Critical Steps to Online Success--More Ways to Promote your Blog

If your Blog is just a fun thing you do on the side then
this article doesn't have much relevance for you unless
you're really keen to expand your readership. But if you're
in business with your Blog; if your blog is a key element
in your online marketing strategy, then promoting your Blog
is very serious business.

Do anything and everything you can do to get more visitors
and more links to you…every little bit counts.

Here are a couple of reasons why it's important:

1. You'll get more people reading your articles and
eventually more names on your list.

2. You'll add inbound links that add to your ranking with
the Search Engines.

So it's a good thing to do!

Need even more traffic to your Blog?

Try BlogExplosion.com. It's 100% free to join.

Here you can join a blogging community--other people can
find and read your blog, get reviews etc. BlogExplosion is
a great way to expand the number of people that read your
blog!

Here are some further tips from Blogger.com:

* Tweak your blog. There are three basic categories-
settings, techniques, marketing.

* Set your blog to ping weblogs.com. It's a blog update
notification service.

* Activate Your Navbar. Visitors really like the "Next
Blog" button.

* Install Email This Post: It's a convenient way for
others to publicize your blog for you.

* Turn on Post Pages: This ensures you are publishing
every post as its very own web page; your entries become
way more link-able and more attractive to search engines.

* Turn on your site feed: visitors will be able to
subscribe to your site feed and automatically read your
pages.

* Add your blog to Blogger's listings: When you add your
blog to the blog listings it shows up in Nextblog, Recently
Updated, and other places. It's like opting-in to
traffic…another good thing to do…

I keep running across new ideas daily and so can you if
you search the web for ways to increase your traffic. But
these few ideas will get you started…

Keep on winning

Regards

Jim

Do you want to learn how you can get off to a quick start
in Internet Marketing? Then read my fast start guide "3
Surefire Ways to Make Money Online".

Download it free here:
http://homebasedbusinessontheweb.com/cap/

Jim Keayes is an expert Internet Marketer. He coaches
internationally in how to build successful Home Based
Businesses Online.
You can visit his website at:
http://homebasedbusinessontheweb.com/

Critical Steps to Online Success-Even More Ways to Get Blog Traffic

You've got your Blog up and running, you've been making
posts regularly…but your "Hit Counter" says you're not
getting much traffic!

What else can you do to increase the number of visitors to
your Blog.

Here are some ideas:

Start your own "Wikizine".

How?

Add Your Blog to Zimbio!

What is Zimbio all about? you might ask:

Zimbio offers thousands of "wikizines" about a wide range
of topics, covering both popular culture and special
interests.

"Wikizines" are interactive magazines that anyone can
create or edit. They're a mix of technology, mainstream
media, and participatory journalism - so people can either
check out the best stuff that other folks posted about a
topic, or they can add articles, pictures, or videos
themselves.

Zimbio helps you Syndicate Your Blog…reach a wider
audience and promote your website. It's a community site
where you can research and learn about whatever interests
you.

How will Zimbio help your Blog?

You'll be able to create your own "wikizines" and post your
blog articles to it. More exposure equals more traffic.

How do you get started?

Go to "Zimbio.com" and register. You'll be forwarded to a
webpage that says:

"Welcome to Zimbio! Enter your blog URL and we'll do the
rest."

Once you add your blog URL to your profile and select
"Promote My Blog" then Zimbio will automatically post your
articles to related wikizines.

And now the fun part begins because you get to create (if
you choose) your own very professional new wikizine site
devoted to the topics you have chosen.

My "wikizine" is called "Critical Steps to Online Success"
and I cover Internet Marketing, Network Marketing and
Affiliate Marketing.

Once you have your Wikizine up and running you just go to
your "dashboard" and start adding articles from your blog.
Time to get started?…what will your wikizine deal with?...

Learn the "3 Surefire Ways to make Money Online"

http://homebasedbusinessontheweb.com/cap/

Jim Keayes is an expert Internet Marketer. He teaches people
to be successful online.

Critical Steps to Online Success -Getting Blog Traffic--"Ping" your Blog.

So you've published your 5 articles on your blog and
you're waiting for results…but nothing seems to be happening…

First Question: Do you have a "Hit Counter" on your Blog?"

If you can't measure the "hits" to your site, how can you
know what's going on? You can get a hit counter by Googling
the term "Add a Hit Counter to your Blog".

If you are using Blogger.com then just go to their Help
menu and you'll find directions. Now you can see how many
visitors you're getting, you can start to add some traffic
generation add-ons to your Blog.

The first and easiest thing you will want to do is to add
a new post every day and then update your Blog on all of
the major Search Engines.

The easiest way to do this is to "Ping" your Blog every
time you update it with new material. Pinging simply
notifies from 10 to 50 or so of the top search engines that
there is new material on your blog and increases the likely
hood that their "spiders" will visit. (Spiders are the
little routines operated by the search engines that run
around on the web searching and indexing all of the sites
for SEO relevancy).

This is a good thing-you can't get your
site indexed until you have a visit from the spiders and to
maintain your ranking you need new material to keep them
coming back.

To "Ping" you Blog you simply register with the Ping
services, select the sites you want to have pinged and
press "ping".

And Bingo…you're starting to become visible on the web.

Here are some of the top Ping engines:
Ping-o-Matic: pingomatic.com

Pingoat: pingoat.com

Technorati: technorati.com/ping

King Ping: kping.com/

For all that, it would seem that Ping-o-matic is the most
popular and gets the job done. But if you're trying to
squeeze more traffic then these others may help. I haven't
done enough testing to have a definitive answer for you.

Keep on winning

Regards

Jim

Critical Steps to Online Success--So I've got my Blog…What Now?

What about that Blog…pretty exciting, huh?

There you are live on the net for everyone to read. I must
admit I felt a twinge of embarrassment when I realized how
visible I could become.

As I said in an earlier article, make good use of your
blog. You control the publication here. You are the one who
approves the submissions. Turn your Blog posts into emails
to your list and into articles if there's enough meat on
them. Post your emails on your Blog.

Your next step is to begin to post all of your articles,
one by one, to your Blog. Don't worry about formatting or
fonts or anything like that for now. Just get the content
posted. Newsletter and Ezine editors will begin to pick up
your articles from your Blog and your Blog traffic will
grow, very slowly but steadily.

And put a hit counter on your blog-you'll want to be able
to measure the traffic.

Go to your Help menu, select the Help Center, scroll down
the page to Advanced Use and choose Add-ons. At the top of
that menu will be "Hit Counter and Statistics" which takes
you to a page of hit counters.

I use "Bravenet"-it's free and they provide a
comprehensive array of stats about you Blog visitors. Go to
their site and grab the code to attach to your blog. Just
copy it to the clipboard. Then go to your Blog and open the
Dashboard, select Layout and then "Add a Page Element".

Now Find the link for 'HTML/Javascript' and click on the
'Add to Blog' link to access the text field. Then just
paste the code into the content box, enter "Hit Counter" in
the title box and "Save Changes". The hit counter will now
show up at the top of your Blog page.

That's it…you're live with your very own Blog. Just keep
on posting…every day is best! Keep on Winning

Regards

Jim

Do you want to learn how you can get off to a quick start
in Internet Marketing? Then read my fast start guide "3
Surefire Ways to Make Money Online".

Download it free here:
http://homebasedbusinessontheweb.com/cap/

Jim Keayes is an expert Internet Marketer. He coaches
internationally in how to build successful Home Based
Businesses Online.
You can visit his website at:
http://homebasedbusinessontheweb.com/

Critical Steps to Online Success-Publish a Blog

Why on earth would anyone want to publish a Blog? you
might ask.

Well, some people do it because they have an urge to
communicate their thoughts to the world…and that's a fine
thing to do…it's nice to read what other ordinary people
are thinking rather than the often slanted views of the
popular press.

But we are in business, you and I. We want to publish a
Blog for two reasons.

The first is let out readers get some insight into who we
are…to get to know us…people are more likely to do business
with people they feel comfortable with and trust. The
second reason is that we want to create another outlet for
our article writing.

Turn your Blog posts into emails to your list and into
articles if there's enough meat on them. Post your emails
on your Blog. Post your Newsletter to your Blog.

And always, always, post your articles on your blog. You
can even sell your products from your Blog. You see how
it's going round and round here-one hand washes the other-
and your web presence grows.

The easiest way to start a blog is to go to Blogger.com
and register. It takes about 5 minutes once you select a
name and a template for your site. Go to the Dashboard and
select the Templates tab to find a template you like. You
can edit the fonts etc.

Now select the Settings tab and work through each of the
tabs there to set up your defaults. You'll find the Help
menu is quite comprehensive.

That's it…your blog is live on the web and now you need to
get some cont in there.

Keep on Winning

Regards

Jim

Do you want to learn how you can get off to a quick start
in Internet Marketing? Then read my fast start guide "3
Surefire Ways to Make Money Online".

Download it free here:
http://homebasedbusinessontheweb.com/cap/

Jim Keayes is an expert Internet Marketer. He coaches
internationally in how to build successful Home Based
Businesses Online.
You can visit his website at:
http://homebasedbusinessontheweb.com/

Critical Steps to Online Success--Submit your articles to 5 or 6 Article Directories.

Let me tell you…submitting your articles to article
directories can be quite the time consuming experience. But
it has to be done because that's how you get your exposure
to the readers.

After all...no readers, no list!

It probably takes 5 to 10 minutes per article, but after a
while you develop an assembly line mind set and you just
roll through it. You quickly learn the quirks of each of
the directories you are listing with.

Ezine Articles has the most stringent requirements but
gives you better reader response, by far, than any of the
other directories and very detailed article performance
stats.

http://ezinearticles.com is the URL.

If you are strapped for time you could choose to just list
with this one directory. I estimate you get 5 to 10 times
the readership from Ezine Articles than from any of the
others. But you can double your exposure by submitting to
another 5 directories and it takes less time and mental
output to submit an article than it does to write one.

A few of the bigger directories are:

Ezine Articles
Go Articles
Article Dashboard
Article Alley
Article Base
Easy Articles

Typically all of the directories want you to submit
articles between approximately 250 words and 1250 to 1500
words in length. Your text should be created in a text
editor, not in MS word because the Word formatting and
quotation marks can destroy your articles appearance on
download.

Most want you to wrap your text at around 65 characters
per line but Article Dashboard does not accept articles
with hard line breaks.

A good text editor can help immensely here-you'll need
something more powerful that MS Notepad if you don't want
to be counting each line. Lots of the directories won't
accept hard returns at the end of lines anyway.

You need to supply a personal profile or a "resource box"
as it is called which is appended at the end of the
article. This should contain your contact information
(email and website) a brief sentence about who you are if
you like and a link to your opt-in box with the offer of a
free gift.

You can do something like mine (see below) or you can just
search through some of the articles on this site and you'll
get the idea.

Keep on Winning

Regards

Jim

Do you want to learn how you can get off to a quick start
in Internet Marketing? Then read my fast start guide "3
Surefire Ways to Make Money Online".

Download it free here:
http://homebasedbusinessontheweb.com/cap/

Jim Keayes is an expert Internet Marketer. He coaches
internationally in how to build successful Home Based
Businesses Online.
You can visit his website at:
http://homebasedbusinessontheweb.com/

Critical Steps to Online Success—Hit it Big with Article Writing

Article writing can be very demanding. Along the way you
will get dispirited…you'll want to lie down and give up. In
the early stages it takes much more effort than we expect.
Most of us are not naturally good writers so there are
skills to be acquired and new work habits to be developed.

Article writing as a source of leads for your online
business will surely challenge you to dig down, suck in and
just keep on going.

But it will be worth it!

Why? Because it works!

How does it work? It works because of two things.

1. The big article Directories have very high SEO rankings
so you can piggyback on their success to get your site
noticed. People searching will find your article. On your
own it could take years.

2. With 10 or 20 articles in the works your website will
be miraculously indexed by the search engines because of
your links to the big article directories…you're on the map.

3. Other Ezine and Newsletter publishers pick up your
article and run it in their publication and put it on their
site. Others see it on their site and do the same etc. etc.

It just grows and grows!

Article writing will return your effort 100 fold…and in
quite a short space of time. But it's like Network
Marketing; painfully slow to start, but for those who stick
around…the really big payoff!

With article writing you can hit pay dirt in 12 months or
less if you are able to stay focused and committed.

Here's why it works so well:

First off-there's not much competition. Lot's of writers
get started but they fall off the path. Not too many people
are willing to go blindly into the future, performing a
demanding task day after day with no noticeable payoff for
quite a while.

For a while you have to be happy with milestones…how many
people read my articles today? Is my readership growing?
(the directories will provide these stats for you).

Most people are looking for the quick fix. You see it
everywhere…just send your money and we'll build your
business for you.

Folks it doesn't work like that. Most millionaires are
business owners and they spent a lifetime steadily building
their businesses to get there.

So when you become a committed article writer you join a
select community of winners who are willing to go forward
in faith until the results show up.

If you stay the course you will be rewarded!

It takes time and commitment to write and publish 200
articles. You need 200 articles in circulation to get
enough readers clicking your link, visiting your site,
accepting your offer and opting-in to your list.

With 20 articles published you may have only 5 people
added to your list and quit writing in despair…don't do
that, don't give up. You're almost there.

The growth will be exponential! Here's how it might happen.

With 40 articles your list can grow to 200 plus-with 100
you can have 500 on your list and with 200 articles your
list may have grown as big as 2000 subscribers.(PLEASE
NOTE:these numbers are just guesstimates. Don't take this
as a promise that this is exactly how it will happen for
you).

Now you're starting to make some worthwhile income.

If you write just 2 articles a day you can have 200
articles in publication by the end of 3 months.

Once the money starts to flow there'll be no looking back.

Here's the challenge. Can you go the distance? Can you dig
in until it starts to happen for you?

Keep on Winning

Regards

Jim

Do you want to learn how you can get off to a quick start
in Internet Marketing? Then read my fast start guide "3
Surefire Ways to Make Money Online".

Download it free here:
http://homebasedbusinessontheweb.com/cap/

Jim Keayes is an expert Internet Marketer. He coaches
internationally in how to build successful Home Based
Businesses Online.
You can visit his website at:
http://homebasedbusinessontheweb.com/