When the bottom drops out of your online business.

As you find the floor you're trying to stand on needs replacing...

photocredit: http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com

You may have run into this already - as your business is going along, you suddenly find out that some tool you've been using, or a method you've studied is actually just a gimmick. There are too many of these out there - they work for a very short time (usually only for the very early adopters, and no one after that) and you may have paid good money for it - but the results aren't there.

The next step is to pick yourself up and learn from that misstep.

Meanwhile, you find yourself trying to balance on the floor joists, because nothing else is under you.

I've done this more that once. I get all behind a certain company, building content and backlinks and so on in order to get the search engines sending me traffic - only to find out that the company or its products were never worth following. No, I never got that money back. I did get a lot of experience. But as I continue on, I find out not to spend a lot to get started. The intro versions will usually tell you if something is worth it.

Conversely, that is your own marketing as well. Be completely transparent and honest from the beginning. Give great value from the outset. Tell people exactly how everything works. Give away the core ideas and sell the tools to help them get implemented.

Perry Marshall, and others, long ago said that people don't want to buy a drill, they want a hole. So you tell them that holes are great things to want, very useful. And the best way to go about getting the hole they want is by using a drill - not just any drill, but this particular drill. So they buy your drill to get their hole. Even if they only use it once.

When you have found out that you were hoodwinked - you wanted to earn extra income online and you were sold a system, but it never produced for you - then back track your own wants and needs to more closely define exactly what it is that you wanted to begin with.

If you can recognize your own yearnings (much as Robert Cialdini did with his book "Influence") then you can proof yourself up against the scammers out there. (Or get the rest of this data and get scam free for good.)

Taking that further, you can then help your clients even more - by explaining how your services help them and why they are buying it. Be completely transparent (one marketer calls this "getting buck naked") in front of your clients.

Openhanded help is another way of stating it.

Your life-long clients will appreciate your honesty and candor. They know they can always go to you for the straight scoop.

And so, they'll return over and over.

This is how you build your own honest online business. Floor by floor.

About the Online Millionaire Plan

This is your story, too.

What is this “Online Millionaire” Plan and why should you care?

After all, you are sitting out there right now and saying, “what’s in it for me?”
That answer depends on how you’ve written your own story so far.
Nobody is after money just for money – they are after that stuff because it helps them feel better. That’s the blunt truth.  Money is a tool which helps you get what you really want. And when you have what you want, you feel better...


The point of your story (and mine) is to have a better life, to feel better and more secure, to gain the respect of friends and family, to control your own destiny, to be part of something you’ve always wanted.

In this site, I’m making several decades of study available to you just so you can re-create the world around you into the one you’ve always wanted.
If that means you’re able to buy an expensive car, or own a huge home, or take exotic vacations year after year – and if this is your ideal world to live in – then this site is designed just to help you achieve that. And if you want to make a lot of  money so you can give most of it away to charity – that’s what you can learn here as well.

But you won’t just be learning this, you’ll be doing it. You can create the story in real life, the one you’ve been dreaming about forever.

The success you find on your path to creating online millions – and ever increasing happiness – will be entirely due to:

1. Learning these materials.
2. Applying them to your life.

I hope you take advantage of all the materials and resources made available to you here.
Check out the pages, the categories, search for the topics and questions you need answered. While this site is narrowed to helping you learn online marketing in order to earn extra money online, it’s also able to do a heckuva lot of other things for you…

Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have. I’m only here to help.

Your story comes to life starting today.

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 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 25 - The Stigma of Network Marketing

Network Marketing, like Internet Marketing, has gotten a bad rap.

But it's their own fault - in both cases.

The problem is GRQ (Get Rich Quick) and this means Lack of Value.

Both have had their problems with this. And the real people making most of the money are those who do educating in this field. Because that is where the real value is. Lets face it - the majority of the people out there are wanting to be educated. Spammers are another form of education - when you come out of the other side, you've learned some lessons which will stay with you a long time.

Fortunately, there are easier (and less expensive) ways to learn life's lessons.

Network Marketing Basics

The point of this is to get people to sell for you. And the basis of Network marketing is to have a repeatable pattern, which can easily be taught and applied. So a person learns this pattern and gets someone else in who they teach this pattern to, getting a percentage of their sales as part of it. That taught person then gets others in and teaches the pattern to them, getting a percentage, and so on.

This is also why I recommend 2-tier (at least) affiliate sales products. So you get returns on the work you do, while you also get returns on others who are working for you. And if they are any good, you'll start getting returns from the people who are selling for them.

And this is also the point of offering valuable consumables - because they have to be replaced. So you have continuing sales.

Shaklee

This brings up Shaklee as an example. While I'm still learning how to crack into this via Internet sales, you can study their whole system with a low entry fee (around $30 - which gives you a lifetime discount on their products) and  see if it's a good match for you and the people you would bring in as a "downline". (I like and have had good results with their Cinch diet plan.)

Shaklee is so low key and not in-your-face, it's almost hard to see why they are expanding. They don't follow the "rules" you expect with various other network marketing offers and systems. Their underlying reason for success is the extreme quality of their products - and the fact that they only sell on word of mouth, not a lot of advertising. Instead, they hand out commissions to people who sell for them.

The marketing which most "classic" network marketing companies use is hard-sell and built on a ponzi scheme of getting more people in at the bottom to pay for those who were there first. Like Social Security. Eventually, these get top heavy and the people who get in later don't get paid anything. (Unless you have the government backing it, in which case they can force people to pay and also print all the "money" they want to pay for things.)

The key is to realize that this is an educational process. And learn from everything. Meanwhile, you simply keep looking for valuable products which can and will teach you the ropes of marketing, plus give a valuable return to everyone who comes into the system.

Magnetic Sponsoring

One fascinating educational process (my only criticism is that they email too much) is one called Magnetic Sponsoring. Ostensibly, you get leads for your own networking system by offering their program. Again, this is about a $30 entry fee for the basic course of the same name to start learning and working their system. You get a nice little ebook and some free video lessons which can start your education process. (That's the only way to become an affiliate - get some "skin in the game") And they are coming out with more materials regularly. Their main point is to teach people about how to network market - and share commissions on all sales, so you are getting a piece of the "action" from day one. Obviously, when people are satisfied, they tell others, and you are then getting another set of commissions from those sales. (Oh, and don't get their "Building on a Budget" - it's based on marketing through Squidoo, so you know how dated it is. I haven't gotten their higher end products, so couldn't give you a review of them.)

The main part with Magnetic Sponsoring is that they give you sample ads to run as classifieds and are constantly tweaking their sales pages for conversions, etc. Of course, you are getting numerous emails to buy this and that new release - which you can opt out of. These are great for simply studying how they are pitching their offers and the frequency (as well as what is annoying and what you should be avoiding.)

Continuing Income (on "autopilot")

The point with these two programs is that you have a low-entry point and are able to train yourself on the whole system of Network Marketing to create a continuing income.

There is no "autopilot" in actuality. The people who earn a lot of money in Network Marketing invest time in working and coaching their downlines to greater production. That's if you want continuing sales and income. I've got a lot of stuff out there (built as tests) which gives me surprise checks every now and then, but I don't work these and have simply put them up as a simple series of pages with affiliate links. And that is more like putting a plane in the air and hoping it doesn't hit something or run out of fuel.

If you want to get somewhere, you have to have a goal and actively work at getting there. Simple.

But there are some very interesting things you should know about setting up a "continuing income" system. I recently read T. Harv Eker's Speedwealth (a free download here) (webinar replay here)and re-learned some datums I'd earlier read while studying Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad).  The point is that you want to build a system so you can simply get out of the way at some point. Passive income (like our online income earning) is like that. Once you can get it up to the point where you can hire (or recruit) promotion outlets, and someone who will keep your content freshened, then you are able to then put your attention on other ways to earn income - or simply sell it off as a turn-key income source. That is why Kiyosaki was interested in real estate. Buy once and rent it out to other people indefinitely after that. Only so much real estate on this planet, so the supply is limited, while demand continues to grow.

More Network Marketing training routes

Another T. Harv Eker ebook, "Millionaire Minds for Network Marketers", takes what he already has been saying (and improving) in his Millionaire Mind Intensives, just for people who are studying Network Marketing. He also has an hour-long teleseminar (podcast) where you can listen to him describe how to network market from the inside out.

But wait, there's more...

Yes, I've already given you far too much. There's one last way to train on Network Marketing that I wanted to tell you about before I sign off for today.

This is the good old boys at Site Build It!. They have a very direct page which ties in having an Internet content publishing system to a successful network marketing downline. And it has a couple of free whitepapers and a video and other stuff you can check out. They are the past-masters of pre-sell and this page shows they use what they preach.

So if you are into Network Marketing, you can have all these links and free stuff to satisfy your thirst for knowledge on how to succeed.

- - - -

No, I don't have (more) freebies today - because I've already given you nearly a dozen above. And that is plenty to study in this area.

See you tomorrow.

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 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 20 - Backlinking you probably can't afford

(Secret Sauce sub-series 06)
Now, this is a change from what I've gone over, but you are going to run into these things and I have to tell you why I don't use them (anymore). Plus, I'll also tell you how they can be done - if you have the time to spend.

Pre-reading on this from The Online Sunshine Plan was pages 263-265.

Now I did a thorough number on researching this area after the book was published, as I kept hearing about Squidoo and Hubpages. These two have long been held to be a standard for getting backlinks. And article directories have been held up even longer. You keep running into various mentions of these, hyping them as the latest and greatest thing to use.

My research showed that while they can contribute backlinks, the search engines have moved on, so they don't have any particular reach beyond other platforms. So I'm covering these to let you make up your own mind.

There are 2 reasons I don't use any of these as part of a regular campaign for the web development clients I support (or my own online promotion):

1. They are no longer reliably able to rank on the first page of Google.
2. They take a lot of individual time to produce and maintain.

But they are all three a great way to get backlinks if you do have the time to commit yourself. And all have valid communities which they support. As well, if you study how they became a success (and how they lost it) you will see a greater understanding of the basic natural laws at work (IMHO).

Article Directories

There is more on article directories in The Online Sunshine Plan (pg 254-257) than the rest of these. And that write-up is still valid. But, as noted, you are going to have a nice time investment to take advantage of them.

This area was researched extensively, since AD's had a long run in being popular with the search engines - and were just as extensively promoted, especially by people using them to acquire list opt-in's.

Unfortunately, the AD's didn't change fast enough to remove duplicate content and both gradually were down-ranked and also slapped by the "panda" algorithm updates. Interestingly enough, the top 10 AD's (which are also the ones which routinely send traffic to your site) were also the ones which regained their rankings almost as quickly as Google lowered them.

If you want traffic, the top 10 are really the only ones you need to submit to. Unfortunately, they all insist on non-duplicative content and on top of that are each different in their submission process to the others. So they must be dealt with individually - for the most part.

Another drawback is that the best AD's all have individually-reviewed articles. So it can sometimes take 3 months to get a submitted article approved and online. This is faster after you've gotten several approved, but most won't let you submit more than a handful until you have proved you can abide by their rules. Now, after a hundred or so approved articles, you can basically get away with murder (unless someone reports you). So AD's have a long ramp-up time.

That said, if you've submitted before, they will probably start checking your work quickly, as they really do want people to submit there. So don't close old accounts with them. Might be useful, later.

While I'd (mostly) given up on these for my own submissions, recent research has discovered a relatively inexpensive one-time-payment tool which is designed to actually help solve this problem. As well, it can post non-duplicative content to dozens (or hundreds) of other AD's, which would then give you some backlink juice. (More on this with a later day, after the "Secret Sauce" series is complete. You don't need AD's as part of your own success sauce.)

Squidoo

These next two get short shrift in my book - only part of a page, in fact (pg 263).

What prompted my research into these was my studies of "Conversation Domination" which gave extensive write-up's on how to utilize them.

Squidoo was built by marketer Seth Godin and was loved by Google for a long time. This, of course, brought in spammers. Squidoo changed their requirements and were mostly able to keep showing up in the standings. As well, they have a solid community of people who go around and comment on other's "lenses" - which gives them points in Squidoo's internal awards system, and this helps raise their own sites within Squidoo rankings.

However, you really have to spend some time each week within that community to keep your own Lenses alive and expanding. If you are adding new content each week, and helping other lenses with theirs, then your various lens will "stay alive". If they go dormant, they will become invisible. And if invisible for too long, will be deleted.

The other point which came up during ranktracking just around the Panda update, is that they don't show up on the 10 ten anymore - unless you do extensive work to freshen their content and get comments as above. It's probable that a bookmarking and pinging campaign could raise a lens - but you have to decide if all this time and effort is worth it, compared to other approaches. (And after today's post, we'll start stringing my favored approach together for you to study on your own.)

Hubpages

This is a tough community to be part of. Mainly because they were top of the heap for a couple of years for Google. And the spammers hit them hard. So now, they review every single hub. And if your hub is flagged, it takes a ton of work to get it off that list. Hours per week, actually, just to build and maintain a hub.

Too many flagged hubs and your profile get flagged.

My setbacks far outnumbered my successes, so I simply dumped this as an unworkable scene. As well, since Panda, they have also not been able to rank very well for content (at least not page 1 or 2, which is all I look at.)

Before Panda, they were one of the Internet Marketing darlings - and were easy to set up hubs. Now, it's like a Fort Knox with guards coming around every few minutes - well, maybe not that bad, but compared to how easy a free blog will rank and can be posted... I decided that I didn't need their approvers looking over my shoulder and the time it took to make things all nicey-nice for a hub which would barely rank.

Probably the kicker is that they only allow one backlink per hub. Hell, I could get 2 or 3 with any submitted article. And not so stringent lookovers.

My view on this one is to completely forget it. They've gone anal with their internal community and really don't want outsiders creating content for them (IMHO.)

Summary:

I didn't really want to scare you off using these or trying them out. Articles are very good for backlinks, and once approved can be promoted with bookmarks and pings. Both Squidoo and Hubpages will tell you exactly what you need to make great content - and are actually telling you what search engines like. So if you want some training on how to build content, post a few lenses or hubs and get them approved. Great training.

However, the added time you need to invest in these make them hardly useful for a serious production line-up in terms of being able to roll out content which routinely ranks well.

And again, I'll show you what I mean over the next (and last) 3 days of "Secret Sauce" posts.

- - - -

Freebies today are numerous. But at least they are simple and fast reads. I couldn't let you go without seeing some of the marvelous marketing that was done for Squidoo. Note that these PDF's I include tell you basics which can be transferred/applied to other social media or regular websites as well.

Everyone is an Expert
Who's There?
Squidoo It Yourself

Day 19 - Slideshare and Videos

(Secret Sauce sub-series 05)

Today we cover some of the more viral (as in virus) and effective alternative publishing formats.

If you wanted to review this section in The Online Sunshine Plan, it start about  page 254 and goes to around 262.

Obviously, I've found it far more useful than I described it originally. Because I started working for someone who was ranktracking as a regular part of his business. And we were able to test out these things as part of working to salvage a floundering business by investing heavily in online promotion - which was cheaper and more effective than TV, radio, or other advertising.

Now we are into re-publishing mode here. Briefly a recap:

1. Write your content, include images and links to other pages on your site. Post this.
2. Make a Powerpoint version of that - post to Slideshare.net
3. Record that article and post it to Archive.org
4. Marry these two up as a Slidecast on slideshare.net
5. And/Or turn the recording and slideshow into a video and post this to YouTube and/or any other video site of choice. (Google owns YouTube - hint). Make sure you have backlinks in the description, and the file is named with your keyword.
6. As you assemble quite a set of these, create an ebook and give it away as an opt-in incentive (and/or sell on Smashwords)
7. Assemble the video's into a DVD and use this as an incentive, or a product on it's own. (Costs you under 2 bucks to burn and mail.)
   

Slideshare.net

This has some incredible ranking. Often it will show up on page 1 of Google with several different articles. This is because they will extract all the text of their PDF and post it below the flash version of the PDF itself. Brilliant move, actually.

While you are posting your content as a PDF, they then create a new, original text version on their site. Now the PDF can still be read by Google, and your description and profile should still have links back to your main site.

They also do featured content, which gets internal views by their community (particularly if its snazzy looking).

As I said above, you create a powerpoint and post it there. But you also do a document-type PDF and post it - with all the text. (Never, ever make a PDF out of images. Use Open/Libre Office which converts your original content - copy/paste from Firefox - into a PDF with all the links intact.

If, as part of your posting, you do this with all new content, your whole site becomes accessible through Slideshare PDF's and will simply replace other sites on Google which are present for the same terms. This brings up the possibility of having 6-8 positions covered on the front page of Google. It's become more rare recently (since Panda/Penguin updates), but occasionally we still pull this off.

There was a product called "Conversation Domination" by Howie Schwartz, which used to work along this line. One Halloween, he had the bulk of the top 5 pages (50 spots) covered with his content which pushed a specific costume as an affiliate product. It's much harder to do that now days, as the search engines moved on. Some parts of it still work, but it's labor intensive.

What I learned from this, and in figuring out how to apply this to multiple clients, is in taking the parts which could be simply produced with minimal time investment, but similar results. And yes, when my boss saw my work take over half-a-dozen spots in Google's 1st page, you knew I had his attention and help in streamlining this.

Video's

Mainly, this is YouTube. Because Google owns it, and so will give you multiple opportunities to take additional rankings.

This is one point Schwartz' technique covered. Google, as I've pointed out before, will return web pages as search results, but will also return images, forums, videos, docs, news, and a few others as valuable information. All on the first page. So if you can get the same content published in multiple formats, you can rank for several different content types - and get people ultimately visiting your site.

Another valid point Schwartz found was that this was highly targeted viewers. People who followed those links were interested in this data and were more easily converted to buyers/clients. It didn't result in spikes of traffic, but did result in spikes of sales.

So the simple technique is outlined above. Text to speech, images to a powerpoint, marry the two into a video.  Post all the sub-products to their own free hosting to rank on their own for that keyword.

If you're presentable, you can always create regular content by simply videoing yourself talking. I just like the above because you get more products out of it and don't have to invest in a camera or lighting, backgrounds, etc. Most computers come with some sort of video editing program, or they can be acquired online for little to nothing.

Audacity is a very good open-source recording program. And video editors are also available, while XP and Windows 7 come with their own, as does the MAC. Linux also has many free ones.

Ensure you have a backlink in the first line of your video description. That is what always shows.

The secret to this success is to set up your production lines to generate regular video content along with everything else. Google likes regular, fresh content - and this is a no-brainer if you can organize your life to write once and publish many ways and formats.

- - - -

Assignment is to check out Slideshare and see the many wonderful and creative people who contribute to their communities. And look for documents to see what you find there.

If you already have your Google account, fill out your YouTube profile and poke around in there. Set up all the backlinks to your main site you can.

Freebie - To give you more background on this "Conversation Domination" theory, I've included an ebook from their heyday: Bending the Web. Use a substantial amount of skepticism when you read this, as the two authors are known for fantastic (unbelievable) sales pitches. While some of this material is dated, there is more of it which has become mainstream. Also, note their presentation quality.

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.

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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.

Day 16 - Where SEO and Social Media Meet (?)

(Secret Sauce - part 2)

Practically, SEO and Social Media don't meet. SEO had to change in order to keep up with the evolution of the Internet.

Welcome to the second day of our Secret Sauce sub-series. We will have probably 8-10 in this series of just telling you the somewhat revolutionary, but very definitely effective ways of getting your content to rank well so you can then potentially earn extra income online - enough for your goals anyway...

Practically, if you look at it, this whole site and Online Sunshine Plan book is revolutionary. Even though it's old school.

The more interesting point to me is that the more I study this stuff up, the more I've found that it's been out there for awhile and what I considered something a trade secret, has already been promoted on several sites.

What keeps people from seeing these (myself included) is their own self-built blinders.

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OK, from our last lesson, we covered that social media can be boiled down into 3 categories. These are from their function, not their communities or content-type. And we are naming these in order to simply make sense of how to earn income online by getting and keeping top rankings in the search engines.

Social Media Types: 

1. Bookmarking
2. Status Updates
3. Networking

This doesn't cover everything, but it covers what we need to know. (If you want to spend days and months covering this material, you can - I have, and it doesn't necessarily increase your income, although you are well-entertained.)

Your first steps are, just to recap:

• Find your own purpose
• Find the community which bests matches it
• Study that community to find out what solutions you can provide to their problems
• Create content to offer the service(s) or product(s) which will best help them (and you).
• Optimize your content so the search engines can make best use of that content and rank it well.

But a funny thing happens at this point. You'll see it if you use Market Samurai to dig into who is actually on top. You'll find that some of these sites have no real reason for being there. They don't have as many backlinks as the people they beat out, and also they aren't necessarily optimized for search engines as well as others.

What we've covered so far is really "old school" and based on very traditional models. And if you SEO your main site properly, you will eventually wind up in one of the top 5 spots and stay there. But that's just on-site SEO, mainly.

What will happen if you don't continue to add fresh, optimized content to your site is that it will drift lower. If more people find your site and backlink to it, then it will come up some. But Google and others bring in fresh content and float it at the top of their rankings to see how people like it. Good performing sites stick around. (Even though Google's second test is to then drop it like a rock to see if people still find it useful - if they do, it slowly rises again.)

But that doesn't explain all the weird things you can find happening on the rankings.

Social media does start to explain these.

Search engines were caught unaware when the flood of social media sites started up. And then these sites matured and started their own internal search functions, which then took traffic away from Google and the others. So now they are playing catch up (and have been for years).

In and among the 200-some factors Google uses to figure out how a site has "authority", they throw in some social factors as well. Not just popularity, but the amount of people who recommend (thumbs up, like, plus-1, leave comments, etc.) any site shows how people trust it. And trust shows valuable information.

(A scam scene I knew had to finally give up and accept the fact that forums exposing their scam were going to rank right along with them, regardless how many people they paid to remove their negative comments or take down their sites. Before, they owned the top 10 or so spots so could point to these as how great they were...)

Bookmarking

Search engine spammers (and others) first tried to understand bookmark collections as ways to get backlinks. Yahoo, in fact, was built originally on huge collections of bookmarks by several college students - who started a company based on having access to those bookmark collections.

Unfortunately, they didn't work that way. (Yes, I was one of those deluded "others".) Studying the effect of bookmarks was mystifying. You could get tons of bookmarks created for your site, but they all wouldn't show up on the search engines as backlinks. And the more popular bookmarking sites (Digg, Delicious, etc.) tended to not show up as well. But bookmarking did make the targeted sites improve in rank.

Bookmarking is an indicator of value and trust. And if you simply bookmark your own sites and have a few friends bookmark them, it still doesn't mean as much as a site where lots of people bookmarked it.

The other problem with bookmarks is that they aren't created by everyone on the Internet. So while they were wildly effective for raising rank a few years ago, they are more or less just an additive today (even if still a very potent additive.)

Status Updates

Twitter isn't the only rodeo out there. If you want a great overview of how prolifically these have spread, check out http://knowem.com - which deals ostensibly in "branding" by helping people to grab social media real estate for their name on the web. If you dig into their back pages, they have sorted out social media into several different categories. Status updates is huge (as are many others). But do a search from the front page and you'll have their list of key ones. You'll see some of every type, but status updates are present - and are also part of several of these, no matter how they are categorized. (Myspace, Facebook, and Google+ are all built on this, regardless of what else you can share.)

It was simply noted by Google that these status updates also showed what content people found interesting and trustworthy. So they are another factor. And while you can search for these, they don't particularly show up in Google for main sites - as they are transitory.

Networking

We are going to approach this from blogging. Every "free" blog out there is part of some community, whether they participate in them much or not. These free blogs make their money from included ads, and so promote the various new content so they can keep viewers interested and entertained.

The search engines know this, and keep tight tabs on them to find new and fresh content they can rank.

A lot of people say Facebook, LinkedIn and some others are networking social media. And it's true that they were formed to facilitate networking functions which people normally have. But both of those IPO's also shoot themselves in the foot regularly. Main point is that they don't provide content, or keep making it hard to add good, fresh stuff. Their main use, really, is in status updates. (Facebook even deletes anything older than 30 days, and doesn't like Google searching what it has.)

Our use in defining Networking sites from a blogging view is to give it some relevance from a content approach. Obviously, a site which doesn't like Google won't have much content ranking well, and so won't get the click-through's found in organic search results.

Sidebar:

Facebook is called a "walled garden" for good reason. And while you can work to involve people in your "brand"  and several people sell various ways to use chat and other means in order to get leads - it's incredibly time-consuming. The most effective strategy I've found is to concentrate on content and always link your content into Facebook, but as an invitation to leave. If you look up my profile there, you'll find that I don't stick around much - but I do post regularly, on a via. Most of my stuff is posted first to Google+ (which we'll cover later.)

This book and site follows the principle that the Internet was built on freely accessible content. And the observed response that search engines reward fresh, original content which is regularly provided.

The pragmatic workouts follow this, and say that your best approach is to simply optimize your content for the search engines to get the best ranking and click-throughs.

So our over-arching approach in all of this is to follow what the search engines observe about their users, and duplicate so we can help them understand our content best - and so get the best ranking possible.

By creating blogs, you will be contributing to the search engines finding your material and being able to rank your stuff well. And then you only have to have some way to convert viewers to leads and leads to clients. (Like that is "all" you have to do. Well, I didn't say this was easy, only that I could explain it simply...) ;)

Summary:

While I've covered a great deal in a short space today, we've still gone on longer than is wise. You are going to be using (or at least studying about) these three types of social media in order to further your search engine optimization and both attain and preserve high rankings and volume click-through's.

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Freebies and study assignment:

Social Networking Exposed! makes more sense if you don't take it too seriously. This PDF does give you another viewpoint than what I've said. The key point is to give you a good overview of how to set up social media, as well as pitfalls to avoid. Note that the date of this shows how much social media has already changed in just a few years.

WAHM Masters Course - another great book from SBI! for work-at-home-mons will give you a lot more options about how to build your business. But I'm also giving this to you now in order for you to get a thorough overview of how to build a business to earn income online. It's not all that social, but does build on their concept of having an Information Site which pre-sells the viewer into becoming a lead (and later, client).