that were a pain in my ass and I have no idea what I should be doing with them.

Sounds familiar?

So in this article I would like to share about a link building strategy that will work. I call it Link Engineering. What ever you call it, it’s all the same, how to get more links pointing to your website. Like me you must have read lots of ebooks on building links. The ones that say do this, do that and bla bla bla. But in reality link building is very diverse. Here are the most basic ways to attain links for your website:

  1. BacklinksDirectory Submission
  2. Article Directories
  3. Social Bookmarking
  4. Forum Posting
  5. Paid Links
  6. Link Exchange
  7. Guest Blogging
  8. Edu/Gov Links
  9. Link Requests
  10. Blog Commenting
  11. Press Releases
  12. Mass/Automated links

And that’s not all; there are countless ways you can start building link for your website. The thing is when most people start link building (doing it yourself or outsourcing it) they focus on the most conventional methods of linking. Sometimes they pump up 1-2 methods of building links. For an example most link builders advertise on forums that you can purchase a link packet for merely 50 bucks and receive 5000 one way links to your website in 3 days. This will boost your website on top for the desired keyword you want. But in reality it doesn’t work. Think about it, if it were so easy then why don’t other people do this to get top rankings and make money? Why people spend thousands of dollars in SEO and link building?

The reality is you get what you pay for.

So if you want a good link building strategy, you have to touch all of the means of backlinking as you can. For an example say you setup a new site on selling sunglasses online. Start your building link by submitting to article directories. Submit your link to 50 directories. Then start writing articles for article directories, post to 50 article directories. So the whole thing may look like this:

  • Premium Directories – 1-5 Links – 1Week
  • Directory Submission – 50-100 Submission (30-50 Links) – 1Week
  • Article Directories – 50 Links – 1Week
  • Social Bookmarking – 50 Links – 1Week
  • Forum Posting – 20 Forum Registration (20-30 Links) – 1Week
  • Paid Links – 1-10 Links – 1Week
  • Link Exchange – 10 Links – 1Week
  • Guest Blogging – 5 Links – 1Week
  • Edu/Gov Links – 10 Links – 1Week
  • Link Requests – 1-10 Links – 1Week
  • Blog Commenting – 25 Links – 1Week
  • Press Releases – 25 Links – 1Week

So with the above rough calculations you can attain roughly 300 domain backlinks in 12 weeks. The total number of backlinks will be higher than this, could be 3000-5000. This is because when you get a backlink from footer or from the sidebar, it counts every page the link is shown. So if I give you a link from BlogKori sidebar, you get 1 domain backlink but you will get total 400+ backlinks because your link will show up in all of the 400 pages this blog has.

Here is a quick overview of the backlink types I have mentioned on top:

Premium Directories: These are paid directories, high editorial standards. 2 of the top directories to name are:

Both of them are useless for 97% of webmasters because DMOZ is hard to get into and they have a waiting list of 5 years. So when your number comes you may have retired from the IM, LOL! Yahoo Directory doesn’t guarantees for the inclusion but the 300/year is so high for most people.

There are other premium directories that don’t cost an arm or leg to get included. Such directories usually charge $29-$97. Better if you can get your site listed in few of these sites. Some niche ones (category specified) cost as low as 10 bucks to get listed. So I have proposed 1-5 links for the first round of link building. This will cost you roughly 100-200 dollars, but the investment is worth it! Here are few of the many paid directories with their fees:

Directory SubmissionDirectory Submission: These are all the mass free directories that exist in the cyberspace. In regular these links don’t do any good to website ranking but when it comes to a large number of these and then you will have a good impact for your site. Submit your site to the general class directories. Submit to the ones that has page rank, higher than 4. Less than that is not worth your time. Avoid reciprocal links. It’s not worth your time.

Search for niche directories. Such as if your site is about flowers, then see how many directories specialize in florists or garden niches. Submitting to those sites will give you better value. Any page rank these sites have doesn’t matters. So if your site is about shoes and you found a directory about shoes, then go for it. Doesn’t matters even if that site has just Page Rank Zero or no page rank at all; when it’s on topic, it’s gold –you get the point! Submit to 50-100 sites and out of them you can expect 30-50 live links. Then move on to the next phase. Here is a website that lists all the directories:

Article Directories: These are article sites where you can submit articles and get a link back to your site from the footer or author resource area. One of the top article site is EzineArticles. To speed up the process and make it less time consuming you can write one article and then spin it. Spinning means changing the words and synonyms of the article so it looks fresh to the search engine. Write 5 articles and spin them to get 10 copies of each, you have 50 copies now. You can use an online article spinner to do this for you. Then you can post these to 10 top level article directories and you will have 50 links when they are accepted. Here is a free online content spinning software you can use: Content Professor. And also these are my favorite article directories that accept spinned articles:

Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking sites are user generated content sites such as Digg, Reddit. Delicious etc. Register for 10 top level bookmarking sites and submit 5 posts to these sites. 5×10 = 50 links you will have. Just like other easy link building techniques, these links don’t add any great value to your campaign but in big numbers you have something there! Here are 10 of my favorites:

Forum Posting: Search on google for related forums. Search “your keyword forum” or “your keyword discussion board” –where your keyword means the keyword you are targeting. Find the forums and register for 20 of them you like. Most of these sites will allow you to create a link on your profile. That link is all that you need. Just by registering to 20 different forums and putting your links you can ensure 20 links from different IP addresses or countries. If you want to take one step further then go to the “Introduction” thread of every forum and say HI. That’s all. Most of these forums allow a link to your signature. Create one for a bonus link. We don’t want to spend the whole day on forum posting so let’s move on.

Paid LinksPaid Links: These are links that you have to purchase from other site owners. This can be a good investment. Search for blog directories if you can find related blogs and websites of your topic. See if you can get a good advertisement or paid link opportunity. Links to new blogs may cost $5-10 a month or even $50 a month. We want to save money here so keep looking if you get a good deal. Search on Fiverr, there are lots of webmasters willing to sell links for 5 dollars. Some of them offer a yearly or even a lifetime deal. Great if you can get a yearly deal. Get a few paid links if you have the money but make sure you are not spending a lot just for paid links.

Guest Blogging: Guest blogging will give you more exposure. The thing of guest blogging is that you write a post for another blog. Find these blogs that match your market topic. You can search this on MyBlogGuest forum. You need to produce the best article for these blogs. So make it good so that link will count. Almost every guest post gives out a link back to the author’s site so that’s a WIN WIN situation. Do 5 guest posts and move on.

Edu/Gov linksEdu/Gov Links: These are rumored to be the highest authority links. And yes they are because most of these sites belong to reputable institutes such as harvard.edu or usa.gov. You don’t have to buy links from them. You can build your own. It takes common sense and sharp observation. Most of these sites have a blog where you can comment so that’s how you get a link. Build 10 links of these in any combination and let’s move forward.

Link Requests: AKA link begging. This is a process of emailing other webmasters on giving a link back to your site. This straight approach may be light but “If you don’t ask, the answer will be no“ I have asked many webmasters for links, most of them rejected but some of them were kind enough to link back. All it takes is a few minutes of your time to find the name and email of the webmaster and then send them a personalized email. It works best when you have a relation with that webmaster, your friend or work buddy. So ask links and build 10 of these.

Blog Commenting: This is yet the easiest form of securing a link. You can search a blog and comment or you were reading an interesting post and comment with your link, as simple as that. Some comments allow keywords, some of them don’t. Some are dofollow. Build 25 blog comment links and move on, we don’t have much time for this!

Press Release: These are online press articles you can submit to a number of free sites. I think you have no idea how to write one. Go to fiverr and have one written for you for $5. Then submit your article to the free press release sites. Most of these sites allow a link back to your site so use that on your favor. Build 25 links like this. Here is a list of Free PR sites you can use: (if you see some of them are paid or unreachable, please notify me so I can remove them)

End of Round One

Now that the round one is complete for your link building strategy, you will find that your site has a good standing in the search engine rankings. We did this over the course of 12 weeks (3 months) you can however do all in one week but this is not recommended. Steady growth in backlining is better than fast linking. If you rush for backlinking you will be stressed and lose momentum. In the mean time you have to keep writing new articles and learn new ways of building links and tweaking your site. Once the round one is complete, check your stats that you are progressing and then do the same as round two. Keep doing it until you hit the #1 position for your keyword.

In the next articles I will write details on each of the link building methods I have mentioned above. Do let me know your thoughts and did I miss anything important?

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]]> http://www.blogkori.com/timeless-link-building-strategy/feed/ 0 How to Host Your Ebook as an Online Download http://www.blogkori.com/host-your-ebook-online-download/ http://www.blogkori.com/host-your-ebook-online-download/#comments Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:44:21 +0000 Tamal Anwar http://www.blogkori.com/?p=3606

You have an ebook that you want to offer as a download. Now in this post I will write about how you can host your ebook online and offer it as a download. If you want to know how I have created my word document in a PDF ebook, then make sure to check that post out.

Okay so we want to host this ebook you created online. There are many options to host your ebook online. The end goal here is that we want to make this available on demand. The very basic way to host a PDF ebook is to host it on your own server.

Host on Your Own Server

You can do this if you are a wordpress self hosted blogger. Go to your Dashboard > Media > Add New and upload your ebook. Now for many reason you should or could not use this method. One reason is that in some hosts there is a limitation on how much the file size should be.

Some limit with 2MB, some do 8MB and some do 64MBs of upload per file.  You can however FTP your file to your server manually. Here is a video you can see on how to use FTP software. This video is related to something else; but if you want to know how to use FTP, then make sure to watch this:

Either way you should not want to host your ebook on your own. Because the ebook will be visible on search and you may not want to offer that for free (if you are selling it or using it as an email hook)

On the other side if you are hosting your own ebook then it may eat up your bandwidth fast. Such as my ebook that I am offering it costs 5MB. So with just 20 downloads, I will be burning 100MBs from my shared server.

Host Your Ebook Online Using Amazon Web Services (S3 Storage)

A good way to host your ebook online is to use Amazon Web Services. This is an extremely cheap service. Cheap is because they charge a every (like 1-2 dollars) per 5 Tera bytes. And the first 5 TB is free so you are not going to pay anything until you use it off.

Go and sign up for an account in amazon web services. Go to your S3 panel and create a bucket (a bigger folder) from there you click on the upload button and upload your ebook.

amazon s3 console overview

Once the upload is finish you have to make this file public. Right click on the file and click “Make it public”

amazon s3 console make public

Once you are done, you have to take the url. Right click again and click on “Properties”

This is the URL you need, this is the public URL.

amazon s3 console take url

Copy this address to a notepad file, when people will sign up for your newsletter or whatever, you will supply this link to make them download your ebook.

Host Your Ebook Online On Media Fire

MediaFire is yet another online FREE service that will make it easy for you to upload. It’s a no brainer. Just go and sign up for an account, upload your file. Then in the files overview click on settings over the file and click “Copy Link” –this is the link you need.

mediafire download link

One great think about MediaFire is that it counts how many times the file has been downloaded.

Now that I have covered the topic on how to host your ebook as an online download in this article, I will write about how you can offer your ebook as a part of an auto responder. Thanks and leave a comment to let me know how this article was.

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]]> http://www.blogkori.com/host-your-ebook-online-download/feed/ 2 How to Create A PDF Ebook Using Google Docs http://www.blogkori.com/create-a-pdf-ebook-using-google-docs/ http://www.blogkori.com/create-a-pdf-ebook-using-google-docs/#comments Mon, 27 Feb 2012 08:44:07 +0000 Tamal Anwar http://www.blogkori.com/?p=3598

On this post I will write about how you can create ebooks to offer in your blog as downloads in PDF version. PDF files are very popular and it can be opened in mobile phones, smart phones, iphones and ipads as well as computers. In google chrome PDF can be opened and read right on the browser.

If you want to get more traffic from your blog and make money then you can offer free PDF downloads as a part of your content. Most internet marketers use downloadable ebooks as a hook to get email addresses. Such as I am doing with my blog, I am offering this ebook in my sidebar so people can submit their info and get the book. You may offer your blog articles as PDF downloads so people can read it offline and can print it. You can also sell ebooks and make money. There are endless opportunities with ebooks but first let us learn how to create a PDF ebook using google docs.

Which Program to Use for Writing an Ebook?

To write an ebook, open your word application such as Microsoft word or any other word processor you may have. You can also use open office to create your ebook. You can put your older blog posts and make up an ebook or you can write one from scratch.

What Should Be the Length of an Ebook?

It all drills down to the information you are providing. It can be short 10 page book or even 200 pages long. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve. If it’s a freebie, then make it short and if it is something exclusive then make it worthy and full of useful information.

How Should I Convert My Document in PDF Format?

Now here comes the important part and I think for this information you came to this site. How you can make your word document into a PDF file. Go to docs.google.com. It’s a free service and you should need your google account to sign in:

google docs for creating pdf

Now that you are signed in, upload your word file that you created:

google docs upload doc file

Now after uploading the file, open it on docs and you will see your document online.

google docs edit your file

Now all you have to do is to click File > Download As > PDF.

google docs download as pdf

Then you should be able to save this file back in your computer but this time it’s in a PDF format.

the pdf in your computer

Now your ebook is ready to be distributed. In the next few posts I will write about how to host your ebook online and offer it as a free download.

Make sure you leave a feedback and let me know about the ebook you created, thanks!

 

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