Thursday, October 14, 2010

Staying Motivated While Running Your Own Business

Working online, especially on your own is a job in itself when it comes to staying motivated and going in the right direction. So much so that recently procrastination has played a huge role in my day to day schedule. I’ve had a short break from affiliate marketing whilst working on something else, now that’s in the beta stages I want to pick up where I left off getting various campaign ideas off the ground.

That’s the first problem, I have so many ideas I want to actually do I never seem to move forward. I’m a big fan of a notepad and sticky notes, if you could see my desk you would have to wade through paper just to get to the keyboard to begin work. Don’t get me wrong you should write down all of your ideas down so that you can keep on working fluently but the main issue I’m having is starting a campaign and then having a ‘aha’ moment for another that probably would do better – instead of sticking to the half complete campaign I just switch to the next. Before you know it your still making no income and never given yourself the chance to.

A solution I’ve just started using which is working (and simple) is to write each idea down on paper as a to-do list – pick one and just grind until it’s complete and up and running but put the list out of sight in a draw or wherever until you are ready to get onto the next thing. Often when you have completed something you will have to wait for it to get approved on whatever traffic source you have chosen so you can begin on the next to save just sitting at your computer doing nothing. I guess my problem was the fact I could constantly see it on my desk so I was never 100% focused on the task I was working on.

Everybody’s different so you will have to find the balance between having too much on your plate and just sitting around doing nothing. I’ve yet to find the perfect number out myself as I’m concentrating on PPV a little more so I can bang campaigns up fairly quickly depending on how I’m approaching it and should be able to manage a fair few at the same time.

When it comes to motivation you have to find what makes you tick, whether it’s to quit your 9-5, get a new car or just pay off your mortgage each month. Be sure to write down your goals and have them visible for a constant reminder. I’ve only just been able to say no to my mates when they want to go for a game of pool or have a drink – I’ve got my mind set and I’m not stopping until I reach it.

I highly recommend taking frequent breaks, even if it’s just to read a blog or something to take your mind off what you’re working on briefly. It gets to a point where all I think about is work, even when I’m done for the day and trying to get to sleep. I often find myself jumping out of bed to jot some notes down for the morning – keep a notepad close by at all times you never know when you will have a burst of inspiration.

What are some of your methods for staying motivated and not getting lost in new ideas and unfinished tasks?

This guest post was written by Richard Bonner, a successful affiliate marketer and blogger at RichardBonner.net.

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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Web Hosting with Great Customer Support

Over the past decade I’ve had my fair share of web hosting companies and I’ve bounced around from shared hosting to dedicated hosting and even to buying 20 of my own servers and having them in a storage center. The main reason for jumping around with so many hosts, was that my web sites and business was always changing and new sites were exploding while others stayed the same. Either way, no matter how my web sites were doing, it was always important that I could get in contact with my web host quickly and just as important, having them get back to me just as fast.

I was previously with MediaTemple and when I signed up with them, I paid for two server for a year in advance to save some extra money. Their hosting was fine, but the customer support (from my experience) was terrible. If you are a web hosting company and don’t have LIVE CHAT support, or email support that is answered within a few minutes (30 mins max), then you just don’t cut it… and this is how MediaTemple works. It would take anywhere from 10-24 hours from support to get back to your emails. The only way to get instant support was through calling them on the phone. I don’t know about you, but I’m more of an email/chat type of person… so only have phone support as my option is really garbage.

After MediaTemple I went over to WiredTree and they are just a god send. Their support is amazing and they always get back to you within a few minutes of sending an email through their support ticket. WiredTree staff also doesn’t send back one word answers, and they actually make an attempt to help you and not refer you to a “how to” guide. I have WiredTree running my larger web sites like this one.

I also have a few hosting accounts with HostGator. Personally I’ve never really liked the idea of paying a few dollars a month for hosting, just because I would assume the slogan “you get what you pay for”, but HostGator has been great with up time so far, and when you are running huge sites, this is a major concern. I currently have HostGator running a bunch of smaller and test web sites… nothing too crucial. However, I still had a question and wanted to talk with someone from HostGator. I went to their site and saw that they had LIVE CHAT support. I was instantly connected with someone extremely helpful and am glad to be hosting through their company.

I just wanted to share my experience on customer support in the web hosting area. It doesn’t matter if you have shared hosting, VPS, dedicated or even have your own servers in a data center… customer support is one of the most crucial aspects of a successful business and keeping customers happen.

Feel free to share your web hosting customer support stories and help others when trying to find a new web host.

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You’ve Landed a Blogging Job – Now What?

Blogging for other people is a great way to make money online. If you run your own blog and have published regular content, then you are well placed to write for other people or companies.

Each job will have its own set of requirements – i.e. expertise or experience required, specific topics to write about, number of posts required, length of post etc.

Understanding your client’s requirements when you applied for the job doesn’t stop there.

Here are some tips on writing after having landed that blogging job:

1. Understanding the Blog and Its Business

Obtain an understanding of the blog’s focus and target audience. Learn as much as you can about the company or website you are writing for – e.g. is it a start up business or well established in the market?

I currently write for The Netsetter at Envato, the brainchild of Collis Ta’eed. The Envato brand is an established player in the industry – it is well known for its suite of websites like Freelance Switch and the Tuts+ network. The Netsetter is targeted to web entrepreneurs who are interested in useful tips and resources on how to make money online.

2. Blog Post Style and Content

Each blog will have its own style and content. Visit the blog and read some of the published articles, taking note of the style, length of pieces, and what topics have been covered in order to gain a better understanding of the style and content of blog posts.

The owner or editor may have already decided what topics he/she wants you to write about, but most blog owners are open to good suggestions. If you are passionate about writing on certain topics, run your ideas past the owner and you may find that he/she is more than willing for you to share your expert knowledge.

Last and not least, pay attention to detail when writing your blog post – check your grammar and spelling, use catchy titles to grab the readers’ attention, and look over the format and clarity of your post.

3. Commit to Write on a Regular Basis

Most blog owners like to hire bloggers on a regular basis, since it makes planning much easier. Typically a blog owner will require a minimum number of posts and articles per month or week, but many owners are happy to pay for extra content!

Aim to deliver quality blog posts on a consistent basis. Like they say, the hardest part comes after you have landed the job!

Aim to impress with your first few blog posts, as first impressions are very important. Many website owners hire bloggers on a trial basis for their first few posts. They will be gauging readers’ reactions to your blog and the popularity of your posts.

4. Relationship Building

The relationship between a blogger and website owner should be business like. Accordingly, it is important to treat your working relationship professionally. Take the time to establish a good rapport with your employer, communicate on a regular basis, and discuss requirements and ideas.

If you are unsure about something, ask questions or seek clarification. There is nothing worse than writing a terrific blog post just to find that you have been off topic. If the website has a Style Guide, read through this thoroughly to understand the requirements.

5. Be a Skilled “Blogger”

Each blogger can bring to the table many skills – whether as a prolific writer, a person who is passionate about blogging on a specific topic, a background as a journalist, or as an SEO expert. Be prepared to make the most of any complementary skills you have.

As bloggers we can offer skills such as knowing where to source images, uploading videos, using screen capture software, using the client’s WordPress platform, or knowing about SEO techniques and Internet marketing.

A blogger will thrive if they can offer a broad range of skills. A scan of the job boards like Problogger’s one will provide a good idea of the skills and competencies required for modern bloggers.

6. Have Fun
You are getting paid to blog on topics that you are hopefully passionate about. If new to blogging for other people, have a positive attitude and be willing to learn new skills.

Use your blogging talents to contribute to the goals of the company. Strive to go the extra mile once you have landed that blogging job, and your efforts will result in improved marketability of your skills.

About the Author: Nita Teoh is the creator of Wired Web Writer – W3 Writing, Marketing and SEO Solutions, and Perth Walkabout – Your Local Guide to Perth, Western Australia.

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How Not To Follow Up After a Conference

I’ve been attending blogging conferences since 2007. Through conferences I’ve been able to meet some amazing people. However, through my own ineptitude I’ve not done a great job of following up with everyone that I’ve met. The photo above is an actual box that I have filled with missed opportunity, missed connections and missed business opportunities. Some business cards are over 3 years old. Might be a little late to follow up with those folks. So here is my surefire guide on How to Screw up Follow Up.

Step One – Collect cards like Pokemon
Some conference attendees are whipping out business cards and collecting them all like crazy. I’ve been in a group of people having a great conversation and then someone comes up and hands you their card out of nowhere. Will you remember that person at all? Will you follow up with that person? Most likely not. So, the key to follow up is to actually meet people and talk to them, make a connection and then exchange cards. You do not have to collect them all. More meaningful connections make for much better follow up.

Step Two – Glance at the card and shove it in your pocket.
Taking a business card and shoving it in your pocket after a cursory glance will be a way in which to immediately forget the person who gave it to you. When someone hands you their business card take a good look at it. is there something interesting that you can talk to the person about? There should be something on that card that you can ask a question about. People love to talk about themselves so give them a chance to do it. So don’t just take the card and put it away, try and make that mental connection, if you don’t then it is unlikely that you will actually follow up.

Step Three – Try and remember everything in your head.
When you are at a conference you are going to meet so many people and trying to keep everyone straight in your head is an incredibly futile task. After you meet someone and take their business card you should make some notes for yourself. Make a few notes directly on their card. This will give you reminders as to who the person is when it comes time to follow up.

Step Four – Go home, put the cards in a box and hide it away. You’ll get to them in a few weeks. Really, you will.
If you stick everything into a box and leave it there waiting for a the right moment to hit you to follow up then you will never do it. The box above has three years of cards that I was going to follow up on in a couple weeks. As you can see that never happened.

So How Do You effectively Follow Up?
When you get home take a stack of 5 -10 cards, open up your e-mail program and enter all the card info into a new contact. Also write in the notes that you made about the conversation that you had with the person. Then write them a follow up email reminding them about the conversation that you had and how much you enjoyed it. Repeat until your giant stack of business cards are gone. Do this within 2 weeks of the conference just not the first day you are back unless you can schedule the e-mail to go out a day or two after the conference. Many people are dealing with their own thing and playing catch up the moment that they return from a conference so don’t get lost in the shuffle.

Additional Tips.
When you add the new person as a contact put them in a group for that conference so you can pull up everyone that you met at a specific conference. Make sure that you add in notes that you want to remember about that person, likes, dislikes and the like.

Hopefully your conference experience will be a fruitful place to make meaningful connections with great new people.

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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Keyword Winner – Targeted Keyword at Your Fingertips

We already know that blogs are a winning formula for any business, but you can’t simply expect to throw a blog up there and hope for success. Instead, you need to focus on producing quality content, then leveraging social media, seo and wordpress plugins to make that magic happen. A new wordpress plugin called Keyword Winner will soon be released from my friend and fellow blogger Daniel Lew.

What Can Keyword Winner Do For You?

The end goal of this wordpress plugin, is to get you more traffic and better rankings in the search engines. How is does this, is by helping you with writing your blog post titles and other key points to getting that extra edge in the search engines.

With so many of us focusing on paid advertising, it’s always important to never forget about the BILLIONS of free targeted traffic that is out there every day in organic search results. Keyword Winner can help you get there.

While the product hasn’t officially launched for sale yet, many beta testers and bloggers are seeing the first results of what Keyword Winner can do. To give a better idea on what Keyword Winner can do for you, check out this promo video.

Make Money with Keyword Winner

Right now Daniel Lew is doing an amazing job of getting pre-launch promotion for his Keyword Winner wordpress plugin, and he’s still looking for more! The launch is going to be big and many people will be ready to buy when it becomes available. This leave a big window of opportunity open for you to cash in. Join the Keyword Winner JV program and you will earn 50% commissions on top of a bunch of bonus prizes.

Be sure to check it out and sign up to the mailing list where Daniel will show you how others are already creating review sites and getting ready to cash in at launch time.

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Announcing the Prose Theme for WordPress

image of Prose Theme logo

You may have seen recently that we merged StudioPress, creator of the powerful Genesis theme framework, into Copyblogger Media. Why did we do it?

I can sum it up for you in a single phrase: because we’re control freaks.

With Genesis, we saw an opportunity to create WordPress themes that were tailored exactly to our customers’ needs and desires.

We could incorporate the features that are most important for content-rich sites, the expert SEO you insist on, and the security to keep your sites as safe as possible.

Brian and I worked closely with Genesis founder (and our new partner) Brian Gardner on a new collaboration. A WordPress theme designed for those of you — bloggers, copywriters, consultants, and content marketers — who in one way or another produce great content to make a living or part-time income.

I’d like to introduce you to Prose.

An elegant minimalist design

The first thing we knew was that we wanted the design to support your content, not fight with it.

Some themes make great use of animated widgets, or are designed to highlight striking imagery. Or they’re great for e-commerce, or building a corporate brand.

And Genesis has terrific themes that do all of those.

Prose is something different. It’s all about words.

Your words.

It’s simple and elegant, so it doesn’t distract. But it has enough design sophistication that it never looks amateurish or “fly by night.”

Like the perfect little black dress, it doesn’t call attention to itself … it just makes you look amazing.

Point and click design controls

But just because you may not be first and foremost a designer, that doesn’t mean you want to commit yourself to a single rigid design mold.

Writers are creative people, after all. And we knew you’d insist on being able to change some key elements yourself, without “breaking” the overall clean, designed look of the theme.

That’s why we built in point-and-click design controls into Prose. They let you control site colors, typefaces, font sizes, and other critical elements of your site design. Instantly.

Do your readers want a larger font size? That’s just a few clicks away, starting right from your WordPress dashboard.

Want to try a different column layout for your site, or to change the look of your subheads? Takes less than a minute. And if you don’t like it, it’s a few clicks to change it back again.

You can change how your links are styled, how tall you want your header to be, and dozens of other key design elements.

And you don’t have to know any CSS, HTML, PHP, or any other letters. If you can point and click, you can customize your site design.

Search optimized and powered by Genesis

You might have seen that Genesis isn’t just a WordPress theme, it’s actually what’s called a theme framework.

So my first question when I saw that was, What’s a theme framework?

The first thing you need to know is that when it comes to web design, form and function need to be separated.

In other words, how your web page works (like the code that Google looks at to find your content and how to rank it, or the security that keeps evildoers from hacking your blog) should be separated from how your web page looks.

Why?

Well, in the first place, Google is a big fan of clean code. The Google “bots” are sophisticated, but they’re only so smart. Clunky, junked-up code can confuse them — and if Google gets confused, they won’t give your site the ranking you deserve.

In the second place, the web evolves. Those “back end” elements always need to be up-to-date. Security evolves, SEO evolves, WordPress evolves, and your page function needs to grow with those things so that everything works the way it should.

But the last thing you want is for your carefully designed web page to suddenly look completely different because you updated your WordPress theme.

That’s the beauty of a framework. When you click the button to update Genesis, it automatically takes care of all of those security and SEO issues for you. But it doesn’t touch the design of the page, because that’s handled by “child themes.”

OK, so what’s a child theme?

The theme framework is all about how the site works.

A child theme (like Prose and 27 others from StudioPress) is in charge of how the site looks. The colors. The layout. The typefaces.

The child theme controls the “look and feel” of your site. And the exact same content will have a very different feel depending on how that content gets presented.

The nice thing about child themes is that with the Genesis framework, you can change them in just minutes.

That means you can take a funky site with a handmade flavor, like the Genesis Bee Crafty theme, and in about two minutes you can give that exact same content a sleek professional gloss by switching to the Enterprise theme.

And you’ll never touch the important “behind the scenes” code that makes your site work exactly the way you want it to.

The biggest security hazard for most blogs

Unfortunately, bad guys are everywhere, and blogs get hacked every day.

The most common culprit? Bloggers who haven’t updated their theme or their WordPress installation because they’re worried it will mess up the look and usability of their sites.

Outdated software is a major security hazard. In fact, Brian Gardner told me that one of the reasons he developed the Genesis framework in the first place was to make updating his own sites one-click-easy.

When it’s easy for you to update WordPress and your theme framework, and you don’t worry about anything breaking, you won’t put it off.

And that keeps your blog (and your readers) safer.

Get Prose + Genesis today

Pick up Prose with Genesis today and you’ll get:

  • Prose’s point-and-click design controls to create the exact look you want
  • A great-looking theme that puts the focus on your content
  • All the SEO and security benefits of the Genesis Framework
  • Unlimited updates and support
  • The ability to use Prose on as many sites as you like (no developer surcharge)

Find out more about the best WordPress theme for writers and content marketers here.

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Keyword Winner – Awesome WordPress SEO Plugin


Keyword winner
is a cool new SEO plugin by my friend Dan Lew that is about to open to the public in a few days. This thing is really interesting! I seriously cannot wait to get my hands on it!

What is Keyword Winner?

Keyword Winner helps you get better search engine rankings by assisting you to write your post title (and other things) in a way that will get you as much search engine traffic and have the least amount of competition. Basically, it helps you get more traffic with little extra effort on your part.

From the website:

Keyword Winner makes writing posts and ranking high in the search engines so much easier, no need to write different headlines in Google to find the best one based on its competing pages and search trends, it’s all there at your fingertips in your blog post admin!

Awesome stuff! That thing does exactly what I do... except I do it manually... so I seriously cannot wait to get my hands on this thing! :)

Check out this video promo from the pre-launch page:

Affiliates For Keyword Winner

Dan has not yet launched his SEO wordpress plugin but will be launching it very soon. If you want to get in on the action, I suggest you go join his JV page and get ready to promote it as soon as it launches! I think it's going to sell like hotcakes. :)

A lot of the top bloggers are going to be promoting this so the sooner you promote, the better your chances are at getting some sales!

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