Monetizing Your Blog

Everyone's trying to monetize their blog - to some extent at least. Many - in fact most - people feel as if it's not happning to them and they can't understand why.

Jack Humphrey has some really interesting theories to share in this video so listen up and benefit:



Enjoy!
Patricia
Patricia Howitt
1stClassWeb.Biz
http://patriciahowitt.com

Feed URLS

Seems to me once a blog's feed has been syndicated at Feedburner, it's hard for a visitor to find the feed URL if they need it for some purpose.

I have just been grappling with the problem of getting feed URLs for feeds I'm submitting in the Worlds of Interest (Niche Worlds) at CAGORA, where I work.

I think it's a good idea where your blog is syndicated at Feedburner to list the feed url somewhere on the blog so people can easily find it - I got so frustrated a few hours ago I nearly walked away altogether from a couple of blogs I was trying to list. I just couldn't get them listed using the original feed addresses and I had no way of knowing if the blog was syndicated on Feedburner or not. I finally found the Feedburner URL by a fluke - and that's not good enough when visitors can click away from any site in a second if they don't find what they want. I'm thinking especially of newbies here.

The Feedburner feed url for this blog is
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/1stClassMarketing
and I shall be listing that URL in the sidebar shortly - AND doing the same for all my other blogs.

Feedburner's great, except for this one little drama......

Patricia Howitt
1stClassWeb.Biz
http://patriciahowitt.com

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market, marketing, business, shoestring budget, advertising, promotion, blogs, feeds, Feedburner, niches, niche worlds

Stephen Pierce - Brilliant Audio

Whatever you're doing on the net, I can guarantee there are times when you wonder why you are here.

Don't become a statistic. Sometimes we all wonder if it's worth it, and let me tell you, this audio is going to give you a whole new outlook, no matter what you are into.

Stephen calls it:
"This Will Change Your Life!"
www.makerealmoneyontheinternet.com/freeaudio.html

Click now - it's an hour long recording, but I promise it will be the best hour you've spent in a long time ...

Patricia Howitt
1stClassWeb.Biz

Technorati Tags:
market, marketing, business, shoestring budget, advertising, promotion, success, motivation, mind management

404 Pages

Over the years there have been quite a few suggested ways to customize 404 pages.

One of the best for blogs, using Google's Webmaster Tools, comes from Vladimir Prelovac on his Wordpress Blog.

Enjoy!

Patricia Howitt
1stClassWeb.Biz

Technorati Tags:
market, marketing, business, shoestring budget, advertising, promotion, webmaster tools, enhanced 404 page, google

More SEO Tools and Sites

At the end of this article I'm going to tell you how good SEO is for YOU, so listen up!

Monetizing resources has become the name of the game, but there are still a lot of FREE tools around right now that help you in evaluating keywords and choosing the best for your purpose - even tools that help you get creative in exploring new keywords for your topic. Here are a few:

SEO Chat The Best! This is a comprehensive site with a heap of tutorials and SEO tools to help any webmaster optimize his or her site for traffic. Keep this site in your toolbox (see my post on this) because you will want to refer to it often.

SEO Book has a series of paid courses and the owners can be hired for SEO work on your site. You can sign up for a free membership and get a free 7-day SEO beginners course by email also - go for it!

Scrub The Web One of the older engines, Scrubby has always been an SEO resource. They have a comprehensive area devoted to SEO, with some free tools and help, plus a series of courses for their exclusive membership. At $ 79.95 for a 6 month membership, this HAS to be one of the best value for money SEO deals on the net. Scrubby is definitely worth taking a look at because they have extra goodies like a free Metatag Builder, a free Metatag Analyzer and an Easy Submit, to name a few.

EZ SEO News is also worth a glance, though it doesn't rank up there with the above resources and it's not at all well organised, for my money.

Firefox Among all its features, Firefox has a free extension that adds many search engine optimization data points into Google's SERPs and Yahoo!'s SERPs on the fly. You can download it HERE.

Of course, there are heaps of companies out there falling over themselves to do an SEO job on your website - for a fee. For the big guys with money to burn and not much time to spend, that might be the way to go.

My feeling is though, if you're serious about your online presence, it's a much better idea to upskill and do the job yourself. Learning this stuff is going to widen your vision about the potential of the net and how to position your business to make the best of it - and that can only be GOOD for your business!

More tomorrow.

Patricia Howitt
1stClassWeb.Biz


Technorati Tags:
market, marketing, business, shoestring budget, advertising, promotion, SEO, keywords, keyword research

SEO and Keywords Research

Keywords research is a huge "key" (forgive the pun!) to Search Engine Optimization for any site, not to mention making a proper job of choosing a niche, if you're looking to create a niche site. You should start your keyword research ideally before you even decide on your domain name.

And, who knows, a bit of savvy research right at the start might lead you to one of those still untaken domain name gems of pure gold at rock-bottom prices that James Siminoff talks about in the article mentioned in my previous post.

Okay, so where do you go to do keyword research? Many of the keyword tools now cost - usually a pretty steep monthly fee. Let's have a look at what there is.

Wordtracker.com has an extensive range of keyword tools and tutorials. The monthly fee is $59. They have a basic free keyword research tool HERE, and you can sign up for a free newsletter.

Wordze.com is the cheapest of the paid tools with a current special offer at $38.98. Members get access to daily, weekly, and monthly search trends, and other features. The tool is apparently very well suited to bloggers, and has an intuitive interface. Their index page has an interesting list of the Top 10 keywords from the previous day's search history.

Keyword Discovery is the tool for serious keyword research. According to its site copy, Keyword Discovery is the most advanced Keyword Research tool available. With a standard monthly subscription of $69.95 it is definitely a tool for dedicated researchers only.

Keyword Elite is designed and marketed by Brad Callen, the SEO expert (Get his free book on SEO from the link in my post SEO - Search Engine Optimisation below). Keyword Elite is a downloadable software package, priced at $176. The site copy includes some glowing reports and testimonials. It has a full money-back guarantee.

Good Keywords has just revamped its software range, designed to be downloaded and operated from your desktop. I've used the free Good Keywords before and it's handy to have. There are free as well as paid versions, so well worth looking at when first starting out in this field.

For an excellent review of the first four options above, CLICK HERE.

Patricia Howitt
1stClassWeb.Biz

Technorati Tags:
market, marketing, business, shoestring budget, advertising, promotion, SEO, keywords, keyword research

How to Choose a Great Domain Name

Just came across an interesting article about choosing and getting a good domain name, by someone who has the $$ to go only for the best. Getting the right domain name is the important first SEO step for your website.

Well worth having a look at. Check out this post by James Siminoff, the founder of PhoneTag.com.

Patricia Howitt
1stClassWeb.Biz

Technorati Tags:
market, marketing, business, shoestring budget, advertising, promotion, domain names

50+ Ways to Analyze Your Traffic

I use Statcounter for my site traffic statistics, and I would recommend it to anybody, because even the free version has a whole range of useful tools to tell you what kind of traffic you are getting, where it's coming from, and how long it's staying.

But I just found an interesting article by Cameron Chapman on Mashable called Analytics Toolbox: 50+ More Ways to Track Website Traffic

This is very current information. In itself the article doesn't resolve the question which of these tools one should use, but the comments provide a few additional sidelights on that issue.

Patricia Howitt
1stClassWeb.Biz

Technorati Tags:
market, marketing, business, shoestring budget, advertising, promotion, website statistics, traffic

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation

This is a very important technique to learn as soon as you take the step of creating your own webpages. The best and most responsive traffic you can get is from search engines, because people who have found you from their own search efforts are in a much better frame of mind to respond to whatever it is your site asks them to do - THEY have found YOU and they don't feel pressured.

Brad Callen has just brought out a new issue of his landmark "Search Engine Optimisation Made Easy" Ebook, which you can now download for free as a gift from my marketing and web development site at http://1stclassweb.biz. Just RIGHT click on this image
and save target as ...

I got a pleasant surprise when I opened it, because I checked some of his links and found that the great free keyword research tool at Good Keywords, which disappeared for awhile, is not only back - it is now part of a suite of free tools. I saw it go, and thought it had succumbed to the all-pervading "monetization" syndrome.

THANK GOODNESS sites like this still provide free tools! Don't miss out on this great book and the advice it has for you - this is invaluable stuff for anyone working in website design, on however small a scale.

Patricia Howitt
1stClassWeb.Biz

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market, marketing, business, shoestring budget, advertising, promotion, webdesign, SEO, optimization