Sunday, November 28, 2010

U.S. Government Seizes Multiple Domain Names and Sites

Quite some interesting news spreading around the internet today about the government and Homeland Security seizing and shutdown a large amount of domains around the web. “The Hill” has the full articles, which states the following:

The investigative arm of the Homeland Security Department appears to be shutting down websites that facilitate copyright infringement.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has seized dozens of domain names over the past few days, according to TorrentFreak.

ICE appears to be targeting sites that help Internet users download copyrighted music, as well as sites that sell bootleg goods, such as fake designer handbags.

The sites are replaced with a note from the government: “This domain named has been seized by ICE, Homeland Security Investigations.”

For instance, 2009jersey.com, 51607.com, and amoyhy.com have each been seized.

TorrentFreak has another article about the domain seizing and also has a large list of “infringing sites” and domains that are no longer in possession of their original owners. The article includes the following recap:

“Following on the heels of this week’s domain seizure of a large hiphop file-sharing links forum, it’s clear today that the U.S. Government has been very busy. Without any need for COICA, ICE has just seized the domain of a BitTorrent meta-search engine along with those belonging to other music linking sites and several others which appear to be connected to physical counterfeit goods.”

Stay tuned as more information on ICE, site infringements and domain names that have been seized all continue to be released…

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Saturday, November 27, 2010

10 Realizations that Will Crush Your Little Heart In Your First Year of Blogging

This guest post is by Moon from Experiments in Passive Income.

This post comes from someone who has made a ton of mistakes and is on her way to learn from those mistakes. You and I probably have a lot in common … after all, you’re here to learn about blogging and how to do it well and, well, I’m trying to do the same.

Being the owner and author of a blog that is in its first year of infancy, it’s been an emotional roller coaster ride—kind of like riding a car with a driver who makes you think of your impending death thanks to their inept braking skills and their random urges to switch lanes (without looking).

As a new blogger in a very crowded niche, I’ve found the year tough. It’s been tough finding my voice among so many others, producing content that is rich and teaches others a thing or two, attracting traffic that sticks (subscribers)—all while trying to establish a schedule.

Still, it helps to be prepared. Here are ten things that will crush your little heart in your first year of blogging:

1. You’re still waking up to low subscriber levels.

After eight months, only 100 subscribers are subscribing to your blog feed. Yeah, that will kill you inside. You might smile on the outside and tell yourself all’s well … but you’ll have to swallow your pride and evaluate how you’re hindering your blog’s growth. Are you presenting your readers with boring content? Or do you need to guest blog to bring exposure to your new blog?

2. You realize that attracting visitors is more than just good SEO.

Sooner or later, you’ll realize that attracting visitors to your blog is more than just good SEO (long-term strategy). At that point, it’s time to buckle down and learn how to use Twitter, su.pr, and Facebook properly to garner thousands of views a month.

This type of social media marketing needs to be done, and done well. And it will take you more than a few minutes to promote your content properly and on a daily basis. No one wants to simply hear noise on their media streams—give them that, and they’ll quickly stop paying attention to you.

3. You realize what SEO entails.

Eventually, it dawns on every budding blogger that SEO involves much more than just incorporating your keywords into your content excessively and using keyword rich links. If you want search traffic, you need to spend a few hours a month learning about SEO and actually executing it. It’s amazing how much time I’ve spent catching up on SEO, but I’m still not using it properly. I bet you’re not, either.

4. You fail to monetize your blog.

When you don’t earn even a measly $100 per month from your blog, despite trying hard, it hurts. But earning money through your blog is more than slapping ads on it. Keep trying!

5. You realize there are no easy ways to make money through your blog.

It’s absolutely essential that you write great, unique content and create a list of subscribers who love that content. It’s not 2001 anymore! People have become wary of the Internet, and they want proof of your success before they’ll trust you. Give it to them.

6. You understand that you need to do more for others.

You want subscribers? You need to do more. To get that list going, you should probably create a handy, free ebook or report that deals with a topic related to your blog, and helps your readers. Yes, you do have to help others in order to help yourself.

7. You recognize that good content can take more than an hour to create.

Great content will definitely take more than an hour, especially if you’re a beginner. Anyone can produce good content. You’ll need to write unique and in-depth content to give your readers something to talk about and impress other fellow bloggers—to get the buzz going, so to speak.

8. You realize that people want to read specifics and in-depth case studies.

Your readers can find generic crap anywhere. There are tons of blogs that talk about growing your traffic or making money online … and the majority are boring!

Instead, show readers how you’ve helped someone grow traffic or what strategies you’ve implemented to make money through your blog. This is precisely what I did when I showed my readers how exact domain names can kill the competition! This kind of content takes a bit of time and experience to develop. Keep plugging away!

9. You understand that networking is a necessity, not an option.

This doesn’t mean you re-tweet someone’s post occasionally. You need to converse with your followers, ask questions, and interact with other bloggers—successful ones as well as beginners in your niche and peer bloggers who started around the time you did. Create a group that helps promote each others’ posts. You never know who will get your hype snowball rolling.

10. You realize that you’ve been doing most things wrong!

Just because you knew all this stuff doesn’t mean you executed it at all, or executed it properly. At the time when I started my blog, I thought I knew something about blogs and making money online. But that learning is an ongoing process. Once you realize this, you might feel momentary despair. That’s okay—as long as you continue to take steps and improve your efforts.

Despite all these things that might have you sobbing under the blanket with a pint of scotch, hopefully you’ll realize that you should keep going. In fact, if you love what you’re blogging about, the pure thrill of having your content go viral or making your first few sales will probably have you giggling like a school girl and make you realize that it’s all worth it.

I’ve made all these mistakes and then some and I won’t be quitting any time soon! What mistakes have you made in your blogging experience? Share them with us!

Join Moon as she shares results of her passive income experiments at her website. You can check out her free ebook, To The Moon & Back, in which she details all her experiments in the span of a year

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What’s In A Name – A Domain Name That Is?

NOTE: This post was originally written by me in 2006, but I have updated it with new numbers and tools.

You are getting ready to start a new business or expanding your current one to include an online presence, what is your first step? These days you might want to check what domain name is available for your potential business before you purchase your business cards. According to Domain Tools, there are 125,067,779 ACTIVE domain names, of which 91,264,685 are .com names.

Before you go to purchase your domain name, I recommend brainstorming a bit and start with 5-10 potential names. Once you have this list, you need to go to Bustaname.com and let their system help you come up with potential names based on the keywords you want to highlight. Once you think you have a domain name, you need to register it. You can purchase your domain through a company like Networksolutions.com or my personal choice GoDaddy.com. Network Solutions has long been the standard, trusted source for purchasing domains, but GoDaddy has proven itself as a leader in the industry and has the best prices for domains.

Dot com is still king and if you can get a .com name, you really should. You may need to be a bit creative with your domain name – using a phrase or dashes between words, but there are plenty of names left and Bustaname or GoDaddy will actually suggest alternatives if your first choice is taken. It might take a two or three word combination to get the domain you want and I recommend focusing on the keywords you are going after rather than the “cute” or “cool” factor in a name.

Deals on domains:

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Thursday, November 25, 2010

How Changing My Intentions Made Me Money

This guest post is by Roman from how this website makes money.

Two years ago I stumbled across the concept of blogging for money.  Instantly it hit me as the perfect thing: sit behind a computer, design a site, write, be my own boss, work from home, what could be better? I knew nothing about traffic, SEO, backlinks, Pagerank, or keywords.  I knew nothing about how to make money with a website.  So what did I do next?  I registered the domain name howthiswebsitemakesmoney.

Looking back all I can do is laugh at my arrogance.  Like thousands before me and thousands who will come after me, my first attempt at blogging was a site about making money online.

Two years later, I know how to start a site, I know how to write content, I know about SEO, I know about backlinks, I know how to add advertisements … but I still do not know how to make good money online.  The site makes dimes a day, not dollars.

The site has been two years of disappointment.  Two  years of waking up in the morning and seeing the same green egg in AdSense.  Two years of waiting for a four-digit affiliate check with my name on it.  Two years of working without pay.  Two years of scratching my head.

So I asked for advice, and every time the reply was the same: create a site about something else. Create a site about what you know and what you enjoy.  Do not create a site with the intent to make money, create a site with the intent to help people by doing something you enjoy doing.

What happened when I changed my intent

Six months ago I created a new site.  This time my intent was pure pleasure.

I live in Prague and I love it here.  So I made a little site about how great Prague is and what people should do when they come for a visit.  It was built in a month.  In a gust of activity I designed the site and wrote the content.

It was so easy.   I did not agonize over what to write about.  The content flowed effortlessly from my head to the keyboard.  I did not have to take long walks with the dog or waste water standing dazed in the shower coming up with new ideas.  I just sat down at the computer and wrote about what I know.  It was so easy I actually looked forward to it.

As an afterthought, I created a simple page where people can order a real postcard from Prague.  Visitors select a picture of Prague and fill out a form indicating what they want written on the postcard.  After they hit the Submit button I get the request by email.  I grab a postcard and, like an ancient scribe long before computers, lick the tip of the pen and write.  After pounding a Prague stamp on the postcard I toss it into the mailbox on my way to work. I charge $4.00 for this five minutes of work.

I created this site with no aspirations of becoming rich, no day dreams of shaking hands with Oprah, no imagined scenes of telling my employer to find some other donkey to kick around. I created the website because it was easy for me to do and I enjoyed it. I made it because I needed a break from my ‘real’ website. I expected nothing to happen.

Again, I was wrong.

My hand is ink blue from all the postcards I have written.

I wrote a postcard from a son playing a trick on his mother: “Hi, Mom!  Sorry for not calling in last few days.  But I am in Prague with friends.  Having a great time and the beer is sooo cheap.  Say hi to Dad.”

I have written postcards to countries all over the world.  Some of them in languages other then English—I have no idea what I am writing. Fortunately, the order form does not allow Chinese characters!

I get emails from people thanking me for the information they found on the site, thanking me for the postcard, asking for more information.

I feel like I am making the world a better place.  I made a website about something I know about and am interested in and people are thanking me. Emotionally it is a soft, warm, fuzzy ball.

And yes, I am making money.

Intend to enjoy and you might make money

I learned a lot about making money online not from my site about making money, but from licking postage stamps.

New arrivals to the make-money-online scene go through the same initiation—they start out with the intent to make money, then fail to make more then a pile of pennies.  For some it means the end and they quit, but for others this brutal introduction teaches them that their intent needs to change.

Of course, making money is about traffic, clicks, affiliates, backlinks SEO, but it’s also about finding something you enjoy doing.  If your intent is only to make money the odds are stacked against you: you will probably quit.  But if your intent is to do something you enjoy then you will keep moving forward until one day, you will be surprised to find that you are making money.

What’s your intent?

Roman intends to figure out how this website makes money.  He has been trying to do that for two long years, so when he needs a break and do something fun he goes onto his other website to send a real postcard to his mother who misses him very much.

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Start Creating Killer Content

You know you need great content in order to succeed at blogging, but how do you keep coming up with interesting and useful ideas? How do you keep your blog content compelling over the long haul?

Darren Rowse and I have put together a brand new short online course called Creating Killer Content for your Blog that shows you exactly that.

The course is presented using lots of bite-sized videos in 5 modules (over 5 days or work through at your own pace):

  1. Planning your content – understand what your audience really wants, never run out of topics for your blog and prepare your content so it hits the mark.
  2. Structuring your content – writing your content in a way that works well
  3. Polishing your content – taking good content and making it great
  4. Killer Multimedia Content – I walk you through creating, editing and uploading multimedia content to add an extra boost to your blogging
  5. Live Webinar – Q&A call with myself and Darren at the end of the week where you can ask us anything about blogging, writing and creating content

This course starts Monday 6th December and it costs just $29.95 (or $99 to have it bundled with the other 3 upcoming Pillars of ProBlogger courses).

If you can’t do it all live with us over a week, don’t worry because after you join you will have access for 12 months. Review everything at your own pace whenever you want to.

Who is this Short Course For?

Creating Killer content is for you if …

  • you’re struggling with producing content for your blog
  • you’re trying to find your voice as a blogger
  • you’ve run out of ideas to write about
  • you’re just looking for a little refresher and/or inspiration

Note: we’re assuming participants of this course have a blog. If you don’t yet – check out the free Getting Started Blogging course.

So if you’d like to inject your blog with some killer content – this is a course for you. Sign up here right now.

We’re looking forward to seeing you on the inside :)

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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

StudioPress Offer 25% Off Themes – Last Sale Ever

If you’re looking to start a new blog or redesign a current one you’ll want to check this out.

StudioPress Premium WordPress ThemesStarting today – StudioPress (the creators of some amazing themes) are offering 25% off all of the products that they make – if you use the word ‘BLACK’ as a coupon code. It’s part of their BlackFriday sale which ends Tuesday.

This is a discount that applies to all of their themes and frameworks including:

I’ve switched two of my main blogs over to StudioPress themes in the last few weeks and have been very impressed by the results. Fast loading, well optimized for search engines, simple to use and secure.

The team at StudioPress also tell me that as of Tuesday (when this ends) they’ll not be doing any more discounting – so this is their last sale.

Make the most of it and secure a StudioPress theme today.

Disclaimer: I’m an affiliate of StudioPress. As a user of StudioPress products I’m more than happy to recommend them – it’s why my face is on the front page of their site telling the world how much I love them!

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Top 5 Affiliate Sales Techniques

This guest post is by the team at E-junkie.com.

Working with so many merchants and affiliates gives us a great opportunity to see what different bloggers are trying to do to generate sales of affiliate products, and over time we’ve noticed that some strategies work much better than others.

These are the top five affiliate sales techniques we’ve seen work time and time again.

1. Only promote products you’re willing to stand behind 100%.

We had one incident on our site where someone bought something from a third party, didn’t like it, and got so mad that they launched a Denial of Service attack on us!

It’s very common for us to receive emails from people who buy stuff from our merchants but get mad at us for allowing people to sell what they see as substandard products. Initially we used to tell them that this is akin to writing to Bill Gates complaining that someone who made budgeting software using Excel didn’t do a good job, but now if we get too many complaints we just get rid of the product.

We have a certain brand that gets attached to whatever is being sold using our platform, and if a product is bad, people view us negatively, even though we have nothing to do with it.

The same applies to your blog.

Your customers will see very little difference between your products and the affiliate products you sell. They’ll blame you if they don’t like the affiliate product. Only promote products you really love, and are willing to back 100%—or your readers will lose their faith in you.

2. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

The range of products that our merchants sell never ceases to amaze me. Recently we featured a seller whose product is poo-shaped pillows! No, that’s not a typo: these pillows are colored and shaped like poo.

You never know what will work until you try it out—many times you’ll think about something, assume it won’t work, and move on to something else. Yet the Internet makes experimentation so cheap and so easily measurable that you should give all your ideas some time before you drop them. You never know what will bring you the next million!

3. Reviews work much better for affiliate sales than buttons, widgets, or advertisements.

In Darren’s 31 Days to a Better Blog book, the exercise for Day 28 is writing a review post that includes an affiliate link.

We’ve seen this approach work much better, as far as conversions are concerned, than advertisements, widgets, or buttons on your website. You may drive a lot more traffic to your sales page using buttons, but contextual links in reviews have much better conversion rates.

4. Think of your customer service as your product.

If we see a merchant who offers first-rate customer service, we know that they’re going to be big. There’s so much commoditization in so many industries that it becomes difficult for customers to choose between products, and for merchants to be heard. Great customer service is something that easily cuts through this clutter.

Sometimes people will buy your product just because they know that you will pick up their call or answer their emails. When you put customer service on the same pedestal as your core product, you will see an attitude shift in the way you deal with your customers, and also the way they see you.

5. Don’t lose your customer at the last step.

One of our core mantras is to make our product as easy to use as possible, and we see a lot of other successful merchants do that too.

There are two key ways of doing this: simplify your product, and provide as much detailed documentation as you can on how to use it.

While there are limits to simplifying the product, you can always provide a great amount of detail on how to use your product, or how to become your affiliate.

Leo Babauta’s step-by-step directions on what to do when you want to join Zen Habits as an affiliate are a great example of what I’m talking about.

A user can walk through that whole process without any confusion, and providing such great detail can vastly improve your conversion rates. You really don’t want to lose your customer at the last step just because your instructions weren’t clear. It’s so hard to get people’s attention, and convince them to try your product. Don’t let them fail to sign up just because they can’t understand the directions on your site—that’s the last thing you want to happen.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out any of this stuff—it all makes so sense when you think about it.
The reason why affiliates and merchants fail to follow this advice isn’t because it’s hard to figure, but because execution is difficult. Doing the right thing, day in and day out, over and over for years, is what makes the difference between generating a six-figure income online, and the rest of the blogosphere.

Keep these best practices in mind—but also focus on executing them as much as you can. What tips can you add to this list?

E-junkie.com is a hosted shopping cart and digital service that lets you sell just about anything on your website, blog or social network. Our mission is to lower the barrier of entry in online selling. Our blog is about small business, e-commerce, self publishing and all the awesomeness in them. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook or

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