Gee on April 12th, 2010

Chances are you have a blog. Almost everybody does. Not all that many people make money blogging, though. Why don’t you? Why not do what you like to do and make some money doing it!

If you’re a blogger, you already have all the skills you need in order to make money online. You can write entertaining copy, for starters. That’s more than a lot of professional writers can do.

That’s not to say that professional writers can’t make money blogging, too. It’s just that bloggers who are not trained writers tend to have a conversational style that is perfect for writing articles to promote their products. People can sense a too-polished approach, but always respond well to a conversational type article, especially if you’re actually interested in your subject.

BloggingWhatever you blog about, odds are you tend to write about the same things all the time. If you’re into music, you write about your favorite music. If you’re into girls, you probably write about hot girls. If you look through your blog posts, you’ll see a lot of words and phrases popping up all the time. These are your keywords.

Now is the time to take the leap and go from just one blog to many. If you want to get a wider audience and more traffic, you’ll need to submit content to many different directories. Doing this by hand can be an exhausting and almost impossible job, but you can subscribe to a cheap article submission service and it will be easy. If you like, you can just sign up for a free service for starters, but later you’ll probably be better off using an inexpensive service.

Once you start generating traffic, you’ll want to keep them coming back for more. This is best done by starting a mailing list. This way, every week or so, you can send out a mailing and keep them interested in you and your blog.

You’re going to have to put a lot of work into it at first, but later you’ll be able to go back to blogging as usual and watch your passive income online start rolling in. You might be amazed by how much money you can make blogging.

Really, can you think of a single reason why you shouldn’t give it a shot? It won’t cost you a thing to get on board some affiliate programs. Later, you might want to start marketing your own products. There are so many great digital product possibilities out there, like video downloads, MP3’s and eBooks. There’s no limit to what you can do if you put your mind to it!

To Your Success

Gee Hollings

I make the goals in my internet business plan fun to attain . Let me explain how…

If you like to play games, then this internet business plan strategy is just for you!

I’m playing this game with every other website on the planet and also with myself, always trying to improve my scores.   It’s like ‘Monopoly’ but much more satisfying because it is real.

Once you have decided on your internet business plan goals, you must then decide how you will keep score of your progress (or otherwise.) My scoring system is on paper so it has maximum visibility but you may wish to keep yours on a spreadsheet.

I keep the scores every week but there is no reason why you should not keep yours daily or each month.

My Internet Business Plan Key Performance Indicators.

Some of the KPI’s I track are:

  • site ranking via Alexa (- I have the free Alexa toolbar).  I love to keep tabs on this because it is evidence of my sites overall progress.
  • by clicking on the Alexa toolbar, I can access the Alexa site for more selective information – specifically my sites ranking in the US, where I am seeing a massive reduction since inception just a few months ago and far out-pacing many long-established sites.   I find it rather exciting that my site ranks  highly after a relatively short time on the internet.
  • I can also track the number of incoming links to my sites which started off low but are building day by day.
  • I am also tracking the activities that render traffic such as:
    • no of articles and blog posts
    • no of videos
    • no of forum and social comments
    • fans signed up to fanpages
    • and so on.
  • all this activity should generate leads, so I am monitoring the number of leads generated weekly
  • the size of my list is also monitored.
  • sales amount

Keeping ScoreThe point about all this is to score those things that are critical to  success of your internet business plan.   Then set your benchmarks or goals and plot your strategy for achieving each one.

If I don’t achieve my goals, then I realize that it is important not to ‘beat myself up’.   It is helpful to remind yourself that business is a marathon and not a sprint.  You are not beaten until you give up.  So the aim must be ‘never to give up’ and you will eventually win.

Play it like a game, have fun, and you too will find yourself achieving your goals more easily.

I make sure to reward myself when I achieve a goal.  I bask in the glory – it helps me to press on to the next summit.   I now find I am ‘playing the game’ more intelligently, realizing what works and doesn’t work.

So are you going to get ‘in the game’ or are you content just to drift along, not really sure whether or not your internet business is improving?  It’s much more fun to do it my way.

To Your Success

Gee Hollings

Gee on March 28th, 2010

It is totally possible for baby boomers to make money passively using the Internet.  This is a very attractive option for increasing your basic income, and is almost ideal as a way to make money even in retirement.  We will leave the advantages and disadvantages of earning money via marketing on the Internet to another discussion.  For now, what we need to talk about is HTML coding.

What is HTML?

HTML coding stands for HyperText Markup Language coding, or programming websites using HTML, which is the basic standard for all websites on the Internet.  HTML coding is responsible for specifying the layout, links, and placeholders for embedded media on webpages.  Basically, it is the stuff that specifies how a webpage will look.

HTML coding is not particularly complicated, but not a whole lot of people know how to use it.  In fact, you yourself might be thinking of hiring a programmer to build your website for you.  While this is a viable option at first, as your webpage matures you will learn that it is not the most economical way to go.  Eventually, you will want to be able to make minor tweaks to your webpage, and having to get a programmer to do it every time will cost you a fair amount of overhead.

Learning HTML Coding

html codingIn the long run, it is better to learn HTML coding and do your own tweaks and changes instead of hiring someone to do it for you.  Not only is this more cost-effective, it also gives you more control over the specifics of your website.  Not to mention the advantage of time, which would be otherwise wasted waiting for your programmer to finish his or her work on your webpage.

HTML coding is available for study in many colleges, in many computer skills development centers, and also via online tutorials.  They may divide the subject matter into several courses, and you should take as many as you can.  At the very minimum, you need to understand the basic HTML tags, how to change text content, and how to edit your metadata.  Metadata is the information about the webpage that users do not usually see.

The Basic Idea

Tags are the fundamental element of HTML coding.  These work to mark the starts and ends of sections, and also have specific instructions to be executed by the Web browser viewing the page.  A tag looks like this “<x>” where x is substituted by one of many keywords.  If the keyword starts with a slash character (“/”) it is a closing tag, meant to mark the end of one section.  In between opening and closing tags, you will usually see text to be shown on-screen or other instructions.

The best thing you can learn from a competent instructor in HTML coding is the concept of nesting.  Nesting is enclosing one section within another section.  This makes certain layouts possible, but it can be intimidating to a non-expert.  Don’t worry though.  You only need to understand how nesting works in order to know in what places in your webpage code to make your changes, should you need to.

To Your Success

Gee Hollings

They have been mentioned previously, but what exactly do keywords do for a website?  How do they work in SEO or Search Engine Optimization?  Read on and learn more about what could very well be the mortar in between the bricks that make up the bulk of the internet, and learn the way to choosing keywords to your advantage.

Keywords Are the Lifeblood of SEO

That last metaphor was quite apt actually. Most web pages use a lot of text, which are the bricks.  What holds the web page together are the keywords and the concepts behind these keywords.  The keywords are the essential descriptions of the page.  For example, a web page about internet marketing would have “SEO”, “social networks”, and others as its keywords.  Choosing keywords for your web page is essential, as you will soon learn.

Why Choosing Keywords Will Affect SEO?

keywordsSEO works by a search engine analyzing web pages and determining their general content for improving results during search queries.  Since it is a computer program doing it, it will do so mathematically.  One of the ways it does so is to count the frequencies of important words, particularly nouns.  Words like “the”, “is”, and other often-used words are discarded, since they would just slow the whole thing down.  The more frequently a keyword appears, the likelier it is that the web page is relevant to searches asking for the keyword.

What this means is that choosing keywords early on will let you know what keywords to use more often in your web page’s text and metadata.  By choosing keywords that are often used in the social circles your web page serves, you increase the perceived relevance and thus can improve the likelihood your web page will come up high in search results.

Keyword Principles and Ethics

The golden rule when choosing keywords for your web page is to use relevant words.  Avoid using keywords that do not relate to the actual content of your web page.  For example, if you have a web page for marketing homemade products, do not insert the title of the latest hot movie in the metadata or in the text.  The addition of keywords that are currently popular but have no actual bearing on the specific topic is considered unethical.  Avoid doing this, regardless of how it might improve  the page’s presence.

Another ethical folly is to use the keywords excessively.  For example, after choosing keywords which do relate to the content, you might use them every three or four words.  This is an exaggerated example, but it can happen.  Not only does this make the text hard to read and unnatural-sounding, but search engines are programmed to avoid these, or to rank them lower.  It is not only impractical but also frowned upon in general.

Achieving Frequency and Distribution

Aside from choosing keywords for quality and relevance, you also have to achieve frequency with proper distribution.  If the search engines spot the keywords clustered in a small part of your web page, it will rate the keyword factor lower.  If a keyword is distributed throughout, then it is more likely that the entire page is about the topic behind the keywords, so the keyword factor in the SEO calculations is higher.

To Your Success

Gee Hollings

Baby boomers are a unique generation, which is why there is search engine optimization tips (SEO tips) designed specifically to help a baby boomer break into the internet scene. Get things right, and a baby boomer will be able to create passive income that works even for retirement.

This is especially important, since search engines are the primary method of finding anything on the internet these days.

So without further ado, here are some search engine optimization tips to help all you baby boomers out there get some extra exposure for your website.

Do Your SEO By The Book

SEOThe first thing you should remember is that SEO is a means to an end.

There are less legitimate methods of making it to the top of the search engine ladder. Some search engine optimization tips focus on exploiting these methods.
This approach will not work for the long run, however.

The problem with these methods is that they leave a bad impression on the readers and the search engine. You could get yourself blacklisted from the search engines, which is something you do not want to happen.

This is why one of the first search engine optimization tips you should remember is to do things by the book. This will allow your website to actually profit in the long run and will be more easily trusted by visitors – who will be primarily responsible for your site’s profitability.

Learn Basic HTML Coding And Scripting

This is one of the most overlooked search engine optimization tips, and one that costs people big money in the long run.

Coding and scripting are the commands that build your website from the ground up. You must have at least a basic understanding of it all if you want to fix problems and modify your website on the go.

You could just hire a programmer to handle this for you. This is not, however, one of the more advisable search engine optimization tips.

You will have to turn to your programmer for every little detail in your website. This will greatly increase your expenses in the long run, which is why it is worth it to learn basic HTML coding and scripting.

Understand How To Use Keywords

KeywordsKeywords are the lifeblood of SEO, and properly using them is one of the most important search engine optimization tips out there.

First off, you should select keywords that are actually related to the content of your website. Sum up your website’s purpose in one or two words and you have your basic keywords. You can then add more diverse words to these basic keywords to reach out to a wider audience.

Other related search engine optimization tips include the strategic placement of these keywords around your website. Spread them out in the content while emphasizing them on titles, headers and buttons for maximum effect.

Consider Hiring A SEO Specialist

This may not be one of the cheapest search engine optimization tips out there, but a SEO specialist will help you solve your bigger SEO problems. Hire one when you are starting out or when you come across major hurdles in website performance.

To Your Success

Gee Hollings