OK… Didn’t get those 10 comments, so… you lose. Can’t give you the rest of that really, really cool advice. But, I’ll give you another chance.
You win!
I’m doing a call about blogging for business with Rick Burdo for his Disabled Veterans Teleseminar Training Series tonight. I’m kicking things off!
So, if you’d like to hear what I have to say, along with 11 other smart speakers, including Tellman, Erik Stafford, Kyle Battis, Mike Purvis, Jeff Mills, and a bunch of other cool people…
Something that comes up time and again in calls, in email, on the phone with clients is that they can’t get started because there’s so much stuff coming at them all the time from people whose lists they’ve joined. They’re overwhelmed and unhappy and why aren’t they making all the big bucks they’ve been promised?
OK… I get that. I’ve been in this game for almost 6 years now, and I felt the same way at the beginning when I was a newbie. But I wanted to learn. I wanted to be the smartest and best damned Internet marketer on the planet, and I wanted to make all that money and have that Ferrari – Beachside – Buy Anything You Want, Anytime lifestyle, too. It was all so much fun and I figured it would all just gel in my brain one day.
And it did.
But though I knew a LOT of stuff (and still do, BTW), want to know how much good it did me?
NONE!
I was trying this and that. I had four blogs going. I was driving traffic ineffectively, and though I knew a ton of stuff, I wasn’t making ANY money! It was frustrating and time consuming and I couldn’t look away for an instant because well… I was sure that I would get the big break any second, and I really needed the extra money, and well… it just never happened.
In my case, I was lucky. Tellman happened, and my IM life was transformed.
Want to know how?… Come back on Monday and I’ll tell ya.
But, only if I get at least 10 good comments. (No “nice post” comments will do. Tell me your thoughts or what you’re feeling about all this right now!) Make a comment and the secret will be revealed. Otherwise… Hmm… I guess you’ll just have to keep being overwhelmed.
The question that gets asked most by new Internet marketers is, “What niche should I be in?” I think. They have ideas about what they’d like to do, but are concerned about whether or not it will be a “good” niche, and rightly so. Selling clothes for racoons probably isn’t a great idea.
What to do?
Research.
The first thing to do is to think about what you really like to do and what you can work on for hours and hours without becoming tired or bored. What’s your passion? That’s really important. If your heart isn’t in it, guess what, neither will your mind be.
So, your first step is to sit down and to make a list of things you really enjoy doing, no matter what those things might be. It’s amazing that there are markets online for some things you’d think will never sell. And then again, things you think are a sure fit might totally suck. Or, they might be seasonal. Or, they might be so over.
Once you have your list, take your search for a niche over to http://SEOBook.com. Plug each word into the search bar and see how many searches a day are happening in Google. If you find that 3,000 to 10,000 searches are being performed each month, you’re on the right track. But that’s just the first step.
Move over to the column that says “G Trends,” and see whether the trend for whatever you’re searching is rising, falling or consistent. Rising and consistent is good. Falling isn’t.
Then, move over again to “Google TE” and see how much people are playing for clicks at Google AdWords. Anything over $1 is promising. Anything under that is iffy.
So, there are some general rules of thumb. SEOBook, also has a great blog. Peter D, who wrote “How to Spot Keyword Trends,” pulls Twitter into the mix, and some other factors that you can track to decide on a good niche to be in.
The whole idea is… do it! Why waste a lot of time working on things that nobody is interested in? You’ll lose time and money chasing something that just won’t work.
Just got back into town after a whirlwind trip to New York City. Tellman took most of us up for the 2009 American Business Awards, affectionately known as the “Stevie Awards.”
It was pretty swanky. We stayed in the Marriot Marquis, which is right in the heart of Times Square. In fact, we could look out the window and see the whole corner… pretty nifty. (Click on the link to see our view.)
The sad part is that we didn’t win. <sniff> Oh, well… there’s always next year.
But the Internet was well represented. Among finalists such as AT&T and Delta Faucet were names like ConstantContact, SchoolDude.com, and even Matt Bacak was there, representing a totally different category from ours. Sorry to say that Matt’s company didn’t win either, but at least we got to hang out with him a little later that night, in Koreatown.
Not winning was important. We were nominated as one of the fastest growing companies with under 100 employees in the country! That’s pretty huge, right? But what I’m thinking is that if that was so for 2008… we have a big job ahead of us for 2009, and we’re toally up for the task.
The truth is, we’re a very dedicated bunch and we really do care. We all want folks to learn and earn that extra money they need from an online business, or to even start a new business of their own so they can stop buying all that gas commuting to a job they hate every day. Whatever people want to achieve, we want to make that happen for them. The money comes from that, sure, but the money really isn’t the goal. I’m just blessed to be part of such a great company.
And the OE gang is totally fun to hang with, too. We did a whole walk of the city yesterday morning from Times Square to Central Park to Madison Ave., and let me tell you… my feet hate my guts. It’s not smart to wear new shoes when you’ll be walking like 15 blocks after an awards dinner, and then start all over the next morning and walk for like an hour and a half without stopping. Argh! We’re talking major blisters, people!
But it was still great fun. Wish you’d been there.
I’m so excited to have a friend of mine take the time to make a great video for my blog. His name is Wayne Sharer, and he’s done a great job of explaining the basics of keyword research, and I know that if you’re just starting out and aren’t sure of the process… Wayne will clear things up for you, so pay attention!
Learn something? Well… I hope you have and that you’ll visit Wayne at http://YourTrafficStarterBlog.com. He’s got some great traffic videos for you there, and I know they’ll be helpful, especially if you’re just starting out.
I’ll be back atcha with another post on Wednesday. I’m actually on my way to New York City today. You see, Overcome Everything is nominated as one of the fastest growing companies in the country for the American Business Awards. I’m really excited because I was lucky enough to get to write the entry that landed us the nomination.
So, Tellman is taking a bunch of us to the dinner and the ceremony. Pretty cool. Wish us luck! That would be one of the coolest things that’s ever happened and it wouldn’t be too bad for business, either. Ha!
Ever have one of THOSE days? Well… I did today. Nothing seemed to have been done right… out of my hands… just a victim of getting others to do things for you and not following up. Who’s court is the ball in ultimately? Mine, of course.
Or, how about those days when you don’t see any sales, no optins, nothing working no matter how hard you try! I get that. Been there…
I have a friend who’s vlog will totally pick you up and set you on the straight road again. Energy and how to channel it is important. But that’s only one aspect of her vlog that I know you’ll enjoy…
I was over at SEO Book, reading Aaron Wall’s post from June 16, entitled “Expert SEO Testing: Usually Worthless,” and was surprised to learn that rel=”nofollow” no longer works. Matt Cutts, Google’s spokesperson, admitted that was true at the recent SMX Conference.
Page rank sculpting is the practice of adding “no follow” to links going to your overhead pages, like your privacy page, your terms of service, or other pages that you don’t want ranked in the search results. It used to be that if you had 10 units of page rank and each link on your page was worth 1, when you added “no follow” to 5 of those links, they would transfer their page rank to the remaining links, right? So, then, each of the bare links would be worth 2.
What Matt Cutts is telling everyone now is that “no follow” no longer transfers page rank to the bare links. So, basically, by using no follow, you’re merely wasting PR. The “no follow” links will be worth zero, but the bare links will still only be worth 1.
I should say, “Is,” because apparently, this has been true for about a year and nobody noticed.
Great.
If you’re using “no follow,” don’t run around trying to change the links back to bare links. It’s not worth the time and effort. Just understand that you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s a waste of time.
Why did Google decide to institute the practice in the first place? Basically, to stop blog comment spamming, and yet, it didn’t really stop anything, so it “no follow” means “bupkiss.” It’s like the keywords META tag. Another useless convention.
Put your time into more important things like developing good, unique content and solid keyword research. Those should always pay off. I say, “should,” because there’s just no accounting for the whim of the Google ghods.
Keep your eyes and ears open to what’s happening, and try not to get caught up in the fads or fancies. Nobody truly knows the algorithm but Google, and they’re changing it all the time. Even the few people who claim to know it probably have no 100% clear idea.
OK, so I’m the project manager for The ListBuilding Club and totally love, love, love it. And why wouldn’t I? I’ve helped create it, have maintained it, and work on it 100% of my time for Overcome Everything. I’m prejudiced. But we have hundreds of people, if not thousands who would agree with me.
The site starts at the beginning with picking a niche, getting a domain name, setting up a blog and so on. I mean, it’s step-by-step video training that anyone can follow. It just rocks and we’re constantly working on what we have to offer to make it better and better. We really care that people love it and are able to use what they learn and take it to the bank.
But that’s not why I’m writing here.
I’m writing to tell you about our affiliate program. It’s awesome! I mean, where else can you get $20 – $29 a month from every customer you refer and pays for his or her membership? That keeps on coming! It’s an awesome site to promote, and something you can be proud to represent.
Sell 50 memberships to the LBC and then, you can apply to be an affiliate for our high-end coaching programs that bring in MUCH bigger commissions. Show us you know your stuff and you stand to make a great deal of cash!
But here’s a cool thing:
Even if you’re new to this whole affiliate marketing environment, we’re there to help you. Every Friday, we’re putting on training teleseminars that will teach you what you need to know to promote and make money with our system. You’ll love it!
So, sign up now and be part of the team. We’re waiting to help you make the cash you need to get by in these tough times.
Oh wait???? What’s that? I mean, really. If you’re a good affiliate marketer, there is no recession. It’s awesome!
So many folks are unaware of how devastating a domain name change can be… if it’s not handled properly. The search robots will freak out when they go looking for your website or blog and POOF! It’s gone. (At least to them.)
There is a way to handle a domain name change so that it doesn’t affect your rankings, and it’s known as a “Mod Rewrite.” For example, if you change the permalink structure in your WordPress blog, the blog automatically writes a small file to explain to robots what happened and where they can find the content presently.
This concept isn’t an easy one, but I found a great description and “how to” today in the Search Engine Journal blog by Sherice Jacob, entitled appropriately, “How to Change Your Domain While Keeping Your Search Engine Ranking.” This article explains .htaccess and what you need to do to appease the spiders. Very good explanation that is bound to help you if you’re planning to take this step.
OK, so I’m the project manager for 
