A fast warning on latest wordpress update
If you are thinking of updating your wordpress blog, then I suggest you to wait for a while. I recently updated my blogs with wordpress 2.6 and encountered one problem after another. I tried everything these guys suggested without any results.
2 of My main problems were
1. white screen after login – I can’t login to my dashboard.
2. Permalink structure effected: one of my blogs permalink structure is effected badly. I am getting 404 error for articles, archives, pages.
My only solution so far was to revert back to 2,5.1. My suggestion is to wait for a while and then upgrade.
How I started Making sense of conversion maths?
Ed’s response on my blog post “Zero – 150 Unique visitors in 8 days” got me thinking. So I am going to cover this very important topic. Its called conversion maths. Or Rather
Conversion Maths : 80 Unique visitors = $3 Income or 80 Unique Visitors = $70 Income Which you’d chose?
Before I start off this article, let me confess, I am not one of those fanatic testers. In fact I pretty much hate when I have to do the numbers and figure out if I am making money or losing. But this is a fact you have to deal with if you want to do marketing and run a business. So here’s complete background on how I got started…
I wasn’t a Traffic Expert back then…
If you have been subscribed to my list then you know my story. During my first 13 months as a failure in marketing… I started blogging and I wasn’t very good at generating traffic. On one of my main blog I was getting 80–100 uniques a day after continuously blogging for 3–4 months (that’s how much I used to suck).
When you don’t get traffic, you only have one option to turn to… Become good at converting people into clicks (Using google adsense). I think I applied every click tricks for adsense I could find… Some techniques were even pretty objectionable too.
Like the one here called Adsense beautifier. This is an example of a wordpress plugin. Of course this thing can get High CTR’s and in those good ol`days Google used to pay pretty decent money with ever click.
Though I am not using these techniques (as you can increase CTR with bit more creativeness). For example creativity with adsense. Now I don’t want to make this post another improve adsense ctr. So lets get on with story.
In one of those lucky days I sold a product and got a commission of $70. Now this kind of commission outside Internet marketing is pretty un-heard of (at least for a guy like me). So I was curious, surprised and really happy, but I didn’t do anything with the info. Later next week, I sold another of those product and this time I started wondering…
What the hell I am selling exactly for $70 commission?
Now I dug into my affiliate stats and started comparing the prices and their commission structure. I dug into my own stats to tried to understand few things like..
- Where people are coming from.
- What kind of mindset these people into before they came at my blog?
- Does that mindset change after reading my blog post (or pre-sell)?
- Which of my posts were pre-selling these costly products?
- Which keywords people are using to land up on my blog?
- Does these keyword have anything to do with decision making on the product?
- If I write this new post, will it help sell the product more?
Now as you can see, this was heavy duty work for lazy me. It took me like couple of weeks to gather that much data with small visitors. Remember, I didn’t knew about the list building concept back then…
Now after I got my data, I started working on …
- How to get more people into same mindset as when people were buying?
- Can I add something to get additional traffic to my specific blog page?
- Can I add something more to my blog post to increase conversion?
So armed with all these question and answers I started making changes to my layout structure. On how am I was writing my articles and pre-selling products.
Results : Are you interested?
After another 2 weeks I was able to sell 1 of those products in 2 days (or rather 180–200 unique visitors). now this was something good. Why ? because Before I was making $3 a day with adsense and odd change with affiliate products. Now I am selling a product at least 3 times in a week and making around $210/Week.
Now if you know the stats for affiliates, 90% of affiliates are not making $200 per month. Well Finally I was able to break that barrier.
Later on As I kept adding more post, information and becoming better at writing copy and converting, I was able to convert higher and make around $65– $70 per day just by selling affiliate products.
My lessons learned from this experience were
- If you know your basic numbers you can make more money
- Conversion Maths doesn’t have to be complicated. If doing A gets you more money, you just do that.
- Testing isn’t complicated (Hang on I’ll show you how too)
How to do basic testing…
Now there are tons of softwares and stuff out there helping you do basic testing. Of course there are also complicated formulas and terms floating (Multivirate testing) around too. Personally I do not worry about these things as much…
I want to find out 3 things first if I am starting out.
- How many unique visitors my pages are getting (in my case, I wanted to find out about that specific pre-sell page)?
- How many products I am selling from that page?
- What kind of offer I should make on my pre-sell page?
This should get you started to implement basic conversion and testing strategies. For example In that blog I am testing my character voice.
Currently this is converting at 17.9 % +– 10%. You might get worried by seeing this much variation but this version is outpulling my original by 300%. So I know for sure what kind of voice I am going to use in this market.
Whew. I almost wrote a 1000 word post this time around… Anyways I’ll add more on how to do strategy and conversion maths topic. So don’t you worry about it. For now… Sayonara.
How I started podcasting with these 8 steps.
Do you want to start podcasting and improve traffic?
If you have a website, podcasting has many applications that allow you to get in front of your customers, get your name out there, and ultimately make you more money. You’ll find there are tons of people who love to listen instead of reading a blog post or an article. These people download the podcasts on their IPod and listen as they go.
8 Step to Create your Own First Podcast.
1. Spend 1 to 2 minutes and brainstorm some topics you are interested in. He doesn’t have to be new and brilliant content for your first podcast, it should simply be something you have a passion for.
2. Select one or two of those topics that catch your eye.
3. Spend 1 or 2 minutes and brainstorm interesting facts that you know about those topics
4. Group those facts together under one or two headings.
5. By now, you probably see the one you want to podcast the most. If not, you’ll need to choose one now.
6. Go online and find a web site that talks about that topic as well that you can review in your podcast.
7. Write down an upcoming event that is related to your area of interest. For example, if the area you’re going to podcast on his genealogy, you might be able to find a local genealogical society which has a genealogy fare coming up. If you can’t find anything, think of a past event that you can review.
8. Develop a brief script on your own, or from the example in the Example box that follows this exercise.
Here is an example script for your very first podcast
“Hello and welcome to our very first podcast at [your web address, which you will get shortly… in the next exercise]. My name is [your name] and today we’re going to be talking about [your topic].
In this podcast we’ll be talking about [heading #1] and [heading #2]. Later, we’ll review a website and talk about an upcoming event.
First, we’re talking about [heading #1]. Did you know that… [talk about the interesting facts you wrote down].
Second, we’re talking about [heading #2]. Did you know that… [talk about the interesting facts you wrote down].
Now is the time in our show where we review a website. Today’s website is [say the web address and the name, if it’s different]. [Briefly describe the website and rate it on how helpful or informative it was as well as how easy it was designed to navigate around].
Finally, we’ve got to mention the [upcoming event]. [Mention who, what, where, when, cost, what to bring, what to expect].
We’ve had a great time on the show today and look forward to having you tune in next time!”
That was easy, wasn’t it? Sure! There’s nothing to it.You probably don’t even need the script. Often you just need a simple cheat sheet with you about the topics you are going to mention in your podcast.
As for as I am concerned, I need the whole script as English is not my first language. Even then I try to not rehearse when I am doing any kind of audio recording.
So what’s stopping you? Get going…
Oh Here are few links for you to get started too…
1. http://www.podcasting-tools.com/ This is an excellent site about podcasting and takes you through everything from an introduction to how-to-podcast as well as the technical aspects of podcasting. It doesn’t look great but it’s quite functional and informative.
2. http://www.podcastalley.com/ Podcast Alley is the podcast lovers portal. Featuring the best Podcast Directory and the Top 10 podcasts, as voted on by the listeners.
3. http://www.podcastingnews.com/ This might be a little advanced for the beginner, but it is an excellent and comprehensive news site devoted solely to podcasting news. Once you’re familiar with podcasting and want to really benefit from the industry and stay on top of it, this should be in your “favorites” folder.
Oh btw, if you go there right now, You’ll find story about Gary Vaynerchuk who started Winelibrarytv.com. Its complete interview. You should head over there right now and read it.
Using Firefox to Write more, Faster and generate traffic.
Are you using Firefox to generate more content and traffic to your website?
No?
Then here is very simple guide to generate as much content & traffic you want using firefox.
So if you STILL haven’t installed firefox in your pc, then go to http://www.mozilla.com/ and download latest firefox. Here are 2 tips to put your firefox on steroids.
1. Use Firefox Search Engines : Right next to your URL, there is a box with G logo, this is one of the search engine built. You might not see the List of search engines I am using right now. So you have to click on the manage search engines.
Next click on the Get more search engines link on the box.
You’ll go to a list of search engines. Where you can select all of your favorite search engines that you need to go.
I’ve added yahoo answers, wikipedia in my list for researching and generating content.
How these sites’ll help me?
Simple, whenever you want to write more content and just can’t come up with ideas, then just head over to yahoo answers tab, and search on your topic. You have one of the most powerful system with “content on demand“.
Well, I’ll it up to you to figure out how to use this resource best possible way.
2. use Scribfire addon for mozilla: Download this plugin and you can write your blog with this nifty tool.
“ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.”
You can use this tool to write more content whenever you are surfing and ideas pop into your head. Great plugin to start with.
Oh Did I talked about how to generate traffic with?
Its very simple, more unique content means more traffic to you, Using scrib fire and yahoo answers can help you get more incoming links to your blog/website. Rather than explaining I’ll let you do some hard work and figure out how to do it. Because this way you’ll learn more…
Otherwise post your response & experience. I’ll help you out with your problem related to this tip.
Blogging tips : The correct way to start blogging in 2008
With so many changes in internet marketing & blogging, this topic suddenly become so darn confusing. When few years ago, you only needed something to talk about and blogspot. This blogging guide will help you get started in correct direction.
I started blogging in November 2004, It’s been more than 3 years for me using blogs as business. Having seen the changes in Marketing and Blogging world, I wonder about this new found complexity in blogging. Earlier all you need a topic and something to talk about. Then came blog and ping, tag & ping, now social bookmarking… So What exactly is correct stand in this confusion? I am going to clear this in this guide today once and for all…
Blogging for business has only 2 key ingredients
If you are blogging for part time income, then you only need to remember 2 key ingredients. They are buyer and seller. That’s it. If you are a blogger, you become a medium of communication in between these 2 people. That’s where you make your income. If you remember Sony fiasco, when they tried to influence the crowds with blogging. They created these 2 people because they understand that blogging is a medium of communication.
Think of all the pro bloggers are new wave of journalists who writes about the current, past and future on internet.
Think of all the pro bloggers are new wave of journalists who writes about the current, past and future on internet.
How to Join the ranks of pro bloggers?
Like I earlier said, You only need to find 2 key ingredients, you’ll find things to write about. You should stop worrying about the changes, Web 2.0 is more than just social bookmarking. So here are few key points you should remember.
1. Blog for Fun & Profit : Listen, this might not be for everybody. Some people are suited to become bloggers and some not. So if you don’t succeed, may be you are not suited for this, who knows… Why I am saying this? Because if you are not having fun while blogging, you’ll have hard time profiting from it. In that case you’ll need more marketing experience than blogging.
This activity needs passion of writing and speaking your mind. You’ll find some marketers updates blog almost on daily basis.And some do that when they want to sell something… WHY? Because they understand their limitations. I love it that’s why I am doing it for more than 3 years.
2. Your content matters : As others are saying, your content matters a lot. That’s why I suggested it might not be for you, if you hate writing. But here’s the secret, It doesn’t matter if the content is unique. What it matters is that your viewpoint in blogosphere. People read blogs for only this reason. They want to find out and confirm their beliefs. That’s where blogger comes in.
Here’s the harsh truth. You read & follow blogs for only 2 reasons… You either love the blogger or hate him. There are no in betweens.
If you just remember these 2 things, you’ll be able to succeed as a blogger and generate a decent part time income. Don’t forget the buyer/Seller key points. Don’t forget where blogger stands. He’s an informer a journalist.
How to tackle the social Media beast?
If you notice in this article I haven’t talked much about blogging softwares, techniques like tagging and pinging or social bookmarking… why? The reason is very simple. I don’t want you to think about complicated things right now. I am going to discuss this topic right now (in a while).
As far as softwares and other things are concerned. Here are few things you need to remember.
- Publish your own blog on your own hosting service. I do not recommend hosting at wordpress or blogspot. I use hostgator for website hosting. They have cpanel powered hosting services which can help you install softwares like in a minute.
- Use All in one SEO pack for Search engine optimization.
- Post regularly on your blogs. It takes work and effort to create a blog. Of course you can spam and create splogs but their lifetime is low.
- Interact with other bloggers.
This is the simplest way I can explain this to you. You can read more on “blogging making your presense felt
Now lets go to bookmarking and web 2.0
Social bookmarking for bloggers?
Let me sum this up in few words… “Bookmark often, bookmark a lot”. That’s the only social bookmarking tip I can give you. If you are in a niche market, then bookmark anything that interests you. Bookmark your pages, your competitors pages and everything that you think is related.
Share the love ;). Bloggers don’t differentiate. Of course you can censure your news (blog), but its more fun the other way.
The only idea is to have lots of ways for people to come in to your blog. Though I have found social bookmarking is not much of use, but I believe in creating multiple entry points to my website. Every article you publish, every link you leave and get they are all entry points to your blog. This will bring lots of traffic overtime.
Web 2.0 :What the, how the?
Believe it or not, so far in this article I have been giving you ideas on how to create a web 2.0 website. I don’t think of web 2.0 as long tail or whatever other marketers are thinking. I am thinking as a blogger and as a medium who is between the seller and the buyer.
When I told you to understand 2 points and becoming the medium, this is all about web 2.0. In web 1.0 where the only interaction between buyer/seller was in forums. These days marketers are creating many platforms where you have multiple mediums like these for example squidoo, face book, orkut etc.
Because of these mediums, news travel fast, faster than it was used to. That has become a critical point in all of these. In my earlier post on web 2.0 and “social media = useless traffic“, I eluded to this fact. I wanted you to understand.
If you have tried looking and researching the way normal folks (not marketers, they stopped being normal when they started marketing :D), you’ll understand what I am talking about. Its amazing looking at people getting influenced by the media (TV, internet, blog, forums etc).
Blogging : Making Your Presense Felt
With so many amateurs and professional writers who write compelling and useful pieces, blogs enable new idea entrepreneurs to explore their conceptual niches.
To make a compelling presence on the web, bloggers should be able to identify what’s hot and what’s not.
They should be able to capture new idea floating in the web-space and should think of ways of its best utility. In other words, bloggers can build their online presence by delivering high in demand information.
Bloggers should ensure that a blog as a diary of events should capture things missed by the computerized information-sorting schema. It should present it as a record of the events as they happened.
To ensure a compelling web presence the design of the website should also be considered, as the look and feel of the site also attracts visitors to the site. The site design of a blog should reflect the tastes of the users rather than the designers. It should be user friendly and should have the context and interactive features.
To have a constant online presence a blogger should not:
- Write entries to just please readers or advertisers
- Post entries for the sake of posting or to get paid
- Ignore checking facts while pushing things in under deadlines
- Create a situation that leads to conflicts of interest
- Disclose who is paying and why
In the end success with blogging comes down to 2 things.
1. Targeting Your Market: Effective knowledge of the target market enables to:
- Efficiently segment the audience profile
- Gain valuable marketplace intelligence through data mining
- Know and follow evolving trends and movements
- Cater to the profile characteristics within the planned content categories
- Effectively individualize communications
2. Giving the Reader what they Want:
So, what is it that is expected from a blog? A blog is considered to be a place to inform and to be informed. Straight talk is what readers consider to be an ideal blog message. Straight talk is a four or five sentence of direct, informative content about a specific issue or bit of news.
If you notice with big institutions, they are creating a character to promote their products. They are trying to connect with their readers. This is exactly what you should be doing to promote yourself or your company.
Promoting your blog is more than just writing post, using article marketing and other means (of course they have their place). But if you are not writing on the topics that the masses want and not targeting properly, your blog will die a slow death.
Great Wordpress Themes for Your Blogs
Today I was surfing around and found some great wordpress themes… In fact I updated this blog with a new theme. This theme is called Whitespace by http://www.briangardner.com/themes. You can get Few free themes at his blog/site.
There is another website That I found great blog themes. In fact they are one of those magazine type themes. Check out Widget Ready magazine styled Themes. You have 7-8 themes to chose from.
Dailyblogtips.com has another nice theme. He also have another great theme called Deep Blue
I remember couple of years ago, there were hardly any decent wordpress themes. Now you have way too many to decide from… Anyways… check them out…
Mark Joyner Releases his Blogging Course for Free
I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.
It covers:
- The best blogging techniques.
- How to get traffic to your blog.
- How to turn your blog into money.
I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.
EDIT: I just checked out this course. Frankly speaking this course is better than many of the paid ones out there… I highly recommend you to check it out…
Bloggers: Do you makes these Design mistakes in your blogs?
There seems to be a trend developing lately.
I don’t even know where to start this. With the advent of computers, fat internet connections & latest web design technologies (remember WYSIWYG anyone?), it seems like every Tom, Harry and his mother in law is getting online and expressing themselves in rather unique way.
The worst part is it shows in their Websites, blogs and journals. Sometimes I even think “The ability to be creative” should be outlawed. Most of us in order to create something magical, gets it quite wrong.
Lets us test your blog… Go to your blog and notice how many color it has.
Done? How many colors does it have? If it has more than 3 colors, you might be one of the Tom, Harry or their mother in law
The First Golden Rule: My first golden rule for designing (that goes for websites, brouchers, blogs etc) is that it shouldn’t have more than 3 colors. The accessibility of 10,248 colors doesn’t mean you have to use’em all… Direct marketers understand this point very effectively.
Why because they don’t want their visitors to get distracted by anything. And the reason is 3 colors is easy to process for your brain. It gives enough breathing space to receive the message you have been trying to send…
Remember, more colors, more confused brain, less sales or conversion.
Second Golden Rule : How many fonts you have? Again the Rule of 3 applies to fonts too. When you change the size of fonts, it becomes different in shades and effect. Do not use more than 3 different fonts in your blog.
Lets understand our fonts a little bit.
The one Font I am using right now is Serif font with 12 point font size
This one is called sans serif with 12 point font size.
This one is called sans serif with 12 point font size with bold.
Notice how different all three lines look. It looks like they are completely different font. So you can avoid confusing your visitors with having 3 stable font list.
Don’t forget, in designs simplicity is the key to success. You don’t want your marketing message to be buried with your design.
For example. Check out Brian’s Copyblogger.com or problogger.net they have their main colors picked up right. Best of all they are not drowning their marketing message in their design.
Link building 102 : An outrageous concept for blogs?
Link building 102 for your blog sites. How much outrageous it can be? Lets understand the basics of link building for your blogs. Almost every method I’ve discussed so far to build traffic is about building a link profile.
Posting to forums, writing articles, comments every single thing is guiding you along this path without you noticing.
Sure, by now everyone knows about link building but we are still in so much dark that its crazy. In fact some of your so called SEO’s doesn’t know much about it.
If you think about link building as just reciprocal links then you need to update your seo knowledge. Or if you are one of those who think about Incoming links then you need to remember not all links are equal some can actually hurt your chances of free traffic.
There is a reason I called this article as “Link building 102”, because its starts with basics and goes on to advance topics that will make you go “duh”.
The first Basics is : Building High Quality incoming links to your blog or website can almost ensure good search engine rankings. This is the most boring, cumbersome but best rewarding work you can do. Here is a method that almost every SEO expert use.
Build Your Link profile from High Quality pages
Build Your link profile from tons of related websites (not much on link quality).
Use both of the above techniques to ensure a mix of links.
Getting links from important pages can get you good rankings really fast.
How do you ensure High quality?
There are 3 basic ways to make sure about high quality pages. Google PR & How old the website is & the last way is to check how many outgoing links that page have.
Google PR is one way of checking out if the webpage has high PR and can help you get high quality links.
Second way is the older the website the better you are off (you can break this rule sometimes, but not always). There are times when websites can get High PR in relatively low time frame.
Third method is about checking how many out going links this webpage has. Now understand when I am talking about outgoing, then it means you have to count every single link (even when its link to its domain). Because every link will leech off the effect of High PR and quality and distribute it among all the links.
Remember Link value is passed from page to page not from site to site.
Last thing about High quality you need to remember is, make sure your link on that page is permanent.
Is there any hope for reciprocal linking?
The answer is Yes. This form of linking has really formed a backbone in current SEO standards. It’s not going anywhere. The only issue is, it has become a little less effective. So you need more efforts to ensure good rankings using reciprocal links. If you are going to build using reciprocal system then here are few tips.
1. Related websites/blog: Try to find related websites or blogs and exchange links with them.
2. Good Neighborhood: Try to find websites that are not banned or were banned in past. Normally you can’t get penalized by any sort of incoming links from bad neighborhood but if you link to it… you might feel some penalties.
3. More than just Link partner: This is something That I have been teaching to my clients. My advice to them was, don’t just become link partner, become partner in business. If possible give an idea to share articles, free e-books or host contest together.
Remember the Iron Rule of Link building : High Quality Links. And trust me, that link partner page does not fit exact high quality profile.
Promise your link partner an exclusive link from your articles section or other high quality pages from your blogs. They’ll surely oblige with giving you a one in return.
Check Your Link profile:
Make sure you vary your link building profile. If you only have High PR links then it looks quite unnatural. In same way, if your link structure is same for all the incoming links, it might ring a red flag for your sites.
This is the reason I’ve been stressing a lot on using various medias to ensure lots of incoming links in my articles. You have to plan this out from advance.
Well guys, this one make sure you understand all about link building. I might discuss some advance strategies to get links in some other article.
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