ResearchByDave.Com » Blogging

Took the plunge – Bought the Thesis Theme

Dave — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 03:50:27 +0000

Well, I finally took the plunge and purchased a theme for the new, upcoming redesign of my site.

While I wanted a theme for a long time and tried to mess with coding myself…I finally decided about a month ago to just try and find one that I could modify without a lot of messing with the coding itself. And for the last week I have been going between two theme: The Frugal Theme and the Thesis Theme.

In the end, the Thesis Theme won.

Stay tuned for quite a change in my design … as well as a redesign in my whole outlook in my business life.

Install SEO WordPress

Dave — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:18:15 +0000

Install SEO WordPress

To help folks out there, Pawel Reszka decided to create cool step by step videos that you can watch and follow to install your own high traffic niche blogs. There are 7 Camtasia videos that you can download …

Install SEO WordPress

With Master Resell Rights And Is Only $3.95!!

Video #1 – Install WordPress Part 1

In this video I am going to take you step by step through the entire process of setting up MYSQL database and configuration settings.

Installing WordPress is very easy, but there are still folks out there that are having trouble with it. Video 1 & 2 will have your blog installed in less than 15 minutes.

Video #2 – Install WordPress – Part 2

In this video I am going to show you how to upload all the files on your server and proceed with the installation process.

I am also going to go over some post-installation settings that need to be done before any further modifications.

Video #3 – Theme Settings & SEO Plugin Installation

Here you are going to find out how to set up your blog for maximum seo benefit and how to install the SEO plugin on your WordPress.

I am also going to show you how to make your wordpress ping Weblogs and what services you should include.

Video #4 – Customizing The SEO Plugin

This video is going to take you over some of the options and settings that you need to customize for your blog.

Video #5 – Installing Google Sitemap Plugin And Optimizing It

In this video I am going to show you where to find and how to install the Google Sitemap plugin on your blog.

I am also going to go over some cool optimization tips of the plugin.

Video #6 – Installing Related Posts Plugin & Customizing It

You are going to find out where to download the plugin for free and how to install it in less then 5 minutes.

This video will show you how to set up better in-depth linking structure on your blog.

Video #7 – Installing A Killer Plugin That Will Allow You To Generate More Pages On Your Blog

This video is going to reveal an awesome plugin that is going to have a huge impact on your blog’s performance. I will go over the installation process and customization.

Traffic Generation Ideas Part Four

Dave — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:04:13 +0000

This is part four in a series of how to generate traffic to your website or blog.

Read Part One Here

Read Part Two Here

Read Part Three Here

1) Participate in Giveaway Events. Not only can you join a giveaway event to get some good products you can use and resell yourself, but you can also use them to drive traffic to your site! By joining as a contributor, you can create a giveaway product and offer it on their site for others to download. MANY marketers build very nice opt-in lists by using these giveaways and if they participate, you should take note of that fact and participate as well! Your giveaway item should be useful to those downloading it. Because you want to earn their trust and keep them on your list…so you can sell to them later on. Almost every giveaway event allows you to send the visitor to an opt-in form to collect their name and mail – and then deliver the freebie to them. So, it is best to have a way to collect that information. I would suggest a good autoresponder service – such as Aweber or GetResponse (these are without a doubt the two top autoresponder services on the net.) You can find out about these Giveaway Events by joining several email lists of better known marketers. To find some, you can go to Gurudaq.com – which lists MANY of the top internet marketers. To give you a start, here are a few current Giveaway Events:

Use these wisely and often, and you should easily be able to get a solid 500 to 2000 new potential clients in a short amount of time!

2) Use Free Advertising sites. There are several highly traffic Free Advertising sites that you can list your website, blog, or product on. Again, you can try and sell on these sites, but a better use is to use these sites to get traffic to your site by offering a freebie. Here are a few of the more well known sites you can try:

3) Craigslist. What started as a local directory has blossomed into one of the most visited classified site on the net. I read that they receive something like 8 billion page views a month…hello!! You can try and get yourself a little piece of that pie! One note of caution to begin with: the users of Craigslist are very good at spotting and reporting spam. It must be used wisely to benefit from their traffic. Some hints:

Pick an appropiate category to post in.
Become a member and get involved in their discussion groups.
Don’t SPAM!
Instead of selling an item, create a freebie to give away. Collect name/email with opt-in.
Don’t post too many things at one time. Spread it out over time.
Use a Google Gmail account.
DO NOT TRY and sell affiliate products – those are very easy to spot and will get your ad deleted.

One thing you can try to do is lurk around the “wanted” section (inside the For Sale category). Find people that want to buy a certain item you are interested in. Then go to Ebay, do a search for what they want. If you find items that would meet the Craigslist user’s needs, join Ebay’s affiliate program, insert your affiliate id with the item for sale, and email the Craigslist user with what you found. You are not selling an affiliate product. You are offering them a way to find the item they WANTED to buy!! Just an idea!

4) Use your 404…..404 error pages I mean! So this is not really a “traffic generation” tip, but MANY webmasters do NOT make use of their 404 pages, which is WASTING TRAFFIC! You can edit them and send that traffic to any place you want….send them directly to your home page; send them to an offer; send them to an affiliate page….the main point here is to take advantage of that traffic. Here is a Google Search for 404 Error – as you can see there are many resources you can check out to learn how to create a custom page.

5) Blogs. I know I mentioned submitting your site to directories, but in case you have a blog (and YOU SHOULD), you should also submit your blog to the various blog directories. Not only that, you really need to make sure you utilize your RSS feed that is built into most blogging platforms (Blogger and WordPress being the two most popular.) I would also suggest that you “burn” your feed with Feedburner’s free service! (oh by the way, did you know that Feedburner is now owned by Google?) Burning your feed allows your feed to be easier to subscribe to. When a user clicks on your Feedburner Feed link, they are taken to a page that offers them several ways to subscribe to your feed. Ok…and WHY do we want to have a way for people to subscribe? So they are updated via their RSS Reader whenever you update your site! RSS Readers are becoming VERY popular and if you don’t utilize this feature, you are wasting traffic. RSS feeds provide users with a convenience…a simple way to stay informed of when a site is updated. It makes it easier for them to find niche-specific sites that they feel are valuable to them…if you can’t see the value in that, I give up! Only kidding!! You WANT niche-specific traffic. You NEED that niche-specific traffic….because it is MUCH easier to make a sale to those people that are already interested in your niche. Make sense? I hope so!

Anyway, here are some resources:

6) Email Advertising – Solo Ads. While many may find this to be non-effective anymore, I say poppycock! Email advertising (Solo Ads in particular) can be a very effective and cheap way to drive traffic to to your site…if done properly and if you make sure you are dealing with a reputable company or list owner. There are MANY places that will sell you an email list – 75 million for $29.95 … are you that gullible?! If so, just send me the money instead…I can use it to help the hungry! Anyway – there ARE some good places to buy from…and the best way to find them is ask your fellow marketers that have used them! Many say that they tried and didn’t like them – probably because they used them wrong or their offer was not targeted. As in other methods, you can try and sell via an email ad, but you may have better success offering a freebie in exchange for a name and email address. Get them in your own traffic funnel before you “sell” them. Make them want to buy from you by offering them quality products and information.

Here are a few resources that I see mentioned by well-known marketers:

7) USFreeAds. While they are not as loved by Google as they once were, they do still get indexed by Google fairly fast. USFreeAds has three different ways you can post an ad – Free, Gold Membership, and Premium Membership (check out that page for more information on each level.) The best way to use them is to create ads that are designed to drive traffic to your site or blog. What is nice about the Premium version is that you can run an unlimited number of ads at a time….while you are limited to 25 ads at a time with the Gold version. Unfortunately, their Free version, according to their own site, does not allow you to run ads for a commercial purpose. The Gold version is only $10 a year…very affordable! Worth a test drive anyway!!

Traffic Generation Ideas Part Three

Dave — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 23:44:29 +0000

This is part three in a series about how to drive traffic to your website or blog.

Read Part One Here

Read Part Two Here

1) Submit Videos! Unless you have been living under a rock, you should already be aware that videos are a VERY HOT trend these days! And if you want to try and get a piece of that very big pie, you should be submitting videos these video sharing sites.

One really nice way you can submit your videos to about 17 video sharing sites is a service is called Hey Spread. Hey Spread is an online service and is free.

I want to include a link to a special offer that I created about 2 months ago – called Social Madness.
This resource lists:

Over 100 Social Networking Sites (i.e. MySpace, Squidoo, etc..)

Over 150 Social Bookmarking Sites (i.e. StumbleUpon, Digg, etc..)

And Over 180 Video Sharing Sites (i.e. YouTube, AOL, etc..)

You can order this valuable report for only $9.95 by Clicking Here.

2) Utilize Other People’s Blogs. Not only can you post comments on other people’s blogs (that is, if they are similar to your own site or blog)…but you can also ask the blog owner to trade blog posts with you. In other words, you are creating a “guest post” for the other person’s site…in exchange for allowing them to make a post on your site! It’s really a win – win for both of you: each of you get an extra article (i.e. original content) and each should get traffic from each post. Make sure you both agree that you can place a link to each other’s site inside the post!

3) Use Answer Sites. By helping people on Yahoo Answers, you can help spread your URL around. The thing to remember is to (again) NOT SPAM! You need to use and treat the site as you would a forum. Be respectful and helpful and the traffic will naturally follow! Also…BIG SURPRISE…there are other sites besides Yahoo Answers!!

4) Create a Wikipedia Entry or Post. Ahh, bet you didn’t think about that one Just in case you didn’t know, Wikipedia (and many off-shoots of it) are human edited and can be edited by almost anyone. Like all other sources though, you have to treat it gently and nicely (READ: DON’T SPAM!) If you contribute real content, you may just be rewarded with not only direct traffic from Wikipedia, but also from the search engines that pick up their entries!! Start Here at Wikipedia, choose your language, then do a search for your topic. You will see a clickable [edit] link on each section. Go from there!!

5) “Old School” Ways. Hey, what about creating flyers to hand out … passing them out at shopping malls, flea markets, or colleges? Ok…what about creating small, classified ads in your local newspaper or college newspaper? How about creating ads in those “freebie” classifieds (popular ones are Thrifty Nickle, Penny Saver, Penny Ads, etc…) Well then, how about sponsoring a local event – such as a chamber meeting or get-together, or perhaps sponsoring a local youth sports team? I can tell you from experience that these groups are ALWAYS looking for sponsors!! Not everything you do to create traffic has to be done online! What about buying a billboard ad? Expensive? Maybe, but why not check it out and see for yourself?!

Traffic Generation Ideas Part Two

Dave — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 07:07:07 +0000

Here are some more ways to generate traffic to your website or blog.

1) Write a Press Release. Writing a press release is one overlooked way of creating some buzz for your website or blog! You can then submit it to several places, such as:

2) Related blogs – using comments. Find blogs that are related to your own website or blog and participate by posting comments or questions. One warning, DO NOT SPAM! Two great places to find blogs in your niche – Google BlogSearch and Ask.Com’s Blog Search!

3) Create a Squidoo Lens or Hub Page. Join their groups and make a contribution! Again, just don’t spam The reason you should use these two resources is that they are loved by search engines! Squidoo lenses and Hubpages are picked up pretty quick and can help drive traffic to your main website or blog.

4) Social Bookmarking…it’s not just for organizing your own favorites The vast majority of these sites allow you to share your bookmarks with the public. So, they create a very nice way to show others your sites, articles, or blogs – which gives you more traffic! One great tool I found is called Social Marker – which allows you to add your bookmarks many of the top social bookmarking sites from the convenience of only having to access their site.

5) Social Networks – they are not just for teens! Many of these sites are visited by all ages – and can generate some nice targeted traffic to your other sites. Some of the top sites you need to check out are:

6) Create a Free Giveaway offer. Many forums and sites allow you to post free stuff. Create a free report, make it useful and place links in it back to your site. Give it away either without requiring an opt-in or with an opt-in (in other words, are you going to make the person fill out a form, giving you their name and email or are you just going to supply a download link?) Each has their advantages and disadvantages. Try them both and see how they do for you!

7) Participate in traffic exchanges. Many people believe that they are yesterday’s news, but from what I have seen, they can work! The biggest problem is that many people try and SELL via the traffic exchanges. That is a mistake. Instead, combine a freebie report (see #6 above!) and start using these traffic exchanges to just collect names and emails for future mailings. One good site to check out for a listing of “the best” exchanges is called the Hit Exchange News.

Ok … now you have a total of 14 ways to generate traffic to your website or blog! Use one…use them all But I am not done yet LOL!

Stay tuned for more!! Also…feel free to contribute to this list and use the comment form below!

Dave

7 Traffic Generation Ideas

Dave — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:22:29 +0000

Today I would like to talk about how to generate traffic to your site.

1) Create a blog in your niche. Keep it updated – say 2-5 times a week. Use a service like Pingoat or Ping-o-Matic to tell the world your site has been updated. WordPress has a nice feature that allows your blog to automatically ping many of the popular services every time you update your blog!

2) Create articles in your niche and submit them to both article directories and your blog. Many webmaster use these article directories to gather articles for their sites to use as content. If your article is interesting enough, you could see LOTS of backlinks to your article and your site! See What is Article Marketing for more information. You can also get a list of “Top 50 Article Directories By Traffic, Pagerank” by visiting – http://www.vretoolbar.com/articles/directories.php

3) Use Ebay! Ok … just follow me here: Ebay has a fairly new feature called Classified Ads and guess what? MANY of their normal rules do not apply in this section! For example, with a normal auction, you are not allowed to link to an outside site for sales…in Classified Ads, you CAN! The cost (as of today 11/27/2007) is less than $10.00 (US) for a 30-day listing. There are other “add-on” features you can, well, add on to the listing to make it stand out and it may be worth testing to see what works better for you. What is really nice is that Classified Ads show up when a Ebay user types in their normal search keywords! So, if you find a popular search term or product that is selling well on Ebay, you can grab yourself a portion of that traffic and send it to your site! Just make sure that your landing page is relevant to what the user is searching for … you can read more about Ebay Classified Ads Here.

4) Find Forums and Groups that are related to your niche. Make useful, relevant posts in those forums. USE YOUR SIGNATURE LINE, if allowed. If you are not a part of a forum or group, you are missing out! Not only can you get a lot of useful information that can help you make more money online, but you can also develop a nice following of people that may buy your products! Many forums generate thousands of page views and again, if you are not plugged into these forums and groups, you are missing out on some really good traffic!

5) Obvious…but manually submit your site to the major search engines and directories. I don’t suggest paying for submission, unless you can get it done manually. One nice site to check out that is “free” (with a voluntary donation option) is called SelfPromotion.Com. There are links to many of the search engines and directories on his site.

6) Not-So-Obvious – Use a page translation plugin or software! Guess what: not everyone on the planet reads or speaks English If you use a blog (again, another reason to use one) is that there are plugins that will do this for you. Why not give people the option to translate a page into Spanish, French, or German?! You can check out some plugins by going to WordPress Plugins/Translation and Languages Page. Here is a nice Paid Translation Plugin – Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro For WordPress 2.x.y Blogs.

7) Use Pay Per Click advertising. Ok, so it’s not free, but it “can” be a nice addition to your other traffic generation techniques. Oh, yea … by the way – there are more choices other than Google Adwords, Yahoo SearchMarketing, or MSN AdCenter! You can check out PayPerClickSearchEngines.Com … there are tons of places … and the best part is that they can give you some of the same keywords/searches for a whole lot less money!

There are 7 ways you can generate traffic to your site. Theykey to ANY technique is to DO IT …. do everything you can do get traffic.

In the coming weeks, I will be adding onto this list…and please use the comment form below to add to them!!!

Wishing you the best!

Dave

Marketing … with your own website

Dave — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 03:20:19 +0000

WHAT? You don’t have a website yet? Shame on you!!

ok .. only kidding!

One of the ways to make a living online is to create your own product or service. There are actually lots of ways to make money online (and I hope to cover as many as I can find in other posts)!

BUT there is just something about creating your very own product to sell!! It is fun – scary – stomach churning – exciting – depressing and can be very rewarding … all rolled into one!

With affiliate marketing, you don’t really need to have your own website – but with creating your own product/service, you should consider getting one!

One of the reasons being is that you have a ton of options available to you, especially if you find a web host that offers you Cpanel with Fantastico!

Fantastico is a free add-on suite of scripts that can make your life a LOT easier. In fact, if you do consider creating a blog (and you should), Fantastico offers an install of WordPress on your own domain! And if you are at all familiar with WordPress, you know that there are MANY different plug-ins available that can make your life even more easier and more productive.

Now, one of the advantages in having your own website is that it provides you with a “presence” that just having a blog can not do…it helps give your product a “home”.

And with that, it makes you look more professional or credible.

Think about this: would you be more likely to buy from someone that has a sales page as mygreatproduct.blogger.com or from www.mygreatproduct.com??

Get my point?

Also, IMO, you are more likely to get your site listed in the search engines with your own domain, versus ONLY using say blogger blogs. Not that you can’t get listed with just a blogger blog, BUT I would be willing to bet that (1) your website listing will say listed longer than a blogger blog and (2) you will, in the end, make more sales with your own website/domain.

Blogs are a great way to get traffic…but, personally, I would use blogs to funnel that traffic to my main site…via good articles on my blog that link ONLY to my website.

Think of your website as the central piece in your marketing “hub” – and imagine with me, that you are looking at a network…a spider web…

In the center (the hub), is your website. Leading to your “hub” are lots of smaller, but important parts that make up the frame of your network….all of those smaller lines are traffic, being funneled to your main site, which contains your product.

Having this type of network can not only make you more sales, but can give you more traffic…because within each outlying traffic source (blog for example), you will link them not only (and MAINLY) to your website home for the sale … but also interlink them to each other, so that the search engine spiders can find all of them! Search engine spiders (putting it simply) work by starting in one spot (say, your blog) and then follow the links inside….and if you have linked to not only your website but your other traffic sources (other blogs, Squidoo, etc..), then the spiders find your others sites, which all also not only lead back to your main site, but to your other sites….and so the process just goes on and on….and hopefully, all of this leads to your site not only being listed, but listed with a decent pagerank

It’s a beautiful thing really, when you think about it…

I really hope this made sense and that you realize what you may be giving up when you don’t have your own domain/website to utilize in your marketing efforts!!

If you have questions, ask away!

Dave

Getting traffic using Blogs …

Dave — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 02:58:32 +0000

One way you can get good traffic to your products and services is using blogs.

Now, just because you created a blog (using either a free one such as Blogger or WordPress or you host one yourself) does not mean instant success or instant traffic.

To make this a viable traffic source, you need a few things.

The first thing you need is good quality, unique (or original) content … and enough of it to jump start the flow.

When you create your posts, you really don’t need to create a thesis paper!! What you do need is to create a good 300-500 word post.

If you are using the blog to drive traffic to a product or service, you want to use your posts to drive their eyeballs to either a link within the post (that goes to your product) or drive their eyeballs to a product image on the site (that, again, leads to your product.)

Many people suggest that you LIMIT your traffic leaks on any site you build – whether its a blog or your own website. I agree!

IF you do NOT monetize your site with programs such as Adsense, you have a MUCH better chance at funneling your traffic when you want them to go!

I am NOT saying don’t monetize your site; yes, by all means DO MONETIZE it! But monetize it with products you can get more than $.05 cents per click!

Think about it: do you want to make pennies or dollars?!?! And yes, I am fully aware that you can make a good income from programs like Adsense!

Anyway, don’t give them a reason to do anything other than going where you want them to go or click the back button!

The second thing you need to help your blog along by making it known to the world.

This is done using either automated pinging (which is available in WordPress); by submitting your new blog/post to one of the multi-submit pinging services; and/or by manually submitting your blog/post to the various blog directories.

You may be asking, “What is pinging your blog?” Simply put, pinging a blog service just tells them that you have a blog and that you just updated it. Depending on who you ping, you then get links (and hopefully traffic) back to your blog. It also helps (in my opinion) with getting links back to your site (which may help with ranking in search engines).

WordPress has a built in ping list that, if you have it activated, will automatically ping the various blog directories. There are built in list of places to ping, but from what I have seen and others have written about, that list is not the best. Here are a few resources you can use to create your own custom list to ping:

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ping-list/
http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=161966
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=52431
http://www.seofeed.com/ping-list-for-wordpress/

If you are using Blogger, you can go to one of the Pinging sites and submit your blog’s URL once and these services will ping multiple larger sites for you automatically. Here are a few of the top pinging services available on the net:

Ping-O-Matic – http://pingomatic.com
Pingoat – http://pingoat.com
Autopinger – http://autopinger.com
KingPing – http://www.kping.com
Google Ping – http://blogsearch.google.com/ping

Using blogs to get traffic to your products can be a great way to supplement your marketing efforts. It just a matter of doing it now!!

One thing – don’t be tempted to get into some black hat blog marketing! Yes, it can work, but you (well your blog and/or hosting account) are risking being banned. Just don’t do it!

Look for more tips coming later!

Enjoy and best wishes,

Dave