I have a blog, well a couple of dozen blogs on various topics so I get to see the comments from two perspectives.

1. As a blogger I find comment on other blogs in my niche.
2. As a blog owner I moderate comments on my own blogs.

For me it’s pretty straightforward. After writing a comment I simply ask myself if I would keep that same comment on my own blog. If the answer is no I start over and do it right.

Below is a comment that I get all too often. How would you moderate it yourself?

Comment: “I visited your blog, would you visit my blog?”

DUH!! Even though they sometimes add the phrase “You have a nice blog.“, it’s just a ploy to stroke your ego but it’s still just spam and adds nothing to the post. So it’s always outta here with just a click. Makes me wonder if it’s automated and if they actually read any of the post.

I work my online business 5 days a week, Monday thru Friday and each of those days I get comments to moderate that are just plain useless and need to be deleted or marked as spam. I am sure it took them longer to write the few words than it took me to delete it along with all the others I get like that. So they have wasted their time.

I used to get right stressed over comments like that, wondering why they wouldn’t just take the same time to write a few sentences that ask a question or add to the post. Can’t be bothered getting all worked up about it these days.

What Does This Tell Me About The Blogger?

• The blogger doesn’t care a lot about comment etiquette.
• The blogger isn’t too concerned with their time, as they waste it leaving comments that will just get deleted.
• The blogger is at the point of desperation.

My Goals As A Blog Commentor And Owner

1. Getting links to my internal pages.
2. Getting Blog Visitors and Owners to visit my blogs.
3. To add value to a bloggers posts that makes me look knowledgeable.
4. To link from blog posts to relative posts on my own blogs.
5. To increase my PageRank.

My strategy for commenting on blogs in the same niches as I am is simple. It requires some thinking, a bit of work on a regular basis and patience.

Take The Time To Plan Your Comments For Best Results

I use Bloglines RSS Feed Reader to follow more than 100 blogs on various topics, fishing, gardening, travel, horseback riding and many other niches. I can see at a glance any blogs that have new posts I haven’t seen so I save a lot of time by not having to go to each blog individually.

I check out Bloglines every day or two to see who has new posts and if any of those posts interest me enough to comment.

When I find a post worth commenting on I then check to see if I have a post that is similar that I can link to. That’s an important one for me as it makes my comment far more relevant and more likely to get people to click through to my own blog.

If I don’t have a blog post that is relevant I will take the time to create one. That’s how important it is to follow through on comment planning.

Tweet This Post

Image by beachwalks via Flickr

Even in today’s technology driven world, word of mouth marketing is a very powerful way to get tons of new customers to your business. The concept behind word of mouth, or any other type of marketing campaign for that matter, is simple – you reward the person who brings you new business. What makes this kind of marketing so highly effective? We can just take a look.

Many people like to get rewarded for their actions. People especially love to get recognized for what they do as well. Combine these couple of things together and you have got a good incentive for a word of mouth campaign. In this type of marketing campaign, you reward people who give you new business in two ways.

1. You would give them a reward or incentive. The items are countless – service credits, gift certificates, or money.
2. You acknowledge them for their great effort. You can feature their names and thank them for their efforts in your weekly newsletters.

These two things can make people very happy and satisfied – happy to get something useful and satisfied to know that their effort has been successful.

Here are some very useful tips to help you initiate your word of mouth marketing campaign the right way.

1. The incentive that you give should be useful. Money is the most obvious choice, but some people might feel uncomfortable with cash rewards. In my opinion, gift certificates are the best choice you can make. You can get multiple denomination gift certificates from Amazon – they are always an excellent selection. You can also give free food passes for your customers at local restaurants, wine clubs, spas, movie theaters, and so on.
2. Make sure you let your existing customers know that they are being rewarded for their referrals. At your place of business, put a cork board on the wall and list the names of people who have brought in new business on it. This way, your customers can see their names on the board each time they come to your business and this will make them feel really appreciated.
3. When you send out business newsletters about your word of mouth campaigns, you can mention the names of people who have referred a lot of high value customers. Your newsletters reach everyone in your mailing list and you can imagine how happy your customers will be if they see their names in there. This clearly shows your customers that you care about them and you appreciate whatever they have done for your business.
4. If you are conducting a sales event or a meeting, simply ask your existing clients to bring their friends along and offer them some form of incentive for doing so.
5. Whenever your customers bring some new clients, thank them immediately. Call them, send them a mail, send them a text message, or send them a thank-you card. It is important to make sure they understand that you appreciate their effort.

This is pretty much what you need to know about word of mouth advertising campaigns. Keep in mind – the cost is minimal, they increase brand awareness, and increase your customer base exponentially. So, if you want to get the best results, make sure you set up a marketing campaign today.

Tweet This Post

I Blog For Profit And Wordpress Plugins Make Me Happy

After using Wordpress for a few years I have to say I am more in love with them than ever. It just keeps getting better and the plugins, well they are the main reason I stay so in love with Wordpress. It seems like ever week there is another plugin that I just have to try. They don’t all meet my needs but they are easy to install and just as easy to remove so I don’t mind giving them a try.

Note: Even though I have a real fondness for Wordpress blogs I would not host on their servers, basically for the same reasons I wouldn’t host with services that let me control my own content.

Now I did have a blog on Wordpress.org and had absolutely no problems with them but I can’t say that for blogger.com. Someone complained about my site, falsely I might add, but did anyone from blogger.com check it out for themselves, NO, they just shut my site down and left me a message for me to see the next time I logged in. They couldn’t even send out an email.

The message was simple. You have been temporarily shut down, do you want a human to check your site? Well DUH!!

I responded, not in a nice way either. They checked my site, the complaint was false, they turned it back on. That doesn’t work for me and I will not work on their server again and I guess I will also have nothing good to say about them.

So for me it’s Wordpress all the way with my hosting accounts.

Sharing Wordpress When I Can

I was on a fishing trip a few days ago with a new fishing buddy who found my web site, contacted me and we have been friends since. He even started a blog a few months ago, I just wish he had talked to me first because he chose to use blogger.com.

On our little trip there was a lot of exitement about fishing as this was our first time out this year but there was also a lot of talk about having a web site online. That’s when I told him how much I like Wordpress and explained my story pointing out that I would never use blogger.com again.

The subject moved around to why I get so much more traffic than he does. Well the simple answer would have been the fact that he has only had his site for a few months and mine has been live for more than a year. Once I told him my story about blogger.com shutting me down he started regretting he started with them.

I told him to give Wordpress a try with another domain and to start a similar site on blogger. Then I would show him how to use the plugins that have helped my blogs and see what happens to both sites. That sounds like a fair test although I have my money on Wordpress and the Plugins he will be using.

I will make another post to keep track of his progress and link to it from this post, although one of the plugins I use does that linking for me automatically.

Free Wordpress Plugins I Use Daily

Below you will find a list of Wordpress plugins I have been using on my blogs to help me in so many ways. Read up on each plugin to see what it can do for you. After all not every plugin will be useful in your blog but they are so easy to install and use that you can easily and quickly use them and then remove them if you don’t feel the need for that particular plugin.

1. Akismet – is already install, but not activated, on each Wordpress install. Use this plugin to monitor comments and to remove spam for you. I use this on all my blogs and it removes 90% of the spam I get as comments saving me plenty of time with far less stress.
2. All in One SEO Pack – this is a great little plugin and does a lot of the search engine optimization automatically for me by default, but also has a lot of other setting that you can modify to make it even more focused.
3. Better Blogroll – Pulls a configurable number of links and their categories from the WordPress 2.3 Link Manager and gives you more control of your blogroll. I love the idea of having 20 or so links but the ability to only show 5 or 6 at a time randomly. NOTE: This plugin works through your widgets.

   Contact Form][ - is a drop-in form that allows site visitors to contact you. It sure beats messing around with giving out an email address and having it spammed.

4. Darren's Related Posts - This is one of my favorite Wordpress plugins as it automatically determine related posts, based on keywords.
5. Google XML Sitemaps - This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold.

   Kontera Integration - This plugin adds the Kontera script to the bottom of the page. Also you can choose which posts to omit from targeting, this is very useful when you use PayPerPost. By Karol Krizka.

6. Most Commented - Retrieves a list of the posts with the most comments. By Nick Momrik.

   Page View - Allows the insertion of code to display an external webpage within an iframe, along with a title and description. The tag to insert the code is: [pageview url "title" description] By John Godley.

7. Recent Comments – Retrieves a list of the most recent comments. By Nick Momrik.
8. Recent Posts – Returns a list of the most recent posts. By Nick Momrik.
9. Subscribe To Comments – Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess By Mark Jaquith.
10. What Would Seth Godin Do – Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another to return visitors. By Richard K Miller.
11. WordPress Related Posts – Generate a related posts list via tags of WordPress By Denis.

Paid Wordpress Plugins I Use Daily

The links below are for my paid plugins therefore I will be showing my affiliate links. After all I am online to learn but also to earn.

1. Wordpress Affiliate Pro 2.1 – Wordpress Affiliate Pro is the Swiss army knife for all affiliates. Automatically translate any keywords to affiliate links you define and turn all your content into a cash making machine within seconds. Forget about manually editing your existing blog posts whenever you want to promote a new program. Forget about adding affiliate links when posting new articles. Wordpress Affiliate Pro will automatically do the grunt work for you. Advanced click tracking comes in by default so you can see at a glance what are your best performers and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly. Control the number of links and how they look down to individual affiliate link without touching a single line of HTML code. Explode your income with this no-brainer tool, and switch your focus from intensive manual labor to making more money. If you’re serious about affiliate marketing then you need to have this plugin activated on all your blogs. By WP Affiliate Pro.
2. Caffinated Content – Looking to automate your content then this is the plugin to work with. You can get content automatically, from several places, based on keywords.

Utilizing these Wordpress plugins can make a huge difference in the attention your blog gets.

Tweet This Post

Image via Wikipedia

Viral email marketing is one of the easiest and is by far one of the most effective ways to exponentially increase brand awareness and to increase product sales. The term viral refers to the nature of this marketing technique – the message is passed on from one person to a new person with minimal effort and whoever views the message starts spreading it as well. Just like a virus, the marketing message spreads very quickly and reaches a massive number of people.

If you want to increase your brand’s popularity or if you want to increase your product or service’s sales, you should definitely consider running a viral marketing campaign. If you have never done it before, this is the time you should really consider doing it. The results will really be a surprise.

Some great advantages of this marketing technique include:

1. It costs virtually nothing to run a viral campaign. The USP of these types of campaigns is that they use existing communication networks and reach a lot of people in a very short period of time. The marketing message is usually generated and spread via emails, articles, blogs, software, and social networks – all of which are free.

2. These campaigns usually are incentivized for the user. The campaign is most always created in such a way that the client who gets the message most likely has an incentive to pass it on to his friends. It could be anything – free software programs, free email services, free buttons, free PLR articles, free wallpaper, and so much more. This way, the user gets rewarded for his effort to spread the message. This will prompt them to do it over and over – thus widening the scope of the campaign.

3. It is very simple to share your specific marketing message through a viral marketing campaign. So once again, these campaigns use free email services and social networks to reach out to end users. The end user finds it relatively simple to share messages with associates or friends.

4. Viral marketing is all about utilizing other people’s resources. For example, if you give away a free article to someone and ask him to place it on his website, he will be happy to do so. Ultimately, he gets new content to his site which is great for him. The important thing is – you get to place a text link or an image link at the bottom of your article. This way, each person who reads that article will be tempted to click on that link and visit your site – especially when your article has great content. This gives you free, highly targeted traffic without spending any cash at all.

As you can see from what I have explained above, a viral internet marketing campaign is probably the best way to put your business on the map. You can create your own campaign if you have the creativity and time required to do it. If you don’t, you can approach a good marketing company which can take care of everything and run a successful viral campaign. So, weigh in your options and make the right decision today.

Tweet This Post

Image by Joe Penniston via Flickr

If you are still wondering why the online store you have put up months ago is not performing as great as expected, your business may be lacking in the ideal search engine optimization solutions. SEO services London is perfect for the online entrepreneur who wants to achieve better profitability through his site.

If your London agency has a web page, it would be smart to seek SEO Services London. London offers a lot of outstanding businesses which will optimize your web site for enhancement of its SE rankings. In order to get the greatest effect, it will be necessary to locate a company that can fulfill each of your SEO Services requirements.

SEO Services : Elements of a SEO Marketing Services Package

Concerning London organizations that want to look into SEO methods, locating a dependable SEM company is vital. If it is in your plan to acquire a local web ad agency, named below are two of the crucial services linked to search engine marketing which should be extended: Pay per click and Search Engine Rating

SEO Services UK: Good Keywords are Vitally Important

There is a marked distinction regarding the way that keywords are named and sorted. Significant keywords are not only the ones that produce the greatest number of searches. For a lot of organizations, the best key phrases are those that draw in the needed leads despite the volume of visitors.   Aiming to target generic / vague key-phrases is never a good idea.

Numerous organizations have already begun to gain the rewards of spending less by doing web marketing. The organization you opt for should plan a web marketing campaign integrating extremely productive keywords. Finding keywords is an extremely procedural method that ought to be employed in an internet marketing advertisement. A thriving web ad promotion needs to implement as an objective “top 10 placement.” With this method, a site will show up on the beginning page of search results.

If you are an internet business owner who knows very little about SEO optimization, it is essential for you to locate the proper SEO agency. The ideal company will be able to direct your optimization goals to more lucrative heights, bringing in better profitability for the business.

These SEO companies have the right set of tools and are backed up by years of valuable experience in their field. They are able to effectively recognize the reasons why your internet business is merely dragging along instead of performing among the competition. With the right solutions and time proven techniques, these companies will place your business on its ideal track.

If you are looking for SEO services, London has many excellent agencies to choose from. SEO and net campaigning are currently a vital aspect in any organization. Should you not cash in on the advantages of this service which is right there waiting for you?

Direct online marketing will also help your internet business soar, and with excellent SEO strategies, such as SEO Services London, getting a favorable return on investment from your site does not have to take long months or years.

Tweet This Post

Image via Wikipedia

Who wouldn’t want to know how to make money with websites. Learning how to really make money using Google Adsense is what several would call ‘webmaster welfare’. And in reality, the odds are that you have seen screen shots or pictures of people holding up mammoth checks from Google and have thought about are they not telling you something and if not, how can you be just as successful. You may even be desperate for a new source of cash after recently becoming jobless.

Who cares what your rationale for desiring to educate yourself how to make money with internet. All that matters is that you are looking to understand how to make money online. Please realize, there is a lot to comprehend and it will take time to do so. And know that if you are going to comprehend how to make money online correctly, then you must to be familiar with the tricks and tools of the trade.

The real secret to learning and knowing real ways to make money online right now is to invest in yourself first by learning all you can online. Of course, you can always learn how to do it all on your own, but you still are looking to keep yourself rounded.

Make sure you include all the base pieces for an adsense campaign. The essential components are: keywords, competition, management, potential revenue, and more. You know your method is strong if it is worth purchasing to get. Emails and supposed guru conferences about making money with adsense will often waste your time. Be cautious, take my word for it.

At the end of the day you have to do whatever you can to stay alive in a difficult realm of online business. Congratulations for being part of the smart few that takes time to improve yourself. Be proud of yourself for taking this first step, now get to work! It won’t take much more than a some dedication and open minded experimenting to win in this game.

Tweet This Post

XSitePro web design software is my most loved piece of software. Why you might ask, well let me tell you.

I was a computer instructor for just about 20 years and near the end of my teaching career I start teaching students and friends how to write HTML code. We didn’t yet have web design software, so it was all hand coding the pages and trying to be really smart about copying and pasting codes we had saved.

Because hand coding pages was so time consuming many friends and students asked if they paid me would I write their code. That is when my web design business started and my stress level started increasing.

It wasn’t long after that I was able to pay the ridiculous prices for web design software and life got a bit easier, even though the learning curve for the software was a bit intimidating, it was faster than hand coding.

I eventually had a heart attack and my life as I knew it stopped. The damage was done and couldn’t be fixed. I wasn’t allowed to even lift 10 pounds. My business looked like it was going to stop right there.

I was so blessed to have clients that were so understanding. I did have to let a few go and couldn’t take on any new clients but I was still able to earn a little money.

I guess I was a bit depressed as well, even though I told myself I wasn’t. I didn’t know which way to turn and was thinking of just giving up and I am usually no quitter. Then a dream came true in a round about way.

I was introduced to XSitePro website design software and my life changed. Once I saw what it would do my little brain started smoking. I instantly became happy inside. It was a very strange feeling and even a bit scary. Any thing that made my heart beat faster scared me then.

Now my dream wasn’t exactly for XSitePro to come into my life. The dream was for me to be able to enjoy some of my hobbies again but I had no time or energy and not a lot of extra money.

Almost immediately, once I transferred most of my clients sites to XSitePro, I was able to work less time but accomplish so much  more. My energy level was up a bit as well because I was once again enjoying my work.

It just got better and better.

XSitePro let’s me pick from a large library of templates, which I like to modify to make them unique for my clients.  The time I saved there is huge and it was just a small part of it all.

It’s been 3 years now and I am still using XSitePro web design software. I can truthfully say it just gets better year after year.

Tweet This Post

Image via Wikipedia

Your website is your company’s calling card on the internet so you need to have one you’re proud of and does the job it’s meant to, and offer pleasant viewing for your browsers which can only be achieved with quality web development. That means gettingan expert web development company to help shape your site and create web based solutions for your business. But before approaching a web site design company, you should clarify your requirements. Here’s how you do it.

Firstly, you must establish your goals. What’s the nature of your website? Are you trying to sell your own products or other’s products? Are you displaying your portfolio and announcing what kind of services you are offering? The best way to do this is to put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. What would you expect and what would you like to see by the time you step inside a virtual home?

Next you have to set your budget. Having these figures in hand at the beginning can help in your negotiation with the web design services companies. But never expose your financial capabilities. Always get quotes based on your needs first. The first thing you would probably do is to go to Google and search for the best web design companies. Take the advantage of the global reach of the internet and search for web design agencies in various places. Also take into considerations if you have any technical staff you employ, would you need to do the maintenance of the sites yourself? If you do not have the people power, then web based answers could be the best choice for your site development, which are endorsed by many different web design companies all over Cyberspace. Okay, alright, now you know what to do but the question is, where can you really find these companies that employs able and competent web designers and wizards in just one move? Aside from going for the Google, you can go to this site called “webdesigncompanydir.com” and find all the best web design companies in one step. With this choice, it will be appropriate for you to choose the one that fits your budget, your Internet Marketing needs and of course, the one that can help you reach your goals.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How Important is Web Designs ? (it-sideways.com)
• Who is the best possible professional web design group? (themarketingprofessional.com)

Tweet This Post

Image via Wikipedia

 Have you heard about Bum Marketing? What is Bum Marketing?They say that it’s a whole new way of making money online but why are there so many people overlook trying to make money with Bum Marketing? They say that it is the simplest, easiest, not to mention, the cheapest of all method to get traffic to your site. And if you don’t have your own site, that would not pose as a problem. You can still make money with Bum Marketing promoting other people’s products, services or websites. But why? Maybe there are lots of other reasons why people don’t go for Bum Marketing. Maybe no one have informed them yet about it or maybe they have some other methods in making an extra income on the net other than Bum Marketing.

This blog writer is also composing various articles on Squidoo because he feels he has no time in teaching himself how to make his own website or maybe he’s just too preoccupied in doing so. The point is, many people are now making good money in other ways and they don’t have the time to even learn the Bum Marketing method. But what is really Bum Marketing? In general, if you are fond of writing a lot about lots of things, you can be in Bum Marketing. The first thing you need to do is determine what your objectives are. Are you trying to make money with bum marketing by selling someone else’s products? In determining your objectives, you will learn what to do and what to do next.

Just say that you are focusing on promoting someone else’s product. The first thing you should do, is log into sites like Clickbank and find a nice product to sell or maybe something that is saleable as of this time. After you have found a product, make a brief advert. You can look for free classified ads websites where you can post your ad for free or for a price. After you have written an ad or two, sit down and write a short article on that product and when somebody reads your ads and your articles and actually go to a site where that product you are promoting is nicely displayed and they buy that product, you earn an income. Amazing, huh? And this is how Bum Marketing works. If you can write 2 articles a day, that would mean a lot via the Bum Marketing method.

Tweet This Post

A day or so ago, as I was having my early morning coffee and scanning through my emails for non-spam email I came across an email from MyBlogLog telling me that David Perdew was following me. I looked behind me and didn’t see any one, thank goodness. Okay just kidding about that last part.

I like to check out the people that follow me to see if they have anything that would interest me enough to want to follow them. Unfortunately most of the time, likely higher than 90% of the time I don’t find a site I would follow but not this day.

I was definitely impressed by what I found when I arrived at David’s site, Niche Widget and it was time well spent. I now have another way to earn money from my blogs and other web sites.

The ad blocks look great as well, which is most important to me. I have dropped so many programs because they were butt ugly ads or bizarre sizes that didn’t fit into my sites.

If you anything like me you are always looking for more and better ways to monetize your sites, so do take a look at Niche Widget.

Niche Widget is a really interesting concept.

It’s basically a widget that scrolls through a variety of products that can be found on the Niche-Mall. As normal, when ever people purchase through your widget you get paid.

How much you earn really depends on the level you enroll in at Niche Widget. You can choose from the Silver, Gold and Platinum and even Diamond level. The difference between the levels is the monthly fee and how much commission your receive from each product sold.

Silver Member – Not being 100% sure of what I was getting into I started with the Silver levle which is free and I still earn 50% of the sale. Not bad for free, plus it gives me time to evaluate the company long enough to see if I want to upgrade, which I will do as soon as I see that I don’t run into any problems.

As a paid member you will receive 100% commissions. However, I was quite surprised at how low the monthly fee is and I am sure you will be as well.

Using Niche Widget to make great widgets if very simple.

Once I had signed up and activated my account it only took me a few short minutes and I had 3 widgets done and placed on three of my blogs.

I put in my site info, simple, then chose a category or topic and picked the block size I wanted and clicked Build Widget. That was about it.

I then took the code given to me once I was done and placed it into my blog’s sidebar. I am sure it didn’t take me 5 minutes, the first time. It was even quicker for the other two I did.

I don’t like a lot of ads on my sites as it turns me off when I see so I imagine it does the same for others. For this reason I look long and hard to find ads that work and look great, Niche Widget does that for me. I can even mess with the colors if I choose to so that the ad blocks match my site like Adsense, Bidvertiser and other ad delivery systems do.

In my experience with various programs my initial feeling is that Niche Widget is definitely worth a try. The fact that you can start for free doesn’t hurt does it.

Tweet This Post