1. Begin with Great Content

Like any other content, YouTube videos must be engaging and compelling enough to prompt discussions and social sharing. Great content brings users to your channel and videos. Content that is refreshing, funny, thought provoking, entertaining, useful and even bizzare can cause a viral effect and bring about a marked increase in website awareness and product sales.

2. Make Your Video Findable

Your videos should be findable both within and outside of YouTube. Since Google owns YouTube, videos often appear on the first page of search engines. This is a proven method to out rank your competitors. make sure your keyword is in your title and your description as keyword rich as possible.

3.Brand Your YouTube Channel

Turn your channel into a destination of choice. By creating a custom background with colors to match your branding and creating a playlist of your most popular videos, you will appear more professional.

4.Engage your Viewers and Commentors

Don’t simply post and forget about your video. Make a commitment to reply to viewers who leave comments and further pique their interest by stimulating discussion about the topic. Simply interacting with viewers in this manner encourages them to click on your link and lead to an increase in sales.

5. Plan Ahead

Know what your marketing goals are and gently lead your viewers to see the benefits of your product or services. Be ready to answer any questions and be helpful in your comments.

6. Analyse the Data

How many likes did your video garner? What about Thumbs up or thumbs down. You can gauge what is popular and trending by looking at these data. Again, initiate discussion and make improvements to future videos you upload.

7. Cross Promote on Facebook and Twitter

Post and tweet about your video on Facebook and twitter. This would encourage even more interaction among these incredibly popular social spaces.

Being a savvy YouTube Marketer has big benefits for your online business. If you are new to video marketing or just want to know how to maximise your efforts in YouTube Marketing, these TUBE TUTORIALS are the perfect resource!

This is a guest post written by Carolyn Soh, if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.

Tell me your first name and I will use it to get your attention whenever I
want to. What would you do if you heard someone scream out your name in a crowded shopping mall? Of course – you would turn around and look to see if it was someone you knew.

The truth is… there are psychological factors at play in this situation.

The same thing happens whenever you see your own name in print.

“A person’s first name is arguably the most attention getting word that you can use on any web page or printed material.”
– Skylr

That’s why Personalized URL Marketing came to be such a powerful tool in both online and offline marketing.

Think about the concept of personalization for a moment. Imagine you are receiving an email or even a card in the mail from a friend of yours. They don’t write, “Dear Friend”.

They personalize the note directly to you. They write something like “Hi Joe” or “Dear Mary”. That’s because they are familiar with you and that closeness is felt in part because they know your name and who you are.

How Does This Relate to Internet Marketing?

Have you ever heard the quote that “People buy from other people that they know, like and trust.” ? Well, it’s true and it is your job as a marketer to build relationships with the people that are on your list and let them know that you are someone to “know, like and trust”.

Using personalization is just one way to accomplish this. How else can you do it? Well, you can send thank you cards, birthday cards, hold special customer appreciation events, pick up the phone and reach out to them and so much more.

But since this article is about personalization, let me show you two ways that you can use personalized URLs in your marketing.

Use it with your Email Marketing

Imagine being able to send your entire email list to a Personalized URL? You can, by using the personalization tools inside your autoresponder program and giving your entire list their very own personalized url.

Let’s say you have a guy on your email list and his name is John Smith.

John will receive an email from you with a highly targeted message that lets John know that he can get more information by going to:

www.yourdomaingoeshere.com/John-Smith

Do you think John will be curious about why you created a web page on your website that has his name on it?

You bet he will.

Once John clicks the link, he will be taken to any page you want (landing page, video sales letter, etc.) and John will see a headline and offer that seems to be designed specifically for him and only him.

Your page is literally speaking DIRECTLY to John!

Use a Personalized URL to Increase Your Direct Mail Response

Personalized URL Marketing also works wonders with direct mail campaigns.

Imagine that you specialized in helping independent Jewelry Store Owners to get more customers. You could take a list of prospects and send them a postcard with a personalized headline and url.

Attention: John Smith – Would You Like To Know The Secret To Getting a Flood of New Customers Coming Into Your Jewelry Store?

Go to this special page I created just for you:

www.yourdomaingoeshere.com.com/John-Smith

Whatever your niche is, by adding your prospect’s name to your marketing, you are increasing the likelihood that your prospect will pay attention to your offer and take action by clicking on your links or visiting your website to get more information.

Everything we do as marketers revolves around engaging our customers, providing tremendous value and of course – making more sales because of it.

Isnʼt that what we all strive for?

* If you want to see a demo of what a Personalized URL looks like, check out: http://PurlPlugin.com

But first of all, you have to have a list of people to send your emails to. But how do you go about that? It’s one thing finding the addresses of physical homes, but finding personal emails is a different game entirely. You could buy a list from another company, or rent one out for a price. But this can be expensive and there is a huge flaw in that you have no idea how many of the prospects will be interested, and your emails may go straight into their junk mail.
The only real way to go about starting off an email marketing campaign is to compile your own list. Here are some tips on building an email list for your online business:

Home Page Sign-up – have an area on the home page of your website dedicated solely to enticing people to sign up for something. Having a regular newsletter to send is always a good idea, but you can also ask people to sign up for information on new products, promotions or special offers. Whatever it is, it needs to be of value to your customers, not just to you.

Ask to Add – when you attend networking events, meetings or trade shows, wherever you are likely to meet potential new customers or are gathering business cards, ask those you meet if you can add them to your mailing list, to send them a newsletter or special offers.

Association Lists – if you are a member of any trade or community organizations, ask if you can have access to their membership list. Many offer membership lists to members for free; some are available for a fee.

Sign-up after the Sale – if you have an ecommerce site, add a check-off box that encourages customers to sign up for your newsletter or special offers as part of the online checkout process. If you take telephone orders, provide guidelines for employees to solicit email subscriptions after the sale.

Reciprocal plugs – find other newsletters that you think your customers would enjoy and ask if they’ll promote your newsletter if you do the same for them.

Buy a List – there are quite a few online resources that offer lists for sale sorted by postal code, demographics, income, lifestyle interests, buying behaviour, etc. You can purchase a really targeted list based on your products or services and use it to test a variety of promotions or special offers.

Does it Work?
Like all things in internet marketing, it depends how well you do it. Email marketing is such a great technique because you end up with a list full of hot prospects. These are people who have shown an interest in your niche area, and they are therefore much more likely to pay for something.
But here’s the most important factor: they will only pay for something if the free report or information that they signed up for was really of a high quality. If it wasn’t then you can hardly expect them to pay for more of the same. With email marketing you need to start them off with something really great, and then offer them even more for a price.

Building an email list that will help you drive traffic and sales is an integral part of a well-rounded online marketing program, one of the many helpful tools you’ll find in Pathways. Check it out!

This is a guest post written by Dave Crew, if you would like to be considered for a guest post contact me.

Squeeze Page, Traffic, Articles, Hosting …. the list went on.

I’d convinced myself it was all too hard, when coincidentally a day or two later, what did I come across in the Warrior Forum? A WSO from a guy telling me “Not to believe all those gurus who say ‘you must have a list to make money’…”. Boy, this was the guy for me. His methods seemed so simple. He had testimonials galore confirming exactly what I suspected – that this was indeed the way to go. Why oh why would anybody bother with all that awful list building stuff when you can easily make money ‘this’ way.

Long story short, a year later and more list-less products than I care to admit, and I was still not making it big online. I started to consider the fact that I may have been wrong, and began beating myself up for not catching on sooner. So I looked at a range of gurus and how they make their money and guys, I want to tell you that I was wrong. I should have listened to that guy on day #1. Who knows where I might be by now.

Anyways as far as I could tell, albeit with some fancy refinements not strictly necessary when you’re starting out, the gurus were ALL making their dough like this:-

1)   Put up a Squeeze Page

2)   Drive traffic to it, and…

3)   Email Market the list

Oh, and 4) Earn the right to ‘Bank large’ if you do it consistently well over time.

There’s Not a Moment to Lose

So if you need a little help to get started in the right direction, then this is what you should be doing – starting now! Keep in mind that this worked for all the gurus.  It worked for me, and it will work for you too.

Now in this post of limited length, I can’t cover all that goes into buying a domain and hosting. But in a sentence, you buy your domain from a respected Registrar (Google that and you’ll see loads to choose from). I recommend you buy “yournameandsurname.com” or as close as you can get using a hyphen if necessary. This is going be your business hub and you’ll create a blog around it.

Also, buy hosting from any well known Company. Again Google “Domain Hosting” and the best ones will be on page one. Buy monthly packages if you’re on a budget, but these will be the worst value. If funds permit, buy the year package.

OK, to business. Now this post isn’t about the blog or anything other than what will be your main way forward in this business. So just stay with me on this. The rest will come in time – don’t worry about that.

Build a Squeeze Page

The first thing you have to do is to create a Squeeze Page and display it at your domain.  Your Squeeze Page essentially contains 3 things.

i) A great headline

ii) An offer of a high quality free, and

iii) An opt-in form where your visitor can enter their email address to request the free gift and join your list

You can have some bullet points under the headline showing some benefits of your free gift. This helps create a good impression, and most people do this. Remember, your squeeze page is only a single page on which your offer is displayed. It should be simple, uncluttered and have a clear call to action.

Your Free Gift

OK, so your squeeze page is done and online. You now need to create a free gift of value to give away. In the limited space I’ve got here I’ll give guidelines about what to do rather than a fully detailed description.

Basically, you need to create a product. It’s usually going to be an eBook or report for a first attempt, but it can be an MP3 recording or even a video once you get a bit more confident, and it needs to be helpful to people in this niche.

That is, it needs to address the things that people in this niche are talking about and having challenges with. You want to help them with those issues. So how do you find those things out? Simple, just go to the places where people in this niche hang out. Forums and blogs are a great start. Just Google “niche+forums” or “niche+blogs” and tons will come up, but just join a couple of forums and read the blogs to see what people are talking about.

How many have thought of this? You can even type questions directly into Google in the following format:

Niche name FAQ (with or without quotes – the best ones will still be on page 1)

So now you know what is being talked about in this niche. Make a note of the questions. Research the answers from the exact same sources or even by typing the exact questions into Google.

From your research, simply compile a well laid out and researched eBook/report of about 20 – 30 pages in length. Get the guys from Fiverr.com to make up an eCover for the front page, and you are done with the content.

Convert it to PDF format and upload it to your domain to make it available to your visitors.

Traffic

So now you need to start driving traffic to your squeeze page. You’re going to be building a list of subscribers to email market to remember, that’s where your income is coming from.

There’s paid traffic and there’s free traffic. Paid traffic is quick, but costs. Free traffic is slower, but there are no out of pocket expenses.

Most newcomers are reluctant to buy paid traffic. They seem concerned with keeping a cap on costs while they’re still learning, which I kind of understand. But the fact is this is a business, and in business you need to use the right tools. It’s kind of like starting a Taxi business and not wanting to pay for petrol, you get nowhere fast. The way I see traffic, you can pay to send traffic to your offer, get the job done fast, and get on with building a list and earning money. Or you can go for free methods and take longer, which in turn delays your earning capability by the same time frame.

Also, free traffic can be quite time consuming, so using paid traffic is sort of a double whammy. You get your stuff happening faster, AND you get to use the time you save doing something more profitable, like building a second squeeze page or split testing your first squeeze page to get it converting (getting more subscribers) better!

There are many ways to get free traffic to your offer. I’ll list a few but there’s not space here to go into them. They’re all easy to find more information on however.

So, free traffic methods:

1)   eBook syndication to Ezine Directories

2)   Blog commenting

3)   Forum posting/marketing

4)   YouTube video marketing

5)    Article Marketing

6)   Ad Swaps (although you do need a small list to do this)

7)   Guest Blogging

Paid traffic methods are many and varied, so I’ll list just a few that I know work well:

1)   Facebook ads

2)   Solo Ads

3)   Ezine Advertising

4)   Direct to Site Banner Ads

Clearly, I’ve only talked about ways to drive traffic. I don’t have space in this post to discuss the ins and outs of each method.

Once you have a blog and a list of 1000 subscribers, there are other things you can do to take your list to the next level.

For instance, you can survey your list to better understand their needs and wants, and with the information they provide create an information product or maybe even a software tool. Promote this product using affiliates at 100% commission. This will be a front end product, with up-sells and higher ticket items available once they buy. This way, your list will grow like crazy. Did you get that?

Email Marketing

And then of course there’s the Email Marketing side of things. This is where the fun really starts.  But folks, that’s a whole other story, for next time maybe. You now have more than enough to be getting on with as you get started on your new path to success.

Well, in a nutshell folks, that’s it.

Now is the time to get going with those 3 simple steps and get things moving. Get your blog going and let it tell the story of how you turned the corner and moved to higher ground with this simple system.

On your Blog, write useful and helpful content for your subscribers about your learning curve, and tell them about your success. Write things that will help others in your situation and broadcast the link to your posts to your list. Comments and social activity will follow, and not far behind it the snowball effect, and success, will show up!

That should just about do it folks. Thanks for being with me, and I really hope you get something useful from this post.

My best to you,

Paul Henderson

Zero to Hero Marketing

This is a guest post written by Paul Henderson, if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.

If you have a good relationship with your customer or potential customers, every time you promote either your product or an affiliates product, they’re more than likely be happy to whip out their wallets and buy from you. Right?

So how do you get to the point where the customer trusts and respects you?

Well firstly, if you have a list, you can do it that way, by giving away free information and promoting good quality products that help them.
However, in my opinion one of the fastest ways to build long lasting relationships where the customer not only respects and trusts you, but instantly sees you as an expert in your niche, is by being an author of your own book.

Let me explain…

Having your own book gives you instant credibility with customers and potential customers alike. You are instantly seen as an expert in your niche – whether you are one or not. Basically, the publisher or media has indirectly given your name and your business name as a referral to countless people reading it, who may need your help.

In the society we live in, anyone who is a celebrity in a certain field is looked up to. If they’re in a position of power, they must know a great deal of what you’re interested in.

Just look at all the celebrity chefs, how many people have the chefs’ cookbooks on their shelves? Or fitness TV personalities, many people have their own workout videos lining the bookshelves? That’s just the way the world works.

Take Daniel Wagner as an example. Some of you may know him, some of you may not. A little over a year ago I met him at a seminar in London. What immediately attracted me to him was he was holding a book in his hands, in fact it was his book “My Journey and the Machine.” So I approached him and we got chatting. He went on to explain that as soon as he had the book in his hands, it became an instant and incredibly powerful marketing book for him.
It was the reason people in the Internet Marketing community trusted him, and the reason he had instant credibility with customers and potential customers alike.

Another example is Financial guru Robert Kiyosaki, the author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.”  He has an army of followers eager to hear what he has to say.
They’re pretty much convinced that he’s going to provide them with the most value when it comes to real-estate investing, and it all stems from the success of his book. He’s done what every other professional wants to do, separated himself from all the other competitors in his field and put himself on the forefront of his prospective customers mind, and that’s what makes writing a book one of the most powerful marketing tools any Internet Marketer can have.

Think of it this way, think of your book as a huge magnet, a magnet that instantly sucks in leads and puts them right in your lap. What’s more, clients will not only buy the book to learn from you, they will trust you enough to be repeat buyers, and that’s where the truly massive profits come into play.

Your book is an ultimate testimonial, of you and your business and as we know testimonials are one of the best marketing strategies on the planet. Just think back to when you brought your latest product, I bet deep down you were swayed to purchase from the testimonials left by others. It creates massive awareness of your skills and gives you a reach no other marketer has. That awareness and credibility can be easily translated into your business to create massive profits.

Now I can imagine what you’re probably thinking right now. “Writing a book seems too much hard work, I don’t know where to start, I need a degree to write a book!”

I’m here to tell you it’s a lot simpler than you think. What if I told you, you could write a “how to” non fiction book in a matter of weeks, even if you didn’t know anything about your chosen niche, or a novel in under a month. Would you believe me? Maybe  – maybe not, but I’m here to tell you it’s entirely possible. When I wrote my first book, I didn’t have any fancy creative writing degree and it took me just under a month to write it.

If you’re a marketer and want to distinguish yourself from the crowd, then writing your book is an absolute must. If you want to learn how to write it in the quickest time possible so you can concentrate on your other marketing efforts, then the Start Your Book Home Study Course is for you. It’s one of the most comprehensive and easy to understand writing courses on the web. It’ll teach you things like: How to pick a topic that customers can’t resist, how to write a chapter in a day, how to know exactly what’s in the book before it’s even written and how to research in the fastest time possible, and believe me when I say that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So I invite you to join a growing number of marketers who have taken the decision to write their book and put themselves ahead of the pack.

Here’s to your new adventure,

Glen Palmer

This is a guest post written by Glen Palmer, if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.

You get excited but say “dang where did that sale come in from, I need to repeat whatever I did”, but then you have no idea what you actually did. Pity as if you knew you could repeat it.

Here’s the thing, 90% of people online aren’t successful. You know one of the reasons?  The “I want to see results right now and if I don’t I’ll try something else” syndrome. Yup it’s an actual syndrome :). Most of us call this the shiny object syndrome. It’s jumping from one thing to another.

The other issue is setting out time to actually do things. There are lots of people who are working in a job and they have limited time to devote to their online ventures.

In my years of coaching I’ve found that people waste what precious time the have on the Internet venture. Spending time “researching” a new shiny object or new system. Convincing themselves that this system is it.

If you look at what John teaches you’ll see he has a process and one that he follows. He’s perfected it and it works. But of course what do we do? Instead of following it there are many who pick it apart, try to find weaknesses or even try to improve it without even trying it out first! In fact sometimes we end up with analysis paralysis, and guess what, we don’t do anything.

Even if you can only commit 1 hour a day to your business you must make sure that it’s a productive hour where you are working towards an end goal.

So that’s important, but what is also important is that you review what you’ve done each week. Why? So the following week you know what you did, what worked, and what did not. This means that every week you’re refining your process.

Let’s say you select a task to build your list and your sales funnel. You throw up a squeeze page, give a product away and then you wait. Your list does not grow. You make no money, so you blame the process. To be honest what you did was not bad, but it could have been better. You could have planned things out more.

Being fast at the beginning and perhaps taking a shortcut does not necessarily mean you’re getting more done. You have to plan and evaluate everything you do.

I’m sorry to burst your bubble but that product that is promising a push button overnight tags to riches story won’t work for you.

You have to plan and evaluate. Now let’s say you were to write everything down that you did and evaluate it. Don’t you think after a month you would be in a better position? What about after two months? The systems you are implementing are now working. Each week you write down what you have done and you evaluate and refine your processes.

Say you’re breaking into a new niche. Where do you start? You’ve got it all written down so now it really is rinse and repeat! You look back on what worked and you rinse and repeat. You do this each time you have a new niche.

Now after 52 weeks you have a complete blueprint of success that you can refer to. I’ve been there just like you. Attempting this and that, then forgetting what I did when I set up this system etc. But know I have it all written out so when I go to create a new product I can refer back to my ‘success diary’ as I call it.

The truth is all the top marketers follow a rinse and repeat formula. They want to promote an affiliate product? They use the same process they used in their last promotional campaign.

Sure they went through some trial and error, but they noted what they did and refined it.

So let me ask you this. Will you start recording what you are doing, stick with it and evaluate your outcomes?

I know you are thinking ‘but how will I do that or what will I use?’ I’ve got you covered there. I invite you to download my weekly planner and success diary. You’ll see what others have said.

Here’s something. I want to feature you as one of my success stories so download now, promise me you’ll stick to one system and show me your results.

To your greater success

Richard

This is a guest post written by Richard Butler, if you would like to be considered for a guest post contact me.

If you read all of this post I guarantee you will increase your blog subscribers! A bold statement to be sure, but one I stand by 100%, no BS theory, just stuff that works!

Ok, let us get right into this with the stuff that works. I assume you have a blog online, if you don’t then take a look here, but before you do please finish this article as it will help you during your blog creation.

Generating subscribers to your blog is essential, not only for building business but for your own sanity! There is nothing more disheartening than seeing no traffic and no interaction on that personal space you so dearly care about. So let’s change that and start with – 8 tips to build subscribers!

These tips are applicable to anyone at any level and most of them are free or very low cost.

1. Opt-in – First of all when it comes to gathering subscribers to your blog, you need a process in place to gather those readers with. By process I mean an opt-in form. This type of opt-in form can be seen here on John’s blog, my blog and many others like it. So your first step is to get an opt-in and position these opt-in’s to maximise exposure.

Maximum exposure from an opt-in can be achieved by positioning your opt-in on one or all of 5 positions:

a. Sidebar – The most popular place to opt-in. Keep the opt-in high on the sidebar and above the page fold.

b. Below the post – After the post is a great place to have an opt-in, providing you give great readable content so the reader gets that far :-D. This opt-in can however be overlooked by those who would rather comment, so don’t rely on just this opt-in.

c. Pop-ups – Popups can be very annoying, but also very effective. Probably the most effective of all popups is to have a good looking pop-up with a great call to action. Some opt-in software such as Aweber can be set to show only new people the opt-in, this helps to prevent old and already subscribed readers from seeing the popup every time.

d. Feature Box – A feature box is not available on all blogs, but this is one of the best places to put an opt-in. Just below the title (same as John’s blog) is prime real estate to place your opt-in and call to action. This gets seen almost immediately when a visitor lands on the site.

e. About me page – Surprisingly, having an about page on your blog gets visited a lot. People are naturally curious to see who is writing and what they do. On your about me page, place a description, images and also your opt-in. It is very important to connect with people and by creating an about page, you can do just that.

2. Facebook – Facebook has 3 avenues which you can effectively distribute content to others:

a. Groups
b. Fan Pages
c. Personal Timeline

a. Groups – By joining groups of like minded people, you will find the space to share your information with the people in those groups. By providing good information on related content and inserting your blog post hyperlink to the group post, you can link direct to your post. This is gold if the group you are in enjoys your content.

The same goes for your own groups. If you own a group of related content to your our blog, then you have a gateway to share your online content with the people who are interested in what you have to say. Sharing your content with your own group will allow your readers to interact with you on another platform i.e. Your own blog.

b. Fan pages – Fan pages are a little different to groups where the content of the page is more about the owner of the page. The principals are the same as a group however. Just remember to ask permission of the page owner to share your content on their timeline.

c. Timeline – Simple, share your content on your own timeline. If you have a single Facebook account, you can group your friends together into internal groups so you can share content with these specific groups. Syndicating your groups like this allows you to share valuable content on your timeline with people who want to read it. Once more, the link back will provide an access to your blog and allow you to build subscribers from your opt-in’s.

3. Blog Hopping – Yes, you may have heard of this before and may have tried it, but did you stick with it? Blog hopping can be very time consuming, but it works. Take your time and spend it commenting on around 5 blogs per day to generate links back to your own blog. I guarantee, if you engage the readers and authors on the blogs you visit, you will see results.

Rules:

a. Always leave value when commenting. This is essential to gain interest from fellow bloggers and the blog author.

b. Share content on social networks. By using the share links on the blogs you visit, especially if they have them setup right, you attract the attention of the blog owner. Reciprocation is not always returned but quite often is. If your posts are shared by others, this creates a viral effect and generates traffic back to your posts. Let your opt-in do the rest!

4. Guest posting – Simple but very effective! By providing value on other people’s blogs you can set yourself as an authority in your niche. The guest blog will always give you a link back to your own blog, which will generate traffic and new readers.

Rules:

a. Provide massive value when writing guest posts

b. Always have a great posts on your own blog for people to connect with

c. Be on hand to return comments to every commenter on the post with a valued and respectful message. This allows interaction as well as relationship building with new readers. Remember, just because you landed a guest post doesn’t mean your traffic will explode. You need to work with your new readers. Earn their respect!

5. Product development – A little trickier than the sharing methods above due to the fact you need to create a product before you actually can share it, but the end benefits are huge.

a. Free Guides – By creating a free guide you can share this in many places and also allow it to be shared. This then creates a viral effect which, yes you guessed it links back to your blog. You can give these away on many platforms including social media, ad swaps, giveaways, Kindle amazon, eBay (paid for) to name a few.

b. Paid for products – Something I remain constant about is creating a link back to my blog from every product I create. No matter what happens to that product when it is sold or after it has run it’s course, my blog link is always there and my blog is always constant. Having a blog link in your products provides extra value for the product buyer and also provides a place to become part of your own community. Always give value to retain customers.

6. Paid traffic – I’m sure I could hear the groan when you read that! Ok, forget Google, and look toward Faceboook and Just Retweet.

a. Facebook – Did you know your can target your ads to pretty much anyone and any location. The demographics are awesome, so don’t discount a Facebook ad offering free information. This will guarantee you some new readers and customers. Just remember to provide value.

b. Just Retweet – Ok, Just Retweet (JR) has a paid and a free option, but the free option is very time consuming, so I suggest spending $10 on some targeted tweet traffic. JR allows you to buy tweets from real people, from which the real people earn points so they can in-turn spend their points on retweets.

By placing your link and short description on JR for people to retweet, the people who retweet your post gain points and you gain visitors from twitter. Good enough posts can go viral! I have had in excess of 150 tweets and the same in subscribers from just $10. JR is worth looking into for some of your more informative posts.

7. Tribes – Admittedly, not something I have spent a ton of time involved with but works very well. Sites like triberr.com allow you to join a tribe of bloggers who actively share each others content over the blogosphere. Joining a tribe allows you to become part of a blogging community, to share your content and also learn a thing or two about blogging on the way. Remember adding value and sharing each others content is the key here.

8. Content sharing – Ok, lets say you have written a very good article on something in your chosen niche. You have exhausted all your avenues of social media sharing and are looking for the next place to gain more exposure? Have you considered asking people on similar blogs to share your content? Some bloggers or websites will gladly share your content with their readers. They may even ask you to write a small article and then link back to your article, but this small task is nothing to what you will get back from it.

Remember, we live in a content hungry age and people/businesses are more than willing to share important information with their readers if it makes the reader happy. Don’t be afraid to ask people to link to one of your articles in their own articles if it’s related. Sharing is fun!

What are you waiting for? Get to it!

I hope you enjoyed these 8 tips today and do take something away with you and put them to work. You will see improvements to traffic by doing so I guarantee it.

If you have any questions related to this post, please let me know in the comments section below or if you have any additional value to add, please let me know I would love to hear what you have to say.

If you liked this post and would like to read more from Dan, you can check out his blog here at DanSumner.com. Dan writes about online marketing, focus methods and business tips.

For me, it is manifesting in trying to absorb and learn all I can at first before deciding to take any action in my online business.  It can also mean procrastination on my part as I have some uncertainties on the next steps to grow an online business.  This is because I tend to think that an online marketing business is hugely different from the usual brick and mortar business.

You will find below what I consider as my major list of “symptoms” that might indicate a person suffering from analyzing and researching too much prior to taking action:

1) You have lots of purchased but unread Warrior Special Offer (WSO) products (also known as bright shiny objects) in your hard drive

I agree that most of these products offer good value to novice and experts alike in internet marketing.  However, having lots of these products could also lead to information overload and hence, indecision.

2) You tend to gather these WSO products as you believe you will need them sometime in the future even if it does not fall within your current business plan

Most of us are probably guilty of doing this.  If we see good value and new trends emerging in the internet marketing business, we tend to become distracted and purchase these products.  However, this could lead to a lack of focus on our current projects that would lead to loss of sales or recurring income.

3) You read all the incoming emails from all the different marketers whether you know them or not

Reading all emails, whether legitimate business messages or not, could further distract us from meeting some specific deadlines.  While emails are good sources of information and source of building relationships with other potential joint venture partners, we should be more selective on the people we follow or communicate with.

4) You attend all webinar invites

Webinars usually take at least 45 minutes.  Based on my experience, most of these webinars are sales pitches that might not be connected to your current projects.  In this case, you are diverting your valuable time to something which will not contribute to further sales and revenue.

5) You spend more time in social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn among others) than in planning and performing specific tasks.

I agree that social networks are here to stay and are critical to our online business, primarily in driving traffic and developing business relationships.  However, these are also sources of distraction and can delay your previously set project deadlines.

So how can we try to change this “recurring analysis paralysis” and procrastination of sorts?

There are several ways to change your non-productive business process and turbo charge your online business to profitability.  Here are some of my suggested methods to address productivity:

a) Choose and decide on your main online marketing strategies, tools and techniques and give them a chance to work

With all the information and technologies available to us, we need to decide and focus on the best strategy, tools and techniques that will help us get to where we want to be.  All other strategies are to be kept at bay as we test out and try to give a chance for our chosen methods to work within a specific period of time.

b) Plan your schedules wisely – daily, weekly, monthly and annually, if possible

A practical method is KICK-Starting your day:

K = Know exactly what task you are going to do first
I = Implement that task immediately
C = Complete the task
K = Keep it simple

c) Define specific tasks to be done

It would help if we define specific items with time allotted for each task.  As an example, if one is full-time on an online business, the person can start with setting a small list daily, say 3 tasks individually scheduled for time blocks of 9am-11am, 1pm – 3pm and 5pm – 7pm.

d) Outsourcing

If we still have a day job or want to take our online business to the next higher level, we have to leverage on other people’s skills and time to help us.  I believe outsourcing is partnering with people who can complement our own skills and talents.

There you go.  I heard it only takes 21 days to change one’s habits. You might want to consider these suggestions to improve your productivity.

Also, if you find these tips helpful, there are some more details and items being discussed in a new WSO “A Successful Internet Marketer’s Daily Action Plan” together with the bonuses e-book “Top 6 Critical Activities for the Successful Internet Marketer”  and video “Interview with John Thornhill”.

Hopefully these strategies can help business owners propel and launch their business in high gear. Should you wish to learn more you can check out the WSO here.

Let us all happily work and be more productive in our online business especially in 2013.

This is a guest post written by Jane Deguia, if you wish to be considered for a guest post contact me.

Once upon a time, Pinterest was just a fledgling social network, but since late 2010, its popularity has skyrocketed, and now Pinterest is a major player in the Social Media world. One of the main reasons this site is so popular, is because it’s beautiful; Pinterest is all about the images.

You could be forgiven if you haven’t heard about Pinterest before, as it was somewhat underground for a time, but it can no longer be ignored as a major source of targeted traffic that can be tapped into by the savvy online marketer.

Seriously, wouldn’t it have been pretty awesome to be in front of the traffic avalanche Facebook could bring, instead of trailing from behind? Where would you be now if only you had known how huge it would be ahead of time? What about Twitter? Were you there in 2006? Did you know it even existed?

Now this great opportunity has reared its head again and this time it’s called “Pinterest”. We’d be a bit crazy not to harness the power of the pin ahead of this game!

What makes Pinterest different from other social networks is that it is completely made up of pictures. Beautiful images that millions of people pin every day. Vacations, weddings, food, recipes, styles and the new catch-phrase… Instructographics. (Instructions + Graphics = Instructographics)

What pinners do is repin images from each other’s boards, or upload their own images to share with other pinners. If you have high quality, beautiful images on your Pinterest boards, then there’s a very good chance your followers will want to pin them as well, and this is where the magic of the ‘repin’ can spread your marketing message far and wide.

So how does this come into play with online marketers? Traffic. And a lot of it! Big, fat, juicy traffic! This is not just some theory. While we were researching Pinterest to see how it was going to play in the social media mania, we did a few of our own experiments.

We knew Pinterest was going to be a great social media site to be able to send traffic to blogs and websites, and there were a few articles about Martha Stewart and how she had increased sales on her website by a few million dollars through Pinterest. We knew we wanted to find the way for other online marketers to tap into this phenomenon.

So we kept searching and researching because we knew there was a way to be able to use Pinterest the way it was meant to be and not do anything black hat or illegal or robotic just to get traffic and followers and we were going to find it!

We took one of our own domains that was empty and hadn’t been used in a couple of years, loaded it with a fresh installation of WordPress and began posting just a few articles with some related images. We were making some tutorial videos for NonstoPinterest 2.0 and wanted to demonstrate how to set up boards correctly for maximum SEO.

While making the videos, some images from this new site were also pinned to brand-new boards in this brand-new Pinterest account and within hours, there was traffic going to the site! It was unbelievable just how quickly the Pinterest traffic was sent to this cold, lonely blog!

What happened next was simply amazing! The lonely blog was left alone while we finished developing the product and a few months later, we discovered that the site had continued to receive traffic from Pinterest despite the fact that it hadn’t been updated it in all that time!

Now these traffic numbers weren’t huge by any means, but it was quite a few hundred unique visits every month over a 5-6 month period and looking at the traffic stats before and after Pinterest was pretty amazing! It was like night and day because before we started using Pinterest on that site, it was only getting 2 maybe 3 vists per month!

With that kind of information and evidence, as a marketer you simply can’t ignore Pinterest… and here’s another interesting fact: Pinterest users spend more money from recommendations of other Pinterest users than from any other social network.

The typical Pinterest user is female between the ages of 25 and 50, well educated and earning between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. So, with that kind of money floating about, there is plenty of opportunity for the online marketer to make money on Pinterest. So… Pinterest has traffic and money? Sounds like a marketer’s paradise!

And just like any youngster having a major growth spurt, Pinterest has had some of its own growing pains. At the beginning of 2011, you had to have an invitation to get in and Pinterest accounts could only be used for personal use. In August of 2012, Pinterest was opened up to everybody and you didn’t need an invitation to get in and in November of 2012, they opened up the site for businesses.

Pinterest for business is probably the best thing they could have done for us as online marketers. The reason it’s great for internet marketers is because before they introduced business accounts, Pinterest tried their hardest to keep marketers off of their site because of all the crazy, black-hat, spam accounts.

During Pinterest’s quick rise to its’ millions of users, there were a lot of questionable tools being developed for Pinterest marketers. There were autobots that could automatically pin images and get followers, which sounded like a good idea for spamming marketers or somebody who wanted to try to beat the system. There were also autobots that could pin affiliate links automatically, and that probably sounded like a good idea at the time, but turned out to be nothing more than a really fast and easy way to get your account suspended or banned.

Pinterest caught on to all the spammy marketers and started cleaning up and deleting accounts. In fact, just a few weeks ago a lot of users lost followers because they weren’t real and Pinterest was taking care of all the accounts that didn’t have a genuine person attached to it.

With that said, if you want to do anything commercial using Pinterest, you need to be set up as a business account there. By commercial we mean if you’re going to promote or pin anything that takes the user off of the Pinterest website whether that be for affiliate marketing, lead generation or even simply for driving traffic to a website or blog that has a commercial element to it.

So if you’re pinning from your personal blog for purely recreational purposes or pinning from somebody else’s blog for that reason then you can do that with a personal account. Practically every other scenario if you’re not just repinning pictures within the Pinterest site or uploading your own pictures will definitely mean you need to have a Pinterest business account. There are so many new and inventive ways of using Pinterest as an online marketer, and everything is covered in NonstoPinterest 2.0 and also our monthly membership site, The Pinner Circle.

NonStoPinterest 2.0 is a hands on multimedia course that will get you set up and started fast and lays out the steps to becoming a Pinterest Pro. The Pinner Circle is exclusive training month after month of the different aspects of getting Pinterest traffic, viral images, blogging, branding, third-party applications, anything and everything you want to know about Pinterest…
so come on over and join us and use Pinterest to take your business to the next level!

Enjoy!

Chris and Lisa

This is a guest post written by Chris Shaw and Lisa Hernandez, if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.

However, choosing WordPress could be one of the smartest decisions you make. WordPress is a great tool you can use to build incredible websites. In comparison to other solutions it will save you both time and money. You should seriously consider using WordPress even if you already have a website.

What is WordPress?

In a nutshell WordPress is a flexible platform for building blogs and websites. Anyone can use WordPress to create high quality sites, without needing any technical knowledge of web programming languages.

Why Use WordPress?

1. It’s 100% Free to Use!
The WordPress software will cost you nothing. Simply download and install it on your server. You can then immediately start building your site.

2. Quick and Easy Installation.
WordPress is very user friendly and can take just 5 minutes to install. You will be adding content to your site in no time.

3. Powerful Content Management System.
Using the admin Dashboard you can add/edit/delete the content of your site, including images, audio and video.

4. Abundance of Themes.
There are thousands of themes available, both free and paid versions. Themes allow you to completely change your sites design and can be further customized.

5. Enable New Features with Plugins.
Easily add new functionality such as in built Google translate, search engine optimization (SEO), image galleries, contact forms, social networking features etc.

6. Supported by an Active Community.
With millions of users, any questions or problems you have won’t go unanswered. It is likely your questions have already been asked and answered. The WordPress forums and online manual are indispensable resources.

7. Keeps your site Safe and Secure.
With every new release of WordPress, the security of your site is improved. In addition there are many tools to help backup your website data, so you can easily restore your site if something ever does go wrong.

How Do I Get Started?

Good question. To start off, download the latest version of WordPress from WordPress.org. Then watch this video:

Customizing WordPress

After you have successfully installed WordPress on your server, you can change the default theme. Choose from the thousands of free and paid-for themes, find the theme that has a look and feel appropriate to your site. You can even edit a theme, if you are not completely happy with the existing ones. To apply a new theme, go to your WordPress Dashboard. Click appearance, then Themes. You can preview a theme before installing it.

You can customize your WordPress site further by using plugins. The one plugin you will want to use is Akismet. Comment spam is a big problem and without this plugin you would waste a lot of your time trying to separate the genuine comments from the spam.

One last tip. The default URLs for your WordPress blog posts and pages, are not optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Watch this video to learn how to change the permalink appearance, to fix this issue.

For more WordPress tutorial videos check out:

WordPressBlogHowToVideos.com

Erfan @ TheInfoMarket.co.uk

This is a guest post written by Erfan Shahedi, if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.