Your guide to building, promoting and monetizing blogs and websites
From the category archives:
There are certain techniques that I put into the worthless, “busy work” category…
1) Spending several hours per day on directory submissions
2) Re-writing other people’s content and submitting them to other sites
3) Posting worthless (”Great Post!”) comments on people’s blogs
Be careful of spending too much time on empty promotional techniques. Measure the results of everything you [...]
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A gentleman named Stephan asked me last week…
Lisa, how much money do you make from Twitter?
My short answer…
Nothing.
However, if I were to answer that question more indirectly, I’m sure it would be greater than that.
Here’s what I mean.
I promote my sites a lot of different ways online (through my forum, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) However, I [...]
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There’s been a lot of buzz about the value of directory submissions on my forum, so I thought I’d do a video that gives my opinion on this topic.
If you’re reading this post via an RSS reader or email, click this link to view the video on my blog.
Here’s the link to Matt Cutt’s video [...]
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One of the biggest challenges I face with teaching people how to market their sites online is the constant comparing. People want to know exactly what I did to draw in so much traffic over the years because they are convinced if they do the same, they’ll have the same (or similar) results.
One guy even [...]
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In the last site review I mentioned how offering e-books from my site has really helped boost my traffic and income over the years. So I thought I’d create a video showing you how simple it is to create an e-book using Adobe Acrobat Professional.
Adobe Acrobat is quite expensive and may not be in the [...]
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What is your ritual for creating a web page to rank high in the search engines? Do you spend time counting the keywords in your meta tags?
Do you obsess over the number of outbound links you have, thinking they might be hurting you in some way? Do you copy your competitor’s meta tags hoping you [...]
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Do you spend an excessive amount of time checking your Alexa rank?
Do you often wonder how long it will take your PageRank to go up to the next number?
Are you stuck in the site brainstorming phase until you find the the perfect supply/demand combination in the AdWords Keyword Tool and WordTracker?
If you can relate to [...]
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Sometimes it’s the little things you do that help build loyalty, and I’ve made a vow to come up with more ways to reward my visitors — particularly the ones who continue to add value to my blog and forum.
With the emergence of the social networking scene, developing connections and acknowledging regular contributors is an [...]
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I’ve always been a stat junky.
I love checking my RSS feed subscriber numbers, my AWeber subscriber stats, Google Analytics account, etc. multiple times per day.
I’ll admit, I might need therapy.
However, if you really take some time analyze your traffic stats and even stats from other sites (I’ll explain that part in [...]
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When you’re first starting a website, it can be tempting to seek new advertisers, build a community (forum) and add other features/additions that can generate revenue and make your site look appealing.
The problem is, if you don’t have enough traffic, your site will end up looking vacant, smallish and unimportant.
So I thought I’d make a [...]
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I just logged into my YouTube account today and noticed my videos have handy little “Add to MySpace and Facebook” buttons below them.
Now anyone who likes your mini flick can post it on two of the most popular social networking sites with greater ease.
I’ve toyed with using another video hosting service because I’d like to [...]
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They’re everywhere…
Blog posts, forum questions, emails, website articles, etc… all about improving your PageRank.
Google is clearly the front runner in driving free, targeted website traffic, so everyone wants their site to rank well in any measuring tool Google produces.
First of all, I’ve seen no indication that your PageRank affects the amount of traffic Google [...]
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If Google suddenly dropped your site for good what would happen to your online income?
For many Webmasters, it would be a total disaster.
If you’ve been around long enough to remember the infamous “Florida Update” of November 2003 then you heard the cry around the Net when thousands of Webmasters lost their Google rankings.
Some rankings returned [...]
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Getting ranked #1 in Google for those heavily searched, relevant keywords is the dream of every Webmaster.
And if you’ve been around for a while, you know that task is not as easy as it once was.
Years ago you could stuff keywords, hide content in your background and perform all kinds of tricks to get you [...]
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I just got serious about blogging in December of 2007.
I had a blog on Blogger.com for 2 years, but rarely updated it.
Then in November of 2007, I installed Feedburner and discovered I had 430+ subscribers. I was shocked due to the fact I hardly ever blogged.
I didn’t want to lose those subscribers or the [...]
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If you’ve been marketing online for any length of time, no doubt you’ve read articles that emphasize the importance of collecting email addresses.
Well, I’ve taken that a step further by using an autoresponder, which is a script that automatically sends emails at intervals specified by the user.
I’ve been using AWeber’s autoresponder on my flat stomach [...]
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People often stress over domain name choice because they worry if they choose a certain name, they’ll only be found for the keywords in that domain and nothing else.
While the domain name is important for branding, letting people know what your site is about etc., don’t stress over getting every “important” keyword in the domain [...]
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I saw a comment on another blog from a new Webmaster who was frustrated about his lack of traffic. He recently submitted a sitemap to Google and Yahoo and wondered why his traffic hadn’t increased. So he titled his blog comment, “Sitemaps Don’t Increase Traffic!”.
There’s a lot of misunderstandings when it comes [...]
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Building traffic to a site or blog is an ongoing process that takes time. And over the past 10 years, I’ve learned it’s about the sum of the little tasks you do often.
For example, you may not think much of that 3-paragraph blog post you wrote this morning, but two years from now that very [...]
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If you haven’t tapped into the video world, you may want to consider it. Not only does video help build credibility for your site, it builds traffic too.
Just like a website on Google.com, you can optimize your video for YouTube searches, and drive more targeted traffic to your video.
Learn how to turn this YouTube [...]
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When you’re struggling to get enough traffic to your site, it can be tempting to exchange links with anyone who is willing. More is not always better when it comes to link exchanges, so choose your partners wisely.
Swapping links with sites that have little to do with your theme won’t do you much good. [...]
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You know about search engine submitting, blogging and writing/submitting articles for other sites. So what do you do when you’ve done all these things and still can’t get enough traffic?
The video below discusses topics which often get overlooked when people create websites. While some of it may seem like common sense to you, [...]
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In case you don’t know, Yahoo! Answers is a free Q&A community that allows people to ask and answer questions on virtually any topic.
I was doing a backlink check on Yahoo the other day. (A backlink check is a way to see how many other sites link to you. Go to Yahoo.com and [...]
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Every now and then I’ll get emails from people who are puzzled as to why they can’t get ranked in Google. And almost every time I review the site in question, I see the same things…
Not enough unique, useful content
More affiliate links than content
Too few pages
Not enough backlinks (quality sites linking in)
Google makes its [...]
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There’s a nifty little tool out called “Page Strength” and it takes Google’s PageRank to a new level. It offers more insight into how valuable, important and popular a site or page is as compared to others on the web.
Check it out here.
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If you are trying to build traffic to your website, giving away a free item that your audience values can be an excellent way to generate visitor loyalty. It’s even better if you can give away something on a regular basis.
Just make sure if you do decide to do this, your gift is relevant to [...]
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Here’s a book I wrote on traffic building. It’s called “20 Ways to Build Traffic to Your Site”. In this eBook, I discuss various methods (most of which I still use) that will help bring in more visits to your website.
I’ll admit some of the tips are pretty elementary if you’ve been marketing [...]
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If you want your search engine traffic to grow, you MUST build an effective link exchange campaign. And I’m not just talking about building a “Links” page where you swap links with other webmasters. Those are not as effective anymore.
Search engines are starting to ignore those kinds of links pages because they realize [...]
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