Cup of Joe: 9 Steps To Go From Newbie To Guru

So you want to be a famous seo?

You want to be a Social Media guru?

Want to rock the socks off of affiliate marketers?

Awesome! Want a little tip on how to start?? Don’t start blogging! So you might be thinking What? Don’t blog? Are you crazy? (I am not sure) But, here’s the truth. Almost every “famous” or well respected person in their industry got to where they are by doing good work, not talking about it.

Nathan Hangen tells us that all you have to do is squelch your fear and step into your role. Sorry, Nathan but honestly there are a lot confident people that give bad information and lack real substance. As a result their confident facade looks fake and untrustworthy. You have to produce a good product and be confident in its delivery.

Blogging is good for many reasons. It can help build your personal brand. It can facilitate communication with your community. It can help you develop your ideas and become more well rounded. It can build relationships and partnerships that can have lasting impact.

But none of the above will happen if you don’t know what you are talking about. If you start blogging today about seo and you have never ranked a web site in search engines, then the industry elite will be able to tell by reading your blog. If you start blogging today about affiliate marketing and you have never made a dime, skilled affiliate marketers will read that in your words and not give you a second thought. You can’t get recognition from inexperience.

Inexperience stands out like a sore thumb. Inexperienced bloggers are unoriginal. They oftentimes spread inaccurate information. Their writing doesn’t fill a void in their niche. It becomes obvious that they are just talking for the sake of talking.

Experienced people write original content based on what they have done. Experienced people have developed intuition from having a firm grasp on a subject. Such intuition can help them predict trends and see the “big picture.” Experienced people are the ones that other industry gurus recommend (and link to).

Joe’s Power Plan For Becoming A Guru

1. Setup a blog and leave it blank.
2. Read blogs from industry gurus.
3. Get out in the field and start applying what you have learned.
4. Keep moving forward.
5. Keep an offline journal and jot down everything that you are learning while in the field. Make notes of what works and what doesn’t.
6. Research the ideas in your notes to see if others are experiencing the same thing.
7. Compare other’s experiences with your own.
8. Write your first post about your experiences. In the post compare other peoples experiences and highlight whats different about yours.
9. Repeat steps 2 through 8 for your next post.

OK, so I know that there are a lot of steps above and all you want to do is get yourself out there and make a name for yourself. However, it’s a lot easier to make a name for yourself when you are providing top quality content and steps above will insure you do that. Bonus tip: Don’t rush into all of this. The longer you take to work in the field, gain experience, and develop an understanding of your subject, the better your content and exposure will be when you finally begin to blog!

Until next time, get to work and start becoming a guru today!

Be Warned, Twitter Lists Will End in Tears!

It will all end in tears.

OK, maybe the A-List won’t be crying, but if you thought the “they’re not following me” snub was bad, Twitter’s about to ramp up your angst with the pending launch of Lists.

Twitter Lists will allow you to create your own themed list of Twitter users. Want to create a list of the best search engine marketers? Go ahead, create that bad boy. But note this:

Lists are public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you’ve created are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can then subscribe to your lists. This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.

I bolded that first part, because it is important. Twitter wants you to make your lists public. Sure it has its own list of uber-users that all noobs get presented with, but Twitter would like your help discovering niches–and sharing those niche lists with the twitterverse.

OK, that sounds all well and good. Add your family to a list. Create one for your favorite marketing bloggers…ahem! But, the lists you make public could have you facing some tough questions from those that are snubbed.

For example, what if you created a list of top technology CEOs, but didn’t include your boss. What if your lists of affiliate marketing gurus left off your friend because, well let’s face it, she’s not that good at affiliate marketing. Keep your list public at your own risk!

Now let’s look at this from a snubbee’s perspective. Twitter is already full of cliques, Lists just formalizes them and confirms your worst fears–you are indeed a nobody. You’ll lie awake at night wondering why you weren’t included on such-and-such’s list. Doesn’t he like me? Does he think I’m not good enough? And don’t tell me it won’t happen–either you’re in denial, or you’re just not admitting it publicly.

Twitter Lists provide a lot of great uses–I can’t wait to get my hands on them. But this Pilgrim has been around the block and he’s seen the cold chills some folks get when shunned from the infamous “A-List.” Now they’ll get shunned from the B, C, seo, SEM, PPC, SMM-Lists too!

Good times!

The Collusion Of Editorial & Advertising; Plus: Cheap Ways To Buy Exposure

Many reporters would like you to believe there is a firm wall between content and advertising, but often they merge…particularly for niche or trade related publications. When my wife was getting started in business and wanted to promote her first website, a trade magazine kept trying to push her for an ad and she kept [...]

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SEO by You

By Chinmoy Kanjilal

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Readers, seo has always been a field of tough competition and deep interest amongst the netizen, especially webmasters. Today, I will let you in to my biggest seo secrets related to Technology blogs. One top secret of seo is the content. And I always prefer it in a compiled manner, point-wise. So here is Chinmoy’s seo Guide to success.

• Choosing a good domain (Applicable if you do not have a domain yet)
  

• your domain will reflect your website content and your niche. Keep it relevant.
• Check over at www.domaintools.com for availability of your desired domain. Also look at the typo-domains. If they are huge in number with good ranks ,opt out. Chose a different domain.
• If your domain is available, check for competition in your niche with similar domain names.
• Keep your domain name easy to remember and avoid any break-up words. Try to keep it a single word.

• Choosing a good hosting provider

• Your server can make and break your website. If you chose a slow server, you will either have a low visitor count or a high bounce rate.
• A fast server offers faster page-loads on server-sided scripts. Chose a fast server to keep a continuous inflow of visitors and aiming for a rise.
• Visitors remember slower sites, they are reluctant to return-visit slow pages.

• Choosing a good design

• A professionaly designed website attracts visitors in huge numbers. Get a professional design and look. Make sure you mean what you claim in your niche.
• Check for broken designs and browser optimized design. Make sure your design is compatible with most web browsers. Check the css for broken tables or disjunctions.
• seo on a light coloured theme is relatively easy. Also, make use of colours wisely. Keep your website soothing to the eye.

Your readers may come from all sections and ages, but you need to target a specific age group. This needs interaction with your fellow netizen and that needs buildig  a strong social profile and online presence to promote your website. From this point onwards, I will focus on technology blogs.

• Link building through link exchange

• Link building is an important strategy to get noticed from search engines and from visitors on other site.
• the more you are linked from various sites on the internet, the more you get noticed, the faster search engines index your site, the faster you are in competition with fellow keywords.
• As you get into link exchange with related sites, you get a share of their visitors. This increases your pageviews.
• With quality links from reputed sites, you get a boost in PR, increasing your google rank,  which is a marker of site content quality.

• The Content

• Everything fails without the content. A blog or a site without quality content is like a car without oil. You can only get it so far with pushing.
• Regular content will keep search engines busy on your site, gettting you indexed faster.
• If you apply all the other methods without any content, you will have high bounce rates combined with high visits, which is a negative marker.
• Keep your content comprehensive and make proper use of keywords in the content. The content can be of any length, but make sure it never at one point loses it’s focus on the topic.
• Check for the readibility and various aspects of the content at http://www.textalyser.net . It helps improve the content.
• Chose proper keywords. Check for rising trends in google, yahoo and use the keywords. Also check for keyword optimization at google keyword analysis tool and keep optimized content for appearing in top searches and for adsense optimization(covered later).
• Keep your content in a presentable manner.Use points to make your statement. People are more interested by five point lists nowadays.
• Keep your final verdict on the research you made on the topic, it not only reflects your hard work, but also your knowledge on the topic.

• Social Bookmarking

• Social bookmarking has become very famous in seo. Social sites like Digg, Stumbleupon alone have sent me hundreds of hits in a single day.
• Keep your social profile on social bookmarking sites active and get a huge number of friends, this ensures your blog gets through social bookmarking networks and once it is in it starts travelling seeking you more audience, more visitors and higher ranks.
• Social bookmarking sites are also constantly crawled by serch engines, so posting content to them also gets you indexed faster, as the bookmarking sites have a good pagerakn, you get a share of the PR too.
• Sometimes, social bookmarks become more famous than the original URL to the post. Even then, it gets you search traffic in an indirect way.

• Directory Submission

• Directory submissions are a sure way of getting listed in search faster. Directories are used by search-engines to crawl sites. The more you are present in directories, better are your chances of getting listed in search results.
• Directories also offer god PR. So, if you want a good PR, a directory service is the best as they do not ask for link back, and submission to them is free. One way back-links are much more valuable than 2-way link exchanges.

• Writing Guest Posts

• Writing guest posts on reputed sites gets you recognized as a valuable contributor, and gets you indirect traffic to your blog. It also identifies your content quality as valuable and helps build a strong online presence.
• With guest posts, you also get a huge following of readers who are directed to your site, as traffic swarms.

• Commenting on other sites(Blogs)

• Commenting on other blogs can get you visitors as well.Always be the first one to comment on other reputed blogs. That way, follow-up comments are interested in you and visit your site.
• Some blogs and sites allow dofollow on the comments. That way, you get a share of their PR as a one way link!
• Commenting on other blogs also gets your blog in focus, and you get back comments on your posts, thereby getting popularity on posts.

• Using BB Forums

• Forums are a great place to advertise your blog. With forums, you can reach thousands of audience with a slight effort.
• Join a forum from you niche, create a good presence in it.
• Speak about you initiative, your blog.
• Get users on the forum to comment and post on your blog, host contests and giveaway gifts.

• Using microblogging

• Microblogging is another sphere which can get you numerous visitors in a few days. With microblogging services frm twitter, stumbleupon and others, your blog can reach a new level of seo. Use it wisely, get a good progile and follow more to get followed.

• Optimizations

• Make sure your site is fst enought to handle all the load that is goind to get onto it as a result of this optimizations. Keep your javascript safe for safety on client side.
• Keep your server sided scripts optimized for faster serving of pages.
• Keep your database optimized for faster data retrival.
• Do not plan to host all the data on your server. Keep files like images and videos on a CDN(content delivery network) That will decrease load on your server.

• Things to do when not blogging

• Spread the word, really helps if you are in  a company or a college. Spread the word. Let your blog be known. That way, you will get a new stream of local visitors, who keep visiting back out of curiosity.
• Fire up a technical discussion when amongst friends, quote lines from your blog, refer to your posts.

That is all you need to do to get an optimized site, so that next time you get a visitor, he sticks around for quite some time. Blogging is  a big addiction and an even bigger knowledge resource. Make use of it if you have it in you.

This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

Newspaper Ad Revenue Drops a Shocking $2.6B in Q1

Yup, that’s a B as in billion. Just when you think the newspaper industry can’t take another hit it gets hit with a haymaker. According to TechCrunch, the Newspaper Association of America reported a 28.28% year over year in Q1. That number’s monetary equivalent is $2.6B and that’s a stunning number even to an already beleaguered industry.

TechCrunch says

The sharp decline is caused by the lousy state of both digital and dead tree ad sales: the stats posted on the Newspaper Association of America website show that print sales fell by 29.7% in the first three months of this year (to $5.9 billion), while online sales dropped a record 13.4% (to $696.3 million).

Now it almost feels like dog piling on newspapers. With papers closing and the threats of closings being thrown around the kind of graph you see below almost seems unfair. It’s almost like you want the industry to cry “Uncle!” and just throw in the towel.

While most would say that newspapers aren’t going to vanish those same folks would say that the newspaper’s reach and influence will be determined by how well they move their offerings online and if they can get subscribers to pay for their content. The theory is that you pay for paper delivery then you should pay for online. Makes sense but most end users don’t see it that way at all unless there is a specific niche that will support the information that makes their jobs easier with most being related to business.

So is this the bottom yet for the industry? Not likely.

Annual ad sales for American newspapers came in at a grand total of nearly $49.5 billion in 2005 and dropped to about $37.8 billion in 2008. If the decline rate keeps accelerating the way these first quarter results suggest, we could be looking at somewhere in between $26 billion and $30 billion in total ad sales revenue for this year.

The momentum that the deconstruction of the newspaper industry has gained makes it unlikely that newspapers will ever see their heyday numbers again. The new era of ‘newspapers’ is going to need to get underway now if there is to be any papers of note in the future.

So let’s fast forward 10 years from now. It’s 2019. What does the newspaper industry look like. Is it relegated to museum displays or is there still a remnant remaining. Is it possible to see a bounce back by the industry? If so what could that look like? Feel free to jump in the time machine and take a look. Tell everyone what you see – if anything.

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

eReaders, eBooks Poised to Grow

K, I know that probably 98% of you aren’t rabidly following the blogs of people on the inside of the publishing industry. So here’s the deal: the publishing industry is getting very excited about eBooks, even without Google saying they’re going to get into the eBook business.

We’ve covered the Kindle here a couple times, but I’m willing to bet most of you don’t have one. Sometimes we like to think that means that eReaders and eBooks are nonstarters. But according to new research from Forrester, that’s just not the case. In fact, as RWW says of the report:

the eBook and eReader market has now hit a point where it is ready to break out of its niche and become a mainstream phenomenon

Now this is kind of a big deal coming from Forrester, who initially pegged the Kindle as “a niche device that would only attract a small number of book-loving early adopters.” Now they’ve revised their projections:

This is the year that eReaders are supposed to make the transition to widespread acceptance—and that may already be underway. Seven months ago, Oprah’s favorite new gadget was the Kindle, and she spent quite a bit of a show extolling its features (though it’s possible her love for the Kindle has waned as her love for Twitter did).

This isn’t a format war—there will probably always be a place for paper books in our society, and that doesn’t mean that eBooks can’t have one. But this could well be a turning point—and Google is poised to catch that wave, with its eBook offering reportedly coming out by the end of this year.

What do you think? Is Google getting in on the eBook trend just in time? Or will Amazon, with its eReader and eBook hand-in-hand, continue to dominate paper and electronic book sales?