The theory and reality of remote blogs

Remote blogs aren’t worth it for most people.

Remote blogs are blogs hosted by another company for free – to you at least. Most are advertiser-revenue-driven.

The majority of people really just want to vent and play around with whatever they are interested in at the moment. This is why Facebook has taken off so well. Hobby-minded people love it.

Professionals who want to make a living online are interested in getting the top spots of the SERPs because that is a simple way to get traffic. 80-90% of the SE traffic from Google comes from the first and second pages.

So the use of setting up remote blogs is similar to article directories – backlinks and potential traffic for your main site (which needs to be an SEO-optimized CMS.)

However, out of the minority who would go this route, few want to have to log in and out of these remote blogs and keep them current pm a regular basis in order to keep them all on top of the rankings.

It means you have to join the elite few who can produce tons of content every week. The more blogs you maintain, the more content you have to produce.

The workaround is possibly to treat them as article directories and spin your single post into several.

Now, when you have multiple blogs on the same host, you have to ensure you don’t have duplicate content on that server. So you have to be able to “theme” each blog on that server to have it’s own material. (Which is fine if you are pushing several product lines.)

Otherwise, you can post the same stuff on several different blogs, but don’t expect anything but “supplementary result” vacuum. And no traffic, but you might get some incoming links.

Spinning your content is the only way to do this. And you will have to figure out how to also get your content posted to all these blogs.

There are workarounds for this as well, but I’ve given enough clues already in this blog post. As well you have security issues on all these blogs just to avoid them looking like spam blogs (splogs).

I do have to keep an eye out for the blackhats (who already spam my comment boxes already.)

Care and Feeding of Social Media: a remote blog-outpost primer

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeco/

Sure, social media dominates Google - by their choice. Because social media already has been "vetted" by others and so is popular. And Google simply follows things that are popular and helps others find them.

Homework for our first lesson is to get a copy of "Bending the Web" from Jack Humphrey. While you're out there searching, find a copy of his "60 day plan" in PDF format so you get an even broader clue about what he's talking about.

Essentially, the point is to get your content on as many other sites as possible for any given keyword.

Now, this video (which I did a year ago - my how Internet time flies) shows you a simple route to do this:



But your mileage may vary. For this example, I didn't take some hot keyword with a lot of competition or even figured out how to push a particular product with it. The general idea is there, though - write your content once, publish it many ways as fast as you can. And make sure it all links with the same keyword to the site you are promoting.


Good Hunting!

Use of remote blogs to subvert someone's keyword ownership

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sookie/

The only thing missing in that headline is "dominate".
(But the photo's worth a thousand links...)

Unlikely theory and potential Black Hat SEO use - post removed...

Using Google bookmarks to track your social outposts

(At the outset, I have to apologize for the housekeeping over at robertworstell.com - going through some changes as I optimize the site for better bandwidth consumption. And generally evolve it.)

But the point I wanted to bring up tonight is using that Google Toolbar with it's bookmark function to track your own social outposts.

Social outposts is a term coined (more or less) by Chris Brogan. Essentially, the social sites you visit and leave your profile at are advance scouting parties for your content-production-line.

Trick is that you can sign up for stuff and then forget where you'd been a month later. So these various places are just sitting out there - while you've been moving on and creating all sorts of content everywhere else.

. . . .

The trick is to be valuable with your content - and release it in valuable formats.

Using your Google Toolbar with it's bookmarking simplicity looks to be a key tool to use.

Good Hunting!

Wordpress Optimization: speed up or get out of the way

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ramsesoriginal/

(While this is another one of these technical posts, I'm posting my notes as I run into getting a web business operating online - so you can learn from my efforts and mistakes.)

Ran into this when running Wordpress MU on a site (setting up subdomain mini-sites) and finding all about bandwidth - by running out in the first week of a new month. And then again, the second week. Got it bumped up twice, but it took me off my regular game of posting content over into figuring out how to optimize a site for fast loading. (And this was with just two mini-sites running...)

Luckily, the Internet is full of answers. Lots of surfing with different sites (sorry I can't link to you all) gave me a few simple rules:

• Smaller is faster.
• Don't call up more than you want to chew.
• No pix, no slows.

Smaller is faster.
Essentially, the static html page, text only, is the fastest loading page. The less content, the faster it loads. Kinda like security - if nothing gets through, then nothing can get leaked.

Obviously, since we like nice graphics and nice-looking text, and like to talk to each other - the above statements aren't workable.

Next up from that - CSS-styled pages which look nice but don't take a lot of time to load - meaning the server doesn't have to work at bringing these up. Means you want to compress all the line-breaks and white space out of these CSS pages so that they are more machine-friendly (and nearly impossible to read or edit.)

Don't call up more than you can chew.
Finish off your CSS loading before you call any Javascript - and keep those calls to a minimum. Again, ideally your CSS would be a single document, but the reality is that you have different style sheets for different aspects of the site - human editing benefits, mostly (although some would argue with me on that).

Javascript should load last so the page is there to be read, even if other stuff is coming in the background.

Enter database calls. Same deal. The more you call to your database, the slower the page is to load, and also you are going to use up more bandwidth. So your database has to be optimized internally so that it finds the data quickly and efficiently. Extra tables and entries are removed, which keep the files small and quickly accessed.

No pix, no slows.
Minimalist designs tend to be faster, because a single graphic can be bigger than the entire text on the rest of the page. The more graphics and icons you have on a page, the slower it's going to load.

Your graphics - if you have to have them - should be compressed as much as possible without degrading their quality. (And a two-color GIF still rules.) However, you can do a lot with colors in CSS, so don't think you're limited to a monochrome scene to get a fast-loading page.

While people like pictures on their sites - think these over carefully before you drop a bunch of stuff in there to make it look "pretty".

- - - -
Links:
http://wordpressgarage.com/tips/38-ways-to-optimize-and-speed-up-your-wordpress-blog/
http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/wiki/css-compress
http://www.boydcreative.net/blogging/10-ways-to-optimize-wordpress-for-more-traffic/
http://www.johntp.com/2007/10/24/5-ways-to-increase-the-loading-speed-of-a-wordpress-blog/

- - - -
Tricks and Recommendations:

1. Host your images on another site or a subdomain - this way they load in parallel to your text body.
2. Host your feeds on Feedburner - doesn't speed up your page loads, but does preserve your bandwidth.
3. Don't use an ecommerce plug-in on your WordPress install - host these externally as well. Scripts like ZenCart are amazingly fast as they are designed to specifically deal with ecommerce. WordPress is designed around blogging and ease of use. Make your external ecommerce script do that heavy lifting. (The ecommerce plug-in I used to use had all sorts of javascript calls - when I finally got under the hood to look at it. Now I'm looking at a simple PayPal button to do everything I want - but the jury is still out on that...)
4. Always, always refine by function - actual use - rather than bells and whistles. Practically, leave entertainment on entertainment sites and then link or embed them. Let them pay the bandwidth and give you a sitelink as well.
5. Skip ads, unless they are text links. a) People continue to look at fewer and fewer ads. b) Most are graphic heavy or javascript "endowed". c) Content pre-sells best - then link to the page which will give you PPC or affiliate commissions. (Adsense is still notoriously poor-paying.)

Bottom line:
Serve optimized text only from your server, then call to other hosts for the extras. Sounds austere - but if you keep these in mind with your designs, you won't have the big problems later when you have to find out how to make your site's bandwidth footprint much smaller out of necessity. (And I've already had a domain kicked off one host for violating their *ahem* terms of aggrement - you get what you pay for.)

Good Luck - and Good Surfing!

Small Business Marketing Insight Tip #9 - Remote Blog Outposts

A short FAQ about the care and feeding of remote blogs.

What are remote blogs and why?

When you use an IR keyboard and large screen TV so you can blog from your bed - remotely... (grin)

Have fun - don't take social media engineering too seriously... Some of these theories just don't work in practice.

Auto-blogging - care of wordpress

How to get other people to write your post pages - without server strain.

After being shut out of my hosting for a domain (because cheap hosting is cheap hosting) when my WordPress installation twice bogged their server, I've become more careful.

The idea hit me (and their are several good plugins for this) is to use this blog as an aggregator, so that it goes:

1. RSS feed is collected,
2. Is brought to blog
3. converted to posts
4. new RSS feed created

And then I thought - no, that would make this server have to work, with cron jobs and whatnot - the database work on top of that might be too much and I'd be off my new server (same cheap webhost) for good.

But, as the mind churns, I then thought that I could get Google to do my work for me. Google Alerts sends you email and WordPress allows you to post by email (as does Blogger), so:

1. Google Alert scours and finds data from various posts.
2. Sends email to blog
3. Blog converts these to posts.
4. New RSS feed created from the aggregate.

Of course this needs testing.

But think of the applications. Create a free blogger host and then have Google Alerts populate it with posts. You can then collect these posts' RSS feed and funnel this to Friendfeed or Google Reader as an aggregator, by type, author, subject - whatever you feel you need to organize the data.

Needs a test. But should be doable.

Sub text of this is that for a regular blog, you will build up posts and so content. If these then post directly to categories and not your front page, and if you also have Google sitemaps installed, it becomes an auto-content generator. Probably won't ever rank high on SEO, but on the other hand, it might at least send your links some link love.

Best reason is to have computers do your aggregating and digesting for you. Especially if you can get free blog platforms to do this. Have to try this out with some older blogs... nice way to revive them.

Online Profits: Make money the short, simple way...

(photo credit: Sense Toys)

The short, simple way to making money online - but don't say it was easy finding it...

Bear with me here, because this will probably be refined on the fly.

Right now, this is the probable sequence to getting started in making money online:

1. This assumes you have an Internet connection you can use.
   
2. Get a PayPal account and link it to your bank account.
3. Find or make something that you know helps people improve their lives.
   
4. Get a domain name - something you think people can remember easily, preferably a ".com" ending.
5. Get some web hosting with cPanel.
   
6. Transfer your domain name to that webhost.
   
7. Set up a WordPress blog at root (/public_html). Install the minimal plug-ins to keep it safe. (You'll be tweeking it later, right now, let's just get it running.)
   
8. Set up OSCommerce in a subdirectory to that blog.
   
9. Get these linked with Google Analytics, and Quantcast.com
   
10. Get your product listed that ecommerce engine. (Yeah, I know out of the box OSC's not something to rave about, but again - you'll be tweaking it later.)
11. Start blogging useful stuff about your product. Like a review, or a guide, or "10 things you didn't know about..."
12. Get out into the social media world and find out what people are saying about the problem you have that solution for. Help them out without mentioning (except subtly) that you have the solution. Just open-handed help. Leave your easy-to-remember domain name everywhere you comment (as part of the sign-up, not ever "Visit my site: ______" which never works.)
    
13. Make sure that all your social profiles are listed at your domain name, so everyone can find everywhere else you visit.
14. Keep blogging, keep helping people out - get yourself known for being a trusted authority for that particular solution.
15. Check your Analytics to see who is coming where and how. Check quantcast.com to find out everything about them.
    
16. Now tweak your site to make it easier for people to find your solution. Make it look nicer while you're at it.
17. Go back to blogging and helping people with your comments.
    
18. Check your analytics once a week, tweak, rinse, repeat. (Your mileage may vary.)
    

There's the simplicity of making money online through social marketing. Oh, there's a lot of great alternative approaches to this. But this is the simplest I've been able to boil it down to so far.

And, yes, you could do this with free sites - host your products on Lulu or CafePress - or just sell affiliate products through ClickBank or Commission Junction. In that case, you could use a free blog (like Blogger) and a computer at the local library. (This has been named "Bum Marketing" - as even a homeless person could do it. --Just have the commission checks sent to the library while you're at it...)

But the analytics for that are trickier, and people respect a real domain name - plus you'll be able to expand it.

- - - -

Anyone have a simpler way than the two above?

Getting started in Online Marketing - the easy way

(photo credit: Massety.com)

How to get started in Online eCommerce - the easy way.

It's taken me some time to get my tail to follow my lead. I have been so extensively researching how things work, that I haven't taken the time to make them work for me. Essentially, I never set up my own backend to work.

Let me tell you the basics of how to get started (and let you get on with it).

1. Get some good hosting with cPanel. This is the control panel for your site. Don't accept any hosting that doesn't have it.
2. Buy a domain name cheaply from a domain-name provider. Don't buy this through your webhost, as it may not belong to you if you decide to move. Transfer this domain name over to your webhost.
3. Log into your webhost and open up cPanel (usually http://yourdomainname.com/cpanel).
4. Go down into Fantastico.
5. Install a WordPress blog.
6. Download and install wp-e-commerce plug-in for WordPress.
7. Configure this and populate it with salable products - either digital downloads or drop-shipped items.

At that point, you're set to go. Really. That simple.

Sure, there's tons of stuff to apply to your new site about promotion and marketing and all that sort of stuff. You will be doing this from here on out.

But first, you get some valuable products for sale and set these up so you can sell them. Then you promote.

Too simple.

Life is actually that way, you know...

Buyers, Marketing, Social Media - and the Real World

There's buyers, marketing, social media - and then there's the real world...

If you've been following my learning curve over the past months/years, you'd have seen a constant attempt to narrow down to successful promotion/sales/marketing actions. This lead me to find out about buyers - through eBay, arguably still the biggest marketplace online.

eBay works if you are a discount retailer or a collectible sales outlet. I got in just as they lowered the boom on digital delivery and so for better or worse, dropped into a low-end scene for ebook profits. I've made some sales - and that's kept me going. But not enough to date to make a living at it, which was my goal.

The training I paid for was pretty sad - even though it was a four-digit sum. (Before the decimal point.) And now, my credit cards are licking their lips as they know they have me... they think.

I've since gone through three or four more trainings - and am working on a fifth (actually an earlier version of two of these). What I've found confirms what I started out with.

You want to attract buyers and keep them happy.

(Traditional) marketing to social media sucks.

And studying Charles Heflin, among others, confirms this. Pitifully poor ROI.

But realistically, marketing is still marketing. You have to promote like a banshee mountain wind in winter to get people to know you exist. At least that's what they tell us. Because this is based on the broadcast version, with only 2-3% of viewers taking the bait after 5-7 repetitions.

Because it's "broadcast" based and not a personal conversation.

Bloggers who really connect with their clientele will have as much as 17-25% conversion on any offer. I just listened tonight to a blogger podcast, who is now making $4500 a month from her ebook and affiliate sales through her blog. Cute.

What did she do? Got into real conversations with her readers and asked their opinions - and then commented back on their comments - a real discussion.

That's what Madison Avenue and the "great Jack Humphrey" are missing overall. It isn't getting a lot of traffic to your site - but having real and consistent live conversations with your visitors (at least, until the traffic gets so bad you can't keep up with individuals - other than the truly outstanding ones that even make you pause...)

And that's the route to take.

Sure, I'll keep selling on eBay, but this isn't really good for ebooks, since the demand is not there, and eBay itself is based on cut-rate prices - so hardback books don't sell for as much as it takes to print them on demand. To make a living, you'd have to sell some 200 CD's a week at about $5 profit. You have to sell big retail items on a weekly basis to get that real sweet spot of large profits.

The new target is now back to ecommerce and online sales.

I'll ramp up eBay with what I can scrounge up of suppliers and their drop-ship products.

And that will probably start paying its way pretty well. It's not where my heart is at, though.

The keystrategic and tactical point is to build up some following on my blog - which will be monetized with links that pay - ebooks and affiliate sales, like the girl above. Simple.

And, yes, to begin with, I'll be using Jack Humphrey's (and Howie Schwartz') methods to get some name recognition. But I'm not doing it to become "an authority" - but to really find out what people are trying to solve in their lives and help them with that.

All that work I did years ago with "Go Thunk Yourself" really points to a universal solvent which can sort out and resolve any human problem. Any human problem.

The trick is to "go Archimedes" and find a place to stand, then get a long enough lever - and move the world.

Feel that? It just shifted slightly.

Think it's possible?

Let me know...

Buzz your own site - with Cutts' blessing

"Buzz" your own site - with Matt Cutt's blessing...

One thing I learned from Jack Humphrey is to get a lot of microblogs pointing to your site. He calls this "buzzing". I thought this was a bit objectionable until I read the below. In short, it's fine with Matt.

Google's Cutts: Good directions drive traffic to your website - USATODAY.com:
"4. Create a blog and post often.

Cutts says blogging is a great way to add links and start a conversation with customers and friends. It will cost you only time: Google's Blogger, WordPress and others offer free blogging tools. With a blog, you can link back to your site and offer links to others. It's also a great way to start building content, Cutts says."

SEOmoz | Identifying the Linkerati

This nice post from way back in March 06, lays out some important clues as to who will be/is running and "guiding" our social media (more like trying to head cats - anyone who's worked with livestock knows that they lead better than they "herd".)

I don't hold this to be a sacrosanct list, nor are the importances the same they were in '06 - but this is a starting/jumping off point...

Oftentimes, when I describe the concept of linkbait to clients, it's critical to also describe those folks who are the targets of linkbait - I'll call them the "Linkerati". Let's explore the culture of these most valued of web-dwelling souls:
 * Bloggers - probably the most targetable and directly influenced folks, bloggers are an excellent source of traffic, links and the spread of your content's idea virus.
_ * Forum posters - although the links these folks put up don't often result in great search engine value, the traffic can be positive and the possibility that other likely linkers will come through to visit is also high.
_ * Web News Writers - a rare species, but exceptionally valuable, these folks control the news outlets on the web, including places like C|Net, Wired News, Yahoo! & MSN's online news portals, etc.
_ * Content Creators - These folks are building or beefing up websites and are seeking valuable resources to link out to. Most frequently, you'll find them linking to the sites they find valuable in the top 5-10 results at the search engines (another reason why "the rich get richer")
 _ * Resource Editors - Another rare breed, these folks work at government institutions, no-profit organizations and educational establishments and are looking to add content to their pages or directories.
_ * Social Taggers - These folks don't provide direct links, but if they and their friends at Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit & Furl love you, you're in for a real treat - thousands of visitors and the opportunity to be in front of hundreds of link-hungry bloggers.
_ * Viral Connectors - The viral crowd doesn't directly link to you, but by sending out a blast e-mail, posting to an IRC channel or telling their friends about your site over dinner, they're spreading the word. Some of them can be very powerful, and they're not demographically distinct - a well-connected grandmother may know people in the media, executives of businesses and other highly placed and valuable minds.
* Journalists - Online or offline creators of "news" content, these influencers are among the most valuable of all the linkerati. A reporter for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or the Seattle Weekly all have reach and ability to create links to your site, although it's often in a second-hand fashion (as some sites don't directly link out, but many bloggers "pick up" news items and do).

Any others I'm forgetting about?

SEOmoz | Identifying the Linkerati

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