New Release: Louis M. Grafe's "Get Rich In Spite of Yourself"

Classic Bestseller re-published:
Get Rich In Spite of Yourself
by Louis M. Grafe

 "Many rich and successful men and women," declares the author of this helpful book, "have no more brains or energy than anyone else. They are usually driven to success.

Frequently they are so helpless they can't stop moving ahead even when they want to. Their money is made in spite of themselves!"

Louis M. Grafe, who made his own fortune, lost it, and then went on to earn another fortune, presents an astonishingly simple formula for wealth and success. He has tested it in his own experience and has found that it has brought wealth not only to him but to many other people.

Based on fundamental principles which you can find in your own copy of the Bible, this book demonstrates the existence and practical application of the Law of Success— the law which everyone who has ever made money or reached the top in their work has used, consciously or unconsciously.

The formula can be followed by anyone, rich or poor, in almost any job or business, in any honest trade or profession. And it is so simple that you can learn all you need to know about it in three hours. Marry readers wonder, after reading this book, why they did not discover the formula for themselves, it is so amazingly right, so plainly practical and workable.

GET RICH IN SPITE OF YOURSELF is one of the great inspirational books of our time. Read it now and you will find that you have never spent a more profitable three hours. 

(From the Forward)

Get Your Copy Today

Ebook:

Trade paperback (6"x9", 158 pages) available on Lulu and soon on Amazon and all brick-and-mortar bookstores:

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How to stay on a roll when you get there...

What's next - when you're on a roll?

For those who have faithfully followed this series, I thought to give you an unannounced follow-up.
Most of this series was written in pre-post method, meaning I simply sat down and drove myself to get it out of my head and into a written (digital) form. Wasn't hard, if you can listen to your own inspiration running amok.  (And that's a whole 'nother topic, although I did compile a book about how anyone can release their own genius...)

But as you can see from this blog, I have no short suit in  being able to create new content readily (over-prolific, I call it). Mostly, this is practice, and isn't something I really ever set out to do, but another talent that - when honed - turned out to be sharp.

There is a simple recipe using what we've covered for anyone who finds themselves having more content than outlets: create another outlet stream.

Essentially, a person can have many interests, even though they may only really focus on a few. This where diversity in life makes everything interesting. And the various Internet hosts love it when you dump all sorts of content on them.

That formula:

• On your main hub, set up another category with that other interest (or set up another hub)
• Populate this with some basic content
• Create a new Google+ page and publish these links to it.
• Set up your posterous and remote posting blogs (WP, blog.com, blogger, etc.)
• And set up another twitter account, which posterous can handle for you. You can also autopost to Facebook from here.
• Your onlywire or Synnd work would continue with these new posts.

Quite simple. But it gets all that out of your head...

- - - -

Some examples of content publishing

Hubs

Worstell Farms

Worstell Farms Cinch Diet Plan pages

Thrivelearning System (RobertWorstell.com)

Go Thunk Yourself.com

Google+ pages:

Worstell Farms

Shaklee Cinch Diet Plan

Comparing these 2 sets, you'll see where the cross-posts come in. And its obvious I need to create some more product pages, as I just found Google+ pages and their SEO connection a little over a month ago (just before I started this data dump).

Posterous

Natural Health News and Information

And Now What?

Thrivelearning News and Views

Go Thunk Yourself!

These posterous accounts all autopost to at least 4 other blogs, and usually a twitter account as well. So essentially, for every hub, I (should) have a Google+ page, and a Posterous blog with a mini-net below it. You'll see on WorstellFarms that I created a mini-site just about Cinch which only obliquely links back to the Grass Fed Beef site - but is on the same domain. It's an extension of eating healthy and naturally, so it fits.

Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There's bookmarking and so on. And working to find a review from Market Samurai gave me this link about their results in surveying professional SEO companies.

Just a reminder...

Content posting sequence is:

1. Landing/Sales pages are best hosted by your affiliate sponsor's site (unless they do a lousy job, or it's your own product).
2. Review pages go on your main site/hub (and link to the affiliate sponsor)
   
3. Infotainment pages go on the remote blogs (and link to your hub)
4. Bookmark the remote blogs and ping the bookmark profile RSS feeds.

For an example, if you trace out the Cinch Diet Plan pages (goes through "Natural Health News and Information" Posterous site), it will all lead back to Shaklee as an affiliate: http://order-online-today.myshaklee.com/

Go Thunk Yourself (and some of Thrivelearning) will trace back to my own bookstore: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/robertworstell

Thrivelearning itself is a montage of affiliate programs and materials. Some are even Amazon astores. And if you search for the slideshare.net sites, you'll see how this material was published as PDF's with backlinks to the hub it came from.

So I just wanted to give you some live examples to check out.

Cheers!

Day 30 - Help pay it forward

How can I help you? How can we help each other?

Of course, you probably knew this was coming.

It's not the end, it's the beginning.

You now have a window into my soul, as it were. And into the soul of the universe, if this rings true for you.

The universe is built on open-handed help.

As you give, you will receive - but giving happens first.

And if you want more income from your own online activities, it is just logical that you would work to help as many people as you can to become successful and profitable with their own online activities.

You have my email. I'll answer any questions you have, as long as you have them. If I don't know, I'll work to find out for you. After all, learning is a 2-way street - the teacher is learning as he teaches.

I'm not telling you what to do, but I've given enough hints already that it should be a little obvious.

What I would suggest you do is to start over and read The Online Sunshine Plan again. Then study each day of this blog again.

Once it clicks for you, then so should all life.

And success will be unstoppable, whatever you attempt.

So I wish you the very best at anything and everything you attempt.

Good Hunting!

Robert

Day 29 - Wrap Up and Review

Well, here we are - the next-to-last post in this series.

Bittersweet and all that.

So we are going to summarize what has been talked about.

Summary - it's all logical

Online promotion follows a few very basic and very simple rules.

The Internet is built and continues to expand based on valuable content and speed. The increasing social use of it has only built and expanded those two principles.

In order to earn income online, in this model, you need to be able to regularly produce fresh content. So the idea is that you've been writing or commenting daily as we've been going along. (And I've set an example of how this can actually be done. Sure I started a couple of days ahead, but if you try this yourself, you'll see how much discipline it takes.)

You need to know your passion and/or purpose in order to succeed at anything. And this can be found by simply narrowing down to what keeps you fascinated, what makes you happy (brings you peace) and/or you could talk about endlessly as long as someone would listen.

Whether its a blog or a site, the point is to have a platform where you can add valuable, original content regularly. This is your base, your Hub.

Most people dread market research because they aren't following their own purpose line and don't have the needed tools. Try Market Samurai, or their free Domain Samurai as a starter.

Sales Funnels are used to provide a valuable channel of products to the lead, customer, and client. They start off small (or free) and eventually wind up at big-ticket items, preferably those which are consumable or subscription-based.

Search Engines, at their bottom line, depend on what words you describe your pages with. Google has a SEO Starter Guide (a free download) which tells you exactly what they are looking for. There are just a few (5) online SEO points to take care of, mainly.

While there are many forms of content Google now provides, it's not all that difficult to create all of them. There are 3 basic types of writing styles required for Internet marketing and promotion to the 3 basic types of Internet users.

I recommend affiliate programs when you are just starting out, as you can learn the ropes without an immediate huge investment. I also give you a list of criteria you can use to evaluate any you find that may align to your core purpose.

The biggest effort in marketing is in building a list so you can send out sequential emails with an autoresponder. This is as more people use email than surf the Internet. Email is also a personal and captive audience (as long as you keep them interested enough to not opt-out.)

Writing a web page is simple - you write like you talk. It's key that you know the 3 types of writing and post these where they will be accepted.

Social media isn't for backlinks. It's to show the authority and trust your backlinks have. Understand this and avoid the "Google Slap".

Set up your Google profile and a badge on your main site/hub. Share links to your hub on your Google+ profile. Create a Google+ page for each main product or service you offer. Plug in Google Analytics and Webmaster tools to every site and social property you create. The more you connect with Google, the easier it will be to rank well.

You can publish one essay several ways on the Internet so it can show up in several places on page 1 of Google.

A key point is using Slideshare and videos from that same content.

I don't recommend Squidoo or Hubpages, or even article directories, unless you really know how to get your time investment back in leads.

Building mini-nets from free/remote blogs and similar social properties (videos, pdf hosting, podcast hosting) and then bookmarking and pinging those bookmark profile RSS feeds it the simply and effective secret sauce which prompted this series.

It's possible to get Article Directories to work if you effectively spin the content (by hand) and use Article Demon to publish them to several hundred (or more) AD's. It will still take hours initially, but the program takes the mind-numbing repetition out of it.

You need to be using ranktracking and analytics to have definitive understanding of how effective you are - and where you still need to improve.

Network marketing is a logical extension of Affiliate marketing and providing you have a good program with lots of upline support, you can build extensive residual income from downline sales. I list several places to train in this area.

Ebay and Craigslist can be key sources of ready buyers if approached effectively.

The Natural Laws of Marketing are the same which pervade all of Life's activities on this planet. Knowing this can markedly assist your success from here on out - in any field you attempt.

I give you a list of tools and courses for use and reference. (All in addition to the numerous freebies you've received daily...)

- - - -

As I can (I'm pre-loading these and so don't have all the links), I'll come back to give you the daily links to these summary paragraphs.

Good luck with all this.

See you one last time, tomorrow.

Day 28 - List of Tools and Courses

The Grand (In)Complete List of Tools and Courses - to help you earn extra income online.

It's called so, as I am constantly finding more stuff which has great practical value. (It's that Attraction thing at work. Jesus said something like: "As you look, you will find.") And as I find more, I plan to come back and add them.

However, I did want to drop a long list on you of other courses and tools you could use. This is exactly what people say not to do, since the more choices you give, the less chances people will click on anything. So I recommend you bookmark this or save it as a page with links to your hard-drive (where you can find it later..)

Now I already have listed in the sidebar how to find various things like Market Samurai, SBI!, Synnd, MMI, and Magnetic Marketing.

This 30-day blog in itself is probably one of the greatest tools, since what I tell you about creating content and linking into affiliate sites is true for every page here. But this is as I recommend: find valuable products and services, then become an affiliate for them - and link to these in your content.

If you like what I tell you and find it workable (especially the free versions, trial versions, and so forth), then I'm sure that when you decide to invest in the fully working paid versions, you won't mind that I get a split of what you pay for it?

Day 27 - Natural Laws of Marketing (but you always knew...)

Just as there is gravity, so are there Natural Laws of Marketing.

Probably no one has ever specifically talked about these before - but they exist, nonetheless.

Of course it would take someone with 20 years of experience as a counselor and a Masters in Metaphysics to make this leap.

While this isn't in The Online Sunshine Plan directly, I've already given you one of the freebies which heads down this path: The Power of Creative Selling, by Prevette.

Another would be Wallace Wattle's "Science of Getting Rich", in addition to Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich." Their underlying text would be Charles Haanel's "Master Key System". And we could trace this back to Indian and Egyptian texts, right back to Polynesian Huna (who's legends say they helped build the Pyramids and establish the early Egyptian social order). [Now of course, you can find all these in various versions - I'm giving you my Lulu links as an example of how its possible to take public domain works and possibly earn extra income online.]

When we say Natural Laws, we mean to say that there are regular recurrences and explanations for things. These are Laws which cross over from one application to others, are present in all "sciences" and studies. So it's not so surprising that they show up in Marketing.

Now, in no particular order, let's see what we can find:

Golden Rule

I've mentioned this one before. As you treat others is how you can expect them to treat you.  This is found in every major religion and philosophy in one form or another.

This is based on probably the most basic Huna principle, which is why it works:
"The world is what you think it is. "
Or, paraphrased, the world around you is as you consider it to be - or as you create it. This also hinges on the 2nd principle:
"There are no limits." 
Meaning that there is nothing separating any of us. So when you treat someone else well, you are treating yourself well, also.
It's the third principle which is distinctively applied to marketing:
"Energy flows where attention goes."
You can see this as the key theme of "Think and Grow Rich". Hill says to get a "BURNING DESIRE" about what you want to accomplish and then you will get the inspiration to do what you need to in order to help it show up. The other 12 parts of this philosophy just contribute to this one point. And this is the secret of having a "vision" or Covey's "7 Habits" and his emphasis on a company's mission statement. Wallace Wattles also goes into this, which book is what started Rhonda Byrne in her quest for data that produced "The Secret" DVD.

The Law of Attraction

Is more or less the same thing, or a consolidation of the above. Whatever you hold in your mind is what will show up for you. This law also shows up in both Testaments of the Bible and all through various philosophies as well - though not as well documented as the Golden Rule. Because those Huna principles actually cover a great deal of territory.

Here's the complete Huna list:

1. IKE - our ideas create our reality.
2. KALA - there are no limits.
3. MAKIA - energy flows where attention goes.
4. MANAWA - now is the moment of power.
5. ALOHA - to love is to be happy with.
6. MANA - all power comes from within.
7. PONO - effectiveness is the measure of truth.

 The fullest definition of these is by Serge Kahili King, as quoted on one of my sites.

And I've found that they explain how other Natural Laws work - although I expect you to simply test them out for yourself.

Inner Peace - "Feel Good"

I've earlier brought up the point of asking yourself, "Does this bring me greater peace - or make my life simpler?"

Of course, you can trace this back to that 5th principle above: "To Love is to be happy with."

During the course of these 30 days, and the stresses I created for myself, I was using my usual tools of Releasing and meditative review (See my "Freedom Is - (period.)" book-lessons and book.)

And what came up is that the primary and underlying common purpose the vast majority of us share is to always "feel good." And we could go into quite a discussion of how to remove artificial emotions from your life, which are not actually feelings per se. (Just read that book above.) You could also find this through all the lessons of "Get Your Self Scam Free" (or buy your own copy of the book...) This is where you would see that the main drive we all have it toward pleasure and away from pain.

If you understand that the purpose of Love is actually creative, then you can know that all which is bad that is happening to you is simply a lack of creation on your part. It does no good to be critical of others (and yes, I'm still working on this point myself), as this just makes you feel bad - as we are all connected.

And if someone around you is being critical, you simply have to let that go - as nothing to do with you. (And how to release or "let go" is covered in the "Freedom Is" book linked above.)

Real-Life Applications

The next point is to work constantly to improve the lives of others. Because if you want something better for yourself, it's obvious that you need to work at helping others find it first. This is paying it forward in advance. A simple, logical extension of the above.

When you focus on something you want to improve in your environment (Vision) and then work to help others find that (Law of Attraction), you then will find it showing up in your own life - or an inspiration of how to make it so (Golden Rule).

This of course explains my complete effort to "data dump" all the knowledge I have to you. Even though I don't necessarily apply all of this to my own online business efforts, it is perhaps because I have been too busy researching this all out in order to leave a path others could follow. (Or I just need to get busy with earning my own extra income online...)

As well, I mentioned I have another completely different path coming up. So I simply couldn't sit on all this data that would help others - it would affect my being able to get help in the immediate future, wouldn't it?

And so this rather different approach to marketing: finding your own purpose, finding the community which matches it, selecting or creating products which help that community, marketing them so others can find and use them to improve their lives, promoting them with regular fresh content which the search engines and social media can use.

In short, marketing by the concept of win-win-win. Everyone wins.

This of course brings you greater peace - and makes you feel good.

- - - -

A final freebie is one of these compilations I've created to have all the vital references in a single spot. But with today's essay, I think you could more readily use this to improve your efforts in earning extra income online.

It's named "Conceive, Believe, Achieve" and has James Allen's "As a Man Thinketh", Wallace Wattles' "Science of Getting Rich" and Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" - all in one volume of almost 600 pages.

Any assignment today would be to consider if the above laws apply to your operation and whether they might be able to improve what you are doing so you are more profitable to yourself and others. As usual, reject what I say completely until and if you can prove that it works for you in improving your own life.

Next: The (In)Complete List of Tools and Courses

Day 26 - Ebay and Craigslist: getting buyers to find you

The biggest scam I fell for was in researching eBay...

(And funny enough, when I was getting my refund - and they found out how good I was at blogging and how much I knew about earning income online - he asked, well why did you sign up, then? Answer was: I just wanted to find out how eBay worked. Which left him quiet. He knew I had overpaid for that simple knowledge.)

Ebay and Craigslist by themselves only get a short mention in the book (page 264-265). But the best way to learn what I know about Ebay is to do a search on the digital version of The Online Sunshine Plan and simply read before and after every time I mention eBay. My examples tell you volumes about how this system works.

Not your grandfather's eBay...

Originally, it was an auction site. Now, it's either a clearance rack for the Big Box stores, or it's for limted, higher-priced collectibles. Those are the only two types of sellers really earning income online via eBay sales. Mostly the community which supported eBay has moved on, as has the management which created it. There are little niche communities there - and that's about it.

The 3rd way to earn online income via eBay is discussed in my book on page  265. You simply offer a small unique product, such as self-burned CD's for a cheap price and then use that to collect names of buyers who might be interested in similar products (your sales funnel). They are qualified leads already, since you only get their email when they bought something from you.

CD's can cost you less than 2 bucks to make and ship to any client in the U.S. If you use a service like Kunaki.com, you can then have professionally made CD's which you can dropship, or simply ship yourself.  There are also companies which will do short runs for you and print a nice color image on top in stacks of 100 or so, which would bring the price per unit below making them yourself (and having to print out and then paste on the label).

While I don't suggest it, eBay has a "store" where you can offer your products. Of course, this means you have routine sales high enough that you can absorb that overhead.

What eBay is great for is market research. You can take any type or kind of product and search for what people are buying, as well as what their price points are.

I was looking though my material to see what I could give you, but only found books what were 10 years old now. So these are to dated to be any good (an eternity has passed in Internet time). I'd suggest instead that you visit http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/index.html to get the current data.

And Terapeak still exists as a way to do market research. Their resource page (as linked) will tell you if it's a service you need to invest in. Of course, you have a 7-day trial period, but that might not be enough to really get your market researched.

Another tool is WorldWideBrands - which was built to help people dropship, especially on eBay. But they can help you with Yahoo and Amazon stores as well. If you click on Seller Resources, you'll get their whole library of data on the various ways to sell your products. I like (and have bought) this service, because it's a one-time investment which gives you access to continuing product and marketing research.

Linked on their resource page as well are newsletters from people like Skip McGrath, who has been selling on eBay nearly since it started. That link takes you to his tools page where you can find all the latest and proven tools.

Craigslist - free classified ads

King of classifieds. And right up front, this is where my next research is taking me. Like ebay, this is where buyers find you instead of the other way around.

The trick with this is in writing the ads. You're going to need 4 things:

1. A product or service people actually want
2. A landing or sales page for conversions
3. Decently written ad
4. Places to post that ad

We've already covered finding a product that is valuable.

As to creating your landing page and ad copy, again, I'd suggest you study the ads which others are writing for you to see what they are using. Those at Magnetic Sponsoring and Peak Potentials (T. Harv Eker's group) are quite good, as this is all they do. Sign up as an ambassador (affiliate) for free at https://www.peakambassador.com/

As for places to post your ad, consider this short list from quickregister.net:

1. http://www.craigslist.org- The grandaddy of classified ads sites.

2. http://www.backpage.com The second busiest classified site after Craigslist. This is where all the escort ads went after Craigslist took down their erotic ads section due to pressure from 17 Attorney Generals. Not so with Village Voice owned Backpage.com. They told the attorney generals they were just fine with their erotic ads section thank you. Those guys at the Village Voice have major cohones!

3. http://www.gumtree.com Weird name but this site is one of the busiest classifieds sites out there. This high traffic classifieds site is focused on UK ads.

4. http://www.oodle.com This serious classified site has partnerships with ForRent.com in the US and Autotrader UK.

5. http://www.ebayclassifieds.com The official classifieds site for Ebay.

6. http://www.olx.com This board has a presence in most countries and can be read in English or Spanish.

7. http://www.usfreeads.com A popular US focused site with a large business opportunity and pet section.

8. http://www.classifiedads.com Classifieds focused on the English speaking world. US, UK, AU, and India.

9. http://www.inetgiant.com A green board not only in color but in their ads. They have a well represented area for green products. The board is pretty much translated in most languages. I checked their Lithuanian board. No ads there yet. Do you want to be the first?

10. http://adpost.com Solid board with presences in the United States, Singapore,Canada,Malaysia, United Kingdom, Philippines, Ireland, Australia, India, Indonesia, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

And that should get you started in this area.

The key point is that classifieds have the person finding you, as this type of Internet user is already a buyer. The studies I done to this date point to using classifieds for network marketing, among others. And the conversion rate for such ads is more than twice what regular Internet viewers do. Makes sense - you are pitching to people who have already decided to buy. It's just a matter of which product at this point.

- - - -

Again, plenty of freebies and homework in the above, so nothing additional from my Gringold vaults.

Tomorrow: Reviewing the Natural Laws of Marketing

Day 24 - Ranktracking and Analytics - the real bottom line

You can't get anywhere without a goal and some where to figure out where you are.

Same is true for search engine rankings. If you don't track what your progress is, then you won't know what to change in order to improve your rankings.

So we deal with ranktracking and analytics.

Ranktracking Tools

I've done a lot of recommending in The Online Sunshine Plan, and it's mostly around Ranktracker. Originally, this was the only decent tool I could find which would give me keyword data. And I didn't actually use their ranktracking much. Later, as I had to start making my research pay, I got it again and did some regular ranktracking. It is a good ranktracking tool, but has an annual subscription, with another one for "updates". So it was running me about $150 a year. That's nearly as much as I was paying for my autoresponder service.

I quit both as I found replacement programs.

SimplyCast, as you know, is an easier (cheaper) autoresponder for people just starting out.


Market Samurai has now been upgrading their ranktracking part of that program and will allow you a certain amount of keywords to check for free - and they do that checking for you. During the beta, it's 50 keywords, but they intend to drop that to 10 when this is over. But they track the keywords weekly for you - you just have to login to get your updates.

Which is exactly the problem a lot of these ranktracking programs have - you need to run them manually. They hog your bandwidth and are another program to have running on your computer.  Market Samurai you can leave open, or just open once a week when you are checking how you are doing.

Market Samurai is a one-time purchase (less than an annual subscription to Ranktracker) and lets you buy only as much ranktracking as you need. So it makes more sense for someone just starting out.

Analytics

In short, get all you can.

We've covered Google Analytics. And that tool feeds right into Google, so you can write more copy according to what they say you are already ranking for. Your ranktracking above will tell you more, as it's independent of being signed into Google personally. (There are also goals you can set in Google Analytics, and tie in any adsense campaigns, etc. I just haven't really gone there as yet.)

Another set of analytics is your own server, which can be found on your cpanel hosting. This pulls data directly from the server and so is the only really accurate set of data on what keyword they came in with and so on.

But Google tells you what they showed your page as - even if no one clicked through on it.

The trick is to take that list of keywords Google made and run them through your Market/Domain Samurai program to see if any are really commercially worth a hoot.

If you use bit.ly, you can get some analytics from them on who clicked through on various links. As well, good affiliate programs will tell you some of this - so they will back each other up.

AddThis has it's own analytics for people sharing your content.

And you can probably find more. While the server analytics are paid by your own hosting fees, the rest are all free.

An analytics sequence - how to review against your goals.

No, I never got down to this in the book - at least that I could find. There was a blog post once, but Lord knows which one it was on...

So a simple rundown:

• You have your basic keywords and all that market research.
• And you are at least running ranktracking on your main keywords. 
• So you can look up Google Analytics and download what they says you are ranking for.
• Cross-check these for both commercial worth, and to see if these showed up in any of your market research.
• You can also get your analytics off your server to see what you are actually being clicked for - and see if these are worth pursuing.
• And any other analytics (bit.ly, Addthis, etc.) to see what pages are being effective at getting links. 
• From all these, boil down what you are ranking for and compare this against what you want to be ranking for. 
• Then decide against actual income - what affiliate or product sales you had that week, and where they came from - how and what content to produce which would increase your leads, conversions, and sales. 
• (You aren't interested in traffic so much, as buyers.)
• And narrow that to what content you can actually produce that week - which includes posting it to your mini-nets and doing the bookmarking/RSS ping sequence.
• Next week, start from the top. But try to keep to the same overall goal, unless you suddenly become very successful from an unexpected quarter. 

If you schedule your data collection and analysis for Monday, main content on Tues, remote posting, bookmarking, and RSS feed pings for Wedneday, you can then go out into your community and leave valuable comments which contribute to the community the rest of the week - or improve your sales funnel - or write that next newsletter.

This is your part-time schedule, though. After you get home from your day job.

And yes, it's a schedule. You are working about a 60 hour week - 40 at your job and 20 at your passion. But you still run both as a business. Businesses have goals, statistics, to-do lists, marketing plans, and accountability.

Doesn't mean you don't have time with your spouse and family. And I don't mention you taking your weekends for anything. But you do take a serious look at this and do a regular schedule to earn that extra income. Anything less is simply a hobby.

- - - -

I was casting about for freebies and didn't find any appropriate to this. (Like no one actually does this?!?)

There is this page from Market Samurai on how to use their ranktracking and why it's important.

However, I did find this one: "How to Live on 24 Hours A Day."

Cheers!

Day 23 - How Article Directories Could Work

Article Directories are far from dead. There is a lot of linking going on.

The trick is to work out how to automate their submissions so we can give them what they want (content for their advertising) and we can then get what we want (backlinks from authoritative sites.

We've been over the fact that they all want original content. And you have to spin everything you give them in order to make it so. Posting individual content to each of hundreds of article directories (AD's) would take a month or so.

And it already takes hours to get a decently spun article. (You have to spin articles by hand - never, never, never use any sort of auto-spin program - there are none out there which work, period. Been there, tried that.)

If you recall from that last time I told you about this area, I referenced pages 254-257 of The Online Sunshine Plan.

In that section, I recommended a spreadsheet-based spinning tool called Article Re-Writer. (It's linked as a download - right-click and Save As.)

I've worked quite a bit with that program and sorted it out to some simplicities. What this had as it's best feature is that you had three (or four) alternate sentences which were chosen at random. Most article spinners simply change synonyms, which too often will make your sentence into complicated nonsense.

Google is all over synonyms, since this is what they show you when you are looking for keywords. So don't think they can't spot that with their algorithms. But the more important feature is that people won't stick around and view your page - which means Google will devalue it. Of course, you may only be looking for cheap backlinks, but let's be real. Tons of low-quality backlinks will not give you any authority and you will just be hurting your own main site rankings.

The reports I've seen say you have to be from 40% to 70% original. Which means you are re-writing the bulk of every version. Article Re-Writer makes that a lot simpler.

When you change out sentences, you can change grammar structure (active to passive or vice-versa) plus all sorts of Modern American English sentence forms like "Expressed Thought". No kidding. You think? Well, I'll be.

Article spinners can't and won't handle creating quality content at least as good as your original.

I've even found that changing whole paragraphs works. This is better, since you can change things around quite a bit. Often a paragraph consists of three sentences, which can be in at least three different positions without changing the meaning of the paragraph. So if you had A-B-C, then C-B-A, then B-A-C - you would still make the same point, but these different positions won't be duplicate content.

Best I've found is to simply write the article and then go down it, paragraph by paragraph, making two alternate paragraphs each time.

Sure, it's a lot of work. But there are a near infinite amount of varieties this way. The original author of the spreadsheet said there was something over 10,000 unique versions. And you'll run out of possible article directories before that time.

Next point to solve is the one of submitting your spun articles.

The top 10 I still recommend doing by hand. Plug your spun paragraphs into that spreadsheet and hit refresh (see instructions) to give you another version. You have to use Excel or Open Office Calc - any real spread sheet program. Google Docs (now Google Drive) doesn't do random functions.

But how to do the rest of those article directories? There is only one product I've found worth mentioning. And, to be honest, I've only scratched the surface of it (remember that I've not though article directory posting was worth my time up to now...)  It's called Article Demon.

The features are that is has long lists of article directories you can load and it will then go even register you with them, and has a place to spin articles (or you can - and should - simply plug in your own spun-by-paragraph articles as above) and it will submit your articles on a schedule, with delays - so they look more natural.

And as far as I can see, it does a very good job of being able to post articles and take the load off your time. It's also a one-time purchase (right now under a hundred bucks) and is being pretty well supported, having come out with a new version just recently which was offered as a free download for existing clients. (At the time I'm writing this, I'm waiting for the download to complete so I can check it out newly.)

One of the best parts is that it allows you to spin the titles, tags, and even the biography. So they are truly unique across the various AD's. 

But that is the general theory of how I would consider utilizing all those article directories out there.

The advantage of spinning your content is that you can have original content which will rank on it's own. And I've said that there are programs and plugins (I've used ScribeFire with success on both Firefox and Chrome) to remote post your blogs. The tip here is to create the text with html code, so you can also include images, then generate variations with the code included - and then insert it as html instead of text. Trickier, but once you get the hang of it - and use a WYSIWYG editor like Kompozer - it's pretty simple work. Longer than Posterous, but if you intend to post to Article Directories, it's a simpler approach. I'll leave you to work out the production sequence and flow, though.

I get results without article directories, but if you've been already submitting to AD's, this would be a way to improve your work flow.

Flash Update: Just found this page from the folks at Market Samurai who are developing what they call "Article Samurai" - and I found a description of how it works (as linked.) Of course, you can see the similarity to what we've already discussed...

- - - -

Update: Recent research and practice down this line shows that really only EzineArticles is potentially worth anything. Looking up Warrior's forum showed that you don't have to spin content, but the backlinks from these sites aren't worth all that much. One author was telling me the backlinks helped to out-rank the competition, but you can do better with a mini-net distribution and social signals such as Onlywire and Synnd.

The other point brought up on that Forum was to remember why Article Dirs exist - to help people republish your content.  EzineArticles has survived the Panda/Penguin updates well and has been known to drive some traffic. It's also not bad to have additional links back to your landing pages from them.

But skipping the Article Directories entirely is OK, too. Synnd is developing their own article directory publishing - but it will need spun content, so you are back to burning time manually spinning your content to make it into quality work.

Fastest is to post on your blog to begin with and then re-publish to remote blogs as you go. Always bookmark and also do the "super-spindle" strategy Synnd recommends for really effective social signal utilization.

So forget "Article Demon" as it's not needed. And

- - - -

I've included another freebie today - an interview with Dan Swanson, who has spent his time writing articles and tells an overview of their benefits.

Day 22 - Beginning of the end, with explantations

(Secret Sauce sub-series - finis)
Explantations is a good mis-spelling. Because we are creating a plantation of social fields which bring us different SEO-enabled crops. However, our field workers are willing and self-paid, so it's a congenial and profitable enterprise for everyone.

Today, we are covering more why's and wherefore's, most of which is dealing with Bookmarks and some about Social Updates. These two are the secret fuel ingredients which give this system so much boost.

That relationship is covered in a Search Engine Land article.

Now to understand the below, I'm going to give you a link which explains bookmarking, RSS, and pinging. 

I believe I've covered before how bookmarking was a bit hit when it became popular, and Google (for a time, anyway) was following these closely as an indicator of what was trusted and so had authority. Then, of course, the spammers started gaming the scene and Google moved on. (However, not completely, as there was recently a big slap they emposed on one network and all the players in it who depended on the "in-bound links" which were being artificially created. So know that Google is watching...)

Our basic model, which deserves repeating:

• The Internet is build on content sharing.
• The search engines (Google, mainly) model their rankings based on people's use of the Internet.
• People trust useful and regularly freshened content sites - and will visit these routinely, according to their own patterns of use. 
• The way to improve your rankings is to routinely create valuable content and let people know that it exists.

Note the emphasized part of that last sentence - that is what we are talking about today.

This is what online promotion has evolved into. And you have to promote in order to tell people about your valuable product or service. The search engines and social media are simply ways to prime the pump in order to find clients.

This was covered somewhat in The Online Sunshine Plan (starts about page 212 and goes through 222). You want to utilize search engines so your new clients can find your product (and old ones can find you when they lost your address). When you have established clients, they will be coming to your site for regular services and won't be utilizing search engines to do so. This also includes search engines built into social media.

And a review of the Promotion section of that book would probably be in order - especially since you know so much by now. (Pages 242 - 309.)

Priming the pump

Here's the point which spammers don't get (as well as a lot of SEO guru's):

You don't get down from an elephant, you get down from a duck.

The search engines can send you traffic, but they won't sell your product for you. Backlinks is just one of over 200 different indicators which Google uses to rank sites. If you are trying to get just backlinks from social media, you are going to get Google-slapped. It's just too obvious. That isn't what the social media are for.

We are going to avoid social networking like Facebook. To get anything from Facebook, you have to spend hours engaging with people directly. Just like an insurance agent will join every social club in town. Gain people's trust, and get invited to their home to do your pitch. You don't close any sale at the club-house.

This is the same point of getting people to opt-in to your list. Email continues to be the #1 use of the Internet. Barely half (and dropping) of the US is using Facebook. Hardly anyone uses their email. Reason? Over 70% of the US already uses email daily - and this is growing (much to the chagrin of the government monopoly called the U.S. Mail Service.)

So you simply let people know that they can get personal emails about the valuable service and product you provide by sending it directly to their email.

The social media can be incorporated into this promotion by leaving little tips here and there, with links.

Another Campbell book - freebie alert

Here's a PDF built from a scrape I did off a site he created: http://www.jigglingtheweb.com/ And he is a good study in what to do. He tells you some incredibly valuable stuff, then says - oops, the rest of this material you have to pay for... but you can sign up here. (Just wish he had an affiliate link.)

Sidebar:

The essentials of his Goobert (Affiliate Marketing) System is found on his newsletter post. With what you now know, you can actually improve this incredibly. And when you sign up for his newsletter (I just renewed it again) you get some more freebies (still wish he had an affiliate link...)

This "web-jiggling" really lays out the basics of what we are doing here.

First make a post to your blog. Second, submit a snippet of the post to social news sites like Digg, Reddit and Propeller.

Third, bookmark your social news snippets, or article submission using three or four social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Mr. Wong, Delicious, Mixx, BizSugar, Yahoo My Web, Faves, Simpy or Google Bookmarks.

(You can get a huge list from AddThis. Just beware that many of these services come and go like the wind.)

Fourth, the last step is to ping each bookmark RSS feeds, just once, using a site like Autopinger, PingMyBlog, PingKing, Pingoat or Pingomatic. Just be careful not to overdo it, as these services will ban you for over pinging. If you ping two or three of your bookmarks, that will be enough. The search engine spiders will find the rest of the links on their own.

That's how simple it is, and what we've built up to.

1. Post fresh content to your main site/hub.
2. Post link to that conent on Google+
3. Spin that content and post to remote blogs, with PDF to slideshare.net
4. Bookmark the remote blogs
5. Ping those bookmark RSS feeds.

Test this out for yourself. This last puzzle piece fits everything together. I've only confirmed this again this week, even though this was posted sometime in 2010. Not a secret, really. But since it doesn't fall under GRQ (get rich quick), lazy spammers probably haven't figured it's worth their effort.

Bookmarking and Status Updates - automated

Now there are free ways and paid ways to go about this. I only recommend one free way and only one paid way. There are others, but these work the best for me.

Onlywire will post to bookmarks and status updates. Set up an account and you'll also need to run their little program on your computer. I've had my difficulties with them in the past, but they seem to have gotten the bugs out (helps if you set it up right to begin with - that's a confession.)

The page I just linked to says you are going to have to go out and set up these accounts. But let me help you with these.

Bookmarking sites: 

Bibsonomy
Connotea
Digg
Diigo
Jumptags
Stumbleupon

Status Update sites:

Twitter
MySpace
Plaxo
Plurk
Friendfeed
Hi5
Identica

The rest aren't worth it, for one reason or another, and I won't go into them here, as I still have too much to go, plus this needs to get wrapped up.

Both bookmarking and status update sites will tell the search engines about your remote blogs, which then let them discover your main site/hub.

And the bookmarking sites above all have working RSS feeds. You are giving the ping sites (like ping-o-matic, but there are several) the RSS feed for your profile there - so you don't have to ping these more than once a week, as they'll then pick up the top few into that system.

A note on OnlyWire - if you budget this carefully, you can stay on their free plan indefinitely, which has 300 a month. However, if you go over once, you are going to have to either create a new login, or pay for their next version up (which is 10$ a month and another $3/month for the optional captcha solver.)

Drawback to Onlywire
It's only you doing this. (Priming the pump, remember?) So if you do a lot of this, it's going to look pretty spammy real quick. Another option is to also bookmark a lot of other sites, but that then uses up your Onlywire credits - or makes you do this manually. Some blogs will do posts like this. And ping.fm can do status updates to several sites like this - however, the shortener gives away the fact that you aren't doing this personally, so don't expect a lot of community support.

The solution brings up our paid version - but don't worry, they also have a free version you can also use indefinitely.

Synnd - the Syndication Revelation

Sure, that's the marketing line for it. What is does it similar to OnlyWire, but while it has a program running on your machine, it's taking that IP address along with all the other members (there's about 4700 now) and automating the process of setting bookmarks and tweets, likes across the many social media sites out there.

So you can run campaigns which will bookmark your content from all manner of international sites.  And there are numerous benefits to not being the only one to bookmark your content. Multiply this by enabling hundreds of others to do this, and you can see the advantages as Google can see that many people are interested in your site, not just one.

I could sit and talk about it for hours, but we'll let you do your own research.

• Here's 6 lessons with videos on how it works: Perpetual Internet Traffic Machine
• Here's a freebie PDF "The Syndication Revelation"
• Here's a webinar you can watch (free sign up): "Driving Traffic, Viral Exposure, Opt-ins & SEO Using Automatic Social Signals"

And did I tell you they have a free version to try out? You can only run one campaign at a time, but you'll see exactly how it works and get some immediate benefit. Try Synnd Lite.

OK - that's more than enough. This isn't a sales page for Synnd, although I could rave about it if I wanted. It's a heckuva monthly expense, so you need to be doing this professionally. The results seem slow but sure, however you'll see results for you new content if you train on how to use it (not a long training curve) and really exploit what it does.

Again, the key datum which they also have found useful is to bookmark, and then run campaigns on the incoming links to your remote blogs. You don't have to do this, but it is the secret ingredient to the secret sauce.

No extra freebies or assignments today other than the above. That's more than you get most days in this data dump, so I'm not going to add to it.

- - - -

Coming up is another week of the stuff I can now tell you, which adds to everything you've learned so far, but isn't essential to it. You will be able to further increase your income with some of these tips - provided they work for  you according to your tests.

Day 18 - Spreading the Content Around

(Secret Sauce sub-series 04)
As much as people (myself included) deride the idiosyncrasies of the free blogs, they do serve a valuable purpose - besides making money for their hosts. They allow you to republish content to different communities.

The weirdest thing, perhaps, is how useful I've found these since I published The Online Sunshine Plan. Yet nothing about them particularly shows up in that book, except as parenthetical examples.

So - no pre-reading assignment, again.

Let's get right into these...

The reason you want a lot of free blogs re-publishing your content...

This seems illogical on the outset. If Google is penalizing duplicate content and giving special tags to show who authored it first, why would you want to re-publish your content to someone else's site?

Two reasons:

• backlinks
• out-creating your competitors

We have to lay one old urban legend to rest here: duplicate content penalties.

The old-school SEO boys wrap themselves around a pole on this one. Duplicate content isn't "removed" from the rankings, it's just moved down to the "omitted results" section. I gave you at least one link where Charles Heflin shows how there really isn't any competition. And if you look up any long-tail phrase, you'll see that for exact phrases, the links Google shows usually fall apart after the 2nd page (20 rankings).

So Google is really trying to produce the best possible page results. Stuff that has the exact same content is just shuffled lower (below 750-800, as linked above.) It doesn't take them out of the standings entirely, if they still have your backlinks, then they are still contributing to your site staying on top.

Duplicate content mostly hit the free sites like blogs and article directories, which suddenly found themselves with not very many pages ranking - because they weren't policing their own content. (And so now they do, with a vengeance.) However, it doesn't mean that you can't also rank for several different sites with the same content.

How blogs do this is rather interesting. You see, they sort by date, tag, and perhaps feature new material as it's released. Tumblr.com is one which pretty routinely shows up on page 2 or 3 according to their tag pages, which sorts in a different order, so has "different content" than sites which just present them according to last first. Wordpress.com has a nice feature page, which will get a lot of new posts on their front page (handy for search engines to find new content), and if people visit it, it will stay there for awhile, as this is all a popularity contest and entertainment.

Another point is that these freebie blogs all have different templates and have different content showing up. (We'll go into this later about how you can help this with sidebar widgets) So it's mostly, but not exactly, the same content. If there isn't much content around with these keywords, then your re-published content has a good chance of showing up.

Now, yes, if they all had completely different (or at least 40-70% different content) then they'd all rank for the keywords. However, it's a different scene when you are spinning several versions of that material with all that time invested. (We will go over spinning content toward the end of this 30-day program, however. In theory it could be useful - and would help out article directories.)

What we've seen by utilizing these freebie/remote blogs and tracking their ranks from week to week, is that the free blogs will show up and maybe even outrank your main site for a few days or weeks, then slowly drop down the rankings, while your main site (which they link to) starts to increase it's rank. Even though they were posted the same day, within minutes of each other (and I'll tell you how to do this on a later day.)

The top remote blogs

We'll refer to them as remote blogs from here on out, as they have your content in remote locations. ("Free" describes a lot of things these days...except perhaps beer, meals, and money.) If you visit http://knowem.com and do a search, you'll find the top blogs on their main page of social sites. They are listed below.

Blogger.com
This was bought by Google a long time ago. And this year has been getting overdue updates which allow it to rank better. Main point of use is that they don't care if you heavily push affiliate sites and you can have dozens (one lady has hundreds, per report) of different blogs to separate out your content.

Wordpress.com
Finicky about anything that sells anything - unless you have a paid hosting with them. So you can get banned and never figure out why. This ranges from dropping your site to dropping your login. I've even experienced accidentally violating their rules and having my login dropped, but leaving my blogs up - orphaned. So two things you have to do with them: 1) only link to an innocuous "review" page and not to direct affiliate links, 2) have multiple administrators for every page - you can sign up several times with different emails to make additional accounts. You're also allowed almost unlimited number of extra blogs, but once you give it up, neither you nor anyone else can get it again. Wordpress.com blogs tend to show up and sink like July rockets, settling down at the lower pages of rankings.

Tumblr.com
Quite a popular blog site. And while they have a few "bad words" which they ban almost automatically (like "work from home" and "make money online"), otherwise they pretty much leave you alone. Also lets you have numerous extra blogs. Noted as above for ranking well according to its tag pages.

Posterous.com
Almost a newbie on the scene. It was first known for allowing you to post by email. (Now all of the above, and most others, allow you do do this.) However, it's becoming more popular as a blogging platform on its own and the guess is that mainly because it allows you to post to other blogs and social platforms with a copy of your post - which will link back to that posterous blog for any default. So yes, it's giving itself all the backlinks it can find.

There are a few others like Livejournal and Xanga which we won't cover here. Mainly because you can't auto-post to them, which is a hint of what we'll cover later. Sad, really, because they have active communities. Xanga did this in response to spammers, which IMHO was a shot in their own foot. LJ does it by neglect - it's supposed so, but is wonky that way.

Other remote blogs of interest

Anything that can be remote-posted to is useful. However, if it's hosted on someone else's dime, then you can get quite a community built up.

I've already covered how you can build Wordpress blogs on your own site. But that can give you server issues, which (twice-burnt) I don't recommend as a platform. Other free blogs can be set up. And you can also set them up as subdomains, so practically you can build up as many as you have space and bandwidth for. Main problem: they are on the same IP address, so they can appear to be spam-blogs (or splogs). And is why the free/remote blogs are nice - you can have other IP's backlinking to your main site.

There uses to be several free blog hosting sites. (And you can look up free hosting and set up blogs there, but most require a lot of attention in order to retain the free status. Leave one alone for awhile and your account gets cancelled. Content means traffic means ad sales - no content means canceled account.) However, most weren't able to keep sufficient profit to survive, so they've mostly gone by the buy. Wordpress-based free blogs were the rage once...

Blog.com
One of the survivors. Wordpress based and ranks well overall. You do have to turn on remote posting, however.

Blogetery.com
Another Wordpress survivor. Went through some wierd hosting problems a couple years ago - some terrorist-related individuals were hosting with them, and their host shut all their blogs down. But they're back and other than being a bit slow at times, it's a great little community of bloggers.

Typepad.com
They are finicky about getting set up and only allow you one free blog per login/email address. And make it hard to find how to set up a free blog (I've lost that page more than once.) Otherwise, a nice little remote blog. They are their own scene and have built up a nice non-WP platform as a standard.

Again, there might be a handful of others which would fit in this. I've literally spent days searching for WP-based blogs and "free blog hosting", but keep dropping back to these few above. There are still some around, but mostly they have closed off free sign-ups, or are based in a foreign language (non-English), which gives you problems.

Tricks and Details on setting remote blogs up

Generally, these just run as a few:

• Fill out your profile so it looks like a real person. Photo, some interests and definitely your main site as a backlink.
• Unless you like a lot of email (another reason to get a[n additional] gmail account), ensure that you simply have to approve every comment. Most of these long tail blogs, in my experience, only attract fools trying to backlink to their site with comments. It's not that you can't do this, or that it doesn't work. But it's labor intensive and most of these guys are rank amateurs - they don't really contribute to any ongoing conversation.
• On some (blog.com, blogetery.com) make sure that you can remote post to them.
• Put your main site RSS feed in the sidebar to get more backlinks. When you update your main site, it will auto-update (and auto-backlink) on the remote blogs.
• A news feed sidebar with your keyword as a search term is a nice touch. Gives another hint of authority.
• Vary the theme and put a different one up than given. Takes a few minutes, but you generally wan them all to look different.
• Follow some other blogs, especially if you have others of your own on that platform.

Some (tumblr, typepad) don't have customizable sidebars. Their loss. And they might have changed things since I wrote this or last visited their site to set one up.

Isn't this a bit, well, callous?

Well, no. The reasoning goes like this: You are one of a handful who are providing new and fresh content for the Internet. Posting to remote blogs is simply a way of reaching more people with that content. These sites are mostly (-ahem-) content pimps. They (especially Wordpress.com) don't want you to earn income from your content, they just want you to post your content to their site so they can.

So you help them, and they help you.

If you keep your sales/landing pages, review pages, and infotainment pages separate (infotainment goes on the remote blogs, review pages go on your site, and sales pages are either separate pages on your own, or hosted by that affiliate product you are pushing) - then you and the remote blogs can have an amicable, cross-beneficial publishing arrangement.

There's also the point that this doesn't mean you quit contributing to your communities that you've found, just because one of them exists on one of these platforms. You keep contributing - but no one said you couldn't also have an additional blog or two to host your additional content, did they? Especially if the profile is different from your personal one... (Someone recently told me that they'd seen I hadn't been blogging much - but they don't know all the "alternate identities" I use in order to get my research done... Rest assured, I'm as over-prolific as usual - "don't try this at home", and "use only under adult supervision") ;)

- - - -

OK, another couple of freebies. But I'm not apologizing for these guys' lack of taste or professionalism. They will give you some additional pointers we haven't gone over. But it's up to you to test them. Some are dated, some never worked. But the common sense ones you should be able to spot right off.

Blogger's Guide to Profits
Building a Blog Empire for Profit

And your assignment is to check out these free platforms above and see what you find there.

Day 17 - The Google Gorilla in the Room...

(Secret Sauce - third installment)

We can't continue here without discussing the 900lb. Gorilla in the room - Google.

This particular scene only unfolded for me last month, but is so basic to our SEO efforts that I had to tell you (been "busting to" in fact).

Google has been working on entering the social arena for years. They tried Buzz and Wave and now Google+ - which seems to be a hit (finally). Of course, it's overshadowed by Facebook, for now.

The reason I can say that is that point I've mentioned about Facebook before: it's a walled garden. Unfortunately, that works against it. While I could tell you all the statistics which show it reaches a saturation point in any country and then starts slowly declining, they offset that with it's entry into new countries. And point to ad revenue (which doesn't get new clients for those businesses, so is a ponzi scheme waiting to implode.)

Google+ is simply built on how people share content. So it's a natural fit to Google and users.

But the real deal is that it's now integrated into all Google does - and shortly will even have their analytics built into their Google+ pages. And how you integrate with Google affects what searches you personally get and also who gets your links. So this will help your community to keep track of your content - nice, yes?

There are 2 parts to this:

1. Everything you connect into Google will help your site rank better.
2. Google will teach you how to make better content - so your pages rank better.

Now, the outset is that you need to set up a Google Account, which is fairly simple -  go to https://accounts.google.com and fill out their form. Now a point here is that you don't try to set up several accounts here. It's not like twitter. They cross-check stuff. So one should do you and keep it the same. From all the work I've done with them, that's my short version. Pick one and stick to it.

Google's purpose

Arguably, they have mostly been interested in how people store and retrieve information. Their business plan has been to sell advertising, which has worked. Especially with the tools they offer to "auction" their ads. So they very nearly always sell as the highest rate possible, but that's another story we don't have time to get into.

The great part of Google is that they have been so successful at search, that they have long controlled the greatest part of the market for searches. So if they say they want "such-and-so" every one asks - "how high?" (mixed metaphor).

For better or worse, they have started to become ubiquitous on other platforms as well. Their Chrome browser is now starting to unseat Microsoft's IE as top dog. And this is another way they are working to understand people's usage of the Internet, so they can give better results in their search.

Factually, their biggest problem now is their success, as they have been losing trust - essentially due to the huge amount of data they can access about people. Again, this is an issue that there are solutions for which we don't need to get into.

Our use of this is to leverage their ability to have their fingers in all pies in order to get them to notice our content more easily. The second point it that their feedback on what we do can improve our own rankings. So we use their expansiveness to our advantage.

Analytics

Google Analytics is simple to find. http://www.google.com/analytics/
You sign in with your gmail account (Google Account) and then enter all the various properties that you have. For each one (unless you group them together) you'll get a number which you can drop into other social properties where they ask for such.

A lot of these social sites are supporting Google analytics, which is a good thing. It makes it easier to implement (no cutting and pasting code into your page headers) and this also tells them that your site is available and connects to you.

While we'll go over this later, this is a key point - that you take control of ownership for your content. The better you make this content and the more sites you have out there, it's important that Google knows where it started. By plugging in analytics, you then will enable Google to directly track your site/blog/content and so tell you all sorts of things about how it's working and what you can to to improve it.

Now a caveat - Google Analytics simply isn't as good as your own server. But if you are using free hosting, it's the next best thing (and far better than nothing.) So if you have a Google account, then take the next step of generating a number for it and plugging it in.

Webmaster Tools

Their use of this is fascinating, since they can tell you what people are using to search your site. Again, your own server is better for this in terms of accuracy, but this is what Google thinks your site looks like and so can give you a leg up on what content you should produce next in order to back up what Google is sending your way.

A rule of warning here - it's not the Gospel truth of what are the best keywords you should be using. Remember our lessons on Market Samurai. Not all keywords are valuable. You want to chase those which have commerciality - people click through on ads which others pay good money for. But you can scrape these keywords and run them through Market Samurai (or for free - through Domain Samurai) to find out what is working best for you.

They also tell you here what broken links you have and how you can improve your site for the search engines. Mainly that when they search a site and find broken links, they come back less often. So fixing these ensure they will search your site quickly (like minutes).

Recently (this year sometime) they plugged Webmaster Tools into Analytics which improved both of them. So when you go into Analytics (you'll have to turn on this interconnection, but it's simple) then you can see what keywords are being searched for and what pages people are accessing.

Again, this is included with your Google Account. And some, like Wordpress.com, only take Webmaster Tools. Odd, but at least you'll be able to see the keywords they visit your free Wordpress blog from it's dashboard - which is also handy.

Google+profiles

While this has been a long, slow start and with several mis-steps, now it looks like they have their feet under them.

Google+ profiles are your personal page on Google. And ties all your work on their various platforms together. And it's the best of the profiles out there, since they have learned from Facebook's and other's mistakes. Just review that freebie I gave you yesterday about setting up your social profiles and you'll get the bulk of it. (Pictures, links back to your site, the whole thing.) But they do privacy better (as much as you can on the web...)

I'm not one who cares all that much for burning my time keeping track of other people's posts. (Even Google has this on automatic.) But Google has released this along with some of their other updates, and is probably the first to use a tag (rel=author) which says that the content on that page was created there first. By doing this, they can see where someone else simply copied the content and pasted it onto their site.

So they can then give the best value to the original content. People who copy your stuff (and leave the links intact) will then be sending you authority for being the author. So they boost your site up for those keywords.

The way Google helps you with this is by enabling you to put a badge on your site which lets people "plus-1" your page. But also marks your site as the original.

Google+ pages

I'm continually surprised that there isn't a land-rush for these.

The same thing you do for yourself, you can do for any product. Like affiliate products and such. If you support or recommend a product and have put up pages about that product or service, then create a Google+ page for this and then share the link here for your content (a lot like Facebook or Twitter). But in this case, the links don't disappear, since Google is hosting it on their servers.

Now, if you have a site for that product, then create a badge from that Google page and plop that code down in the sidebar. Voila - you are now the authority for that content as well.

So if you have several sites, you create Google+ pages, share the links, and plop the badge on those different sites. Don't forget to put your link on that page to your site - it goes right under the logo you use. (Nothing like a backlink from Google to make your day, eh?)

Both on their pages and your profile, you can link all your other sites in. Of course, this makes your blogger blog have more seniority, doesn't it? Not bad for free.

- - - -

There's really too much to discuss here. I've touched on the basics we are going to use later in our "secret sauce" sub-series.

The freebie today is called the Google Plus Marketing Landscape - a collection of data from someone who is an online geek from beyond. While you can get it from his site, I've left all his links in and encourage you to visit it just to get a feel of what he knows. (His style of content isn't what I cherish, so I opted out after awhile...)

Your daily assignment is to create a Google Account if you don't have one and play around with their profiles and pages. If you want, you can start linking in your content so others can find it on Google.

Now I don't go into these "circles" things. But I'll leave you to search for them, as there is quite a bit of discussion on them. Hint: pages can't "circle" people. But you can find "shared circles" of just brands and pages to use for your pages to increase their authority. (It's just branding after all...) Active brands will include you're brand in their circles, particularly if you've shared some good content on your G+ page.