Free E-Book - The Internet Marketing Cure

Posted by Josh | 3:19 PM


I just finished reading Scott Boulch’s latest FREE E-Book “The Internet Marketing Cure” and it was a very good read. Scott discusses techniques used by Internet marketers to scam people out of money, and how techniques like these are hurting the industry. Scott also teaches you how to find good Internet marketing teachers.

Scott also reveals a great online business plan that will really help you make money online.

I am recommending this to my friends, teammates, and especially newbies at internet marketing, read this free report. I do not want anyone to fall into the “guru” trap and end up with loaded up email boxes full of their distracting incoming sales pitches. What I like about this report is that it cuts through the bull crap and, well, you will see why I am so excited about the report. I recommend that no matter what home business you are in, that you read it, pick up some great help, and make sure your team members read it too. Don’t worry, it is a fast read, and very easy to understand.

He also gives some of the best advice I’ve ever read on gaining true focus and clarity, and talks about a no-nonsense plan for taking any business to the same income levels as the “real” big boys are doing.

The stuff just makes sense.

Get Your Free E-Book Now!

Enjoy!


These are the 12 steps I applied to convert, move or migrate blog from Blogger to Wordpress:

1. First and foremost, know the benefits of converting your blog from Blogger to Wordpress. See if the benefits worth the conversion for your blog.

2. Sign-Up - If you’ve decided to convert your blog or go for Wordpress, signup to have one. If you host your own blog, install the Wordpress blog into a directory other than your existing blog through the Fantastico feature of your web host. If you opt to install Wordpress manually, here is the Wordpress installation guide.

3. After installation, sign in and access your Wordpress admin page. Select the Wordpress template you prefer. The popular templates are those with 2-column and 3-column designs. But, there are so many Wordpress themes or templates that will surely capture your heart.

4. Choose the Wordpress widgets you love. Popular Wordpress widgets include Popular Posts, Recent posts, Recent Comments, Related Posts, Top Commentators, and also the money making widgets. These are only few of the Wordpress widgets that attract readers and make them navigate or participate in your blog discussions.

5. Identify the Wordpress widgets and other blog sections you wanted to appear in your blog. Map these widgets and blog sections in your Wordpress template.

6. Edit the Wordpress template to implement the widgets and other sections in your Wordpress blog. Choose the URL structure your prefer as discussed in my previous post, Top 5 Reasons to Convert Your Blog From Blogger to Wordpress. Test if your final template and design are working properly by clicking the links or navigating it.

7. Before you may import your Blogger blog posts with externally-hosted Wordpress blog, edit first the blogger.php file in /wp-admin/import/. Delete the “2″ in www2.blogger.com.

8. Convert your self-hosted Blogger blog into blogspot in Blogger Admin Settings with any available name. Better do it during the non-peak hours of your blog. When there are less visitors accessing your blog. Then, click Formatting in the Blogger Setting and change the post timestamp into mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss AM/PM, the first option in drop-down menu. After that, click Archiving and set Archive Frequency to “monthly”. Then, import your Blogger blog posts and comments through the import link in your Wordpress blog Admin page. After importing, immediately convert your blogspot blog to its original state. This will minimize the inaccessibility of your original blog.

9. Test your Wordpress blog again but having your own blog posts. Don’t forget to delete the sample post if you’ve not yet done so. Navigate your blog to ensure that everything is fine.

10. If all are OK, backup your old Blogger blog and the new Wordpress blog. Then, edit your Wordpress blog base URL at Options in Admin page. Replace it with your original blog URL, either root or subdirectory. Here’s the details of moving Wordpress blog to another directory.

11. If you original blog is in subdirectory, just change the name of that directory with a new one. Then, rename your Wordpress blog directory with your original blog directory. Then, type your blog URL in your web browser address window. You must be directed to your Wordpress blog.If your original blog is in the root directory, you need to delete your original blog files. To minimize or prevent your original blog being inaccessible, implement a temporary redirection to your Wordpress blog directory prior to deletion. Then, upload your Wordpress blog to the root directory where your original blog is located.

12. Now, type your original blog URL in your web browser address bar and your Wordpress blog should appear. If everything is fine, you may delete or disable your Blogger blog permanently. Search engine robot access to your blog backup directory in your server must be disallowed using robots.txt to prevent duplicate content.

That's It, Enjoy Your New Wordpress Blog!

Use StumbleUpon For Quick And Easy Traffic!

Posted by Josh | 6:34 PM

Recently, I have experimented with a LOT of social networking sites and Stumbleupon is my absolute favorite social networking site for driving traffic to my blog.


Stumbling articles is pretty easy when you install the toolbar on your browser. It takes a lot less effort to get more traffic than other social networking sites. You don’t have to be a “top” stumbler to get tons of traffic from it and it doesn’t take a lot of time to be involved in the community.

So as not to re-invent the wheel I thought I would share some of the better guides I have read about using Stumbleupon for driving traffic to your blog or site.

My friend Maki wrote a really nice guide about using Stumbleupon. I recommend you check it out by clicking here.

Another friend of mine, John Wesley became a top stumbler early on and wrote about how he managed to do it. I think that you can follow his advice and become a top poster for quite a few social networking sites. In fact, I have friends using similar tactics to become top members of other social networking sites.

Search Engine Land wrote a good basic guide on getting traffic with StumbleUpon called 5 Tactics For Driving Traffic From StumbleUpon.

Terry Dean did some experiments with Stumbleupon traffic that you might be interested in and wrote a nice 7 step guide on using StumbleUpon for traffic.

I am sure you can find other information on how great StumbleUpon is for driving traffic to your site. If you aren’t already using StumbleUpon for traffic, then I strongly suggest you go try it out.



I wrote a list of 101 ways to get traffic to your blog a while back. I decided to narrow that list down to the ten best ways I have found to get traffic to my blogs.

1. SEO
Without a doubt SEO has been my favorite way to get traffic to my blogs. The Google algorithm loves blogs, which makes SEO a very good way to get traffic to your blog.
2. Commenting
Leaving comments on blogs in related niches is a great way to get new targeted traffic to your blog. It is also an excellent way to build relationships with other bloggers which leads me to number 3…
3. Networking
Networking is possibly the single most important skill for making big money online. It is also a great way to build traffic to your blog.
4. Word of Mouth
Simply tell your friends and family about your blog and/or specific posts on your blog. You will be surprised by how much traffic that can generate.
5. Linkbait
Create posts that are designed to grab people’s attention. Controversial posts are often associated with linkbait, but there are plenty of other ways to create linkbait. 101 lists make for good linkbait and so do posts that are out of the ordinary in some way.
6. Link Out
Link liberally to other blogs in your posts. Many bloggers keep track of incoming links to their blog and will come check out your blog when you link to them. This can also help you get comments.
7. Stumbleupon/Digg
am a big fan of using stumbleupon for getting traffic to your blog. If you haven’t signed up for it you should. Stumbleupon is this blogs third best traffic source, behind retuning visitors, and Google.
8. List Posts
I have found that posts with lists (like this one) generate more traffic to your blog. They tend to get bookmarked and voted on more on social sites. The more list posts you write the more traffic you will get.
9. Blog Meme
Create a blog meme and tag other bloggers. Participating in blog memes has definitely increased my blog traffic. One blog meme in particular really helped this blog out and I never even participated in it.
10. Quality Content
Quality content is the key to keep people coming back for more. If you write posts that people enjoy reading, they will come back regularly to read your posts. Having regular readers is a great way to increase blog traffic.

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This seems to be asked daily, how do I choose the right niche for my blog? And once you pick you're niche, you're probably wondering "How do I get more traffic"?


The first step to get solid traffic to your blog is to choose the right niche.

There is no surefire way to pick a profitable niche. Even professional bloggers admit that they sometimes choose a niche that doesn’t get enough traffic or make enough money to make it worthwhile. So don’t worry if the first blog you start flops. Just try again. Perserverance is the key to success.


Here are 7 simple steps to choosing a niche that is right for you:


1. Make A List Of Your Passions


Write down all the things you are passionate about. If you aren’t passionate about the topic you write about, it will show! Passion is one of the biggest keys to keeping people interested in your blog (yourself included). This is the most important step in choosing a niche. If you don’t follow any of the other steps in this post, make sure you write about something you are passionate about.


Here is an Example List of Passions

1. Video Games

2. Photography

3. Internet Marketing

4. American Idol

5. Reality TV

6. Politics

7. Software Development


2. Make A List Of Things You Do Well


Write down all the things you do well. It is advisable to ask other people for input on this. Find out what other people think you are good at. They might mention things you haven’t thought of. You might also show the final list to your friends and family to get further input on the list.


An example list of things you do well:

1. Video Games

2. Cooking

3. Photography

4. Teaching

5. Sailing


3. Merge The First Two Lists


Take the lists you made in steps 1 and 2. Write down all the things that are in both list 1 and list 2. This will give you a good idea of things you can blog about as an expert. However, you don’t have to be an expert to blog about something. If you are really passionate about something, but aren’t good at it or are just learning about it, you can still blog about that topic from the perspective of someone trying to improve in that area.


4. Choose Your Favorite 3-5 Niches


Out of the list you compiled from step 3 (above), which ones are you MOST interested in blogging about? It doesn’t matter if other people write about it. It doesn’t matter if it’s extremely competitive. Just write down the top 3-5 things that YOU want to blog about. It’s okay if you are down to 1 niche at this point, but 3-5 would be better.


NOTE: At this point you have at least one niche you could start writing about. However, if you want to make money from your blog, you need to do more research.


5. Determine The Traffic Potential


There are a lot of ways to do keyword research and determine the traffic potential for a niche. To simplify things, you aren’t going to worry about competition, you are only going to concern yourself with demand.


Go the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool (which seems to be working again). Type in the primary keyword(s) for the niches you selected in step 4. Then you will come up with a list of keyword phrases and their search numbers for last month on Yahoo owned Search Engines.

Note: If Overture doesn’t work, try the free wordtracker keyword tool.


In my opinion, you really want to see more than 10,000 searches a month on Overture for the main keyword, otherwise it’s going to be really hard to get decent traffic to your blog.


On the contrary, you don't want to choose a niche that is oversaturated, meaning there is already thousands of other sites with the same content.


6. Determine The Blog’s Money Making Potential


Common sense might suggest to you that there are products to be sold to people looking for each of the things in our example, but is there a way to be sure?


Here is a quick and easy method you can use to help determine a blog’s money making potential. Go to Google or Yahoo and do a search for your primary keywords. The more advertisers you see paying for sponsored results (PPC) the better. If you don’t see anyone bidding on those keywords then it may be more difficult to monetize your blog but not necessarily impossible.


The sponsored results are the ads that show on Google and Yahoo at the very top and the right hand side of the Search Engine results, under the title “Sponsored Links” on Google and “Sponsor Results” on Yahoo.


7. Make Sure You Have Time For The Niche


Is the topic so broad that you just don’t have time to blog about it yourself?


For instance, if you choose basketball as your niche, do you really have enough time to cover ALL basketball news on your blog? If not, then you either need to:


A. Start a group blog with enough other people to cover the topic.

B. Narrow the focus of your blog. In our example, maybe basketball is too broad for you to cover. If so, you might choose to cover your favorite basketball team or write about funny basketball moments, etc.


There you have it, 7 steps to choosing a niche for your blog.