So you’re starting a blog from scratch, or maybe you have some experience and want to make sure that you’re not missing anything. Either way, I think I can help you out. I wrote this monstrosity of an article because I couldn’t find one anywhere that was thorough enough.

I want people to be able to get started after reading a single article, and there is no such article that I know of. This is the most thorough article on this subject I have seen anywhere on the internet.

Lately I’ve had quite a few friends ask me how to start a business online. I’ve even had a few friends start up some sites. I can see why, it’s such an intriguing way to make money. When people see you making money this way, they obviously hope that they can do it, too. So they start asking questions, and since they’re starting from scratch they usually have a ton of them.

This isn’t the only resource I’ve created to help people get the right start with creating a passive internet income. If you’re serious about owning websites that bring you income 24 hours a day with very little daily attention, I can tell you the best way to achieve that is by using search engine traffic from Google.

I wish I had more time to teach everyone one-on-one. Since I can’t mentor everyone this way, I want to create a resource for everyone.

Where I Would Start

If I had to start my entire business from scratch right now, I would start a blog. (I actually did start this blog recently, although I already have some profitable websites.)

Definition of a Blog

For those of you that are brand new to internet marketing, blog is short for weblog. It’s kind of like a journal or diary, except you don’t use it only for history. You can use it to post news on a topic, give tips about a specific niche, or to write random thoughts if you want. A blog puts the latest entry at the top, and the blog creates archives all of the older entries for you.

If you go to the homepage of this blog, you will see the latest post I’ve made. To the right, you will find 10 or so recent posts. These are the last things I’ve written for you on this blog. You will also see categories. With a blog, each time you post, or write an entry, you choose which category you want the entry to appear in. You will also see archives. Usually a blog organizes the entries you post by the date they were posted. Since this is the first month this blog is online (written Feb. 2007), under the archives you can only see February. This will be expanded to show more months as time passes.

Sounding Complicated?

I know that many of you are thinking right now that it sounds really hard to create a site that will do all of that for you. I know that it can be overwhelming to learn something brand new. The beauty of a blog is that YOU don’t have to make any of that work. There is free software that will do all of it for you. (We will get to that a little later, I just want to let you know now so you don’t get scared and click the back button.)

Why I Would Recommend Starting A Blog Instead Of An E-commerce Site (or any other type of site)

The biggest reason I would recommend starting a blog is because it’s easier. You don’t have to learn HTML. (HTML is the programming language that websites are written in.) Your biggest obstacle as someone trying to learn how to make money online is learning how to put a website together. You have to make tons of pages (that you designed yourself), and make sure they all work together. You have to create the layout, design, links, navigation, and content. (For the newbies, content is the articles, entries, and posts you put on your site. It’s the actual material that you write.) If you start with a blog you don’t need to do the layout, design, links, or the navigation. It’s all done for you, you just write the content.

Another reason I would start with a blog is that your blog will do some of your marketing for you. The program that I’m going to tell you to use will automatically alert some blog search engines when you post a new entry. These blog search engines will create links for you, and people will be able to find your site. The more you post, the more exposure you will get with the blog search engines. Even if this was the only marketing you ever did, you would be able to get some visitors and build up your list of readers.

My most recent protégé just started a blog about fitness. He just started last week! He and his mother are working together on the project. They haven’t done any marketing at all, other than the marketing their blog does for them, but they have already been able to get a few readers to their site. (Along with a little bit of money, which brings me to my next point.)

Blogs are easy to monetize. In other words, it’s easy to create a revenue stream for blogs. There are quite a few ways of creating revenue with blogs. The easiest and most effective way of monetizing a blog is with Google Adsense. If you look at the top of this article, you will see a Google ad unit. If one of my readers clicks on one of those ads, Google pays me. Depending on a number of factors, I might get between $.10 and $2.00 for a click. Google direct deposits this money in my account every month. You can opt for a check if that’s what you prefer. You make money day or night, as long as you have readers that click on ads. Some of your readers will naturally click because they will see things that interest them.

The reason I like Google ads over other similar programs is because they match up really well with the material on your pages. If they find this site because they’re interested in internet marketing, I don’t want them to see ads about tennis shoes or home loans. Google does a good job of showing ads that are related to the site.

Using Google Adsense is 100% free. After you have a website up, you can sign up with their service and use their ads on your site.

Hopefully You’re Convinced That Starting A Blog Is The Way To Go

If you are, let’s talk about where you go from here.

You Should Choose A Topic

Choosing a topic isn’t the easiest thing in the world. What are you passionate about? I’ve seen lots of different kinds of blogs work! This blog is about internet marketing and personal development, but I have other blogs that are more technical. I have a site where I publish cell phone news, and it does quite well. The most important aspect of picking a topic is your interest level. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Parenting
• Personal Development
• Finance
• Real Estate
• Fitness
• Recipes
• Technology
• Politics
• Dieting
• Celebrities
• Art
• Movies
• Update: 5/1/2007 – Check out a new article I have called “Ideas For Profitable Blogs“

You could literally start a blog about anything that you’re interested in. The important thing is that you have enough interest to keep working. Most blogs die out after a month or so, the owner loses interest!

What do you read about? I’m constantly reading about internet marketing, and how to better myself as a person. I spend a lot of time searching in those two areas, and that’s why I chose to start a blog about them.

You Should Then Choose A Domain Name

A domain name is the .com name for your website. The domain name for this site, of course, is courtneytuttle.com. Your first option is to use your name, like I did. Your other option is to choose a name that is more related to the subject of the site.

For your first site/blog, I would use a name that is related to your subject material. This can spark some interest from people that see the name and can make it a little easier to do well in Google and other search engines.

By choosing to use the name courtneytuttle.com, I know that it will take some extra work. People who see the name won’t have any idea what the site is about. I have to put in some extra time to establish my domain name as a brand.

By opting to use a name that is related to your subject, you can save yourself some marketing time.

How To Find Out If A Domain Name Is Taken/Registering Your Domain Name

There are plenty of sites around that allow you to do this. The one that I use for this is www.prouddomains.com. If you go to the site, you will see a search bar, where you can type in any domain name. It will tell you whether the name is already taken. If the name you want to use is available, you can register it there for $8.99. You will then own the name for one year.

You will probably find that quite a few names are already taken! Here are a few tips that you can use to find a good name that’s available.

Pick your subject and add a name to it. For example, if your subject is real estate, you could try prosperrealestate.com, or mountainrealestate.com. You just add another word at the beginning.

Use .net, .biz, .org, or .info extensions. Some webmasters would disagree, but I haven’t found any difference at all between using a .com,a .net, or any other extension.

Once you decide on a name, you will go ahead and register it. Make sure to save your login information! Save everything or you will definitely regret it later. Congratulations, by now you should own a domain name.

Setting Up Web Hosting | What Is Web Hosting Anyway?

A web host is the computer on the internet that stores your website. You buy web hosting so that your site/blog has a place to ‘live’ on the internet. I use prouddomains.com for my web hosting as well. (The same company that I use to register domain names.) They aren’t the absolute cheapest anywhere, but they are pretty cheap, and they have a support phone number that you can call if something gets messed up. I’ve called them quite a few times, especially in the beginning when I made quite a few mistakes.

If you use prouddomains, you need to get the deluxe hosting to make everything work properly. Its cost is $9.99 per month. At one point they will ask you if you want a Windows server or a Linux server. You need to choose the Linux server.

Once you buy the hosting account, they will guide you through setting it up. You will basically setup a user name and a password that you will use to access your site later. After you setup your hosting, it will take a few hours to become active.

Install Your Blog

Once your hosting is setup, you want to install your blog. The blog software I would recommend using is called WordPress. It’s the best around, and WordPress does a lot of the work for you. This site was built using WordPress.

If you are using prouddomains.com for your hosting, it’s going to be really easy to setup WordPress. Prouddomains.com will actually install it for you. This is what you need to do. First, you will go back to prouddomains.com. You will then hover your mouse over Web Hosting, which is a blue button up at the top. It will drop down a little menu for you, and you’re going to click on My Hosting Accounts. Prouddomains.com will then have you sign in, unless you’re already signed in. Once you sign in, they will show you your hosting accounts. Most of you will probably only have one. You should see a link that says ‘open’. It will be under the control panel column. Once you find the ‘open’ link, click on it. It will then open up the control panel for your hosting account.

At that point, you will see quite a few little icons, (Account Login, Domain Management…..) and you are going to look for one that says, “Value Applications.” It looks like this:

Once you find this icon, you’re going to click on it. You will be taken to another page where prouddomains.com has some applications that can be installed on your site. One of these applications is WordPress. You’ll find it listed in the left column under community tools. Once you find the link to WordPress, go ahead and click on it. You will then see a red button that says, “Install Now.” Go ahead and click the button.

It will then ask you which of your domains you would like to use. Most of you will only have one, so you will select it, (if you have more than one you will select the one that you want to use) and then you will click continue. You may need to scroll down a little to find the continue button. It will then have you fill in a ‘Database Description’ and a ‘Database Password’. For the description you can put anything you want. You could put ‘Dave’s Blog’ if your name is Dave. It really doesn’t matter at all what you put there. For the password, fill in whatever password you want to use. Make sure that you save this information. Write down the information every time you fill out something like this. After you fill it in, click next.

Another screen will come up that will ask you to choose an install directory. Since this blog is going to be your whole site, you don’t want it in a directory. After your domain name, you will see a box that will probably have the word, ‘WordPress’ in it. You need to delete it. Click your cursor in there and backspace the whole word. You will then click next. It will take you to another screen where you need to fill in a little more information. It will have you choose an admin name, and an admin password. You will also need to enter in your email address. It needs to be a real email address. It will also have you give your blog a title. This can be changed later if you want, so fill something in. As you can see, the title of this blog is, “Internet Marketing And Personal Development.” You can use whatever title seems relevant to your subject. Don’t waste a lot of time here, again, because your title can be changed later. Once you have filled that in, click finish. For now you’re all done!

It will take prouddomains.com anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour to install your blog. When they are done, you should be able to see it by going to your site in internet explorer. Once it’s setup, somewhere on your website you will find a login link. You will login with the admin name and admin password you just set up. Once you login, I think you will find everything to be pretty self-explanatory.

If you have any questions about how to do anything, please leave a comment! I will be more than happy to answer any questions. I would at this point take some time to click on everything in there, just to see what everything does and how it works. You Now Have A Website! If you have made it this far, that tells me that you’re probably pretty persistent. Will you make it through this entire article? I’m willing to bet that most people won’t. This is pretty frustrating to me!

So many people ask me for help, but somehow I know that if I direct them to this article, they won’t even read the whole thing. Most people are looking for an easier route. They don’t want to put in the time. They are looking for the easiest way possible to realize their success.

That’s why I really don’t believe that most people can make money with the internet. It seems that most people can’t be successful at all! They simply don’t have the persistence. I would ask you right here whether you are a persistent person. If you can’t muster the energy to do everything in this entire article, I don’t think this business is for you. If you haven’t been a persistent person in the past, perhaps this is the time to learn how to be one. If you can be persistent, you can make this work.

Now You Have A Site – What’s Next?

Now is the time for you to start writing. We need to get some material on your site. Really quickly before you publish anything, let’s check on one little marketing tool that you’re going to need. Login to your site, go to options, and then go to writing. Scroll down to the bottom, and you’ll see a box labeled Update Services. You need to make sure that the following URL is in the box – http://rpc.pingomatic.com. If it’s there, your blog will let the blog search engines know each time you update your site. This is a very important marketing tool, so if it’s not there make sure to copy the URL above and paste it in. Make sure that you click the update options button if you have to do this.

As soon as this is done, you’re ready to add some categories. You probably want to start with at least 5 categories. Every subject has some categories of information, and you should take a little time to decide how to split things up. My most recent protégé started a site about health and fitness, and has the blog divided into these five categories:

• Aging Gracefully
• Fitness Exercise and Weight Control
• Fitness Tips
• Muscular Strength and Endurance
• Stress Relief

This site will end up with quite a few categories, but started with these basic five:

• CourtneyTuttle.com News
• Finding A Voice
• Motivation
• Promoting Your Blog/Site
• Search Engine Optimization

I have added a category for beginners, and can see that I will be adding more soon. I tell you this so you know that your blog will always evolve. Don’t worry about trying to create a finished product right now, just come up with the best five you can.

How To Add Categories To Your Blog

Once you’re logged in to your site, you will go to Manage, and then to Categories. You will see a link that says, “add new.” You will click the link and then it will let you fill in the category name. Don’t worry about filling in the other stuff; it will fill it in for you. Once you’ve filled in the name, go ahead and click, “Add Category.” You will need to do this once for each category you want to add.

Now You Need To Add Entries To Each Category!

Now is the time to start writing! What do have to say to the world? If you’re hurting for ideas, you should have a look at my article, “Read Your Competition’s Work.” It’s always good to read what your competitors and fellow bloggers have to say. You should also be reading sites that offer news about your subject. You can use ideas to get at those sites to start writing. It’s never worth plagiarizing! People want to know your unique perspective on things; it does no good to write the exact same thing as everyone else. People want to know what you think!

By now you should have an article in each one of your categories. Well done!

What Now? How Often Should You Blog?

This topic is highly debated, but I can tell you that you should try to blog every single day. A blog gives you the unique ability of getting repeat visitors that will come back every single day. Most websites don’t have this kind of draw, but you can! Of course, if I go to your site tomorrow and see the exact same thing I saw yesterday, why would I check it everyday? If you want to do well, you will create new entries at least 5 times per week. For more on this, check out this article, “If You Can’t Post Daily, Don’t Quit Your Day Job.”

How Good Are Your Entries?

Even more important that how often you post is the type of material you’re posting. I try to make my articles extremely thorough. That’s why this article ended up so big; I wanted to ensure that people who read it could realistically end up starting a blog. Your users will know if you’re really trying to help them, or if you’re just trying to get something on the site that day. If you focus on writing material that actually helps people, people will come back again and again. I want this site to be a place where people can go to find help. I want them to grow when they read what I have to say; in fact I want this site to be the best site out there for this!

I understand that this will take some time, but I really believe that if I continue to be thorough and aware of what people need, I can make it happen. You have to try to provide the best information you can.

Blogging And Comments

One nice feature about a blog is that people can leave comments. If you’re reading this entry, you’re more than welcome to leave a comment when you get to the bottom. Some webmasters believe that responding to visitor’s comments is too time consuming. I absolutely disagree! Responding to comments is one of the best things you can do, it creates trust between you and your visitors, and makes it so they want to come back to the site again and again.

At some point, your site may outgrow comments! If you’re getting too many comments to manage, you may need to eventually turn them off. Until then, it’s a great way to establish a relationship between you and your visitors.

Respond to your visitors and answer their questions. From time to time they will ask you questions that you don’t know. It is most definitely in your best interest to find the answer for them! You can learn yourself and also establish yourself as an expert in your field. Other users will also see that your site is an interactive place where they can find the material they’re looking for. From time to time, you will see that your visitors answer each other’s questions!

Do You Want To Have A Quality Site?

Many of you are probably just in it for the money. I teach people how to make money online all the time, and the truth is that most people I teach don’t want to do very much work. They want to do the bare minimum. I read the blogs of many successful online entrepreneurs, and there is one common mentality that they all have. They want their sites to be the absolute best in their industries. I notice that I said they want their sites to be the best. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the best.

One thing is certain, they give their all to make their sites the best resources they possibly can. You should keep in mind that when you’re starting from scratch, you won’t be the best right away. Over time, you can establish your site/blog as a great resource for people.

Promoting Your Blog / Getting More Traffic

Now you have a site, let’s talk about getting you some traffic!

#1 Way To Get Traffic – Creating Valuable Material

The absolute best way to promote your blog is by creating content that actually helps people. Many bloggers and internet marketers rely on search engines for 100% of their traffic. In reality, it’s a lot easier to get traffic from word of mouth than it is from search engines! If you are pumping out material that is truly helpful to people, they will keep coming back, and they will tell lots of other people about it. They will link to you with their blogs. They will link to you from myspace, facebook, and send emails to everyone they know.

When I think about writing for this site, I try to think of what topic will help my readers the most. I know that the only way I will reach my goals is to help other people to reach theirs. I’ve met so many people that really want to learn this business, but don’t know where to start. I want this site to be a resource that they can use from start to finish. This means that everyday I think about what information will be the best for you, my readers!

When you create material that will actually help your readers, they will notice. Remember that you will always be more successful if you write for your readers.
You want to make sure that your blog’s content is original. I find original things to write about all the time. I do it by writing about things I can’t find anywhere. I searched for months for an article on how to make money blogging. I found quite a few, but couldn’t find anything that covered all the major topics, start to finish. Even though I know a lot about making money online, blogging has some unique and interesting characteristics that make it a little different from traditional website marketing.

Over time, I have learned a ton, but never found an article that covered everything. This is the kind of topic I look for, that’s why I wrote this one!

Pinging The Blog Search Engines

This part of your marketing will be done for you if you’re using a WordPress blog. Earlier, I had you make sure that this was set up properly. Each time you publish a post on your site, WordPress will ping (send a special message) the blog search engines. They will update their search engines, adding your new material to their results. The way blog search engines work is quite different than the way regular search engines work. Blog search engines will show the most recent entries found under each topic. This means that you can increase the traffic to your blog simply by posting more often.

Commenting On Other Blogs

One super effective way of getting traffic for your blog is by commenting on other blogs. When you comment on a blog, they allow you type in the URL to your website. When you type this in, you want to put in the entire URL. When I do this, I type http://courtneytuttle.com/. It will then make a link that people can follow to your site. Usually when I comment on blogs, quite a few people will visit my site to check it out. The webmaster of the blog I’m commenting on usually has to approve the comments, so he ends up visiting my site too.

Often bloggers will read other blogs to find significant material for their readers. Bloggers who have found me this way will often link to my blog, as they find material that is useful for their readers.

Blog Carnivals

Blog carnivals are places that feature a ton of blogs about a certain subject. There are blog carnivals about almost any topic. If you do a Google search for blog carnivals, you’ll find quite a few sites that do them.

Usually you’ll see a list of a ton of topics, and if you want to get into a certain blog carnival, you simply have to write an article about that topic. You submit it to the carnival, and they link to your site. This can drive quite a bit of new traffic to your site. If people like what you have to say, they will continue to come back again and again. Other bloggers will be checking out the carnival as well, and some of them may link to you if they like your material.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is making it so that your site does well in the major search engines. As of the day I’m writing this article (2/25/2007), Google by far is the biggest search engine. Yahoo! and MSN can also bring significant amounts of traffic to your site.

If you want to do well in any of these search engines, let me point you in the right direction. The most important method you will use to do well in search engines is keeping your site updated. If you stop adding new material to your site, your search engine traffic will slowly die. Most search engines want to see fresh material added to your site constantly, and this is especially true with Google. Google will drop your site altogether if it isn’t updated for a while.

How Do I Get Into Google In The First Place?

Luckily with a WordPress blog, this will be taken care of for you, as long as you continue to publish new material. When your posts get you into the blog search engines, Google, and all the other search engines will naturally find you.

How Do I Get A Better Ranking In The Search Engines?

There are two articles I’ve written about this, and I’ll post them here for you:

• Onsite SEO
• Offsite SEO

To learn more about getting better rankings and search engine optimization, you can also visit the search engine optimization section of this site.

How Long Until I Start Getting Traffic?

This totally depends on you! If you start commenting on other blogs, you will start getting traffic right then! The more blogs you comment on the more traffic you will get initially. Blog carnivals are also ways of getting traffic in a hurry.

As far as traffic from search engines, it will take you at least a few months. As your site continues to grow, so will your traffic from search engines.

How Long Until I Make Money?

This is the most asked question by far! It will take at least a few months after your blog gets set up. Of course, the more direct marketing you do (word of mouth, commenting of other blogs), the more accelerated this process will be.

Sometimes people are learning this business, and they ask if they should quit their jobs. My answer is almost always, “Are you crazy?” You don’t quit your job while you’re learning a brand new business. Learn the business, and then quit your job!

Yes, you can make a very significant income doing this. However, not everyone is going to make money. To tell the honest truth, you have to be pretty smart and wicked persistent. Most people can’t handle writing day after day. When you have a website, you do the work and don’t see the results for months. Most people honestly can’t handle it.

Hopefully This Gives You Somewhere To Start

I really want to create a helpful article that could help my readers to get started. If I could only give you one piece of advice, it would be to keep learning. I will continue to leave you with valuable tidbits of information. I will try to give you the material you need to find success.

Update (12/19/2007): I have now had this site for 10 months and it has grown 1000 times over. I am truly grateful for starting a blog. I also have a new post on starting a blog that was written with a lot more experience: Starting A Blog The Isn’t A Time Sucking Money Pit.

Here is an advanced technique for promotion and link building. I call it an “advanced” technique because there is no assurance that it will result in real links pointing at your website, but it has plenty of power and plenty of potential if done right.

The idea is this:

Take about 10 of your ultra premium articles, your absolute best stuff on your website, and throw about 5 dollars worth of paid Stumbleupon traffic at each one. (Premium content is the foundation of our original blogging experiment).

Stumbleupon traffic is not perfect by any means, but it is fairly cheap (10 cents per visitor) and it allows for quick and dirty testing, which is really what we are after here.

We want to use paid traffic as a way to run quick experiments and find out which is the best performing piece of content.

I recently did this experiment on my own website. Take a look at this picture below that reports on paid versus “free stumbles.” I tested about 3 different articles across these 6 days:

Each day I promoted a single article with 50 paid Stumbles (5 dollars).

On the first two days, the article that I was promoting only received two free stumbles each day.

But look at the next couple of days. One of them received 90 free Stumbles, and another received 164 free Stumbles.

Thus, some of my articles that I was promoting that week performed better than others. The plan is to promote about 10 more pieces of “premium content” in this manner, and see which piece of content gets the most free Stumbles, and thus had the most “likes.”

Once the winner is established, I will likely throw some more traffic at that particular article (maybe 500 visits or so), and do some other unique things to share and promote it.

Why all the testing and fuss over which piece of content is most successful?

Because I am trying to pull in organic links. Real links. And create real word-of-mouth marketing.

Anyone can send paid traffic to a landing page. However, by using this technique, you can test various articles and find out which one is getting the best response.

If you spend 50 dollars on testing and then spend another 50 dollars sending paid traffic to the winning article, will it be worth it?

Maybe, maybe not. But if you push yourself to create a variety of amazing content then I would bet that you will net at least one or two permanent, organic links out of the deal.

And if not, you are still learning something (hopefully). Your testing will still reveal the piece of content that was the most “liked.”

At this point, you could create 5 new articles for your website, all variations on that “winning” article, and try to make them more useful, remarkable, and link-worthy.

Rinse and repeat.

Is paid traffic part of the TKA curriculum? No it’s not. But this is one method of “social promotion” that does not rely on cheap or manufactured links. Instead, it relies on creating remarkably good content. If you create an article and drive 500 targeted visitors to it and you don’t get a decent response, the answer is not more traffic. The answer is design better content. The tactics keep changing (and always will), but the foundation of your promotional strategy and link building should be content-based, not “manufacture as many cheap links as possible.”

Paid Stumble traffic is just one example out of many. There are a million other tactics out there. While the individual tactics may change, consider using an overall strategy that is sustainable in the long run, one that draws in real world links based on worthy content.

For my own experiment, I will test several more articles over the next two weeks, then hammer the “winning article” with 500 visits. At that time I will report the results of that experiment. Stay tuned……

Here is an advanced technique for promotion and link building. I call it an “advanced” technique because there is no assurance that it will result in real links pointing at your website, but it has plenty of power and plenty of potential if done right.

The idea is this:

Take about 10 of your ultra premium articles, your absolute best stuff on your website, and throw about 5 dollars worth of paid Stumbleupon traffic at each one. (Premium content is the foundation of our original blogging experiment).

Stumbleupon traffic is not perfect by any means, but it is fairly cheap (10 cents per visitor) and it allows for quick and dirty testing, which is really what we are after here.

We want to use paid traffic as a way to run quick experiments and find out which is the best performing piece of content.

I recently did this experiment on my own website. Take a look at this picture below that reports on paid versus “free stumbles.” I tested about 3 different articles across these 6 days:

Each day I promoted a single article with 50 paid Stumbles (5 dollars).

On the first two days, the article that I was promoting only received two free stumbles each day.

But look at the next couple of days. One of them received 90 free Stumbles, and another received 164 free Stumbles.

Thus, some of my articles that I was promoting that week performed better than others. The plan is to promote about 10 more pieces of “premium content” in this manner, and see which piece of content gets the most free Stumbles, and thus had the most “likes.”

Once the winner is established, I will likely throw some more traffic at that particular article (maybe 500 visits or so), and do some other unique things to share and promote it.

Why all the testing and fuss over which piece of content is most successful?

Because I am trying to pull in organic links. Real links. And create real word-of-mouth marketing.

Anyone can send paid traffic to a landing page. However, by using this technique, you can test various articles and find out which one is getting the best response.

If you spend 50 dollars on testing and then spend another 50 dollars sending paid traffic to the winning article, will it be worth it?

Maybe, maybe not. But if you push yourself to create a variety of amazing content then I would bet that you will net at least one or two permanent, organic links out of the deal.

And if not, you are still learning something (hopefully). Your testing will still reveal the piece of content that was the most “liked.”

At this point, you could create 5 new articles for your website, all variations on that “winning” article, and try to make them more useful, remarkable, and link-worthy.

Rinse and repeat.

Is paid traffic part of the TKA curriculum? No it’s not. But this is one method of “social promotion” that does not rely on cheap or manufactured links. Instead, it relies on creating remarkably good content. If you create an article and drive 500 targeted visitors to it and you don’t get a decent response, the answer is not more traffic. The answer is design better content. The tactics keep changing (and always will), but the foundation of your promotional strategy and link building should be content-based, not “manufacture as many cheap links as possible.”

Paid Stumble traffic is just one example out of many. There are a million other tactics out there. While the individual tactics may change, consider using an overall strategy that is sustainable in the long run, one that draws in real world links based on worthy content.

For my own experiment, I will test several more articles over the next two weeks, then hammer the “winning article” with 500 visits. At that time I will report the results of that experiment. Stay tuned……

Time for a new blogging experiment.

There is a saying about success in business (I’m paraphrasing a bit here):

“One time lucky, second time–you might actually know what you are doing!”

I recently experienced some huge success with my supersite when I sold it off for a large sum of money. My next internet marketing experiment is going to determine whether I was lucky or not.

In order to duplicate my success I am converting a niche website that I own into a supersite. I’ll be doing this using TKA principles and methods that are taught in the core lessons, with a few advanced tips thrown in along the way.

I am not revealing the URL of this website experiment publicly, but I will post it later on in the forum (on the “inside” of The Keyword Academy). The fact is, this is not a “quick and dirty” kind of blogging experiment. The results will take several months to become apparent, but the potential payoff is enormous. Slow and steady wins the race. This is about building a sustainable business, not a quick money grab.

So this blogging experiment is to turn a niche site that currently earns less than $50/month into a full time earner.

Let’s start with content planning. My philosophy has always been to gear this towards long term organic link building.

I don’t like to sound like an A-list blogger, but the absolute core of this effort starts with outstanding content.

Take a single article and refine it until it is:

* Detailed and insightful.
* Original with unique ideas presented.
* Actually helpful to your core audience.
* Longer rather than shorter articles (I generally shoot for one to three thousand words).

Do all of that, and make a truly outstanding article.

Now, do it again. I would recommend that you slowly and deliberately build up about 15 such “ultra premium articles.”

What does your sidebar look like on your website? In my opinion, it should have almost nothing but links to articles like the one I just described. Your article titles should have serious “grab-ability” and make big promises with reader benefits.

Example: “Learn to Develop a Full Time Income Stream from Internet Marketing”
Example: “How to Create Amazing Content that Sells Itself and Gets Linked to Often”

But you can’t just make hollow promises, of course. The articles have to be really good. Deliver on your headline. If you can, over deliver on it.

Every person who visits your website will see nothing but premium resource posts and link bait style articles in the sidebar. The idea is to focus on gaining organic links, rather than building a readership. You don’t want fans, necessarily. You want link juice.

It is much more difficult to build up real, organic link juice than it is to build an audience or a readership. However, the payoff is much greater as well. If you plan your supersite correctly and focus on getting strong links, building a readership becomes a trivial afterthought later on.

For example, once you are averaging several thousand search engine visitors per day, you have quite a bit of flexibility as to what you will do with that traffic. You can monetize it aggressively, convert it into readers and subscribers, build a list with it, and so on.

But without the link juice and the recurring search engine traffic, your website will not have a source of fresh eyeballs on it. Without search traffic, even if you build a small readership, getting future traffic will remain a problem.

This is why you should develop your website around the idea that you want long term, organic links flowing in. If your content is not strong enough to do that, you should take a step back and refine your strategy:

1) Plan your supersite with premium content in mind, such that it can pull in long term links on its own.
2) Display that premium content prominently to all site visitors (probably in your sidebar). Focus on earning links.

Stay tuned for the next part of this blogging experiment, where I’ll dive into the promotional end of things.

Time for a new blogging experiment.

There is a saying about success in business (I’m paraphrasing a bit here):

“One time lucky, second time–you might actually know what you are doing!”

I recently experienced some huge success with my supersite when I sold it off for a large sum of money. My next internet marketing experiment is going to determine whether I was lucky or not.

In order to duplicate my success I am converting a niche website that I own into a supersite. I’ll be doing this using TKA principles and methods that are taught in the core lessons, with a few advanced tips thrown in along the way.

I am not revealing the URL of this website experiment publicly, but I will post it later on in the forum (on the “inside” of The Keyword Academy). The fact is, this is not a “quick and dirty” kind of blogging experiment. The results will take several months to become apparent, but the potential payoff is enormous. Slow and steady wins the race. This is about building a sustainable business, not a quick money grab.

So this blogging experiment is to turn a niche site that currently earns less than $50/month into a full time earner.

Let’s start with content planning. My philosophy has always been to gear this towards long term organic link building.

I don’t like to sound like an A-list blogger, but the absolute core of this effort starts with outstanding content.

Take a single article and refine it until it is:

* Detailed and insightful.
* Original with unique ideas presented.
* Actually helpful to your core audience.
* Longer rather than shorter articles (I generally shoot for one to three thousand words).

Do all of that, and make a truly outstanding article.

Now, do it again. I would recommend that you slowly and deliberately build up about 15 such “ultra premium articles.”

What does your sidebar look like on your website? In my opinion, it should have almost nothing but links to articles like the one I just described. Your article titles should have serious “grab-ability” and make big promises with reader benefits.

Example: “Learn to Develop a Full Time Income Stream from Internet Marketing”
Example: “How to Create Amazing Content that Sells Itself and Gets Linked to Often”

But you can’t just make hollow promises, of course. The articles have to be really good. Deliver on your headline. If you can, over deliver on it.

Every person who visits your website will see nothing but premium resource posts and link bait style articles in the sidebar. The idea is to focus on gaining organic links, rather than building a readership. You don’t want fans, necessarily. You want link juice.

It is much more difficult to build up real, organic link juice than it is to build an audience or a readership. However, the payoff is much greater as well. If you plan your supersite correctly and focus on getting strong links, building a readership becomes a trivial afterthought later on.

For example, once you are averaging several thousand search engine visitors per day, you have quite a bit of flexibility as to what you will do with that traffic. You can monetize it aggressively, convert it into readers and subscribers, build a list with it, and so on.

But without the link juice and the recurring search engine traffic, your website will not have a source of fresh eyeballs on it. Without search traffic, even if you build a small readership, getting future traffic will remain a problem.

This is why you should develop your website around the idea that you want long term, organic links flowing in. If your content is not strong enough to do that, you should take a step back and refine your strategy:

1) Plan your supersite with premium content in mind, such that it can pull in long term links on its own.
2) Display that premium content prominently to all site visitors (probably in your sidebar). Focus on earning links.

Stay tuned for the next part of this blogging experiment, where I’ll dive into the promotional end of things.

No, you absolutely do not.

The only thing stopping you from creating words out of thin air is that your fingers are not moving yet on the keyboard.

My best articles that I have published on the web are almost never what I would say where my most inspired articles.

You CAN force your brain to create on demand. This can be done using limitations, deadlines, and incentives.

For example, sit down at your computer and mandate:

“I cannot get up from this chair for any reason until I have produced my next 3 article titles, and published the articles that go with them on my websites.”

If you are interested in ever eating, sleeping, or using the bathroom again, then your brain will get to work very quickly at this point.

Part of the problem at times can be perfectionism. We want to write a truly awesome article, or we want it to be just perfect.

Don’t bother with that! Just start writing. Grab your keyword list and start cranking out material. If you do this every single day for a year straight, then guess what? Some of your stuff that you publish will be awesome. Some of it, not so much.

Give yourself permission to create content, and let it stand on its own. If you are knowledgeable about your topic then none of it should be too terrible.

The goal of course is always to maintain a certain level of quality with our websites, but that does not mean that everything that you publish has to feel like one of your best works. By definition, it never could.

Saying that you don’t want to write because “you are just not feeling creative” is a terrible excuse.

Creativity creates itself.

Creativity flows from action.

Start moving your fingers on the keyboard and content will come into existence. Don’t judge the quality of it until you have pounded the keys for 20 or 30 minutes. Don’t beat yourself up because you don’t feel the “flow” right now.

Creativity will come to those who take action. Move your fingers on the keyboard.

Stop judging your output so harshly and give yourself permission to start creating.

If you do not want to write, then blame it on laziness. Your brain will be creative if you tell it to be. Your brain will be creative if you sit down and start typing and impose some deadlines on yourself.

Do not fall into the trap of believing that your creativity is temporarily gone, so you cannot write anything today. You have mistaken that state of mind for laziness!

Now, go forth and create!

No, you absolutely do not.

The only thing stopping you from creating words out of thin air is that your fingers are not moving yet on the keyboard.

My best articles that I have published on the web are almost never what I would say where my most inspired articles.

You CAN force your brain to create on demand. This can be done using limitations, deadlines, and incentives.

For example, sit down at your computer and mandate:

“I cannot get up from this chair for any reason until I have produced my next 3 article titles, and published the articles that go with them on my websites.”

If you are interested in ever eating, sleeping, or using the bathroom again, then your brain will get to work very quickly at this point.

Part of the problem at times can be perfectionism. We want to write a truly awesome article, or we want it to be just perfect.

Don’t bother with that! Just start writing. Grab your keyword list and start cranking out material. If you do this every single day for a year straight, then guess what? Some of your stuff that you publish will be awesome. Some of it, not so much.

Give yourself permission to create content, and let it stand on its own. If you are knowledgeable about your topic then none of it should be too terrible.

The goal of course is always to maintain a certain level of quality with our websites, but that does not mean that everything that you publish has to feel like one of your best works. By definition, it never could.

Saying that you don’t want to write because “you are just not feeling creative” is a terrible excuse.

Creativity creates itself.

Creativity flows from action.

Start moving your fingers on the keyboard and content will come into existence. Don’t judge the quality of it until you have pounded the keys for 20 or 30 minutes. Don’t beat yourself up because you don’t feel the “flow” right now.

Creativity will come to those who take action. Move your fingers on the keyboard.

Stop judging your output so harshly and give yourself permission to start creating.

If you do not want to write, then blame it on laziness. Your brain will be creative if you tell it to be. Your brain will be creative if you sit down and start typing and impose some deadlines on yourself.

Do not fall into the trap of believing that your creativity is temporarily gone, so you cannot write anything today. You have mistaken that state of mind for laziness!

Now, go forth and create!

By Philia, Social Media Springboard

From time to time, I’m asked about how it is that I’m able to manage my Internet marketing business while holding down a full time job and raising a family. Some time ago, I addressed this question in the TKA private forum. I’ve received feedback from several members about how that post was quite helpful to them so I thought that it would be worthwhile to revisit the matter today.

It’s my hope that this post will help some of you who may be struggling to find the time to spend growing your online businesses, develop work habits that will help you achieve your goals.

Regardless of Who You Are, Everyone Faces Time Management Challenges

One thing that many of us struggle with is finding the time to sit down at our computers and write articles or promote our websites on a consistent basis. Whether you have a lot of free time or you have very little, the chances are high that you could make better use of your time if you employ a couple of strategies that I’ll talk about today.

The two main issues that I’ll be writing about today are having good work flow systems in place and developing the self-discipline to manage your time effectively.

The Importance of Developing Good Work Flow Systems

Without good systems in place, I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near the work accomplished that I do. The tasks that many of us here at The Keyword Academy do are very similar. We do keyword research, we build websites, we write content for these websites, and we promote them through either link building or other website promotion strategies.

While the tasks are the same, some members are able to perform these tasks on a much larger scale than others. Oftentimes, it’s even the people who have less time to actually sit down at the computer who get more work accomplished.

For me, the reason I’m able to produce a massive amount of content with limited time is because I have developed efficient systems that help me to make the best use of my limited time. Many of us feel like we are working as efficiently as possible but you would be surprised how taking a good hard look at your workflow can make you even more efficient.

Because much of what we do tends to be quite repetitive, anything we can do to streamline our daily workflow will result in us being able to get more done in the same amount of time.

What I like to do is make a flow chart that shows every step that goes into performing a certain task. Then I ask myself two questions. The first is, “are all of these steps really necessary?” and the second is, “how can I perform each of these steps faster with less effort?”

Eliminate Low Value Tasks and Focus On High Value Tasks

When I first got started in this business, I spent a lot of time in front of my computer doing what I considered to be working. Now that I’ve been at this a while, I realize that most of my time was being spent on low value tasks that simply occupied my time and made me feel like I was working hard.

There’s no question that I was putting the time in but I hadn’t yet learned the importance of identifying low value tasks and eliminating them out of my daily workflow.

Let me give you an example of what my days were like back then.

• The first thing I would do was check my many email accounts and respond to any emails that I thought I needed to respond to.
• Then I would go to the forums to see if anyone had replied to any of my posts and find out what the latest forum chatter was.
• Then I would pop in at a number of other MMO blogs and forums that I was in the habit of visiting each day.
• Lastly, I would spend whatever time I had remaining to write some articles for my websites as well as some articles to use for backlinking.

One day when I was feeling really frustrated because I wasn’t getting enough work done, I took a much closer look at my work patterns and asked myself some tough questions. I was putting a lot of hours in but I rarely had much to show for my time. You might say that I was lying to myself by convincing myself that I was actually working when, in reality, all I was doing was wasting time.

What I was actually doing was spending 50% or more of my efforts on tasks that wouldn’t have any impact on the growth of my business whatsoever. This is when I first sat down and analyzed my work habits to identify the low value tasks that could be culled out of my daily workflow.

After I made the list, I was blown away when I realized how inefficient I was with my time. Here are some examples of tasks that I thought were so important at the time.

• Low value task: I was keeping detailed spreadsheets to record every link that I had ever built along with what I considered to be important details about each link. Solution – After several months of doing this, I had accumulated thousands of entries in my spreadsheet but I realized that not once had I ever needed that data. I immediately cut this low value task out of my workflow and I’ve never looked back.
• Low value task: My systems were very linear and inefficient. I would usually write an article. Then I would paste the article into Post Runner, insert the links, record information about my links, and then I would write another article. Solution – By embracing the power that comes from working in batches, I became much more efficient with my time. The amount of content I was able to produce as well as the number of backlinks I was creating went through the roof!
• Low value task: When I actually found time to work, I often wasted a lot of it by thinking about what it was that I would actually do that day. It wasn’t uncommon for me to run out of time before I actually got any productive work done. Solution – I learned the value of planning my work out far in advance. Once every couple of weeks, I sit down for a planning session and write down what I want to accomplish in the next two weeks. Then I make a list of tasks that I’ll need to get done if I’m going to be able to complete everything on my list. Whenever I have a day off from my 9-5 job or I finish cooking dinner and I have some free time, I don’t have to waste any time wondering what I should be doing to grow my business. I just grab my list, pick the next item on it, and get to work.

Developing Discipline Is Hard but It’s Worthwhile

Once you’ve managed to trim the fat from your workflow and you have outlined a good plan of attack, the hard part begins. The hard part is developing the self-discipline that is needed to take action and complete your plan.

This can be quite difficult and it’s very easy to get off track and end up blowing an entire day. It’s just so tempting to pop into Google Analytics to see what your traffic is looking like. It’s very tempting to pay a visit to the forums to see what’s new and exciting to talk about. It’s quite tempting to fall into the trap of constantly checking your AdSense earnings or affiliate commissions. All of these things are low value tasks that can burn up what limited time you might have.

The way I’ve been able to develop the discipline that I’ve needed to grow my business to the point that it is at today is to constantly ask myself a couple of questions.

• Is the task that I’m doing right now going to help me accomplish my two week goal?
• Is the task that I’m doing right now going to result in the growth of my business?

Whenever my answer to either question is no, I’m reminded to stop doing what I’m doing and get back to working my plan.

In summary, I encourage you all to do three things:

• Plan your work out at least two weeks in advance.
• Take a close look at the things you are doing when you sit down to work and cut as many of the low value tasks as you can out of your workflow.
• Discipline yourself to stick to your plan and don’t let things like sharing your wisdom with everyone about the latest controversial topic in the forum get you off track.

Hopefully you found this article helpful in some way. If you did, the next step is to take action and implement the strategies that I’ve outlined for you today. Don’t cheat yourself out of the success that you are working so hard to achieve by getting stuck in the same unproductive habits that are holding you back.

Break the bad habits that are limiting you and prepare yourself to reap the rewards!

————————-

About the Author

If you would like learn more about promoting your websites via social media websites, visit socialmediaspringboard.com, where you’ll find tips from Philia on implementing social media marketing strategies. You’ll also find free tools such as free buttons, clip art, and stock photos. Philia also offers websites that are pre-made in WordPress that are available to purchase for those of you who are eager to get started making money online but don’t currently have the time or skills to build a website.

Someone within the Keyword Academy once said that they were most comfortable with a posting schedule of putting up two new articles per week on their website.

They wanted to know if they could get to $1,000/month in online income with this schedule.

My opinion is that you would have to be very lucky and talented to build an income like that with such low volume, and you would somehow have to:

1) Get incredibly lucky with your topic selection.

2) Publish extremely valuable content that spreads in a viral fashion.

3) Have a unique and highly efficient form of monetization that goes beyond basic CPC ads and affiliate sale. 

If you think about those 3 points and really take a long hard look at them you will realize that betting on any one of them is not realistic for most newcomers.  This is because:

* The web is a fairly efficient market and it becomes more so every day as more and more internet marketers flood the profitable niches.  So getting lucky with topic selection becomes less and less likely with each passing day as the web becomes more and more saturated.

* Writing viral content is certainly possible but can be  a bit like catching lightning in a bottle.  This is especially true if you are just starting out and do not have a regular audience yet to help spread the content for you.

* Monetizing more efficiently than Google means that you have to move up in the chain as far as services or products.  Rather than referring people through an ad based on a topic you want to somehow sell them the solution directly.  This sounds easy in theory but you will likely need to spend more time and energy refining your product or service than what you spend on your website.  Most internet marketers do not approach their business like this (from the outside-in) and are not in a position to move up the monetization chain.  In other words, if you have a website about credit and loans, are you in a position to start making actual loans to your site visitors?  Probably not.

So what is the solution?

Ignore these potential “shortcuts” that will likely not work out for you anyway and just leave you discouraged.

The Keyword Academy offers a long, stable, and safer path to a sustainable online income through the creation of an authority website.

Writing 2 articles per week probably will not get you to your income goals.  Try writing 2 or 3 per day while building an amazing website.

Don’t count on a lucky shortcut.  Instead, use the volume + quality approach to create a huge website that the search engines would be foolish to ignore.

Here is a quick tip that sounds like it comes from the A-list blogging camp, but it actually works great for any website that is trying to accrue real links over time.

Create a free eBook and feature it in the sidebar of your website.  Doing so had 2 immediate and significant benefits:

1) Legitimizes your site in the eyes of the search engines as being more useful and less spammy.

2) Has the potential to bring in real organic links (the kind that you cannot manufacture and are therefore quite valuable).

Now I can hear your protest in advance: “But I don’t want to spend my time creating an eBook!  I would rather crank out more content and build links, because that is more profitable!”

Your argument does not wash in the long run.  If you want to build a successful website in the long run then you should probably entertain the idea that you are going to need to have some variety.  Just having 100 articles on your site that are all exactly 400 words is not enough.  Getting a free eBook in your sidebar is another step toward having a “real” website.

Now then, how can you create a free eBook that has real value for the visitors, without wasting a ton of time doing so?

Let me break the process down for you:

Come up with a content plan for your website that includes your next, say, 20 articles.  If you are working from a keyword list to create your content, then carefully select the keywords that would create articles that might become chapters in a book about your topic.

For example, say that your topic is “auto restoration.”  So you might go through your keyword list and come up with article titles like:

“An Introduction to Classic Auto Restoration in Your Own Garage”

“What Tools are Critical for Restoring, Polishing, and Maintaining Classic Automobiles”

“Buying and Selling Classic Restored Cars for Fun and Profit”

And so on.  Note that each of those topics could easily be a chapter in a book, as well.  One is an introduction, one is about maintenance, and one is about buying and selling.

So the idea is that you outline your eBook, then break it down into chapters, then write each chapter and publish it as a post on your website.

You might consider the idea of holding back at least one or two chapters that you do NOT publish on your site, so that you have some exclusive content to package up into your free eBook.

After you have written all of your posts and published them on your site, simply copy and paste them into an eBook.  You can find free tools to create eBooks using Google (OpenOffice is free and creates a PDF).  You can also search online for ways to generate free cover graphics.

So that’s it:

* Outline your eBook into chapters.

* Write each chapter as a post and publish it on your site.

* Repackage all the chapters into an eBook and give it away for free in your sidebar.  Simple linkbait made easy, with no wasted effort in the process!