Why Similar Blogs Sell for Different Prices

This guest post is by Jock Purtle of brokercorp.com.

If you are selling your blog, the first thing you will want to know is how much it is worth. You type into Google is something like “what is my website worth?” What you will get is a whole lot of free website valuation tools. If you use something like www.mywebsiteworth.com and type in “google.com” you get an arbitrary value of 1 billion dollars.

Now we all know these tools are can’t be right. So we might then type into Google “what factors determine a website’s value?” and when we collate all the information. we are going to get a long list of different things to look for when valuing a website. Things like domain age, PageRank, Google rankings, and so on.

But what these articles fail to identify is the single most important factor in valuing a website, and that is the future maintainable earnings of the site.

What needs to be understood is that the assets of the business are only indicators of future maintainable earnings, and do not add any extra value to the site. Value is determined by whether the site will make money in the future, and what level of risk the potential buyer is willing to take.

Let’s take the example of company A and company B. Each company has the same income and same net profit for the year. However, as we will find, their value differs completely.

The market has a strong opinion on what a site is worth. Buyers are looking for a good return on investment and the value is based on what they are willing to pay. That is why valuation is really only educated guess-work about what a site will sell for.

From the above example you may think that your blog meets all the criteria of company B, but that doesn’t mean that you are going to sell it for that amount.

The reason company B is deemed more valuable is because, from the information available, the site looks like it will continue to increase in revenue every year and there is a lower risk that the site will fail. Thus there is less risk for a potential buyer, and they would be willing to pay more to acquire it.

The table represents a rule of thumb that you can apply to any website. The factors listed represent the variables that should be considered in any valuation. There may be some outlying factors that skew the data if either site were to be purchased and that is why true valuation is only represented by the final sale price and the money has been exchanged.

The risk a buyer is willing to take in purchasing a website will determine the multiple of earnings that they’re willing to pay.

The general rule you will find in valuation follows something like this:

Net Income x Some Multiplier = Your Website Value

Here is a breakdown of those two factors.

Net income is represented by a company’s total profit for the year and is calculated by taking revenues and adjusting for the cost of doing business, depreciation, interest, taxes and other expenses, or in accounting speak, EBITDA (earning before interest tax, depreciation, and amortization).

A web business normally doesn’t have the usual expenses that an offline business has, like rent, office space, and so on, and this is reflected in the financials.

A simple multiplier will be based on an expected Rate of Return. This is used to calculate the final sale price and is reflective of the risk that the purchaser is willing to take.

Consider these multipliers:

12 times Monthly Multiple = 100% return (your money back in one year)24 time Monthly Multiple = 50% return (your money back in two years)36 times Monthly Multiple = 33% return (your money back in three years).

You are beginning to see why Internet businesses are a good investment. With low staff and expenses and less hassle than a traditional business, they can offer much better value than putting your money in the bank and getting 1-5% interest.

“But what about the value of my domain, and the rankings in Google, and the cost of the web development? Why isn’t that included in the site?” you may be thinking.

Unfortunately, the market doesn’t look at your site as a sum of all its parts. So even if you site cost you $15k to develop, and the domain cost $12k, if it only makes $10k per year, you are only likely to get $10k—$30k for the site, even though it cost you $27k to develop.

The assets of the business (content, rankings, domain, and so on) add no more value than what has already been calculated. The assets of the business simply form the structure for its revenue-generating capabilities.

It is important to understand this principle when valuing your site. Even though it might have cost you $27k to get the site up and running, your blog is no more valuable than the income a potential buyer can see the site making in the future.

Have you had your blog valued? Tell us about your experiences in the comments.

Jock Purtle is a Senior Broker at Brokercorp.com. They are a full-service website brokerage specializing in website sales and acquisitions. Jock is currently offering a free website valuation at http://brokercorp.com/sell/.

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Why Submit Your Best Posts as Guest Posts?

This guest post is by Aman Basanti of ageofmarketing.com.

If you have been in the blogging game for any number of months, you already know about the power of guest blogging in generating traffic and exposure to your blog. Yet there are new bloggers out there who hear about the power of guest posting, but still do not understand why it is so effective.

Image copyright Franz Pfluegl - Fotolia.com

As one reader commented on my recent piece on guest posting, “You people are always advocating guest posting. But I am not convinced about guest posting. Can you help me in this case? Why should we submit our best work to someone else?”

It is a valid question and as there are always new people entering the world of blogging, one that is worth answering for the blogging community at large.

Accordingly, here are three reasons why you should submit some of your best posts as guest posts.

Here is what a lot of new bloggers don’t know. A-list blogs get a lot of guest post submissions every week. On average, an a-list blog like ProBlogger might get around 30 guest post submissions. In comparison, most blogs only post five or ten posts a week, which means 20 posts get rejected.

If you are sending in your weak posts, chances are your post will get rejected. By sending in your top posts, you increase your chances of getting published on an A-list blog.

Guest posting on A-list blogs gets you high quality backlinks that help you improve your rankings in the search engines.

Now, you might say, “But I’m getting backlinks through the comments section. Why would I go to all that effort of writing and submitting guest posts when I can easily get those backlinks through the comments section?”

The answer is that links in the comments sections of the major blogs are “no-follow,” which means that they count for a lot less (some say not at all) than the “do follow” links that you get in your by line or author box alongside a guest post.

Also, links higher up on the page carry more SEO benefit. As SEOMoz wrote in a post on SEO, “We find that links higher up in the HTML code of a page seem to pass more ranking ability/value than those lower down.” As most guest posts include a back link at the start and at the end of the post, it further magnifies the power of the backlinks.

Combine these two factors and it is easy to see that the backlinks from guest posting are far more valuable than those in the comments section.

Traffic from guest posts is some of the highest converting traffic you can get. Here are the subscriber opt-in rates for my free ebook page:

Google Adwords (Banner ads on the content network): 5% opt-in rate (I know I have some work to do on this, but still)StumbleUpon: 0.5% opt-in rateGuest posting: 40% opt-in rate.

Traffic from guest posting is, hands down, the highest converting traffic you can get. Also, on a big site, the chance of your post going viral is high. It is simple maths. More readers equal more people sharing the post. The more people sharing your post the higher the chance it will be seen by an influencer, further increasing its chances of going viral.

My post on The Warren Buffett Method for Building a Successful Blog, for example, went viral because it was posted on ProBlogger. That post earned me 50 subscribers, showed that I was a good writer, and put me on the map of other bloggers in my niche.

In other words, I got a lot more value from posting it on ProBlogger than I would have had I posted it on my own blog.

Unless you already have a popular blog, there is no reason why you should not submit your best posts as guest posts on major sites. More traffic, better search engine rankings, and brand exposure are some of the key benefits.

Plus, it gives you a bit of kick to get so many comments on a piece you wrote, which can motivate you to keep blogging so that one day you too will get that many comments on your own blog.

Aman Basanti writes about the psychology of buying and teaches you how you can use the principles of consumer psychology to boost your sales. Visit www.Ageofmarketing.com/free-ebook to get his new e-book – Marketing to the Pre-Historic Mind: How the Hot New Science of Behavioural Economics Can Help You Boost Your Sales – for FREE.

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What Bloggers Can Learn From Musicians

This guest post is by Jamie Northrup of jamienorthrup.com.

A lot of the keys to being a successful musician are the same as being a successful blogger.

Some of the similarities between these two professionals are that both write a lot, both present their work to an audience, and both can choose to do it for the art or for the money—or even both, like I do!

There are currently three ways to become a successful money-making musician:

Image copyright IKO - Fotolia.com

This is the oldest and most common way to becoming a successful artist. You can either push your demo or get discovered. Either way, you may not have as much control over your destiny, but you usually have some help getting to the top—or as close as possible.

This isn’t the easiest way, but it is probably the most rewarding. You have to work hard, but you get the control over what you do as an artist.

One artist that comes to mind is Master P, who basically sold CDs out of the trunk of his car. He made millions like that, and later founded his own record company. He was worth over $400 million, and was on Forbes richest people under 40 list in the late 1990s.

This isn’t new—it’s been around since television has been around with shows like Star Search—but it seems to have exploded in recent years with shows like American Idol, X-Factor, and others.

It’s a great way to become a star and showcase your talent, but it can be hard to even get into the early stages of the competition.

When you look at these options, you can see that attaining blogging success isn’t much different. You can join a “tribe,” do it yourself, or enter blogging contests—but chances are, like me, you fall in the second group of people trying to do it on their own.

Some of the techniques I use to be a successful blogger are similar to the ways DIY musicians gain success.

Think of a song as a blog post, and an album as a blog.

There are several techniques that work for both musicians and bloggers.

The first is guest posting. The same thing happens in music: guest posting is pretty much the same as one artist featuring another one in one of their songs. It’s a great way for either the musician or the blogger to establish themselves with a new audience, and get their name out there.

The second technique, which is quite similar to the first, is remixing a song. Lil Wayne is famous for doing this on his mixtapes (unreleased or non-mainstream albums). This artist would take popular songs and remake them with his own words. Bloggers do this quite often as well—I actually try and do it once a month. My latest attempt was “remixing” a popular post from Think Traffic.

The final link I like to draw between successful bloggers and successful musicians is that both write about what is hot—the trends. There’s no surprise that when you blog or sing about what’s in the news, you’ll get recognition. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not, but apparently there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Choosing to blog on your own isn’t the easiest way to earn blogging success, but if you don’t quit, you will succeed—just like self-made musicians.

Do you see any other ways that bloggers are like musicians?

This post was written by Jamie Northrup, a web consultant based in Montreal, Canada. Jamie runs several different blogs, and tweets using his web handle DeuceGroup.

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Why Bloggers Should Self-Publish

By James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com.

I’ve published seven books in the past seven years, five with traditional publishers (Wiley, Penguin, HarperCollins), and the last two I’ve self-published.

In this post I give the specific details of all of my sales numbers and advances with the traditional publishers.

Although the jury is still out on my self-published books, How to be the Luckiest Man Alive and I Was Blind But Now I See (the latter was just published last month and is #2 for Motivation on Amazon’s Kindle store as I write this), I can tell you these two have already sold more than my five books published with traditional publishers, combined.

Image copyright photogl - Fotolia.com

The rest of this article is really three discussions: Why self-publish, rather than use a traditional publisher?Why bloggers should self-publish.How to go about self-publishing.Advances are going to zero: Book publishers are getting more and more squeezed by declining booksellers so they, in turn, have to squeeze the writers. Because there’s so much free content on the Internet, the value per unit of content is going to zero unless you are already an established name-brand author.Lag time: When you self-publish, you can have your book up and running on Amazon, paperback, and Kindle within days. When you publish with a traditional publisher, it’s a grueling process—book proposal, agents, lawyers, meetings, edits, packaging, catalogs—that ensures that your book doesn’t actually get published until a year later. Literally, as I write this, a friend of mine IMed me the details of his book deal he just got with a mainstream publisher. Publication date: 2014.Marketing: Publishers claim they do a lot of marketing for you. That’s laughable. I’ll give you a very specific example. After I published with Penguin, they met with a friend of mine whose book they wanted to publish. They didn’t realize she was my friend. She asked them, “what marketing did you do for James Altucher’s book?” They said, “Well, we got him a review in The Financial Times and we got a segment about his book on CNBC and an excerpt in thestreet.com.” Here’s what’s so funny. I had a weekly column in The Financial Times. I wrote my own review. As a joke. I also had a weekly segment on CNBC. So naturally I spoke about my book during my regular segment. And I had just sold my last company to thestreet.com. So instead of doing my usual article for them, I did an excerpt from the book. In other words, I felt the publisher did nothing, but took credit for eveything. Ultimately, authors (unless you are, for example, Stephen King) have to do their own marketing for books. The first question publishers ask, even before they look at your proposal, is, “How big is your platform?” They want to know how you can market the book and if they can make money on just your own marketing efforts.Better royalties: When I self-publish I make about a 70% royalty instead of the 15% royalty I made with a traditional publisher. I also own 100% of the foreign rights, instead of 50%. I hired someone to sell the foreign rights to my work, and they get 20% (and no upfront fee).More control over content and design: Look at this cover, designed by a traditional publisher for me (this was my third book). It’s hideous. Now look at the cover for my last book. You may or may not like it, but it’s exactly what I wanted. Publishers even include in the contract that they have final say over the cover, and this is one detail they will not negotiate. Also, when you self-publish, you don’t have any teenage interns sending back editorial comments that you completely disagree with. You control your own content.You have content: I have enough material in my blog right now (including my “Drafts” folder, which has 47 unpublished posts in it) to publish five more books over the next year. And I’m sure that number will increase over the next year as I write more posts.You have more to say. If you just take the posts (mentioned in the point above) and publish them, people will say, “he’s just publishing a collection of posts”. A couple of comments on that. So what? It’s okay if you are curating what you feel your best posts are. And for a small price, people can get that curation and read it in a different format. There’s value there.Don’t just take a collection of your posts. A blog post is typically 500-2000 words, but usually closer to 500. Do a bit more research for each post. Do intros and outros for each post. Make the chapters 3000-4000 words long. Make a bigger arc to the book by using original material to explain why this book, with these chapters, presented in this manner is a different read than the blog. Have a chapter specifically explaining how the book is different from the blog. With my last book, I had original material in each chapter, and several chapters that were completely original. Instead of it being a collection of posts, the overall book was about how we have been brainwashed in society, and how uncovering the brainwashing and using the techniques I describe can bring happiness. This was covered in a much more detailed fashion than the blog ever could, even though the material was inspired by several of my posts.Amazon is an extra platform for you to market your blog: Or vice versa. You won’t make a million dollars on your book (well, maybe you will—never say never) but just being able to say, “I’m a published author” extends your credibility as a writer when you go out there now to syndicate your blog elsewhere, or to get speaking engagements. And when you do a speaking engagement, you can now hand something out—your book! So Amazon and publishing become a powerful marketing platform for your overall writing/speaking/consulting career.Nobody cares: Some people want the credibility of saying “Penguin published me”. I can tell you from experience—nobody ever asked me who was my publisher.How will I get in bookstores? I don’t know. How will you? Traditional publishers can’t get you there either. Often bookstores will look at what’s hot on Amazon and then order the books wholesale from the publishers. In many cases, traditional publishers will take their most-known writers (so if you are in that category, congrats!) and pay to have them featured at a bookstore. As for my experience, my traditional publishers would get a few copies of my books in the bookstores of major cities (i.e. NYC and that’s it), but nothing more.

There’s lots of ways to do it, but I’ll tell you my experience.

For my last two self-published books, as I mentioned above, I took some blog posts, rewrote parts of them, added original material, added new chapters, and provided an overall arc as to what the book was about, as opposed to it just being a random collection of posts.

But, that said, you probably already have the basic material already.

I used Createspace because it’s owned by Amazon and has excellent customer service. The team at Creatspace let you pick the size of your book and then have Microsoft Word templates that you download to format your book within.

For my first book I did this by myself. For my second book, for a small fee, I hired Alexanderbecker.net to format the book, create the book design, and create the final PDF that I uploaded. He also checked grammar, made proactive suggestions on fonts (sans serif instead of serif), and was extremely helpful.

Createspace approves it, picks an ISBN number, sends you a proof, and then you approve the proof.

All of the above (from Createspace) was free. If I didn’t hire Alex to make the cover I could’ve used one of Createspace’s possible covers (I did that for my first book) and the entire publishing in paperback would be free.

With Kindle, Createspace charges $70—and they take care of everything until it’s uploaded to the Kindle store. Now your book is available in paperback and Kindle versions!

Readers of my blog who asked for it got the first 20 copies or so for free from me. Many of them then posted good reviews on Amazon to get the ball rolling.I’ve been handing out the books at speaking engagements. Altogether, I’ll do around ten speaking engagements, handing my latest book out.I write a blog post about how the bo0k is different from the blog and why I chose to go this route.Writing guests posts for blogs like ProBlogger helps, too, and I’m very grateful.Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+ are also very helpful.

You’re in charge of your own promotions (as opposed to having a book publisher handling them for you). For instance, n a recent blog post I discussed the differences between my latest book and my blog, and I also offered a promotion that lets readers get my next self-published book (Bad Behavior, expected in Q1 2012) free.

Over the next year, I have five different books planned, all on different topics. I’m super-excited about them because I’m allowed to push the barrier in every area I’m interested in, and there’s nobody to stop me.

You can do this also. And you should do it. There are no more excuses in this environment. Do you have questions about self-publishing? Let us know in the comments!

James Altucher has written 7 books, has started and sold 3 businesses, and has blogged successfully this past year at jamesaltucher.com. He also writes for the WSJ and other media outlets. He exposes himself way too much on his blog.

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Wealth Creation Through Blogging

This guest post is by Shaun of MoneyCactus.

There’s a blog for just about everything these days. Some are a lot better than others, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that any blog has the potential to become great.

It is completely possible to find a niche and an interested audience if you are serious enough about it yourself.

Image copyright Maria Goncalves - Fotolia.com

Some Internet entrepreneurs are better at doing this than others and make the process look easy. While many of these great bloggers definitely have a talent for what they do, the fundamentals of how they go about it really don’t change too much at all.

I guess now is probably a good time to tell you that this is not an article about making money from your blog. Before you even get to this stage you need to develop a strategy, understand your market, and allocate your resources. Good bloggers understand this. They are the same principles that you would use when making any investment.

If you want to create a blog that is successful, then these basic wealth creation fundamentals should go a long way to getting you there.

People often make bad investment decisions, most of which are based on their emotions or—even worse—a “gut feeling.” Bloggers can make this mistake when selecting a niche as well.

A hobby is not an investment, it is just another way to spend your money. You do not need to be good at a hobby. Really, it’s just something you do to waste time.

The best investments are made in things that you are very knowledgeable about. Don’t confuse something you like the sound of with something you know a lot about. In order to create an authority site and demonstrate social proof, you need to know enough about your area of interest to attract readers. You do not need to be an expert, but you do need to have a knack for delivering information that makes readers want to keep coming back.

Do your research before anything else. You wouldn’t waste time and money on a dud investment; don’t do the same with a blog.

If you told me I had an imaginary sum of $1,000 and then asked me to pick some stocks to watch over a year as a way to practice my investing skills, I probably wouldn’t have any trouble making a choice and playing the game. If you told me I had to actually put my own money on the line, the chances are I would be studying those stocks very closely and sweating every decision I made.

If you are really serious about blogging, then you need to have a stake in the game. It doesn’t need to be big money, but spending some money on your blog will help keep you motivated as losing it is never fun.

Forget Blogger, WordPress.com, Tumblr, or any of those other free platforms (believe me, I learned the hard way). Yes they can be useful and they are simple to set up, but if you plan to use your blog as a means to generate income, then invest in yourself, and pay the small amount of money it costs to get a unique domain name and a self-hosted account.

Tithing is practiced by many of the world’s richest people, but you don’t need mega bucks to start giving. You can give in lots of ways that help others, and the nice thing is that giving has a habit of coming back to you in lots of other ways.

Bloggers are quite possibly the nicest people I know. It is amazing how approachable they are, and what they will do to help or provide advice if you ask them. If you spend some time hanging out in the blogosphere, then you will quickly realize that the whole network runs on love. Bloggers write about things they love, people follow the things they love, and the better you are at showing people how to do what they want, the more love you will get in return.

If you can find ways to be ridiculously useful to others within your niche and over-deliver on your promises, you will attract people organically. Unsurprisingly, bloggers follow other bloggers in their niche, so reach out and give to a fellow blogger or combine your powers to offer even more.

In order to spread risk, investors often use different vehicles to grow their wealth. The same principles apply to blogging: a nice spread of traffic will ensure you are not reliant on any one stream.

There are many ways to do this, and you might have your own methods, but here are a few things that I have been doing to grow my audience.

There are ways to help make your blog posts as targeted as possible by focusing on keywords and employing other SEO tactics. But, to be perfectly honest, the most visited pages on my site are poorly optimized (I really should do something about that).

Instead, I write about what is affecting me, and I try to solve the problem. Funnily enough there are lots of other people that have similar problems, so my posts end up getting found anyway. I’ve found the best thing to do is just focus on a single topic per post. That way, basic things like keyword density seem to happen on their own.

This is one of the best ways I have found to share my blog posts as widely as possible and get referrals from other blogs. It is also a really great way to network with other people in your niche. Different carnivals have different rules, but they usually let you submit a recent article that you have written on your site. A link to this is then listed on the carnival host site, which means potential traffic from other bloggers and people that are regulars on the host site.

Blogging carnivals are often hosted on a different site each time, so submitting your articles regularly means you are more likely to be seen by a broader audience. If you want to look for a blogging carnival for your niche, you could try starting here.

This has got to be the next best thing to guest posting. You get to have your say on a topic, actively participate in an online community, and you can often leave a link to your site for people to see what you are all about.

I think that this traffic generation strategy is completely underrated. I can’t tell you how many times I have checked out a site because I liked a comment I read somewhere else, and Google Analytics tells me others do the same with my site too. If you want to develop your comment strategy, you might like this guide to writing killer comments.

The best blogs have “shareholders” in the form of subscribers. These people have decided that the site is an asset to them, and that it’s worth investing their time in. Like any good stock, a blog needs to continue to perform over the long term in order to hold or increase its value, and that requires ongoing effort.

I’ll be the first to tell you that there is more I could do more to improve the stock of my blog, but every time I have invested in it, I have seen a gain. My final wealth creation tip is to continue investing in your blog: set short-, medium-, and long-term goals, but view it as an appreciating asset that will grow in value over time.

Try these simple wealth creation strategies on your blog and see what happens for yourself.

Shaun is not an accountant, financial planner or life coach, but he writes about wealth creation anyway! Shaun’s motto is “Make wealth, not money,” which fits quite nicely with where he wants to be in life. You can find out more by visiting his blog where he shows you how to do nothing and grow wealthy.

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Want to Make Money Online? Then Stop Reading and Get Moving!

This guest post is by Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post here at problogger.net about how Firepole Marketing makes money.

I explained that even though we’re less than a year old, we’ve already made over $20,000, and that over half of that came from offline sources.

We wanted to know how other bloggers make their money. Is it all online, or do they make their money offline as well?

In other words, we wanted to know if they were Semi-Local.

In October 2011, we surveyed 153 people; 107 who were already Semi-Local, and 46 who aspired to be. We asked a number of questions to find out what was really involved in becoming and being Semi-Local. Here are the highlights of what we learned.

The first major finding was about how many hours per week people who were already Semi-Local (current SLs) spent working, versus how many hours per week people who aspired to be Semi-Local (aspiring SLs) spent working:

Notice the discrepancies on either end of the spectrum: 31% of aspiring SLs work less than 20 hours per week, versus only 12% of current SLs. On the other hand, only 15% of aspiring SLs work 50+ hours per week, versus 28% of current SLs.

Do you think people are idealizing the Semi-Local life, and expecting it to be a lot easier than it really is?

Another interesting finding was about take-home income:

There’s definitely more money in being Semi-Local: 39% of current SLs make over $60K/year, versus only 22% of aspiring SLs. The majority (60%) of aspiring SLs make between $20K and $60K/year, whereas the majority (60%) of current SLs make between $40K and $200K/year—a big difference!

There’s some interesting data at the edges of the spectrum, though. 25% of current SLs make under $20K/year, versus only 18% of aspiring SLs, and only 2% of current SLs make over $200K/year, versus 4% of aspiring SLs.

One of the most interesting findings (to me, at least) was about how people actually go about becoming Semi-Local:

The majority (71%) of aspiring SLs expect to achieve Semi-Local status by creating an offer that is substantially different from their current offer. In contrast, the majority (60%) of current SLs did it by selling exactly the same offer to a new market.

The lesson here is pretty clear—put away all of the shiny objects, and look for new customers to buy what you’ve already got!

This is one of the top questions for anyone who’s thinking about becoming Semi-Local: how long does it take to launch?

There are really two “categories” of results here: the first category is “under 100 hours,” and the second category is “100+ hours.” Seeing the results in these two categories, we can draw a couple of interesting conclusions:

Current SLs have a stronger preference for smaller projects as a means of getting going (76% of current SLs, versus 70% of aspiring SLs).Current SLs took a lot less time to launch than aspiring SLs expect it will take (46% launched in under 40 hours, versus 34% who believe they can do it in such a short time).

That’s the question that we should all be asking before opening up our wallets for the latest training program on blogging and online business:

This is the most striking finding: 63% of current SLs said “no,” versus only 43% of aspiring SLs. The message here is very clear: you don’t need training, you just need to get off your butt and start working!

Do you want to see more of the numbers? Review more of the answers that the respondents gave us? Then download the full report—it’s free!

Danny Iny (@DannyIny) is an author, strategist, serial entrepreneur, expert marketer, and the Freddy Krueger of Blogging. Together with Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark, Mitch Joel, he wrote the book on how to build an engaged audience from scratch.

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What About Google -1?

Dit gastpost is door Sriram Reddy van BloggingTipster.com.

Allen: Billy, waarom bent u op zoek zo somber? Uw Twitter volgeling tellen halveren overnachting? Hehe...

Billy: Nee, ik had net zo'n cheesy ervaring googlen voor materiaal voor Prof. Dwyer van toewijzing. Er was een ongebruikelijke hoeveelheid spam in de zoekresultaten. Ik had zo'n harde tijd scannen via alle deze zoekresultaten, maar ik eindelijk gevonden wat ik echt was op zoek naar.

Ik wens er een manier kon ik anderen schild in de internetgemeenschap van bezoek aan enkele van die sites die ik bezocht was — geloof me, ze waren een schijnvertoning. Als slechts er een manier die kon ik sommige van deze resultaten in Google SERPs begraven was. Pech dat Google niet geef me een optie om te ontmoedigen van mijn vrienden uit door dergelijke resultaten klikt. Zwarte hoed SEO's lijken langzaam te krijgen de betere van Google zoeken.

Allen: Ahh, ik ben het met u eens van Google is niet spam volledig uitgeroeid, maar maak je geen zorgen: Panda algoritme van Google is zeer effici?nt in het omgaan met spammers. Nog beter, de onlangs gelanceerde Google + 1 knop gaat absoluut om toe te voegen de menselijke factor dat Google de pagina rang algoritme zo ernstig behoeften. Het is een enorme stap naar het verwijderen van spam.

Billy: Hmm, ja ik moet toegeven dat ik hou het idee van + 1?ing iets. Het maakt me het gevoel meer in controle. Ik kan niet helpen maar denk van grote outfits die gaan door te bevelen hun leden naar + 1 hun eigen site via persoonlijke profielen misbruik de + 1.

Terwijl de knop + 1 SERPs in de juiste richting begeleiden zal, wens ik dat Google ook een knop-1 zou voeren te neutraliseren van het effect van de knop + 1 door sommige uitgevers gaming. Het eerste wat ik zou doen als Google vrijgegeven een -1 knop, is -1 alle spammers op mijn onderzoek voor Prof. Dwyer van toewijzing. Geloof me, ik ben zo ontmoedigd met mijn zoekopdrachten vandaag.

Allen: Whoa! Een Google -1 knop! Denk je niet dat we hebben genoeg sociale knoppen om te gaan met al?

Billy: Ik ben ervan overtuigd dat als u had een slechte ontmoeting met een zoekresultaat, u moet tip off uw vrienden en de hele wereld over, zodat ze niet hoeven te maken dezelfde fout u gemaakt — als ze kiezen om te gaan door uw aanbeveling, dat wil zeggen.

U weet wat anders ik zou graag zien op een Google -1 knop? Wen mensen-1 iets, zou het goed om te zien hun -1 openbaar weergegeven in zoekresultaten van Google als aantekeningen over de inhoud ze -1 ' ed — net als de +1s weergegeven in de resultaten.

Neem het voorbeeld van de opdracht dat Prof. Dwyer gaf ons vandaag. Iedereen in de klasse zullen zoeken naar dezelfde informatie op Google, en we zullen zeker alle websites die spam worden overkomt. Als ik werd niet tevredengesteld met een zoekresultaat, kon ik gewoon klikt u op de knop-1. Het zou dan weergegeven op mijn vrienden zoek dat Billy resultaten-1?ed dit. Hoe cool zou dat zijn?! Aangezien ik niet de link had gewild, ben ik zeker de meeste in onze klasse zou niet verspillen hun tijd op het.

Allen: Ah, dat doet me denken, ik beter zou eindigen met Prof. Dwyer van toewijzing spoedig, of ik zal kijken naar mijn tweede aarding in een week.

Billy: Bah! Voor algemeen gezochte termen de resultaten zijn in grote lijnen niet te slecht. Maar voor niche termen, heb ik gemerkt dat ik heb te besteden al geruime tijd aan het zoeken via affiliate links en doelloos blogs voordat ik vind wat ik wil.

Ik heb gehoord dat een derde van alle zoekopdrachten zijn eerst zoekopdrachten. Aangezien Google is nog steeds verbetering van haar zoekalgoritme voor query's eerst, zou hun voordeel met de hulp van mensen zoals wij te stemmen uit spam. Dit maakt een sterk argument voor een Google -1 knop.

Allen: Misschien bent u het een beetje te snel hier paniek knop te drukken. Een knop-1 zou erger dan ontketenen een brand-ademende draak.

Het zou openstellen websites voor sociale aanvallen. Organisaties zal gaan berserk - 1ing hun rivalen uit de competitie. Dit zou veel ernstiger gevolgen hebben dan gewoon de knop + 1 gaming organisaties. Dit zou veel meer dan de + 1 worden misbruikt. Geen wonder dat Facebook is niet een afkeer optie uitgerold!

Billy: Ik ben niet zeker of ik zou zorgen te maken over uitgevers-1ing hun rivalen. Google is slim genoeg om een dergelijke situatie. Ik ben zeker dat het is niet buiten hun bereik.

Enkel de manier een + 1ers identiteit zal worden gelabeld zijn aanbeveling + 1,-1s kunnen ook worden gelabeld Volksgeschiedenis profielen ook. Een algoritme van Google te geven hogere relevantie voor-1s van bepaalde profielen dan anderen die een geschiedenis van gaming knoppen hebben zou zeker de tabellen om te zetten in het voordeel van Google.

Ook, als een uitgever heeft gemaakt een merk voor zichzelf online, zelfs als een rivaal erin slaagt aan massa -1 zijn inhoud, hoe kunnen we korting van de uitgever volgelingen? Ze zou niet willen dat hun favoriete merk te zijn massa - 1ed, zouden ze? Ze zou niet aarzelen om naar + 1 te redden van hun favoriete merk.

Reddit, Digg, en Google's eigen Youtube werk op soortgelijke modellen. Ze trekken de beste inhoud tot de bovenkant van de stapel door middel van een mengsel van positieve en negatieve feedback, en zij zijn vrij bevoegde op het. We weten dat Google is kan dit nemen naar het volgende niveau.

Allen: U bent het maken van gevoel, maar ik weet zeker dat er veel bedrijven die er die zou niet comfortabel met een dergelijk model. Vooral kleine uitgeverijen.

Billy: Ja, kan er enige weerstand in eerste instantie, maar een knop-1 zal echt wonderen doen voor het Web. Stel je een universum waar er geen spam helemaal in de zoekresultaten van Google. Wat we te zien een dag zal niet doen als dat!

Bovenal zou Google worden empowerment van mensen om te kiezen wat ze willen zien. Als Google mij de optie om te beslissen wat is nuttig voor mijn vrienden en het Web gegeven is, moet het zeker geef me een optie om te beslissen wat is ook slecht.

Allen: Hmm... U maakt zin nu... maar ik ben nog niet zo zeker nog. Anyway, het al laat, ik moet gaan. Catch'ya morgen.

…Terwijl de knop Google -1 nog steeds een idee dat de meesten van ons zin is, was dit gesprek tussen Billy en Allen een poging om serieus overweegt de knop Google -1.

Wie zijn Allen en Billy? Allen en Billy (en Prof. Dwyer) zijn tekens die zijn aangevoerd met mijn verbeelding, als ik nodig had twee tekens via die kon ik weer mijn weergaven en counterviews op de knop Google -1.

Wat denk je over het idee van een knop-1? Ik zou graag willen horen je gedachten in het commentaar.

Sriram Reddy schrijft lock voorraad en draaiorgels over scherper bloggen vaardigheden op www.BloggingTipster.com. Volg hem op Twitter.

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Classic Newspaper Reporter Films DVD: 1930s - 1940s News Reporters, Journalism, Journalist, Newspaper Columnists, & Newsroom History Pictures Films

News reporting has evolved drastically over the last century. Changes in technology and media formats have taken journalism from print media formats to the invisible air waves of television and radio to personal computers and the Internet, where an influx of new information is made available to millions of homes. This amazing compilation includes three vintage newspaper reporter films from the olden days of communication! Topics Include: News Reporter, Journalism, Newspaper Writing, Copy Editing. Table Of Contents: (1) Journalism (1940) - This is a classic vocational film about the various careers in journalism, from news reporter to copy editor - 11 Minutes (2) Newspaper Story (1940s) - A great film about a news reporter who writes a news article about a Boy Scout who finds a missing child - 16 Minutes (3) Betty Boop's Rise To Fame (1934) - This is a fascinating newspaper reporter interview with Max Fleischer, the creator of Betty Boop - 9 Minutes

Price: $19.99

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Lonely Planet's Guide to Travel Writing (How to)

Written by a pre-eminent travel writer and bursting with invaluable advice, this inspiring and practical guide is a must for anyone who has ever yearned to turn their travels into saleable tales. Packed with insider hints and tips, practical writing exercises and examples of travel writing excellence, this guide helps you bring the dream job of Travel Writer within scribbling distance of reality.

Discover

The secrets of crafting a great travel story
How to conduct pre-trip and on-the-road research
Effective interviewing techniques
How to get your name in print (and money in your bank account)
The quirks of writing for newspapers, magazines, online and books
Extensive listings of writers' resources & industry organizations

Price: $19.99

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Practice Makes Perfect French Nouns and Their Genders Up Close (Practice Makes Perfect Series)

Solve the mysteries of French nouns' genders

Practice Makes Perfect: French Nouns and Their Genders Up Close puts the spotlight on this tricky grammar trouble spot. It boasts plenty of opportunities for practicing your language skills, as well as extensive examples based on a conversational style that will keep you engaged. The book also features a unique answer key that gives you more than just a listing of correct answers; it clues you in on the "why" behind them.

Price: $14.00

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Differentiating Instruction in Kindergarten: Planning Tips, Assessment Tools, Management Strategies, Multi-Leveled Centers, and Activities That Reach and Nurture Every Learner

Master kindergarten teacher Cindy Middendorf shares her strategies for creating a nurturing, choice-based learning environment where all learners thrive. Packed with research-based tips, model lessons, photos, and student samples, this guide shows how to teach the kindergarten curriculum in a way that engages varied learning styles and taps multiple intelligences. Middendorf also shares expert advice on how to establish an effective classroom management system that supports differentiated learning.

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Chicken Soup for the Prisoner's Soul: 101 Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit of Hope, Healing and Forgiveness (Chicken Soup for the Soul)

Previously available only through free distribution to prisons, this life-changing book is the result of charitable donations from sales of Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul and gifts from thousands of individuals.

In the spring of 2000, over 100,000 copies of Chicken Soup for the Prisoner's Soul were distributed to prisoners, prison libraries and prison ministries throughout the United States. The hope was that this collection of stories would touch the hearts of prisoners and offer them hope and encouragement, as well as inspire them to transcend the limiting thinking and behaviors of their past.

The book was so successful that the co-authors soon found themselves flooded with requests for the book from family members, correctional officers, prison volunteers and others. Because of this huge demand, the decision was made to also release the book to the general public.

Price: $14.95

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The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky (Modern Library)

This collection, unique to the Modern Library, gathers seven of Dostoevsky's key works and shows him to be equally adept at the short story as with the novel. Exploring many of the same themes as in his longer works, these small masterpieces move from the tender and romantic White Nights, an archetypal nineteenth-century morality tale of pathos and loss, to the famous Notes from the Underground, a story of guilt, ineffectiveness, and uncompromising cynicism, and the first major work of existential literature. Among Dostoevsky's prototypical characters is Yemelyan in The Honest Thief, whose tragedy turns on an inability to resist crime. Presented in chronological order, in David Magarshack's celebrated translation, this is the definitive edition of Dostoevsky's best stories.

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New Essential Learning Products 6 Ways Teach 6 Traits Writing Modeling Assessment Rubrics

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The Most Essential Killer SEO Tips That You Need to Know for Creating an Efficient SEO Strategy

These days, anyone who is interested in optimizing his or her website can easily find numerous killer SEO tactics which are ready to highlight the most efficient optimization methods. If you are also searching for such tactics, you can locate different tips for:

creating trust with different search engines promoting product pages building links and driving targeted traffic towards your websiteavoiding duplicate contentgetting suitable URLsfinding the best free SEO tools

In order to find out as many things as possible about the aforementioned points, the following paragraphs give you the chance to discover the most important related details.

Creating Trust with Different Search Engines

It is a well-known fact that the search engines have their own favorites. And even though many people might consider themselves disadvantaged from this point of view, a great thing is that anyone can actually become one of the favorites of the search engines. The only thing that these people must do is to find out how to optimize their pages in order to create trust with different search engines. In most cases, creating trust with any of the available search engines takes a lot of work and patience. Some of the things that you can do to show search engines that you deserve their trust are to:

update the domain owner’s records by providing a valid email address, telephone number, name and address get a popular and old domain, such as .net, .org, .comtry to pay for the domain for an extended period of minimum 2 years; this thing guarantees the fact that you have serious intentionsget a clean IP addresslearn everything you can about the things that might affect your trust, including the spyware infestations

By simply applying these rules, you are able to start creating trust with any of the available search engines.

Promoting Product Pages

In order to promote your product pages, you have to apply some good SEO strategies, such as:

Provide unique product descriptionsUse real customer product reviewsUse URLs with keywords

Building Links and Driving Targeted Traffic towards Your Website

Now, you can find numerous killer SEO tactics which are known as linkbaiting. This term actually refers to the strategies that are used for the new web content in order to boost websites’ rankings by simply attracting inbound links. If you are interested in discovering the best SEO tactics, you must look for new opportunities, which give you the opportunity to use the most important hooks which have been discovered by Nick Wilson. These hooks are the humor hook, resource hook, attack hook, contrary hook and news hook.

How to Avoid Duplicate Content

Google advise marketers not to create duplicate content especially because it can definitely have a harmful effect on the search engine rankings of a website. There are two main types of duplicate content, namely duplicate content across different domains and duplicate content within the same website. The first case relates to the identical content which is published on different domains as scraped content. Sometimes, the scraped content has better rankings than the original content. The second case refers to an unintentional result of different websites that promote similar products. In order to avoid any duplicate content in such situations, the specialists recommend webmasters to include unique URL versions on the sitemap file.

Getting Suitable URLs

In order to have a suitable URL for your website, there are a few things that you must take into account. These include making the URLs readable, short, permanent, memorable and descriptive. As well, it is a great idea to use the keywords in your URLs, so that they can be crawled by search engines.

Finding the Best Free SEO Tools

There are a few SEO tools that you can get for free. The great thing about using these types of tools is the fact that they can help you to obtain some truly great rankings without paying a dime. By introducing the “free SEO tools” formula in any search engine’s box, you are able to locate numerous SEO tools, which can help you to complete numerous SEO tasks.

If you are able to apply all these strategies that belong to the killer SEO category, you can finally succeed to place your website on the first page of different search engines. But keep in mind to be perseverant and never give up your goal regardless of the impediments that you might encounter.

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Gain Exposure and Build Relationship with other bloggers with Blokube

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AppId is over the quota

As part of my weekly contribution here, I will be starting a series where I will be reviewing some great tools I think bloggers should use every once in a while. Every resource I review will be free, and will also be something I personally like and think deserves a review.

The resource I will be featuring today is Blokube, a great promotion site for bloggers that I’m honored to be a moderator of.

If you read my last blog post featuring 4 unique ways to generate traffic to a blog, you will notice my second point talks about social blogmarking sites.

The concept of social blogmarking sites is still new to most bloggers, and I’ll try to give a short description to help you understand.

I’f you’re reading this I’m sure you know sites like Digg, Reddit and Delicious. They are social bookmarking sites where people are able to submit content from other sites across the internet, and where the most voted content ends up staying on the homepage. That is exactly how social blogmarking sites work, just that a blogmarking site only accepts submission from bloggers.

Relationships: While traffic is great, ultimately, relationships is what brings about results for bloggers. Since Blokube is a website focused on bloggers only, you will have the opportunity to network with thousands of bloggers from all over the internet who might take an interest in your work. Blokube also has features that make this easy, such as a chat room, a messaging system, the ability to comment on submissions from other bloggers, and the ability to add people as friends.

Traffic: Blokube currently has over 5,000 members, most of whom are bloggers. By submitting your content to Blokube you will be able to get your content in front of other bloggers, and as a result get more traffic to your blog.

Links: Links submitted to Blokube are also indexed quickly by the search engines, and since those links are directed back to your blog you will be benefiting a link boost by submitting your content to Blokube. It can be difficult to get links online, so it is important to make the best of every link opportunity you have.

I have been using Blokube since it launched, and I have noticed what works. Below are some things you can do to get the best from Blokube.

Use the Right Titles: When you’re submitting your site to any form of social media/community site the best way to ensure your content stand out is by using the right titles. You need to realize that there are thousands of other bloggers looking to get exposure for their content, so the best way to stand out is to have a title that clicks!

Engage: One thing I have learned about marketing is that if you’re in a competitive environment the best way to get results is to get noticed, and online, one of the best ways to get noticed is by engaging. By commenting on submission from other bloggers, by adding other bloggers as friends and chatting with them occasionally, by voting interesting content you discover in the community, you will be able the chances of your articles getting more votes, and as a result leading to more traffic for your blog.

You can check Blokube out for yourself at Blokube.com

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Avoid These Two Mistakes in Online Marketing

It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself a blogger, a product creator or an affiliate marketer. If you’re online trying to earn a living, you are ultimately an online marketer. These two mistakes in online marketing can ruin you and your business.

Mistake One:

Trying to be someone you’re not. I know, you see other successful people and you think if you imitate them you’ll be successful too. However, this is not a good idea. It’s fine to imitate strategies that others are using, but you still need to be yourself. Let your own personality shine through. If you enjoy humor, use humor. You don’t have to be a stuffy marketer. People will like you for who you are and for being who you are.

People hate someone who is fake. If you’re trying to fake your way into their trust, they will know it and stop following you. Attract your own market, people who like you for you. Don’t try to attract a marketing pretending to be something or someone you’re not.

Trying to be someone you’re not will only run you down. You’ll get tired of trying to keep up a facade or fake persona. This will lead to you not caring or having passion for your niche or your followers. If you’re already trying to be like someone else, stop it. Start being you. You may lose some readers in the beginning, but you’ll gain a whole lot more in the long run by being a real person.

Mistake Two:

Losing focus. I know, this one is easier said than done. There’s so much information to get in the way and so many shiny objects to chase, but that is not how you build a business. you have to stay focused and stay true to yourself, your values and your readers.

The grass may look greener in another niche, but this is rarely ever the case. Successful marketers love their niche and work very hard at them. If you’re not passionate about your niche, then yes, you should find one that you are passionate about, but don’t change mid-stream just because you think something else will be more successful.

Successful people stick with their ideas and follow through to completion. They don’t give up when they run across an obstacle, they find solutions.
It’s extremely hard to stay focused on one market sometimes, but if you can avoid doing too many things at one time or taking on too many projects, you’ll find it easier to focus on your target audience and your target niche.
Always start small, work hard and gain success in one area before you start adding on other things. You’ll be glad you did–even if it gets a little boring along the way, it will help you avoid mistakes in online marketing.

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Analyze and Enhance Your Facebook Experience with Wisdom

If you’re still active on your Facebook account and looking for a great way to stay on top of things with your friends, you’ll love Wisdom. Just like the name implies, the app gives you in-depth “wisdom” about yourself and your friends. It’s kind of like an analytics tool for your Facebook account because you get to see statistics and insights that you won’t find anywhere else. Also it lets you sort through all of the junk (like game notifications, videos, images, etc) and get to what is really important – the actual things that your friends are saying via status updates.

So if you want to know more about what your friends are saying and what they’re interested in, try out Wisdom!

The feed is where you can see all status updates at a glance and then filter them by popularity and type (based on what they’re referring to). This way you can see what kind of mood people are in, who’s in love, what’s going on with the health of your friends, who’s traveling, and more! You can also see the date posted, number of comments, and number of likes. Each status will have a corresponding icon such as a star (as pictured above), smiley face, heart, briefcase, etc – based on the topic.

Unfortunately, I was unable to really experience the rest of the app since it takes 24 hours to complete the reports needed for these areas. However, I can give a general idea of what each section is for.

Image Source: http://wisdom.com/what-is-wisdom/

This section gives you a great overview of who you’re friends with on Facebook. Wisdom gives you a list of all of your friends along with their last status updates. This gives you a chance to quickly see what each of your friends is up to. You can also filter this section by age, gender, relationship status, and location. Lastly, each friend will have a rating based on their Facebook activity, popularity, communication, influence, and cheer.

If you’re interested in what others are saying to your friends, then you’ll love this section. You can basically see everything that your friends are chatting about with others from a single location (it’s almost like spying). “That is, everything except repetitive ‘happy birthday’ posts.”

Image Source: http://wisdom.com/what-is-wisdom/

Wisdom uses your friends’ “likes” to show you the most popular and trending interests across sports, entertainment, and nightlife. So you can see things like what artists your friends like the most, the best places to hangout, the most popular movies among your friends, etc.

Here you’ll be able to see the most popular check-in locations and the top cities and hometowns among your friends. You’ll also get demographic information for each place listed.

Image Source: http://wisdom.com/what-is-wisdom/

As expected, you can see all of the events that your friends are attending and see how many others will be there too. Wisdom will also recommend events to you based on the number of friends attending.

Finally, we have the about me section will will, of course, show you information about yourself and track your communications across Facebook.

Wisdom is currently available via Facebook.com as well as an iOS app available for both the iPhone/iPod Touch and the iPad. The only downside is that you have to wait 24 hours to see any other section besides the news feed. From the description and screenshots on the Wisdom website, it definitely looks promising; so let’s hope that those sections do not disappoint once they are available.

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An Interesting Way Of Losing Subscribers

In order to find the latest and great themes and plugins for my blog WordPress Mods, I spend a lot of time reading announcements from theme and plugin developers.

Whilst reading a review of a plugin today I saw a comment from someone promoting their own website called WP Power Plugins. Whenever I find a new plugin developers website I check out all of their plugins to see if any are worth testing and reviewing on my blog. Unfortunately, the blog owner made it difficult to do so.

For some reason the blog owner has placed a box that requests a vote via Facebook or Twitter before you can proceed. It doesn’t work like the newsletter pop ups you see on many blogs, which can be closed easily by clicking away from the ad. Instead, the blog owner has stopped everyone from viewing their website unless they register a vote via Facebook or Twitter.

This has to be one of the stupidest thing I have ever see a blog owner do. It’s obtrusive, counter productive and will drive away existing and potential subscribers. All bloggers strive for more subscribers and social media votes however there is a right way and wrong way of doing things. We need to encourage visitors to subscribe to your blog or Facebook page; we shouldn’t force them.

Remember, don’t take your readers for granted. Even the most loyal readers will unsubscribe and stop visiting your blog if you start frustrating them by forcing them to increase social media votes.

Have you come across any other techniques like this from a blogger?

Kevin

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Bring New Readers To Your Blog By Comment Posting in Early Days

The adage of “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t always hold up online. Though great content is a necessity for any blog that wants to succeed, it simply isn’t enough by itself.

However, getting new readers to your site can feel like an exercise in frustration. To get a lot of targeted visitors, you need to have a good search engine presence. To get that, you need to have a lot of inbound links. That, in turn, requires a lot of people come by your site and like it enough to link to it.

This can make starting a blog feel hopeless, as if there is no way to get it off the ground.

But there is one technique that is often-overlooked, blog commenting, as it can be a simple, powerful way to attract targeted readers to your site and slowly build up your link presence. This, in the long run, can help you drive organic traffic to your site and cause your readership to start snowballing.

Best of all, it’s very simple to do and only requires a few minutes out of your day to make it work.

Use Twitter blog search tools to find people who are talking about topics related to your blog. Though the content doesn’t have to be “new” to be worth commenting on, new posts are usually better to target as comments on such posts are more likely to be read, both by the site’s owner and by its readers.

A good topic is one where anyone who is interested in reading that post will likely enjoy your site as well. Either something related to your topic or something you have different information on usually works best.

What isn’t very important is the traffic of the site. Though higher traffic is better, it might actually work against you, causing your comment to get lost. Sometimes a well-timed comment on a smaller site is much better than a lone comment in a swarm on a larger one.

Once you post a comment, keep track of it. If people are interested in what you have to say and begin to reply to your comment, engage with them and keep the conversation going. The only thing better than one good comment is several more good comments.

Best of all, the people you meet this way often become your first fans and a foundation that you can build the rest of your site’s traffic on.

In the end, when you first start out a site, especially if you don’t have a popular platform to launch it from, you will need to work hard for your first view visitors, often times working for hours just to get a small handful of people to come by.

However, all of that clawing to move the hit counter pays off in the long run as you develop a loyal reader base that eventually helps spread the word for you and helps you build search engine trust.

Posting blog comments is a great way to get to that point.

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for a psd to html service company which provides psd to html formatting conversions.  Lior also consults for the international MA in political science department at the Tel Aviv University.

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Google might have place in a Yahoo takeover bid, Syria cracking down with US technology

Worried about monopolies? Here’s one of the bigger ones in the making that you might want to mull over a bit. A recent report in the Wall Street Journal is saying that Google might have a part to play in an emerging takeover bid for Yahoo.

Still, it’s important to keep in mind that sources were not named although the report is pretty specific about the facts that at least two companies have talked with Google about getting some assistance in buying the beleaguered Yahoo. This all comes on the heels of reports that Yahoo will in fact sell that have also driven the stock prices up. All the usual signs that something is lurking on the horizon with the company.

Here’s some more news about repression and how it all works in spite of the fact that the Internet is changing the way dictators inevitably lose their power and die. New reports are saying that Syria is using American software to censor the Internet. At the center of the storm is California’s Blue Coat Systems since at least some of their technology is being used to crack down on the dissidents in Syria that have been protesting against President Bashar al-Assad for months now. The American company is denying any allegations they sold to the Syrians willingly, but there are experts from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London that are saying many firms don’t always ask the right questions to avoid persecution for selling to places like Syria.

In other news, The Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs is saying that broadcasters that want to get information into countries that restrict access to the Internet need to tailor their approaches to each individual location. The recent study suggests that just having a wider all inclusive web isn’t necessarily the answer since each repressive regime often has a different way of suppressing information. The study looked at two years of BBC information and how it was censored by the Chinese and Iranian authorities.

We all need to keep an eye on the big names in censorship like the ones mentioned above and even the more sly wolves in sheep’s clothing like the Russian Interior Minister who has proposed a limit on the Internet. Dmitry Medvedev says he only wants to find ways to preserve the Russian culture and protect it from illegal activities like child porn, but there are fears that supporters of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are looking for more strict control like the one that the Chinese impose. Does anyone remember the Cold War? It seems likely that an ex-KGB officer who happens to be in charge is pining for the good old days.

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Bad Content Finding Its Way Into Mobile Apps and RIM Owes Big

There’s always a good side to things and a bad side and that includes the ever-expanding world of mobile apps. A recent news article in the Washington Post talks about inappropriate content finding its way into mobile apps that are geared towards children. Violent and suggestive content are the culprits here and parents are complaining they don’t have any real way to monitor what their kids are exposed to.

The Federal Communications Commission keeps an eye on more traditional forms of media but as far as mobile apps are concerned, developers are still in charge of giving themselves ratings. More fodder for those who say it’s the parent’s responsibility to stay on top of what their children see and do.

As you might expect, recent reports are saying that RIM could owe tons of cash to right the fallout from their recent outages. The recent numbers are $100 million US in lost revenues and there’s more to it than that, none of which is good for the Canadian company that was the biggest hope that country had since the Avro Arrow.

Making the problem worse for RIM is the fact that wireless carriers worldwide have promised to compensate their users for the downtime. The whole mess couldn’t have come at a worse time for the beleaguered company and worst case scenarios for the estimated 70 million users worldwide put refunds to 35 million as the number bantered.

The whole Blackberry mess has some interesting spinoffs when it comes to how people deal with even the temporary loss of this kind of technology. Consider a recent article from a New Jersey professional who writes that people should know someone they can call in their office to check emails on their computer there when the BlackBerry network goes down. The article goes on to point out the obvious fact that you can send a text, but I think something even more relevant is being missed here.

Maybe the whole idea of having a Blackberry is overkill and being constantly hooked up to emails 24/7 from a device that you carry around with you is a case of too much technology. I mean, how many people can really do anything about even the most urgent email until they get back to the office anyway? I’m not talking out of school here because I have one and I find myself constantly looking for the little red light that tells me I’ve got mail like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I have to admit too, I did get a little nervous when my emails weren’t getting through regularly but I’ve still got to wonder if we all don’t need some kind of safe zone away from all of these things once in a while.

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Get Product Recommendations and Help Other Shoppers on Get.com

Have you ever needed a new product, but didn’t know where to start looking; maybe you knew the type of product you needed, but didn’t know which exact one/type to choose? It always helps when you can get recommendations from others who are more knowledgeable about that specific category of products. That’s where Get.com comes in handy.

“Get.com is a Q&A platform that helps you get product recommendations quickly from thousands of people.” It’s as simple as that. First you connect your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts. Next you setup your profile. Lastly you can ask your questions or help others who have asked questions.

From the home page you can see recent questions from all categories. You can also navigate to other categories (via the header links), ask your own question, click to view the leaderboard, view the top helpers, and see recent visitors to the site. This is the best place to find questions that you can jump into and give your input.

You’ll also notice that there are often a few odd-ball questions mixed into the bunch.

The main purpose of Get.com is to get product recommendations and help others who need suggestions. Sometimes you’ll find questions that are looking for a straightforward answer, while others may ask you to suggest your own product.

In the screenshot below you’ll see that some users have suggested headphones that the user might like. Other users can then go in and vote for one of the suggestions or add their own to the mix.

There are also ways to share and follow questions that interest you. Additionally, you can see related questions along with your personally history (recently viewed questions) in the sidebar.

Asking your own question is quite simple as well. First click on the yellow “Ask Question” link in the top header of the site. You can then type in your questions along with additional details (if needed), budget, and topic (electronics, automotive, photography, makeup & beauty, parenting).

Lastly, you can choose whether or not you’d like to get product suggestions (like pictured above).

Finally, there is the settings area. Here you can ad a picture, choose a display name (full name or first name and last initial), add a mini bio and about info, add your website, and customize your email notifications.

Unfortunately, you can’t actually change your display name. For instance, I signed up using Facebook and now it is using my full name as my display name. Personally, I’d rather use a screen name or at least a name that most people know me by, not my legal full name.

Do you feel there is a need for a service like Get.com? It is something that you plan to use yourself?

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Profiting with Content

Content helps drive traffic, boosts credibility and authority, and helps you build a community of followers. It can also help you increase your search engine ranking, and should provide valuable information for readers.

Content can also have an impact on your cash flow if done properly. Here are some simple ways you can profit with content.

1. Write reviews.

You can use content to generate affiliate commissions by writing good reviews on the products you’re promoting as an affiliate. Many people search online for quality reviews before they purchase a product. It helps them make an informed decision about the quality of the product and if it will be useful to them.

When people are reading reviews, they are already in a buying mode. They simply need compelling information to help them complete the sale. If you write a detailed review, from your personal perspective, they are more likely to purchase the product. Include your affiliate link so they can click through to buy the product.

There are several things to keep in mind when writing reviews. First of all, always be honest in your assessment of the product. Describe who the product is for, who it will benefit and also cover who it may not benefit. Also remember to mention anything negative about the product, things you didn’t like. Many people think that giving some negative points will hurt their review, but in truth it makes your review stronger. It shows you are being honest. The things you didn’t like may not even apply to the prospective buyer.

2. List Building.

Use email marketing as another avenue of making money. Give out a free report, an incentive for people to join your list. Make sure it is directly related to your content and the things you share and promote. This gives you another way to reach them and another way to promote affiliate products or your own products.

Never bombard your list with useless promotions or daily promotions. Only send out important content that you think they may find useful and valuable. However, you still need to be consistent with contacting your list. You can send out weekly tips or articles that you write specifically for your list. You do not need to attempt a sale in every email, but you do need to stay in touch with them. Show them you care and over deliver with valuable content.

When you do this, they are more likely to buy from you when you promote quality products.

3. Sell Ad Space

You can sell ad space on your blog or even in your newsletter. If you have a large list of followers, some advertisers will pay you so that they can reach your audience every week.

Make sure the ads are relevant to your list and your content. If you don’t have advertisers you can start with a Google ad and remove those as other sites start purchasing those ad slots.

4. Use Article Directories.

If you have your own product or service, you can use articles posted at directories to drive traffic to your sales page. Use the article as pre-sell material so when the prospect clicks the call to action in your bio, they are already wanting more information. This can increase your conversations from those click throughs.

5. Establish Authority with eBooks.

Ebooks are a great way to establish authority in your niche. If you’re extremely knowledgeable in a certain area, you can write an ebook for people to purchase.

You can sell your ebook from your own website, through Clickbank or you can even have it published on Kindle. This allows you to reach more people in your field.

Sales from ebooks not only boosts your income, but it can also increase traffic to your site which can give you future income,  more prospects to reach out to and help you profit with content.

There are many ways to use content as a means to increase sales. Implementing just a few of them can increase your popularity, your bottom line and establish your credibility. Try some of these methods, give them time to work and see if they don’t increase your income.

Another great thing about content is it can work for you for many years. You do the work once and it keeps working for you.

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Create a Professional Profile and Get Endorsements with Path.to

Path.to is a place where you can create a professional personal profile and get endorsements based on your skills. You can also endorse others when you have “first-hand knowledge of their ability to perform the skill.” Path.to has an endorsement algorithm that they use to identify who is the most skilled in each industry and you can view those people on the Leaderboard.

If you’re just looking for people to connect with, you can search within the directory. When viewing someone’s professional profile, you can add them as a contact or request an endorsement from them. Not only is this great for proving your skills, but it could be instrumental in landing a job or freelance work.

To get started, you can sign in with either your Facebook or Google account. Whichever account you choose to sign up with, that will be the profile used to import employment and education data from. However, if you want to import from another account (Facebook, Google, LinkedIn) once signed in you can do so.

Once inside your account, there are only 3 steps needed to get started: upload a photo, customize your profile, and add your skills. Since some of this will be filled in from your imported profile, you’ll just need to double check it and correct anything that may be wrong.

Your about me info consists of your name, title, biography, location, industry, and photo. You can then add up to 5 “endorseable skills that define you as a professional.” These are what others will be ranking you on.

Underneath your skills you can connect your social networking accounts: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ plus your own website and email. You can choose whether or not to display these on your profile. Underneath that is your work experience. For each position you can enter the company, title, skills uses, state date, and end date. Lastly there is your education, where you can list your school, degree, start date, and finish date.

Your profile can be customized using a premade theme or you can choose a theme and then customize it further.

Finally there is the dashboard, which is where you can see recent activity, today’s stats, and tips and tricks. Under the stats you’ll see a link to view your full analytics. If you would like to go a step further, you can even set up Google Analytics and enter the UA code in your Path.to settings for improved stats and analytics.

If you would like to see the final result of a Path.to profile, feel free to check out my profile.

What do you think of Path.to? Do you find it useful? Do you think it’s worth signing up for to get endorsements or is it easier to stick to something like LinkedIn recommendations?

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