Rumor has it…
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Programs
…that ClickBank is currently working on adding physical products to their arsenal in addition to downloadable products along with a few other language & currency updates.
Stay tuned…
Tweet My Blog WordPress Plugin – Why I DON’T endorse it
Filed under: Internet Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategies
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about this new plugin for the WordPress blogging platform called “Tweet Your Blog”…and let’s face it, we all love free plugins right?
In a nutshell, this plugin will make a post to your Twitter account every time you update your blog. Kind of like an “instant” marketing tool. And while an “instant” tool sounds great – especially where marketing is concerned, you first have to understand how Twitter is different and how this new plugin might not be the best thing in the world for you to use.
First, in the event you’re unfamiliar with this little social marketing site, here’s a brief overview.
If you’ve never used Twitter before, you definitely should start. When I first came across the program I honestly thought it was a waste of time, I’ll be honest with you. But then I saw more and more people I knew on Twitter and eventually got my own Twitter account.
When you first sign up for Twitter, you can enter in as little or as much information about yourself as you’d like, similar to other online social programs but where Twitter is different is that it only allows you to post 140 characters at a time. Kind of like blogging but without long-winded posts.
As people find you, they will “Follow” you. This means that each time you “tweet” or make a post on Twitter, the person following you will also receive your update.
There are some people who have over 50,000 people following them on Twitter! While this is highly unusual it’s not uncommon for people to have more people following them than they have in their actual business mailing lists.
Twitter is unique in that you are almost expected to be more personal. I’ve seen quite a few people use it for nothing more than self-promotion, giving nothing of themselves, only to have those who were following them, choose to “unfollow” them…think of “unfollow” as an “unsubscribe” from a mailing list. I personally have unsubscribed from some updates, and some from very well-known people, because all they do is push their own products without giving anything of themselves.
Which brings me to the new Twitter plugin…
At first glance you might be tempted to use this plugin since it will automatically market for you. But, as I noted above, you certainly don’t want to be spamming Twitter in any way, shape or form. You’ll even notice that some of the most noted and “famous” Internet Marketing experts don’t “market” their things often. As a matter of fact, you’ll find that most often the posts to Twitter are questions, responses to others who also use Twitter or just simple updates as to what’s going on in their day at that moment.
The moment that you start posting to Twitter with a link back to your blog on a regular basis, the more likely you are to get “unfollowed”.
That said, I don’t plan on using this plugin at any time in the future. If you do decide to use the plugin yourself, proceed with caution. Be sure you’re participating by writing other posts in Twitter other than just having links back to your blog.
The other downside is that unlike other plugins where you simply just download it and get it up and running in WordPress, this one does have an opt-in form that you need to fill out first.
If you’re interested, just Google “Tweet My Blog” and you’re sure to find it.
P.S. In the event you’d like to follow me on Twitter, just visit http://twitter.com/KristineWirth and choose “Follow” just under my picture.
5 Make or Break Ways to Get Backlinks To Your Blog
Filed under: Internet Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Traffic
If you have a blog, you need traffic. Period. Regardless of how great you may think your blog is, if no one can find it you’re dead in the water. Watching day by day go by without so much as a nibble.
That’s where backlinks come into play. Backlinks are links that come from other sites and point to your blog posts. The more sites you have linking to you, the more likely you will receive traffic and the more likely that search engines will rank you higher in their search engine results pages.
Here are 5 make or break tactics to get those much-needed backlinks pointing to your blog.
- Use WordPress. If you aren’t using WordPress as your blogging platform of choice you’re missing out on a whole world of traffic. It’s important to note that you should be using WordPress on your own server rather than using simply WordPress.com. Having WordPress on your own server opens up a world of options to you that WordPress.com doesn’t offer.
- Create Linkbait. At first glance linkbait sounds like a bad thing. However, it’s nothing more than making a blog post that gets people’s attention. This could be something useful, something controversial, or something fun. Whichever you choose, make it interesting enough to get people to link to you.
- Submit Your Blog. Submit your linkbait to places like StumbleUpon, Propeller and Digg.
- Claim Your Blog. Be sure you sign up to Technorati and claim your own blog.
- Submit Your Post to Social Bookmarking Sites. One quick and easy way to do this instead of visiting each individual social bookmarking site is to sign up to OnlyWire which will allow you to bookmark in multiple places online with one click of your mouse.
These are just five ways to get links back to your blog. There are multiple more ways but even these five ways will put your blog leaps and bounds over your competition.
It’s not difficult by any means to use the tactics above but it will take a little time. Carve out a portion of your day and spend some time submitting those great blog posts of yours. Before you know it, you’ll start to get noticed and nothing is more important than getting noticed online.
Here’s some great resouces that you can use to automate this entire process so that you can focus on creating that great content.
- Comment Sniper – Be the very first to know when a blog post is made within your industry. This allows you to be the first one to comment on the post thus driving traffic to your site. As of this writing, you can currently download Comment Sniper for free.
- Web2Submitter & The Authority Black Book - First, get the authority black book for free. Downloaded over 40 times and rated the #1 Free eBook for Bloggers by Mashable.com. You’d be crazy not to get this great resource. After you get this free book, the author, Jack Humphrey will present you with Web2Submitter. Web2Submitter is a push-button white hat product that frees up your time & resources. Highly recommended!
