Internet Marketing Training

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Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog.  Here I am blogging about blogging consistency when I have been very inconsistent.  Albert would be disappointed in me.  Who is Albert?

Albert is one of my favorite bloggers, perhaps my favorite blogger.

I have been a reader of the Albert Hallado blog for a while now, and I have also commented on his blog a number of times.  Today, Albert mentioned me in his blog post - thanks Albert!

Albert mentions one of the comments I made on one of his blog posts.  I comment on Albert’s blog more than I do on any other blog.

Why do I comment on Albert’s blog?  Because I like how Albert blogs, and I feel like I know him.

The things I really like about Albert Hallado and his blog, are his consistency and his “realness” - is that a real word?

We can all learn from Albert and the way he blogs.  Albert preaches writing to your blog consistently, and he practices what he preaches.

Without fail, Albert posts to his blog every Tuesday and Thursday.  Every Tuesday and Thursday I can expect to receive and email from Albert notifying me that he has updated his blog.

Even if it’s just short post to say that something came up and he won’t be doing a standard post, still I have never seen him miss a normal post day in the months that I have been following him.

Albert has trained me to expect a blog update from him every Tuesday and Thursday, and I look forward to those posts.

Now you know why I mentioned above that Albert would be disappointed in me, but he’s no more disappointed in me than I am in myself.

As I look to 2009, being a consistent blogger is one of my year long goals.  I plan to pick two days a week to post to this blog, even if it’s just a short post to let my readers know I’m still here.

Because I seem to get distracted easily, it will me challenging for me, but I see the success Albert is experiencing with his blog due to his consistency, and that will be the inspiration for me.

I also like Albert relates to his readers on his blog.

Like I stated on Albert’s blog, I feel like I know him even though I have never met him.  Most of his blog posts are about his specialties - blogging and web site templates.  But, once in a while he will let us know some of the things that are going on in his life.

So, I feel like I know Albert as more than just a blogger, but as a real person.  He makes it easy to relate to him because you think - hey, this guy is just like me.

So, another one of my goals for this blog will be to let you know more about me, and what’s going on in my life, in the coming months.

Do you have blogging goals for the coming year?  If so, leave your comments and let me know what your goals are.  Perhaps we can help hold each other accountable

P.S.  You get a dofollow link back to your site by leaving a Quality, Related comment.

Mike

Are you using Twitter for Marketing?  If you are good for you, but be careful.  There are correct ways to do Twitter Marketing, and if you use it incorrectly, it can hurt you.

I love Twitter, and if you’re not using Twitter, I suggest you give it a try and follow me.

If you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of internet marketers now using Twitter as part of their marketing, and that’s okay.  I am an internet marketer and I use Twitter, but I probably don’t use it as much as I should

Some of these internet marketers don’t use Twitter like they should.  They are using Twitter like they would an email list, and it’s going to hurt them.

As an example, I received the following email today to one of my email addresses that has nothing to do with Twitter:
(Note - I have removed the real Twitter username and changed the links in the email.)

Subject: Twitter username wants to keep up with you on Twitter

To find out more about Twitter, visit the link below:

http://twitter.com/i/some-long-code-of-numbers-and-characters

Thanks,
-The Twitter Team

About Twitter

Twitter is a unique approach to communication and networking based on the simple concept of status. What are you doing? What are your friends doing—right now? With Twitter, you may answer this question over SMS or the Web and the responses are shared between contacts.

This message was sent by a Twitter user who entered your email address. If you’d prefer not to receive emails when other people invite you to Twitter, click here:
http://twitter.com/i/optout/some-long-code-of-numbers-and-characters

——————————————–

At first I thought this was a spam email by someone wanting me to follow them on Twitter.  Then I realized this came from Twitter.  Twitter allows you to put email addresses into their system and email people asking them to follow you on Twitter.

Now, I have no idea how this guy got my email address, but I will certainly not follow them because of the desperate measures they are using to get followers.

I have noticed a few Twitter secrets ebooks on the market lately, I hope these products don’t advocate using the Twitter system to send these types of emails.  And please, don’t tell me there are automated bots that can, or will do this!

In Twitters defense, they do allow you to remove yourself from this system.  I won’t remove myself yet, I want to see if I receive more of these.

After I received this message, I checked out who the person was that wanted me to follow them.  I did figure out who it was, and it’s interesting I am on their email list at another email address.

What I found very interesting - were their Tweets.  Almost everyone of their Tweets was a promotion of some product.  No personal insight as to what they are doing, or who they are as a person, nothing about what tasks they are doing - just advertising.

Then I thought about the emails I get from him.  The same, always advertisements.  So, I get email advertisements from him, and now he wants me to get Twitter advertisements from him - I don’t think so.

This is how using Twitter marketing incorrectly can hurt you.  This one email to me from the Twitter system did this:
1.  Made me mad getting what looked like a spam email.
2.  Guaranteed that I would not follow him on Twitter.
3.  Looking at his Tweets made me realize he was using Twitter like email just for promotional purposes.
4.  Made me realize all of his newsletter messages were promotions, and resulted in me removing myself from his list.

Yikes, if only he knew what he had done by using Twitter like he would use an email list.

So the bottom line is - use Twitter for marketing.  But think about how you are using it for marketing.  Don’t use Twitter like you would use email.  Don’t use it for blatant advertising, it takes a different mindset.  It’s part of this Web 2.0 thing that is more about relationships.

Use Twitter marketing by being personal, letting people get to know you, by directing people to your blog and providing good content. Let your blog do your marketing for you.

People get tired of always being advertised to, you do that with Twitter and people will remove you from their follow list - I will anyway.

Mike

Are you like me - you know you need to post on your blog more, but you don’t know what to write about?

Today I was reading the Albert Hallado’s blog and he was making the point that in order for your blog to be successful you need to be blogging consistently.

Albert blogs twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, without fail.  I admire his focus and dedication to blogging every Tuesday and Thursday, and doing that week after week.

I am an inconsistent blogger,and need to improve by blogging to at least twice a week.  I got to thinking about why I don’t write on my blogs more.

Currently, I have 3 blogs that are doing pretty well and I know they could be doing even better if I would just write on them more consistently.

I know that benefits of blogging more often so why don’t I do it?

It’s easy to get distracted by everything else going on in life, making it hard to sit down and write something.  Is that the reason?  No, not really.

For me the real problem is finding something to blog about.  I don’t consider myself a great writer.  I can write okay, and I think my grammar is fine, but honestly I think the main problem is I don’t know what to write about.  I get writers block and have a hard time coming up with ideas to write about.

So, how can I come up with ideas to write about?  I need something to trigger ideas.  Then as I was checking my email it hit me.

I can use Google Alerts to trigger ideas to write about.  I had actually used Google Alerts before to give me ideas for articles I could write, so why not use them to get ideas for my blog.

Using Google triggers is really easy, just go to http://alerts.google.com type in a search term related to your blog.  I use Comprehensive for Type, Once a Day for How Often and have the alert sent to my email.

You can set up as many alerts as you want. If you have a blog with different categories, you could set up an alert for each category.

This has really helped me find topics to write about, and to find information on other sources to comment about.

For example, one of my most popular blog posts was about how Blogs are Dead.  I actually had an alert setup that was related to dofollow blogs for one of my other blogs.  One of those alerts pointed to a blog where the owner wrote about how blogs are dead.  So,I went and read their blog and then wrote a post on my blog commenting on the statement that blog owner made about blogs being dead.

This is one very easy way to generate ideas on what to write about.  I suggest you give it a try.

Now, that I know how to generate more ideas, I need to be more disciplined about posting more often.

I hope this blog posting idea works for you!

Mike

• Updated my blog with Affiliate Marketing For Beginners - Part 8, 9 and 10 http://tinyurl.com/6hqwcg #

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I have to decided to hire out my technical knowledge, so let me be your “Tech Guy”.

It’s important for your business to do the things that you are good at, and more importantly the things that generate you income.

Don’t waste your valuable time doing technical things that take you too much time, and end up frustrating you. Let me be your tech guy.

My name is Mike Gates from Colorado, and I have been in the IT world for over 20 years. I have also been involved in the internet marketing world for about 5 years.

I have an aptitude for technical things - does that make me a nerd? A geek? I hope not

Anyway, I can help you with your technical needs like installing, modifying, enhancing and personalizing your PHP and Java scripts.

I can make your website changes, modify your Wordpress theme to suit your needs, and optimize your web pages and blogs.

Because I have just started this service, I am pretty readily available for urgent work that you may have.

This is the first time I’m opening my tech services up to the general public.

My rates are $19.95 for a normal script install. My rates for other work are $19.95 - $29.95 per hour depending on the type of work to be done.

Just to be clear, I am not interested in working on large scale projects.   My desire is to work on smaller projects so I have more time to help more people

I may be willing to exchange technical work for article writing, copy writing, or graphics design.

Ready some technical help? Goto my Helpdesk, choose “Technical Work Request” and let me know how I can serve you.

Thanks,
Mike

I have a number of Squidoo Lenses, some get a fair amount of traffic and some don’t. I’ve recently learned that there a number of things you can do for Squidoo Lens Optimization.

I have one lens, that’s not in the internet marketing arena, did surprisingly well. This lens was getting a fair amount of traffic everyday and made me a little money.

It didn’t make me a lot of money because I think it’s in a niche made up of people who are wanting information and help for free.

Anyway, this Squidoo lens was doing very well, but started slipping over time. I really didn’t do much to keep the traffic up on the lens and just figured others had entered the same market and had pushed me down in the search engines.

It was no big deal since this market is not good at spending money. As a side note, there is a lesson here - you need to research markets to determine whether people are spending money or not before you do too much work.

Determining if people are spending money or not, is too much for this post, perhaps I’ll talk about it later.

Since this lens is not a great money maker, I’ll let you have a look at it. It’s all about sinus infection symptoms. Not very exciting, but something I have to deal with once or twice a year.

I had pretty much given up on this lens, until I came across a free, cool Squidoo tool that helps you optimize your Squidoo lens.

I don’t remember all the changes I made, but I do remember something very important I learned about optimizing Squidoo lenses.

You probably know that you can add tags to your Squidoo lens. In case you didn’t know, your Squidoo dashboard contains stats, including suggested tags.

These are tags that were used by people searching for certain terms, and these terms (tags) lead them to your lens. Here’s how Squidoo explains it - “These tags, or keyword phrases, delivered your lens to searchers. See one you haven’t used? Add it to your lens.”

Every time I saw one of these suggested tags with a “+” next to it, I added it to my lens. What I didn’t realize was that you can only add 40 tags to your Squidoo lens. So, I was adding tags that were really no good. I was adding very long tail tags that would probably never be searched on again, and I used up my 40 tags.

I continued to believe I was adding tags, but they weren’t being added and I didn’t realize it - oops!

The Squidoo Optimization tool made it clear that I only had 40 tags, and I could see that many of them were junk. So I removed many of the bad tags and by using my Squidoo Dashboard stats could determine better tags to be using.

With the new tags, and changes the Squidoo optimization tool directed me to make, I was able to resurrect this lens. That lens was getting about 90 hits per day at its peak. Then it dropped to about 5 a day. Now it’s back up to about 40 a day and growing.

Plus, my lens is now #111 in Health & Medicine - not bad for a lens that gets little attention. I just wish people spent money in this niche.

Anyway, I used the Squidoo optimization tool on all of my lenses, and every one of them needed some changes. So, I suggest you run your Squidoo lenses through this Squidoo tool.

Mike

• Updated my blog with Simple Site Big Profits - The Personal Touch http://tinyurl.com/4zea8j #

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Do you have a Tell A Friend form on your website? If you do, spammers may be taking advantage of you.

Tell a friend systems can be a good part of your website strategy. Tell a friend is much like referrals in the offline world. In the online world, you’re giving your customers an easy way to recommend your services or products to their friends.

Unfortunately, as with any good online strategy, sooner of later spammers will find a way to use something good, and turn it into bad for the rest of us.

I run a URL shortening, hit counting service. Most of my customers are great, and are using the service as it is intended. Then there are the .01% who use it to try to mask their destination URL.

Recently I’ve had a couple of complaints about customers using my service as part of their spam campaigns. That’s how I found out about the spammers also staking advantage of tell a friend systems.

Here’s how they work.

They find a tell a friend form on some website, it doesn’t even have to be a website related to the product they are promoting. One spammer was using a medical site tell a friend form, to send spam promoting their make money from home product.

They submit their emails to be delivered through the tell a friend system to emails they have gathered - emails to people who are obviously not their friends.

They promote their product in the email, using 2 - 3 short url, or url redirection services to try and hide their final destination.

My guess is they are finding tell a friend systems that they can use a bot on, to automatically submit email after email through these tell a friend systems.

So, if you are using a tell a friend system, do you know if it’s being abused?

Here are some ideas I can think of to keep this from happening.

1. Get rid of your tell a friend system. Instead ask your customers to personally send a few close friends an invite to view your services or products.

2. Use a tell a friend system that makes the referring person, confirm their email address by sending them an email with a confirmation link. Do this for each tell a friend request. Yes, this makes things a little more difficult for your referring customer. But, spammers will not be able to confirm if they are using a fake email, and they will not take the time to confirm again and again and again.

This secure tell a friend script is one that may work for you.

3. At the very least, have a tell a friend system that will email you when someone has used your tell a friend system. If you suddenly have several tell a friends notifications, you know you have a problem.

Using tell a friend systems to send spam is nothing new, but I think it has reached a new level with the ability to automatically fill in forms and send hundreds, if not thousands, of spam emails.

Mike

• Welcome to Twitter Lee. I’m on your list and an SSP member.@leemcintyre #

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I am trying to focus my time and energy better, so I am selling many of my websites. Some websites are established and some are relatively new.

I am also selling some of the domains I had plans for, but will probably never put them to use - so you can pick them up.