The One Year Millionaire

When you think about any major project that lies ahead of you, you know that there will be some trial & error. While you wish that everything will go smoothly, the chances are against you will most likely make a few mistakes that can be taken as learning opportunities. This issue will focus on making sure that those mistakes aren’t the same ones that other marketers have been facing all along! Here is a list of common internet marketing mistakes to avoid:

• Not Optimizing your Web Site for Search Engines.
  If you don’t plan to optimize your site for the search engines and don’t think about the little things that will ultimately help you rank higher then you might as well abandon the idea of getting traffic from search engines! A few easy simple you things you can do are make sure that your title has keywords and is considered to be SEO friendly, your URLs on your web site are static rather than dynamic, and your content is written well with keywords on your topic. Search Engine don’t like dynamic URLs and if you use wordpress for blogging purposes then static URLs are just a couple of easy clicks away! All you need to do is go to OPTIONS > PERMALINKS and follow the simple instructions to set your URL to more be more SEO aware!
• Not Updating your Content frequently.
  If people notice that your content is not updating often then they will have every reason not to return to your web site! They aren’t expecting you to pump out a new article every twenty minutes, but writing an article every day or every other day is not the most difficult thing in the world! If you update your content regularly then you will learn to expect returning visitors. Try to write 3-4 articles per week and take a break occasionally to maximize your productivity!
• Not Registering your Own Domain Name.
  I think that this is just one of those things that hurt a lot of people when they start doing internet marketing. Everyone wants to start from step 1 and skip to step 50. They don’t want to put in the money, time and effort but they want to make money online! If you take the time to register a domain for as little as $6-7 then already your image as a webmaster and internet marketer has been boosted tenfold!
• Not Writing for your Readers First.
  I spoke on this in detail a couple of issues back. One of the biggest mistakes that I noticed on a lot of blogs and niche sites is the fact that they almost lack readability because they are so concentrated on keywords either to try and climb in the serps (Search Engine Results Page) or they are trying to display specific google adsense ads. Write for your readers before you consider anything else and you will see traffic and money follow soon enough!
• Not Cloaking your Affiliate Links.
  If people know that you are making money through an affiliate link then the chances of them clicking it have went down already. If you have you web site covered and plastered with more affiliate links than content then you need to start re-evaluating what you are doing on the internet. Are you trying to sell and make money? or are you trying to scare away potential buyers? Cloak your links and you will see a definite increase in your CTR (Click Through Rate).
• Not Appearing to be an Authority.
  If I give you the impression that I know what I am talking about then you are going to put much more trust in me than if I were to tell you that I am doing nothing but guess work! No matter what your niche is, you have to appear to be an authority on the subject. If you have a web site about flowers and gardening then you have to be an expert full-seasoned gardener who grows plants as a hobby and as a profession! If you have a web site about a sport then you have to know the sport inside out; or  at least make it seem like you do! Readers will give you that much more credibility if they believe that you know what you’re talking about.
• Not Following Through With your Actions.
  If you say you are going to do something, then do it! This can be in any form whether it is working on writing new content or building backlinks to increase your Page Rank. If you take action you have  a fifty percent chance of success, but if you don’t then you have a zero percent chance! Which one would you choose?

If you take a careful look at the list above it is all pretty straight forward stuff that is almost common sense to anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in this business. If you want to make money online then you are obviously going to face obstacles, but don’t fall victim to the same ones over and over again. Remember to research your competition and learn from their mistakes as well!

In the next issue of the ‘ONE YEAR MILLIONAIRE‘ I am going to talk about the importance of cloaking links!

If you take a long and hard look around the internet you will see that most of the people who are successful are those with a lot of experience in their field or someone who just got extremely lucky by producing a floating light bulb at the right place and at the right time. If you want to succeed in this business then you are going to need some internet marketing experience, but who says that you need to learn from your own mistakes, when you can just learn from the mistakes of others? (more…)

Welcome to the 60th issue of the ‘ONE YEAR MILLIONAIRE‘. Today I am going to be talking about how you can turn your blog into a stage for your affiliate marketing performance, but before you read any further into this issue you should read issue 14 : Everything you need to know about Affiliate Marketing!

As you may have noticed, there are a plenty of websites that do not provide theirs readers with any real information; but at the same time, hope to make money from them through advertising or affiliate marketing. That is probably one of the biggest mistakes you can make if you are looking to start making money online! You can’t expect to make money without giving anything in return. I am sure that you will get lucky with an occasional sales commission, but you will not generate anywhere near the amount of sales that you would by creating a website with a great reputation that can offer its readers a reason to return often! (more…)

Hey everyone and welcome back to the ‘ONE YEAR MILLIONAIRE‘! If you haven’t noticed the last couple of issues I have been concentrating a little bit on how you can use a blog to rake in some extra cash! The reason I am talking a lot about this subject is that it could really be an easy way to make a nice income without too much work. Now a lot of people would say that blogging is a lot of work but for me and a lot of others out there it is much better than any job I can think of.

If you want to create a successful blog, rank highly and receive a great amount of traffic then signing up at Technorati.com is a must! What is Technorati? Technorati is a social bookmarking website for bloggers that keeps surfers on the internet aware of the latest news on all the latest topics! One of the greatest things about Technorati is that they are an authority in the blogosphere that systematically ranks blogs. You could generally see where your blog stands by comparing it to others.

Technorati “Currently tracks 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.”

As a starting point a blog will have a Technorati authority of 0… with every links back to your blog from another blog that is registered on Technorati that authority will go up by 1. With every added link from a unique registered blog your own blog will go up in the ranks and the blog with the highest Technorati authority will be ranked as the #1 blog!

Here are 3 reasons that I think you should sign up your blog to Technorati:

1. Exposure
   It is without a doubt that your blog appearing within the Technorati ranks will bring more exposure to your blog. One of the highlights of Technorati is that since it is an authority on blogging a lot of online professionals and webmasters know about it. Remember that when more webmasters and bloggers know about your website there is always a higher chance of someone stumbling on to your page and linking to it! Not only can this create many great relevant backlinks but it could also expose you to a hefty amount of free traffic!
2. Stats
   One of the reasons I personally use Technorati is to see where my blog stacks up against some of my niche’s blog heavyweights. You can easily look up other blogs and see where you stand amongst them. I think that Technorati rank is a great way to build a blog’s reputation. There are definitely webmasters who may not care much for Technorati and think it doesn’t make a difference to your blog’s success but I say that it can only increase your chances and will never work against you.
3. Research
   If you are trying to build backlinks to your website then you can use Technorati! Whenever you are working on a website you must always remember to research what kind of things your main competitors are doing so you can follow and eventually surpass them if you work hard enough. With Technorati you can easily see where a lot of popular blogs have received backlinks from and you can also see the ‘anchor text‘ attached to those links. The anchor text is one of those things that can ultimately affect SEO in a positive or negative way… you will always want to use relevant keywords to ensure a good solid link! Checking out where your competition gets their links is great because you can do the same once you have the information!

New blogs are created every single day, but not all of them will see past 6 months! A blog that can last and continually pump out great content is one that will succeed! Why not let Technorati hold your hand to cross the street? There are so many advantages!

In the next issue of the ‘ONE YEAR MILLIONAIRE‘ I am going to re-visit affiliate marketing and expand on how you can use a blog to make nice affiliate commissions!

Hey Everyone… We are now at issue 58 of the ‘ONE YEAR MILLIONAIRE‘ and so far we have accumulated a great deal of great information regarding internet marketing and making money online. If this is the first time you join us then be sure to read up on the earlier issues because I have packed in a lot of great information in earlier posts! If you haven’t already noticed… my recent posts are more focused on a specific idea or topic while my earliest issues covered broad internet marketing ideas on a grand scale. The reason I am doing this is so that new internet marketers can get an overall idea of what they need to do by just reading the first few issues while advanced webmasters can just stay up to date and hopefully learn more from specific posts!

So in a previous issue I already talked about Leaving Comments on Blogs and why it is important for webmasters to engage in this activity. Today I am going to be giving a quick step by step tutorial or guide about how to go about commenting on blogs. If you are in the middle of a Link Building Campaign then you should consider adding this to your list of things to do! Leaving comments on relevant blogs is an easy and effective way to build great backlinks to your website or blog and gain some quality referral traffic at the same time! So let’s look at how we can go about this:

• Searching for Blogs.
  In order to leave comments on blogs and create some high quality backlinks you need to find blogs that are relevant to your own. There are a number of great ways to do this and all it takes is a little time and patience. One thing that you can do is create a bookmark folder in firefox with all the blogs that you comment on so you can keep track of them and occasionally re-visit them. This makes it a lot easier especially if you want to take advantage of TopCommentator. Here are a few ways you can find a potential blog to leave a comment on:

1. Manual/Natural Search.
   Every once in a while you will come across a great blog that is relevant to your niche and you can use this as a great opportunity to leave a comment. Commenting on blogs that you genuinely read often is a great way to build a relationship between bloggers and also a great way to increase traffic to your website! Another thing you can do is use your favorite search engine and type ” *your keyword* blog ” and you will probably get a list of blogs relevant to your niche that you can leave comments on.
2. Do Follow Diver.
   This is a new search engine created by the linkbuildingbible.com which gives you the opportunity to search blogs that have the do-follow enabled. They also have extra options that you can see which blogs have TopCommentator and CommentLuv. This is one of those great resources that you can’ leave unmentioned. All you have to do is type your keyword in the search field and voila… great results!
3. Technorati.
   Technorati is a great social bookmarking website because it has become an authority on blog rankings. Type your keyword in the search field on their site and you can find a lot of great blogs that are just clicks away. If you have a blog then you should go ahead and register your blog on their site! (In the next issue I will be talking about Technorati in detail)

• Leaving a Comment.
  Leaving the actual comment is just as important as finding the right blog to do it on. You can’t just leave any comment because it could be taken the wrong way. In every comment that you leave you have to make sure that it makes sense and is completely relevant to what has been said in the post. Here are a few things to remember when leaving a comment:

1. Don’t Spam.
   This is one of the things that I see a lot on the internet and blogs. I see my own pages getting spammed constantly and I know that I speak for most webmasters when I say that this is one of the worst things you can do. Spamming can only hurt your online marketing efforts so please don’t do it!
2. Add to the Discussion/Ask a Question.
   One way to comment on a blog is by adding something that you may feel that the webmaster had left out. Maybe they left it out for a reason or maybe they just forgot or didn’t know. This can help boost your online reputation if you have a lot of knowledge on certain subjects. Providing great answers to a posted question can bring a lot of visitors to your own page. On the other hand if the blogger wrote about something you don’t quite understand or something that needs to be expanded upon then you should feel free to ask a question as a comment.
3. Leave your Opinion.
   If you have an opinion on the topic at hand… then by all means speak your mind. You will never get noticed if you don’t say anything, so if you have an opinion let it be known. Adding your own opinion whether you agree or disagree with the blogger is a great way to leave a valid comment.
4. Be Nice.
   I have noticed that generally speaking, a webmaster cannot turn down a comment if he/she is being nice and polite. If you are congradulating the blogger on an achievement or complimenting on a great post they can almost never turn it down. Don’t just say “Nice post” and leave because that can be easily confused as SPAM or a quick way to get a backlink.

So if you have been slacking on your Link Building Campaign lately because you didn’t know where to start… then you can stop right away. This post gives you all the information you need to go about leaving relevant comments to get quality backlinks to your own web page or blog!

Two Things to Keep in Mind.
Some blogs have a ‘TOP COMMENTATOR‘ plug-in which displays the top commentators for that month. This means that the more comments you leave on a blog with this plug-in that your name will be up there displayed with a link to your site throughout their entire blog or on the main page. One thing to remember is that this feature usually resets at the beginning of each new month so it is generally easy to get a top spot with few comments if you leave them at the right time! The second thing is a plug-in called ‘COMMENTLUV‘ which basically checks your blog feed for the latest post and will display a link to that post at the end of your blog comment. I think this is a nice little added feature that could attract more referral traffic from other blogs!

When you spend time working on building backlinks through blogs, do you have a certain process? What do you do specifically on your backlink hunt?

In the next issue of the ‘ONE YEAR MILLIONAIRE‘ I am going to talk about a great website, Technorati!