Do Follow or Not Do Follow? That is The Question

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Andi the Minion 6 Comments

Just when you think you are getting somewhere with your blogging you realise there is so much more to learn. One of those things that stumps most people is whether a link from your site to somewhere else should be a Do Follow link or a No Follow link.

Do Follow? No Follow? If I have confused you then don’t worry I was the same, when I was writing posts and linking out to posts or products I simply added the link in the WordPress editor, I set it so that it would open up in a new window and that was it.

When writing posts for other sites I would see in their guest post terms and conditions they would say whether they would accept ‘No Follow’ or ‘Do Follow’ links. I had no idea what they meant at first.

So obviously I had to do some research into this, what I found out was that there are certain links you must set as Do Follow and those which should be No Follow otherwise Google could penalise you.

So exactly what is Do Follow and No Follow? Well it is a line of code that you add to a link to tell the search engines whether they should add authority to the link.  Authority of a link could be thought of as a road leading to several towns and cities. This road is liked by Google and should be the Do Follow, those towns and cities are pages on websites that all have relevant content on them.

A No Follow link is the dead end road, it leads out to that shopping mall on the outskirts of your town and goes nowhere else. That shopping mall does one thing only and that is sell. All your affiliate links and links to your products should be No Follow links.

Do Follow – Quality content and websites

No Follow - Affiliate links to squeeze pages and products

If you publish guest posts on your blog from other sites and companies that seem a bit dodgy or self-promotional and are using your site only as part of their link building strategy then it is advised that you make any links they have set back to their own site No Follow as well to protect your site from any possible Google reprisals.

Any links created in WordPress are Do Follow link by default, so whenever you link to a site or a squeeze page in WordPress it is a Do Follow, to convert it to a No Follow you need to add a piece of code to that link.

This can be done two ways, you can add the code yourself or use a special WordPress Plugin. For the newbie blogger looking at your post in the Text part of your post editor can be a little scary and trying to find the right code isn’t easy if you are not sure what you are looking for.

In this post I am going to show you how to create No Follow links using the excellent Ultimate Nofollow Plugin and to add the code manually. There is also a tutorial video to watch at the bottom of the post as I walk you through the whole process.

So if you do not have the Plugin installed you need to go to your Plugin section, do a search for Ultimate Nofollow and install it.

Please note, in the example below I am using the default WordPress editor, if you use an editor Plugin like I do then might you need to deactivate it. I normally use the CKEditor For WordPress Plugin and the Ultimate Nofollow plugin option does not work alongside the Plugin.

I create my post in Word and the CKEditor Plugin allows me to copy and paste everything from Word including the image formatting and the links straight into WordPress. All I need to do is edit the links and add the images as this post will show you. Creating A Blog Post In Word & Adding It To WordPress.

Turning Your Links into No Follow Links

Open up a post that you want to edit, highlight the text you want to add a link to or the link you want to turn into a No Follow link and then click on the Insert/edit link button on the WordPress editor.

When you click on the button the edit box will open and you will see a check box with Add rel=“nofollow” check this to add the No Follow code to the link.

Also check the Open link in a new window/tab box; you do not want people to close your website when they click on the links in your posts. All links should open up in a new window giving people the option of still being able to refer back to your posts while they look at the offers you are promoting. You do not want to lose traffic from your site if you can help it, that would be foolish.

Click the Update button at the bottom right of the edit box and move onto the next link, when you have done all of the links simply click on the Update button of the post.

If you have any banner ads on your site or in your posts these also need to be No Follow otherwise Google can penalize you. You can use the Ultimate Nofollow Plugin to add a no follow link if you are adding a link to an image AND if it is a piece of code you have been given by a third party.

When you are in the visual editor click on the image or banner that you want to edit.

Click on the Insert/edit link button on the editor tool bar to open up the editing box.

Check both boxes, click the Update button in the box and then click the Update post button and your image/banner will now become a No Follow link and open up in another separate window. It really is as simple as that. The relevant code is added to the image code for you.

If you want to manually add the code go into the Text editor and look for the link code you want to edit for example here is some code I want to add  rel="nofollow" to…

<a href="http://jvz2.com/c/76905/39549" target="_blank"><img alt="" src="http://30minuteinfographics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/728×90.jpg" />

The code is already set to open in another window so I just need to add the No Follow code and to do that place your cursor inside the last bracket of the destination URL which is the first part of the code.

<a href="http://jvz2.com/c/76905/39549" target="_blank">

The second part is the location of the image.

<img alt="" src="http://30minuteinfographics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/728×90.jpg" />

When you have your cursor next to the bracket, hit the space bar to create a space then type in ref=“nofollow” so the code looks like it does below…

<a href="http://jvz2.com/c/76905/39549" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="http://30minuteinfographics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/728×90.jpg" />

Once your code is right go and click on the Update button to update the whole post. If you have a load of banner ads or images to convert to No Follow it might be worth copying the code of the first one you edit and pasting the whole code into a text file and then going into each post and pasting it over the existing image code.

Creating No Follow Links In WordPress

Video Tutorials, Wordpress , , ,

The Empowered Network & The Lost Fortune Of The Six Figure Mentors

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Andi the Minion 10 Comments

The Empowered Network, The Six Figure Mentors and A Shed Load Of Money Down The Drain.

I thought I should write a post about my thoughts on the types of money making networks that are flooding the internet at the moment which promises it’s members great wealth for little work.

The reason I decided to talk about it today is that my Facebook newsfeed is awash with annoying Empowered Network status posts by people who have no idea that they are, if I dare say it, being fleeced by this company.

I will focus on two of the biggest networks that are really doing the rounds, the Empowered Network and the Six Figure Mentors. Recently I have had many lengthy discussions with people about these networks and have looked into them, I am also ashamed to say that I have had experience with one of them.

The Networks

The Empowered Network is a system that pulls people in by offering them commissions as soon as they sign up, trying to pass itself off as an advanced education and blogging platform the Empowered Network is what is known as a Multi Level Marketing system.

It is a membership subscription based system very similar to a pyramid scheme which are now illegal, they and other networks like the Six Figure Mentors work very closely to make sure that they are within the law, what they do though is still very questionable.

Some argue that pyramids are not a bad thing as all societies are built in a pyramidal hierarchy. There is the Queen/Emperor/President then below that is the Royal Family/Government, the Armed Forces/Workers and then the people.

Big businesses have the same structure, starting with the owner down to the workforce. This pyramid structure is natural and cannot be avoided, even communism was pyramidal, that is often why it failed, it couldn't deliver what it promised. It is ok to say that you are the People’s Republic of Wherever and that the society is all about the workers but they also had the head honcho, the Party, the army then the people. Ironically the people of the communistic system lived harder lives than their leaders and had to endure more poverty than them, mimicking the capitalist system they so hated.  Anyway I digress…

The problem with the Empowered Network and other similar systems is that they use high pressured marketing techniques to get you in by offering you high paying commissions to tempt you in joining while promising you all the best training.

Think about it for a minute, you join, you learn all the best up to date marketing methods; get your own ready-made website, given content and direction from the top about what to do AND then get paid while you learn. Sounds fantastic doesn’t it? You would be a fool to pass it up, I mean you get paid to learn right? Wrong!

You pay a monthly membership fee of $25 and you get a blog on their domain, not your own blog but what amounts to the equivalent of having a page on this website, you can add content to it but you pay for the privilege. They claim that they are ranked high in Google and that is good for traffic, the problem is that THEY are ranked in Google and the chances of your individual blog being found is small. They get all of the lovely Google juice not you.

This blog of yours cannot be branded in your own way, you have to use one of the Empowered Networks own Themes covered with their branding, but you do get your little image in the top left corner… how jolly decent and kind of them!

Before Facebook was floated on the stock market they were very aggressive in their attempts to rid their network of systems and networks they believed were dodgy and Empowered Network was one of those that became banned. Links connecting to external sites hosted on the EN domain would not be allowed.

The Empowered Network got around this by creating other domains to house their members blogs, the SocialMediaBar.com and BadAssContent.com are the two I have noticed recently.  The members are so desperate to make commissions they try and do a manner of different things to get you to sign up. They are encouraged to flood social media networks with posts like those I found flooding my newsfeed this morning.

They post inspirational and funny videos…

They show their bonus products…

They post exciting claims with a friend request to find out more…

The SFM used to offer your own sites and domains but they have since moved over to a similar system as the Empowered Network. You are basically now left to work harder to find your traffic.

The Costs

What is interesting is how they sell the product, the $25 a month for the Empowered Network is for the blog and hosting…? To get the 100% commissions on their products you have to pay a further $19.95 a month so in total you pay $44.95 a month. You do not get a full 100% commissions as several of the products you sell, the money gets passed over further into the pyramid…. Oops sorry the community. Don’t ask me why or how or even to explain as I just don’t know!

The image above is from a comment on a website that was built as a review site designed to get new members into Rich’s team by giving an Honest Review of the Empowered Network, ironically it was not a blog on the Empowered Network’s domain.

I think this guy had a little more of an idea than most however what he fails to mention in his answer is that you can get hosting at Hostgator for as little as $3.49 a month and YOU OWN the site.

With the Empowered Network and the SFM, should you leave you lose your blog and all of your content so you have nothing to work with or sell. If you at least owned your website and had made it look half decent you stand a better chance of getting your money back by selling it.

Hostgator Vs Empowered Network

12 x $3.96 = $47.52 For the year with a website to sell

12 x $25 = $300 For the year with no website to sell

12 x $44.95 (hosting with affiliate license) = $539.40 For the year with no website to sell

As you can see, a basic website with Hostgator can cost you less than 2 months of the Empowered Networks cheapest package, and you own the site so if you wanted you could possible sell your website at the dirt cheap price of $100 and still be in profit. You cannot do that with the EN blog.

The SFM is even dearer, to become part of their system you have to apply for a position, makes it feel more special if you have to apply and worth it if you are allowed in! How many people they actually refuse entry is anyone’s guess, probably none. Maybe they just want to make sure you can afford to keep paying a monthly fee and not make them work for their living.

The idea behind the SFM is that you learn how to make money online using a variety of internet marketing methods by people who have earned a six figure income online themselves.

To join you have to buy the Attraction Marketing home study course and then pay a monthly fee of $97 a month. Now I have been inside the SFM many years ago and their products, set up and community was very good, they certainly tried to make it look good however, you can get all the same good information anywhere else for free or at least a lot cheaper. You will be amazed at what you can learn for free from quality Facebook Groups.

Is it worth the money? No

To build an online business you will need to get traffic and content; to do that means either outsourcing work or pay for advertising depending on what traffic generation methods you decide to use and in my honest opinion the $97 a month could be used for content creation, product creation or traffic generation to your own website. It is hard to do it all on your own and that money could be used more efficiently.

If you were a member for a couple of months and learned everything you needed to know and took action then it probably wouldn’t be so bad but if you became a member and couldn’t afford to take action but stayed a member hoping to make a sale or two and win your subscription back then it is not so good. This is what normally happens with people who are part of these networks, and you can soon run up big debts without realising it.

Let’s look at that $97 monthly fee again.

12 x $97 = $1164 and again you are left with no website to sell if you decide you have had enough.

For $1164 you could have had a website built and probably sold for double that price by smartly outsourcing the work abroad. (Don’t forget these prices will have VAT or some kind of tax to go on top as well!)

The Six Figure Mentors like the Empowered Network lock people in with the affiliate system they have in place. They used to have a similar two tier affiliate system where you were paid a share of the monthly fee of any new members you brought into the network.

I believe things have changed slightly as the UK Government has tried to clamp down on MLM businesses and the SFM wanted to be on the right side of the law and shake off the MLM tag.

They do however sell very high priced training programmes and you will be paid a large commission on any you sell to the new members you signed up. Why would you leave when you can get $500-$1,000 commissions on products?

You only need to sell a couple and that is your subscription costs for the year all paid for. How hard can it be to sell a couple of memberships and a couple of products? Very! Especially if you are inexperienced and lacking in funds.

What I find interesting is that you pay to be a member of a training network and then… you have to buy training packages. It is like paying for a sports channel and then having to pay for a Pay Per View event, why pay for a sports channel if you do not get the sports included in the price! There are Upsells and then there is taking the p**s!

What is behind these networks is a way for them to market and sell their products to a highly targeted crowd without doing a lot of the work themselves. Now I am not saying they do not work , it takes a lot to set up a system like the SFM and they do need to get people involved at the beginning so they do do their own marketing but once they have a few on board they can let them go out and do most of the selling.

It is like the mafia if you like, they are sitting at the top in the position of the Godfather reaping in the rewards while the foot soldiers go out doing all of the hard work of selling guns, drugs, running protection rackets and robbing banks.

(Interestingly the SFM was founded by Stuart Ross and Daniel Wagner, Daniel seemed to disappear from the SFM after a year and now there is a new co founder?!?! Can you be classed as a co founder when you didn’t start the business? And why did Daniel leave? Or was it just that he was a big marketer who was used to bring in the first wave of foot soldiers while making a large affiliate profit at the same time?)

Yes you could say that most businesses and Governments work in the same way and it is very clever but you need to ask yourself this…

…do you want to PAY to be part of a system, where you pay THEM for the privilege of doing a lot of hard work on their behalf which is unlikely to make you wealthy?

Every new month you stay in these networks and do not make a penny you are still putting money in to their wallets, it can become demoralizing.

There is nothing wrong in paying to learn skills that you can use and develop to make money but you should choose carefully and also be aware that sometimes spending a lot on a product could cost you more in the long run because it might hinder your progress.

I learned a lot about content creation and WordPress by paying for a course (by SFM original co founder Daniel Wagner and his friend James Watson) but when it finished it was finished and there were no more on-going costs.  I went on to land this job as a Minion due to investing in a few courses, so I am certainly not saying that you should never pay for knowledge or join a course.

There are some excellent blogging and WordPress courses out there that will teach you a hell of a lot which will transform your life. You just do not need to keep paying for it year in year out.

You can find almost all of the information you need these days online somewhere and if you want to pay to get it all handed to you in package then that is fine but be warned, you can be paying over the odds for very little when you join these types of MLM and commission based educational platforms and become locked in on the promise of big commission payouts. – Andi The Minion

How To Make Money Online, Marketing & Traffic , , ,

Facebook Groups, Google Plus Communities and Real Networking

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Andi the Minion 16 Comments

A lot of business comes from networking, it has been said that many big deals have been made on the golf course, why the golf course? The reason is two or more people are actually engaging with each other and chatting and not simply pitching.

Before I became a writer I used to work alongside my uncle working as a carpenter, we did a variety of jobs and a lot of his work was found by word of mouth and recommendations.

He would pop to the local pub for a few beers at least one night a week, he told his wife that it was ‘networking and finding new work’ We used to laugh as it sounded like a great excuse to go to the pub, but, as humorous as it sounds, it was true, he did go to the pub and often leave with work or at least the phone number of a new potential client.

Yes he did enjoy the night out, and yes his wife probably wasn’t always happy but then again she wouldn’t be happy if he had no work and was not bringing in the money. He could have gone round all of the local pubs and placed a small rectangle business card on the pin boards if they had one, some people may see it, and some might even take down the number but that method rarely provided work.

Instead, he would get work because he was a real person chatting and interacting with people over a pint or several. The pub which became his local had other regulars who would not only ask him first for a price for any work they needed doing they would also give his details to their friends if they needed a carpenter.

Sometimes the regulars of the bar would introduce him to their friends that might have popped in for a quick beer, small talk would start and they then would get to know my uncle was a carpenter and be given a business card.

Traditional pubs are now closing down in the UK on a daily basis, the lifestyle and society of Britain is changing a lot. The online world is adding to that change with many businesses now growing online and with many being online only businesses we cannot get work as easily from spending nights in the boozer.

However there are things we can do online that are similar if at least less alcoholic that we can do that is similar to visiting the pub and that is to join and frequent Facebook Groups, Google Plus Communities and Forums.

If you were running a business doing SEO or you were a writer who wrote content for websites what would be the best places to go to? Exactly! You would want to go and spend time chatting to people who are website owners, both old and new.

New website owners who know nothing would like to get to know more would be grateful for your chats and help and could soon become paying clients and the more seasoned website owners who know a bit about the online world would know that there is work involved and could be looking to outsource a lot of the work to someone who can do it a lot faster and better.

It makes a lot of sense to mingle with these potential clients, even if you find no new work for a while you can create a group of online friends and what do friends do? The saying… ‘It’s not what you know but who you know’ wasn’t created for no reason, it is a fact of life, people will offer work to friends and people they know if they can do the work.

My uncle was asked to hang doors and fit windows because that is what he does. Our societies are built on these principles, whether you believe them to be fair or not, Masonic lodges were well known for looking after their own.

Facebook and Google both have their ways to make friends and network but they also have groups and communities that you can join or set up dedicated to specific topics, niches and hobbies. For instance I am a member of several groups and communities that I try to get involved in around blogging and internet marketing.

At times it can feel like hard work but it is always worth it. When you look at the majority of groups, people do the online equivalent of leaving their business card on the pin board for people to see, but they don’t do it once, no they go into groups regularly posting links then running out and never talking to anyone.

What happens is they eventually begin to cheese people off who then stop paying attention to those people. In many cases group admins will remove the offending posts including the members. All social media networks notify you when your post has been liked or commented on, you do not need to keep login in to check, so how hard is it to reply when you are notified? Maybe not at that minute but you can make a note and go back later surely?

It is pure madness when you think about it; they do this in several groups and communities often using software like HootSuit and gain nothing where if they had posted to just a couple of groups and stayed around to chat to people the odds of them getting work will be much higher. They will gain more from chatting in a couple of groups than doing sporadic post bombing in loads of them.

In one group I am a member of, I have seen people hire other members to do SEO and writing jobs, I have seen members become affiliates for other member’s products where they have both made extra profits from these collaborations.

The online world has become huge and is very fast, people join MLM networks believing they will make a fortune but to do so it costs them a small fortune, to get their monthly investment back and build up this fortune fast  they go around polluting everywhere with annoying posts and links. Again I refer to the Empowered Network and such like. People see this as the norm and have failed to understand the true meaning of networking and how to really do it.

If a good friend of yours was making more money than you and they came to you and offered to show you how to do the same you probably would listen and give it a shot. However if some stranger stood on the other side of the road wearing a pair of dirty jeans and a dark hoody shouted across to you ‘Come and join me in this building while I and a few others show you how to make a lot of money fast’ would you go? No of course you wouldn’t so why do people assume that similar approaches will work online?

The truth is this, to really generate business, leads and sales you need to interact and engage with people. You need to be real and useful. Even if you do not join any Facebook groups or Google Plus Communities but do have an email list, offer them something of value and substance. Reply to emails if you get any, try and chat and help people out. Do what our parents’ generation did, talk to them!

It has worked for generations and it will work now, why wouldn’t it? If you feel it is time consuming then try and slow down, ‘less haste and more speed’ that 5 minute chat with someone that you feel is robbing you of time could just end up with you making a new contract for on-going SEO work or a writing contract.

Once a week my uncle would spend 2 or 3 hours in the local pub networking (and thoroughly enjoying himself) a similar amount of time could be spread out over the week with half hour here and an hour there where you dip in, answer a few questions, give a bit of advice, share a few posts and generally help someone and yourself out. You could also sit and enjoy a beer or a glass of wine as you do it. Of course that part is optional :-)  Just do not underestimate the power of chatting with people. Please tell us what your thoughts are in the comments section below. – Andi

Marketing & Traffic, Social Media , , , ,

How To Create And Format An eBook Video

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Andi the Minion 3 Comments

Every day is a school day and I have learned something new recently which is excellent for those wanting to create their own eBooks so I thought I would share it with you. I also went one step further and decided to incorporate it all in a new video showing you how to create and format an eBook, which is below.

Some of you may remember I wrote a monster post showing you how to do that and you can find that post here How To Create And Format An eBook along with a downloadable PDF version AND an eBook template that you can take and edit to use as your own.

EBooks are fantastic things when you really think about it, if you ever wanted to make money in the past by being a self-published author you would have needed to have had books printed up which would have had to been ordered with a minimum amount to make it worth the printing companies time.

You would also have to consider how you were going to sell your book, would you try and get shops to stock it for you? Would you try and advertise it in papers and magazines? Whatever you did you would have to supply the shops with the books or post out your books to your customers.

If you decided self-publishing was too hard and went down the route of approaching a traditional publishing house you would run the high risk of being rejected. With so many people wanting to become authors publishing houses had their pick.

They are businesses that wanted to choose those they thought would sell well, remember there is a large cost to printing thousands of books and distributing them worldwide. It was more likely you would remain unpublished than publish.

But those days are gone and we are now living in the best time ever in humankind’s history to make money from home by writing a book. EBooks are very easy to create, nearly all of us under the age of 50 have access to technology in our homes that allows us to create products that are not only sellable but that can be sold around the planet in a digital format that requires no manufacturing or distribution costs.

How mad is that?

You do not need to invest a lot of money, you can use your spare time to create products and the research can be done with a few clicks of the mouse using Google or Yahoo. You can write factual books, fictional books or simple How To Guides… whatever you want to do you can do it from home starting tonight. So what is stopping you?

How To Create And Format An eBook

How to Create an Ebook, Writing Tips , ,

How To Build A Big Authority Site: The Easy Way?

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Andi the Minion 15 Comments

There is a method to build a big authority site that will grow and grow and very few people know about it. This method is not talked about in the blogging world, usually bloggers do the content creation themselves and share it along with the occasional guest posts.

Internet Marketing legend Ryan Deiss calls this method The Oprah Factor, he recently built a huge authority site using the same methods Oprah Winfrey has used to create her huge empire.

Oprah doesn’t bore her fans by going on about herself instead she entertains and educates her fans with celebrities, professionals, experts and expert advice.

It has been said that many bloggers are self-centred and simply want people to read or hear what they have to say whether it is any good or not. They try to get their own products out in front of their readers before they have a reputation or following. It can be all sell sell sell. Empowered Network ring any bells?

Fortunately not all bloggers are like that with many of them wanting to make a living while enjoying the freedom which you do not get with a day job.

To have that you need a site that gets a lot of traffic, a lot of hits and has a lot of people coming back to read more of what you publish. When these people are regular returning visitors and subscribers to your email newsletters they are likely to be interested in the products you recommend and promote.

The best way to do that is not to promote yourself, or your own goods but to promote other professionals just like Oprah.

“The secret of promotion in the age of social media isn’t to pro­mote yourself. It’s to promote others. Success comes when your success depends on the success of your customers, your suppliers, your end-users, and when you spend more of your time thinking about them than about yourself.”  - Tim O’Reilly

What Tim O’Reilly is saying is that in reality, people are not interested about you, your blog, your book or your TV show, they are interested in what you, your blog, book, or show is talking about.

It really makes sense when you think about it, imagine you love football, not only do you watch the big games on the TV but you play for a team regularly at the weekends. You create a blog where you talk about the matches you have played, the games you have watched on the TV and offer football advice that you think will help younger players.

You might get a few readers and some good visitor numbers but you have to ask yourself, who are you?

How To Build A Big Authority Site

What if you decided to stop writing the content about your football life and instead started to interview the professionals? What if you could also give an insight into the professional footballer’s lives off the pitch?

Imagine being able to do a weekly mini football tutorial with Wayne Rooney or have a different world class player each week? What would happen then? Imagine that you were able to get David Beckham and José Mourinho to write a weekly roundup of the latest football news and their opinions?

Once people knew they were writing for your site and that your site had lots of information and gossip on the professional players including their daily lives your site would rocket in traffic and rankings.

Remember, when people have something published or have some news out they broadcast the fact on Twitter and Facebook. If they don’t someone will, I did a quick search on Twitter for both David Beckham and José Mourinho and what I found recommended by Twitter.com were Twitter accounts set up by fans which had roughly 396,000 followers.

Now imagine that the admins of these Twitter accounts started to read and share the posts from your blog, already you have a potential fan base and readership well over a quarter of a million people!

OK so you probably know that trying to get some of the most important or popular people on the planet to write for your site is not going to be easy but there are two things to consider…

1.       Your niche might have people who are big names in their own right who will never be a Beckham and not likely to be so unattainable

2.       You can budget it in to your costs and pay for several ‘professions’ to write for you.

Yes I did say pay for writers to write for you, I didn’t mean to make you fall off your chair or spit your coffee out all over your laptop but think about this for a moment.

People will go on Oprah Winfrey’s show for free because it gives them exposure because the show is popular and the show became popular because they would interview and have on the biggest names in the industry. Chances are they were paid to go on the show during the early days.

You are not quite at the position of the Oprah show, instead you need to piggy back ride the popularity of the big names in your industry for your exposure like we talked about earlier with the example of using David Beckham and José Mourinho.

Paying for several big name writers with huge followings can work out cheaper than using PPC advertising like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. The amount of traffic and sign ups you will get will be greater than those from any PPC advertising and remember, to use advertising with Google AdWords and Facebook there can be a lot of conditions you need to adhere too and your accounts can be closed anytime.

When you have several big name writers in your chosen niche each with an already established and large following you have a targeted traffic source on tap. Unlike paying for the odd guest post to generate links you are paying someone who writes good content that people will want to link to and share anyway.

We often talk about reputations, a blogger needs to be open and honest and when they recommend anything it must be of good quality otherwise you lose trust. Going back to Oprah, it is well known that when a book is recommended by Oprah the sales of the book skyrocket the next day and for the rest of the week.

The docu-film the Secret was a worldwide phenomenon and much of that can be thanked to Oprah’s support. Those of you who are fans of Family Guy will know that the power of Oprah’s book recommendation was discussed when Brian the dog was teasing Stewie Griffin for buying a book with an Oprah sticker just because it had an Oprah sticker.

The power of an endorsement by a professional or a popular person can launch businesses faster and in ways no form of hard work or paid advertising can match.

So if you did a search in Google for people who were popular or professional in a certain niche, who created their own content on their own site as an example and that they had an already established following why not offer to pay them for an article?

You could ask for one maybe two articles a month, from several big (biggish) players and pay them a set price per article. The most important things to consider when you pay for content is that the people you choose to ask to be your writers are…

1.       Popular with an established following on Facebook, Twitter and/or Google plus

2.       Have their own site and email newsletter

3.       Write excellent content

Most humans need to feel loved and that feeling means we cannot help but talk about ourselves and want people to like what we do or find the ‘crazy’ things we do as being really funny. Cracked.com bank on that, they pay people to supply content and then the content providers will also share the posts bringing in more free traffic.

Some sites like WriteYourRevolution.com pay up to $50 per article, you are limited to how many articles you can have published each month and you need to be good, but nothing is said about the amount of followers a writer has on the social media networks.

[To learn a little bit more about sites that pay you to write read 4 Awesome Sites That Pay You To Write For Them]

When a person’s business relies on them being in the spotlight or having large numbers of people being interested in what they say or do then it is more important that they share the stuff they create. A professional person will want to share their own articles and posts to their followers whichever site it is on.

If you could afford ten professional and popular people from your industry and had them write twice a month or supply a couple of videos what could that do to your traffic and email list subscribers?

If you have ever used Google AdWords, Facebook ads or even the Promote Post feature that Facebook offer stop and have a think for a minute about the results you got for the price you paid, do you think it was value for money and do you think you would get better results if you had your industries David Beckham writing for you?

I certainly am not saying that it will be cheap, but what I am saying is that it could be greater value for money, your website will be introduced to a larger source of interested people, your email list would grow and you should shoot past your competition in the rankings. I shall leave you to ponder on that and please share your thoughts with us in the comments boxes below. – Andi the Minion Leeman

Blogging Tips, Money Making Websites , , , ,

Keep Calm And Carry On Blogging

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Andi the Minion Leave a comment

Today for a bit of fun I thought I would share this poster, when things are getting a bit stressful for you, remember to…

Please feel free to print off this poster and share it if you like it.

Blogging, Blogging Tips

Choosing Images When Sharing On Google Plus

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Andi the Minion 14 Comments

Images are a very important when sharing posts on social media networks, they can be very eye catching and grab people’s attention instantly and draw them into read your posts or click through to your site, however I have noticed that sometimes when I share posts directly from people’s sites and also when people share mine a generic brand image is shown every time whereas others show the relevant post image.

Now this could be down to how we have set up our sites, why they are different I am not sure but it isn’t just WordPress that it happens too, a friend of mine who uses Google’s very own Blogger has the same issue. When I go to share their posts I change the image because Google plus allows me to do that, I do not think many people realise that you can do this.

As I am sharing what I believe is good content that people can benefit from as well as posts written by good friends I want them to get the best exposure as possible which means choosing the best image to go with the post. The other day my good friend John Banks added an infographic to one of his past posts and I wanted to share it but just like our site, his shows his site header as a generic image. This is not good!

So here I am on his site, I want to share the post so I click the Google plus button (g+1) on the social share plugin on the left of the post.

When I do this it opens up a Share box allowing me to write a small introduction about the post and then I would normally click on the Share button. But if you look closer you will see the image is John’s header image, as good as it is, it isn’t relevant to the post itself or particularly eye catching. (Sorry John!)

This is a shame because the post itself has some great images within it including the new fantastic looking infograph that he has added, we can change this and it only takes a few seconds.

Hover your mouse pointer over the top of the image and a darkened tool bar will appear, you will see two arrows and a large X. If you click on the large X and you will remove the image completely but click on the left and right arrows and you will be able to scroll through all of the images on that page. (Including any advertising images)

Scroll through the images until you find one you like, in the screenshot above you can see how the header has now been replaced with an image that has a question and some great hand drawn childlike characters which are more attention grabbing.

I scrolled further through the images to find the new infograph that John had added to the post as I had mentioned it in my little write up and I wanted to draw people’s attention to it. When I found it and was happy with the look of everything I clicked the Share button.

The screenshot above shows the final shared post on Google plus. I am expecting people to want to look closer at John’s infographic and click through to his post then I would consider it a job well done.

Google + Tips, Social Media , ,

30 Minute Infographics: How To Create Stunning Infographs For Free

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Andi the Minion 16 Comments

How To Create Stunning Infographs For Free… and Then Sell For Profit

What Is An Infograph?

If you do not know what an infographs is by now then you really haven’t been paying attention much to what is going on online recently. An infograph is a large graphic that contains information hence the name infographs… clever eh?

Infographs are big business, why? Because they get shared and when things get shared they go viral and when something goes viral it gets traffic, a lot of traffic to be precise.

Neil Patel from Quicksprout and Kissmetrics talks about the power of infographs on his Quicksprout site… I have included the paragraph here so you can read what he says about infographs in his own experienced words…

‘At KISSmetrics we’ve created a total of 47 infographics. An infographic on average costs us $600, which means we have spent $28,200 on infographics in the last 2 years. 

Within a 2-year period, we’ve generated 2,512,596 visitors, and 41,142 backlinks from 3741 unique domains all from those 47 infographics. And from a social perspective in the last 2 years the infographics have driven 41,359 tweets and 20,859 likes.

If you decided that you want to buy 2,512,596 visitors, it would cost you $125,629.80 if you paid 5 cents a visitor. If you bought 41,142 links from a service like Sponsored Reviews at a rate of $20 a link, you would have spent $822,840. And that wouldn’t even give you high quality links. We naturally got from sites like Huffington Post and Forbes.’

You can read Neil’s article in full here Why Content Marketing is the New SEO

So what we know is that infographs can bring in a lot of traffic, they can be costly to buy and that the results from infographs would cost far more to create using other standard SEO techniques. So with that in mind if I could tell you a about a great way to make professional infographs for free, infographs that not only could bring you a lot of free traffic but you could sell for profit would you be interested? Well I can… sort of…

My good friend John Banks has created an excellent little product where he will teach you how to create excellent looking infographs like these for FREE. You could soon be doing what Neil Patel was doing and start driving traffic to your site in droves by using infographics.

With 30 Minute Infographics you could be creating great looking infographs very soon which will drive traffic to your site and help build up your brand.

John will show you exactly what to do to create great looking infographics for free with an easy to follow video and eBook that will have you making infographs in a matter of minutes.

His 30 Minute Infographics package is for sale for the incredible low price of $14 which in proper money is less than £10. I can easily spend that at lunch time. What is $14-£10 when you can learn a new skill that will generate money or send traffic back to your site? How much was Neil paying per infograph?

As you can see from the screenshot above, the eBook is crammed with easy to follow images as part of a step by step guide showing you everything you need to do to create infographs that people will love to share.

To see how easy and fast they can be made watch John as he makes a quick and simple infograph live on the video. I did, then I went and made my own infographic that I published live on Facebook the same afternoon I watched the video.

Creating the infographs is the easy part, knowing what you want in the infographs might be your hardest part, you could look at some of your past posts and turn them into infographs. You have all the information you need, simply make an infographs and get it circulating the social media networks.

Remember Neil Patel was paying $600 for infographs, so you could soon be creating a great little infograph business and selling them on sites like Fiver.com.  In the screenshot below you can see that one infographic seller has had 217 sales, at just $5 that is $1085

If a buyer had paid $5 for the infographs but also paid $20 for the editable source file with 6-8 scenes and paid the $10 for priority deliver of 5-15 hours then the infographs now becomes $35.

217 x $35 is $7595, not bad is it? There are other people on Fiverr.com making good money from infographs. This was just one example. With a bit of smart planning you could charge more per infographs. As always, the sky is the limit, success is limited to the amount of effort you put in.

Just 3 sales on Fiverr.com at the basic $5 will make you your money back, imagine if your infographs sent a lot of traffic back to a page on your site that had a product you were promoting that earned you far more than $5. Is it not worth $14 – £10? I believe so.

Below is an infographs that John created, you too can create infographics like these.

Add some humour to your infographs and people will want to share them, images are one of the most shared things on the web at the moment, if it makes people smile and they learn something from it then you are onto a winner.

To learn exactly what you need to do to make your own professional infographs that people wil love to share simple go to 30 Minute Infographics.

Marketing & Traffic, Traffic Generation

Interact With Your Site Visitors Live With Zopim Chat

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Andi the Minion 9 Comments

Today I want to tell you about Zopim.com. This I believe could be an excellent service for bloggers and internet marketers as it gives you the opportunity to chat to visitors to your site in real time, turning you from just a blog to a real person.

This week I decided to visit my friend’s website, he owns and runs his own hosting company and occasionally I like to go over and see what is new. Steve is one of those people I admire, he wanted a way to make a fairly passive income which could allow his wife to leave work to spend time with the children.

He set up his own hosting company a few years back called Lincwebhosting and has built it up to a very lucrative side business. He still works a day job himself because he enjoys what he does but the business brings in that all important second wage giving him and his wife more freedom and security.

Anyway, while looking on his site I noticed something new down at the bottom left of the page, this was new. Before I could investigate the box opened and I was greeted by Steve. He had seen me come to his site and started a conversation. I knew it was him the way he spoke, we northern types have a way of saying things to each other. :-)

(He is currently testing out a new system now called LiveChat)

I thought this was really powerful, if I was a potential customer looking to use his service and I needed to ask a question I could chat directly with a live person. Not only that, as a site owner he was able to initiate a conversation with any visitor. As we know with social media today engagement with people is very important.

But unlike Facebook and Twitter, these people are on your site, they want your information, your help and even your products! Why wouldn’t you want to be on hand to answer questions and chat to them?  After all we do it in the comments sections after publishing a new post and usually the commenter has gone, with Zopim chat box, this is a real live interaction.

I decided to look into Zopim.com more and found their site.

I wasn’t on long when I was greeted with a message, obviously I decided to chat to a member of staff called Marc, I was researching after all. So while I was looking around the site and chatting I learned that the company is based in Singapore and that they have 3 different packages with different prices.

1.Lite – Free

2.Basic – $11.20 a month

3.Advanced - $20 a month

They do a 14 day trial and it is compulsory that all new customers try the full system out for the free 14 day period.

As I, like many bloggers, work with WordPress I asked if it was easily integrated with WordPress whether I need to paste code into a Widget or if there was a plugin. I was pleased to be told that there was a plugin and it was in the WordPress plugin database. I did a search using only Zopim and found several plugins. I went with the one by Zopim themselves called Zopim Live Chat.

I did notice a plugin that was designed so you joined Zopim via the plugin creator’s referral account, very clever idea however I digress.

I decide to set myself up an account, I entered my name and email and got the usually verification email. When I clicked on the link I was taken to a page where I set a password.

Once you have set your password you are taking to your own Zopim dashboard, think of Hootsuite or Google analytics.  Before the dashboard opens up fully you are prompted to fill in a personal profile.

There are plenty of things you can do inside the dashboard however I want to focus on the WordPress side of things. So inside WordPress I now access the plugin from the side settings bar.

As you can see in the screenshot above hover your pointer over the Zopim Chat tab on the side bar and then click on the tab Account Setup from the drop down menu.

You will be taken to a page where you need to input your new Zopim account details and link the plugin to your account.

All pretty straightforward, when you have entered your password and email simply click on the Link Up button.

You will be connected and the Dashboard will open up inside WordPress.

It is the same dashboard you would get if you log into your account at their site: it is just delivered within WordPress. There is a link to click if you want to open your account in a separate window at Zopim.com itself.

The dashboard comes with tools and analytics so you can see how many people have come to your site and there is also a great Visitor List which will allow you to see who is online at that time and where they came from.

You now need to customize your chat box or Widget as they have called it. So go to the side tool bar and from the Zopim Chat tab click on Customize from the drop down menu.

Within WordPress you will see your front page with a box full of settings that you customize.

The first section of the settings is Preferences, this where you set where the chat box will appear on the page, the language, whether the chat box is to be hidden when you are offline, do you want the chat bubble to show and whether to disable the notification sound.

When you have set the Preferences to suit your needs click on the Save Changes button.

The next setting is the Theme and colour of the chat box.

I left it as is but you can have a play around if you want to, again click the Save Changes button.

The last set of settings is the Greetings section, here you can change or modify the greetings that people see when they click into the chat box when you are online or offline.

Once again click on Save Changes then head back to the Zopim dashboard and click on the tab that says Visitor List.  You will see a list of the people that are online at that time (obviously lol) and where they have come from in the world.

These people can contact you if they have a question but you can also contact them.

To start up a conversation and potentially scare the pants off them click on their visitor number to open up a chat box. It is best that you do not say ‘Hello there Barbara from Sydney in New South Wales Australia on IP23232323’. It might not go down too well!

As you can see in the screenshot below I started a conversation with myself as a test and to make images, my name shows because of my connection to the site and Zopim. A visitors name is not normally visible.

You can chat to more than one person at a time, if you look closely at the screenshot above you will see in the bottom left corner there is a chat box that represents the one open, you can have several lined up along the bottom.

The screenshot above shows what the site visitor will see when they are chatting to you. Pretty cool eh? You can also add clickable links into the chat area. So instead of the pop up that causes grief, when you are online could you not welcome people with a fun greeting and ask people if they wanted to sign up for your newsletters?

I have had two discussions with people since installing the chat box regarding the Warrior Forum Special Offers product that we have running at the moment. This could lead to an extra sale and for what?  A few minutes of chatting while I have the blog open, I have the blog open all day and generally use social media to network with each day so it is hardly any extra work to sit and monitor the Zopim Chat box.

There is more to this software but I wanted to cover the most important part and that is you can engage with your site visitors! If you are interested in trying out the Zopim Chat for yourself please pop over to Zopim.com.

How To Make Money Online, Marketing & Traffic , , , ,

Time is Your Most Valuable Resource, Learn How to Manage it

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Andi the Minion 6 Comments

Today we have a brilliant post from Anna Robeson, Anna is a social media expert working for an internet marketing agency and today she is going to give us some excellent tips on how to manage your time better. Ok Anna, over to you…

Time is Your Most Valuable Resource, Learn How to Manage it

In a brutal world where competition between companies and internet marketers has become a normal occurrence, it is imperative to prioritize and ration your time the best way you can. Small and medium-sized businesses have an even more difficult task because they have to wear a lot of hats at the same time. Planning projects, sending e-mails, writing articles, organizing team members and contacting clients are only a few of the many daunting tasks which an entrepreneur has to tackle each and every day.

Why is it Important to Ration your Time

To be honest, although I have been writing for a long time, I still have a lot to learn. In the age of hyper-mobility and extremely competitive bloggers there is always some new thing to read about, some interesting research to ponder upon and some new client to woo. Time has always been a problem for me. Sometimes I spend hours and hours doing, what seems to be, too much research, other times I simply waste precious hours on YouTube, or random sites. Whatever the reason, time seems to never be enough, and when it comes to SEO and blogging, speed is undoubtedly one of the most important assets.

While I believe that the ability to manage time and deliver within a deadline is essential, I also believe that on some level, time management tips are applicable to any profession. Moreover, a well-thought out timeline can help organize any type of project, and ultimately, surpass all obstacles. Another thing you should consider is the fact that you shouldn’t work more than 8 to 10 hours a day. It is actually very possible to limit yourself to this number of hours, as long as you have efficiency in mind. This will lead to high productivity, and productivity has the power to alleviate anxiety, enhance focus and determination, raise awareness, improve work and keep you sound of mind.

How to Manage Your Time

How can I manage my time better? This has always been a pressing problem for most hard-working entrepreneurs. The truth is that there is no ultimate recipe for success, but there are a few methods that I found useful. Whether you decide to use tools, hire specialists or make lists, there are approaches which work better for some and not so well for others.

Set Daily Goals

The best way to ration your time is by setting goals. Make a realistic list of the things that you have to do in a day, divide your time according to each task and use a timer. Once the timer goes off, it is time for the next task. Moreover, if you are trying to work in a certain interval of time make sure that you don’t let yourself get distracted. If you work too much you will definitely be less productive the next day.

The Pomodoro Technique

You probably haven’t heard about the Pomodoro Technique before, but it is time you should know about it. For those of you who work a lot, but end up wondering what you did all day, the Pomodoro technique can prove to be an invaluable ally. It consists of 5 stages: planning, tracking, recording, processing and visualizing. These 5 tasks are done in a chronological order from the moment you start working, until you finish. The great thing about it is the fact that it will help you optimize your work-flow.

Make a To-Do List:

For me, To-Do lists work best. With so much work that needs to be done, it can be very easy to forget certain things. This is why you should start every week by creating a to-do list. By creating a to-do list you will be able to set daily goals, and at the end of each week you can draw the line and analyze the results. An amazing tool for setting monthly goals is Basecamp. This nifty gadget will help you track communications, organize files, schedule meetings and create to-do lists.

Don’t Spend too Much time with E-mails

I have the tendency of checking my e-mail every 15-20, and responding as soon as I receive an e-mail. You have no idea how time consuming this action can be, especially if you receive a lot of emails every day. In order to make better use of your time you should schedule intervals in which you are active on mail. The rest of the time, log off in order to not get distracted.

Schedule your Social Media Updates

As important as it is to respond to your followers in real time, it is also important to know when to stop. You probably have many things to do, so why not profit from technology? Use your RSS feed to schedule and promote posts on other social media platforms. This way, you will have post new things every day without necessary being in front of the PC.

Make Your Workspace Inspiring

Remember when our mothers used to tell us that we are as organized as our rooms? I didn’t want to believe her then, but it is true. If you let all your notes and stuff lying around you will probably not get a lot of work done. As a matter of fact, a lot of people usually tidy up the room before they start their day. Managing your workspace in order to easily retrieve important documents, bringing light to the room, using soothing colors and so on will inspire and motivate you.

Conclusion

Lack of time is the most frequent excuse that people use when they fail to deliver results. The truth is that a lot of people gaze at Facebook or Twitter for hours, without doing anything productive, or they waste time surfing the internet for random stuff. As awesome as being your own boss sounds,  there are a lot of traps which you have to avoid. Discipline and responsibility are essential skills if you want to better manage your time.

This is how I manage my time. How do you manage your time? I would love to hear your opinions.

I would like to thank Anna Robeson for this excellent post. Anna is a freelance writer and social media expert who works for an  internet marketing agency. She considers that time management is an essential part of the work-process. If you liked her article you can follow her on Google+.

Positive Prompts, Time Management ,