My First Blogging Workshop

It was small scale, but a big success …

Yep, I finally took the plunge and held my very first blogging workshop last Saturday.

Not only did the attendees walk away with a blog built and ready to go, they now understand the advantages of a blog over a "normal" web site, how blogs work as well as how to make money from their blog. 

I asked them to time me as I Installed a WordPress blog including the time to log in, and it took 5 minutes and 10 seconds!  Ask yourself where else you could get a website created in such a short space of time and for less than it would cost you to purchase a pizza!

As a trainer, I can understand how "genuine" trainers feel when people attend their workshops and then don’t implement what they are taught.  It makes you feel as though you’ve failed and one of my aims of this workshop was to ensure that not only did people "get it" in terms of why they needed to blog, but I wasn’t going to give them any excuse for not getting their blog online because as I was once told, "procrastination is the thief of time!"

So, as in the Aesop Fable of "The Wolf in Sheeps Clothing" I forced them to strike whilst the iron was hot, because I didn’t want to even leave a gap for procreastination to creep in, and it worked!  One of the attendees who’s been talking about putting a blog up for far too long kept saying "what am I going to talk about?"

Well, there was an easy answer to that …

"talk about what you haven’t stopped talking about
 since you arrived at this workshop!" 

You see, my friend makes and sells hand made soaps (from scratch) - so well in fact, that I’ve never purchased a commercial bar of soap since I tried her first samples, they’re that good.  She’s also a massage therapist and is very much into natural cleansing of the body.  I told her to bring some of her soaps with her to the blogging workshop and she even made a few sales!

During the breaks, it was oozing out of her …  Her passion for making soaps, but more than that, the fire in her voice as she told the stories of people who have used here soaps and experienced instant relief of dry itching skin or their skin just felt better for using her soaps.  And here she was, telling me she didn’t know what to write about!

So what subject do you create your first blog around if you’re struggling to come up with ideas?  Well, I think you can answer that one for yourself …  What are you passionate about?

Until next time,

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Is SEO Relevant to Your Blog?

And how much SEO do you need to know?

A blog is differenent to a conventional website in many ways, but the truth is how you market them is no different.

But there is a difference in how they are found by the search engines …

This is what happens when you blog:

1. Once a Blogger publishes his blog, a ‘ping’  message is sent to the ‘Aggregation Ping Server,’ telling them that the blogger’s site has been updated. 
2. Search engines like Google as well as RSS specific services like, Technorati, and Feedster periodically asks the Aggregation Ping Server to let them know which sites have been updated.  
3. Since the Blog sends pings when the site is updated and has an RSS file as well as being updated frequently, a blogs search engine rank is usually higher than a conventional website.  I say usually because a stagnent blog is no differnt to a static web site in terms of being found and indexed by the search engines. 

Compare this to a conventional website:

1. Once the website is published, it’s up to the webmaster to either manually submit the site to the search engines and/or ensure that the title tags, meta tags, description and keyword density is enough to ‘entice’ the search engine spiders to find and index the site.  
2. Since the website isn’t updated as often as a blog,  it doesn’t get the same attention from the search engines as does a blog, meaning you have to implement other SEO tactics to achieve the same results.

So, here are three easy strategies that you can implement on your blog right now that will increase your traffic beyond what you would get just pinging the servers: 

• Comment on other people’s blogs - doing so, will often create backlinks (or incoming links) to your website which the search engines love 
• Write articles and submit them to article directories - another way to get backlinks to your site 
• Exchange links with other relevant websites - known as Reciprocoal Linking.  You can use software such as LinksMachine to do this , but be careful that the sites that want to link to you are relevant.  In other words, you don’t want a site about pets linking to your furniture shop site - unless of course you sell dog kennels or other pet furniture, then in which case, it would be relevant.

In the future, I will be doing a FREE basic SEO teleseminar, so if you’re interested please ensure you sign up to receive my updates - up there on the right hand side.

To your online success,

 

Let The Rich Jerk Help You Make Money With Your Blog!

Using AdSense to monetize your blog?  Let the Rich Jerk give you a helping hand…

In case you don’t know who The Rich Jerk is, he’s a foul mouthed, but very successful Internet Marketer who’s probably loving the fact that yet another person is commenting on the fact that he is so "distasteful."  Online anyway.  He is apparently a very nice guy in the flesh.  Still…

I received a link to a video created by an insider at The Rich Jerk corporation, giving insider secrets about The Rich Jerk’s AdWords account.

Within 2 minutes I clicked the back button after he indicated "The Rich Jerk has no idea I’m doing this."  I mean, give me a break!  How many times have we heard that line before!  He sounded just like a broken record!

Anyway, I received two more emails with the link to this video, both of them coming from two people I respected on the Internet, the last one being Joel Comm of AdSense-Secrets.com who was honest and said he had no idea if they were selling anything, but the video was worth a watch.  So I lightened up and swallowed hard in the first few minutes of the video as I had to listen to this guy say again "RJ doesn’t know I’m doing this, and to be honest, he probably won’t be too happy."  I’ll say no more…

Anyway, what he then revealed was nothing short of amazing in terms of the keywords that convert.  He has promised to send the keywords in a Notepad document, but I wasn’t taking any chances - I captured them all!

What has this got to do with blogging?  Well, if the AdWords are converting well, there must be some serious advertising going on for those keywords! 

I agree with Joel Comm, this is too valuable to pass up!

http://exclusive.affiliatexray.com/

Blog Happy!

Have You Upgraded To WordPress 2.1.2 Yet?

The strange thing that happned since I upgraded to WordPress 2.1.1

I’m sure you get spam blogs like everyone else does and even though I downloaded the "did you pass math" pluggin recommended by Mike Filsaime a few weeks ago, the spam on my WordPress blog sites seems to have skyrocketed! 

Anyway, what I generally find is that the spam blogs usually target one or two particular posts - usually older ones - and I eventually sign into the WordPress back office of my blog and deselect "Allow Comments," which just puts a stop to anyone commenting on that particular blog post.

But a strange thing happended today… even though I deselected the "Allow Comments" option, I still kept getting spam on the same blog post… and there were 7 or 8 of them at any one time from the usual pharmacy spam sites.  And to be truthful, I was getting a little nervous because I had no idea how they could keep adding comments when I had disallowed commenting.

Anyway, I decided to take a closer look at the reasons for why I should upgrade to WordPress 2.1.2 and decided that whilst I had in fact upgraded last week, and not within the 3-4 days that the 2.1.1 files had been hacked, I wouldn’t take any chances.  If you’re using WordPress, you need to go there and take a look at the new security upgrade fro yourself.

The download took minutes to upload all 411 files and guess what…?  So far, no more spam blog comments on that particular post.  Either this is down to sheer coincidence or it’s solved the problem, but up until upgrading, I had been receiving new comments every 5 to 10 minutes… such a time waster!

So if you’re not sure whether to upgrade to WordPress 2.1.2 or not, it can’t do any harm particularly if you’ve already made the transition from 2.0.7 to 2.1.1.

If anyone else has experienced strange happennings like this, or you know of a good way of reducing "splogs" (spam blogs), I’d love to hear from you!  You can leave your comments at the bottom of this post.

Successful blogging,

 

Stay At Home Moms… I Want To Hear From You!

Whether you are a stay-at-home-mom on the net or you don’t yet have an Internet business, this is for you…

In the UK, women represent the majority of entrepreneurs starting a new business.  They may not make headlines as the latest overnight millionaire successes, but they earn a comfortable living and find satisfaction in their work and for the stay-at-home-mom, they get to spend more time with their families and less time toiling behind a corporate desk.

But I think it’s fair to say that many stay-at-home-moms (SAHM) are put off starting their own online business because they think it’s too technical, it takes a lot of hard work and time and maybe, they think they don’t have the right support infrastructure.

To be fair, this is how it was for me starting on the Internet in 2002.  It really was a case of "get your business going first and then focus on the Internet."

So, guess what I tried to do…?  You got it, I thought this was the way to do business, but my heart kept pulling me back to what I was passionate about and now I’ve made my dream reality.  But the truth is …

It’s never been easier to start your own online business!

Why?  Because for less than $20, you can be online in a matter of minutes with your own website and ready to open shop as it were.

I’m not going to tell you that as a stay-at-home-mom you can work all day with a baby on your lap, but you certainly can work part of the day with the baby on your lap, running an information business, writing about the things you’re most passionate about.

Now this is where most mommys get stuck… they tell me, "but I don’t know anything!"  And I hear it all the time and then they start telling you how good they used to be at body sugaring, beauty theraphy, home designs or decor and how much they love to make soaps … And as you can imagine, I just sit there with my mouth open. 

You see, the problem is, the knowledge you take for granted on a daily basis, someone else is probably paying money to receive that same information and advice and I say, "they might as well be paying that money to you!" 

So before I expand and tell you just how easy it is to get online for less than $20, I want to hear from you!  I want to know what you’re good at and what desires you have that you’ve been keeping quiet about for years. 

I want to help you turn those "quiet" thoughts into money!! 

And remember not to assume that no one is interested in your ideas or that what you’re good at is silly since even the thought that the average worker would have a PC on on their desk was laughed at many years ago …  We have 4 PC’s between 3 people in our home and our daughter is only 5! 

So come on now, don’t be shy … I want to hear from you stay-at-home-moms!

Best of Success,