Have strong content. No matter how people find you, your content is what will keep them coming back for more.

1. Be unique. Even if you\’re posting about the same subject as millions of other bloggers, make sure yours stands out as unique. If your subject is one that only you are talking about, congratulations, the field is wide open, now you just have to find your audience2. Post frequently. In the first few months of your blog\’s lifespan, you should post at least once a day. Although it may seem like a lot to commit to, it\’s vital to show visitors that your blog is well updated, extremely well updated. To help ease the burden, break up the content created on prolific days into several days, or even a weeks worth of posts. Just make sure you don\’t miss any relevant breaking news in the meantime!

2. Post often. Post once a day when you are a new blogger. The content of the internet is constantly updated, so constantly updating your content will give it legitimacy. Let people know that your blog is a reliable information source.

3. Be consistent. Once your blog is established you don\’t have to post as often, but you shouldn\’t drop below 3 times per week. Consistency is key in frequency and in voice.

4. Let people know who you are. It doesn\’t matter if you\’re blogging about tax codes, let your personality shine through. Actually, especially if you\’re blogging about tax codes, let your personality shine through! An occasional personal anecdote can do wonders for your blog.

5. Post pictures, videos, and links. This will add to the richness of your content, and also increase its SEO (search engine optimization) rating.

Get involved in the online community and make your blog feel like a community to your readers.

1. Follow other blogs and comment on them. This can be especially effective if you have a post which looks at the same issue from a different angle, or even outright disagrees with their view. People want all the angles, and you want other readers and bloggers to know about your unique take on the issues.

2. Encourage comments. This is vital for your blogs legitimacy. You may have the best content in the world. A first time viewer may immediately recognize that you have the best content in the world, but if you don\’t have comments, they will question their original assumption. So encourage comments so that people can rest assured in the knowledge that they are reading a quality blog. All you have to do is ask for your readers opinions, and be sure to respond to their answers.

4. Exchange links. Find a website which shares your niche and participate in a link exchange.

5. Use social networking. Take advantage of Twitter and Facebook for instant updates on blog activities.

Establish your credibility as a knowledge source.

Establish yourself as an expert. People are looking for a reliable expert, and if you give them a quality answer where you find them, they\’ll follow you right back to your blog.

1. Answer questions on Yahoo and LinkedIn.

3. Write articles and submit them to EzineArticles, Helium, ConstantContent, or another online article source. Be sure to put a blurb explaining who you are and linking to your blog at the bottom.

4. Create a Squidoo lens. Share your knowledge via Squidoo to hook them in, and link back to your best blog posts (a couple blog posts) to keep them coming back for more.

5. Publish an ebook. Once you\’ve amassed a solid stock of blogging material, create a book. With easy online, self-publishing options, this is an easy tactic to increase your standing as an expert and your revenue.

Promote your blog offline. There is a bigger pool for this if you live in a large city, but unless you\’re trying to stay out of your small-town rumor mill, there\’s no reason not to try some of these tips.

1. Enlist your friends. Whatever you blog about make sure they know to casually mention your url whenever the subject comes up. \”You\’re interested in raising exotic animals? Well, there\’s this great blog…\”

2. Find your niche in their offline hangout. Go to a coffee shop and talk loudly about an issue referenced on your blog with a new acquaintance. Insist that he or she read your blog either to commiserate or be converted to your side. They\’ll go and so will the people near your eavesdropping with their laptops. Then they\’ll go and tell their friends.

3. Get endorsements from other experts. You\’ve already established yourself as an expert, but don\’t forget to take advantage of opportunities to network with other leaders. Who is a leader? Anyone who influences people. Is your blog about childcare? Review some toys and let local toy store owners know what\’s going on. It can be beneficial to both, if you recommend that people buy from that store.

4. Use fliers. Put them up where your niche hangs out. Give them to experts to give away. Advertising on paper still works if you know your target.

5. Read aloud from your blog at an open mic night. If you enjoy public speaking or at the very least can temporary sublimate your dread, then stand up on stage and let your words come alive. This is an especially good tactic for a blog with a creative voice, but it can also work for one with a technical bent.

Mike Gates is an online marketer and recommends HostGator for hosting. HostGator is the cheapest web host. HostGator coupons available at http://hostgatorcouponandreview.com/hostgator-coupon.html.

Basic Blog settings for an SEO Friendly blog

Blog SEO

If you used Expert WordPress to install your blog, a good deal of the SEO work has been done for you. You may want to look over the configuration in the settings menu to double check or to tweak it. Here’s a video to show you where and how to do it in WordPress.

Once installed, these videos show how to tweak your blog for your needs. This first video is how to configure the settings area

This next video is how to change the default stuff that WordPress puts into you blog.

Now you may want to change the look of your blog. Expert WP gives you several options with customizing your blog’s theme. Here’s how:

1. Click on Appearance
2. Choose either Expertwp options or Header Options
3. Choose the changes you would like to implement and save.

Don’t worry about messing it up- you can always click on the defaults button and restore it to the original settings. So, go ahead and play around.

You also have some themes in your Welcome Package. All you have to do is upload the zipped file in the “add new themes” section in appearances and install. You can choose to preview or activate the theme. Activating it will make it your present theme for your blog.

The Flexibilty Theme in you Welcome Package has a Whole Lot of options which can be overwhelming when you first see them. It’s a good theme to work with if you really want a unique look to your blog.

This video shows you how to upload/install new themes- no FTP prog needed

Installing plugins is pretty much the same process. Next week we’ll touch on editing themes a bit and start looking for plugins to monetize your blog.

The first webinar tool you need for creating your webinar is a webinar set up sheet. On this sheet you need to list:

- your webinar OBJECTIVE (sales, a phone appointment, education?)

- the TITLE of your webinar (This should describe the benefit of your webinar to your viewers.)

- what you plan to COVER on your webinar

- your STORY (This is \”why\” you are qualified to host your webinar.)

- CASE STUDIES (results of how you, or the people you have helped, have solved the \”problem\”)

- EDUCATION (This is when you can give them some of your best tips and tricks for their business.)

- ROAD BLOCKS to success (obstacles that will keep them from solving the problem)

- CALL TO ACTION (This is where you encourage them to act on what you\’ve shown them. Go to your website, buy your product or service, or call for an appointment.)

Another webinar tool is a powerpoint template for your webinar ppt. Creating a webinar ppt is easy if you include these items:

-background graphic – Create or have someone else create an appealing, memorable graphic that communicates the message of your webinar. Use it as the background graphic on your master slide.

- your picture – Also on your master slide, use a professional-looking picture of yourself. Put it in the top left corner. Seeing a picture of your will help people remember you and your voice.

-bullet points that show up when you click your mouse – Go to the \”custom animation\” option and have each line on your presentation appear when you click your mouse in the master slide.

- call to action url – In the master view, add a url at the top so that the \”call to action\” is available on each slide. The call to action should lead to a web site where your audience can take an action (buy button, phone number to call, email option form, etc.)

Finally, to set up your webinar, you\’ll need these tools:

- webinar hosting – A webinar hosting account lets you present your audio and video to hundreds of people at the same time. A few webinar hosting companies include: GoToWebinar, Manexa, Omnovia, Web Ex and Adobe Connect

- registration web page – You can use the registration page given to you by the webinar hosting company or you can create your own (recommended). Remember to use benefit-driven language to entice them to register for your webinar. \”What\’s in it for them?\”

- autoresponder – You want to remind them of the upcoming webinar (even after they register). And you definitely want to follow up with them AFTER the webinar with your call to action.

So those are the essential webinar tools. Give them careful thought, set them up, and you will likely see HUGE results.

Stephen Beck is an expert at showing individuals and small businesses how to increase their sales using webinars! He welcomesyou to an amazing FREE weekly webinar to discover webinar tools to set up your webinar! Hurry, these fill up fast! Lock in your spot here: http://www.WildlyWealthyWebinars.com.

We also went through the Welcome Package.

Since class time is limited, here are some videos on Installing and configuring your blog.

Tips on making money with blogs.

Happy blogging

Tactics to Upselling

Cross selling and upselling to the existing customers can be difficult if you want to trade more as well as make more cash ”

Customers who had already purchased from you, however, who trust in and notice value in whatever you do and who are in a purchasing mood are fine prospects for cross selling and upselling. There are many possibilities that the customers will purchase more if you make them aware of it.

You should know what you have that you could cross sell and upsell ”

Having a full knowledge regarding what you could upsell is important. Upselling the irrelevant or wrong services or products would only alienate your customers. Cross selling and upselling the right kind of stuff at the correct time is considered to be your duty. There have likely been times where you have purchased something only to get it to your house and then realized that you could have bought the more expensive one which had more features and matched up better with your preference. If only the salesman had informed you or showed it to you.

Ensure that you (the salesperson) ask ”

Perhaps the greatest block to upselling is that the salesperson doesnt ask. It might be that they are scared or intimidated. Maybe salespeople feel cheesy. Perhaps they might think that they have no right to ask. Maybe they are worried that the client will refuse.

The biggest factor which stops or prohibits upselling is that most of the salespeople do not ask and stay quiet when it comes to upselling.

Try to keep upselling simple ”

About eighty percent of selling is showing up and having the right kind of attitude and playing the game.

Salespeople need to ask for the higher end sales as theyre so experienced, but not forget to follow through on sales basics.

Website content is more than just words on an html page. Content is comprised of all the elements users see and interact with when visiting your website. This includes more than simply words on a web page. Quality content includes words on a page as well as pictures, images, audio, and video. Content may also include RSS feeds, tag clouds and other elements like social media and forums.

The development of rich, engaging content is paramount to attracting and keeping website visitors. Whether you are using professionally written content or are simply allowing your website visitor to comment or provide reviews on a given topic, engaging content is important.

There are many benefits to writing and designing powerful content. This is especially true when focusing on the value of search engine optimized content, images, and other on-page factors. The outcome of good optimization is a steady flow of targeted website visitors.

Make sure that your content not only allows for search engines to easily index your site but that it also engages website visitors. Optimized content is worthless if it does not provide a good user experience. Once you attract users to your website, make sure that your content provides value. As website browsers engage your content, consider how they might move through the purchase decision process. Is you content directing them to where you want them to go or providing adequate opportunity to convert them in a variety of ways? Good content encourages your website audience to navigate beyond your home page and through your website.

As you build relationships through quality content, the likelihood of website visitors becoming customers increases significantly. In addition, these customers will be interested in referring others to your site to share something they value. These referrals are essential for building website traffic and growing your customer base. Think about your website as a viral marketing tool that can make or break your business.

When you have quality content, you are building links to your website naturally. As others find valuable information, they will link to your content and make references to share their findings with others. This inbound linking is incredibly valuable when it comes to search engine rankings. The more links to your site, the higher your search results placement will be. Keep delivering quality content and watch your rankings improve.

When websites continue to focus on engaging content, they will find that they receive more links from third party websites and higher search engine rankings. This produces a significant increase in website traffic over a sustained period of time. Once you have the right amount of traffic, your opportunity for increased sales can grow significantly. Make the investment in quality content and reap the rewards.

Successful online businesses produce quality content on a daily basis. This is one of the reasons why they are successful. Not only does quality content engage your browsers, but it creates an environment that people want to visit often. Add the benefit of improved rankings and you can see why good content is so important.

The next time you add content to your website in the form of an article, image, or other elements, do not underestimate the need for quality. It takes very little to generate quality content and it always pays huge dividends.

The 55 second clip “Charlie bit me” in youtube got more than 6 million views worldwide. So popular is the vidoe that it has inspired several spoofs which shows two not so cute grownups mimicking the innocent, unrehearsed acts of Charlie and Harry.

The video has been added on May 22, 2007, about 9 months ago. As of today, it has been commented on 7,764 times and has been marked as favorite 43,030 times.

Around 106,000 website has wrote about or featured the video. So popular is the video that in fact, search for it has reached a high amount of volume. As a result, statistics for it is made available at google trends. (Note that Google trends shows searches only when it has become so popular)

The phrase “Charlie bit me” itself has been exploited by several webmasters and several venture capitalist to get more traffic into their website or blogs. The mother of the boys commented that “I have noticed that the phrase Charlie bit me is catching on and people are trying to profit of it . . .”

Not to get left behind by bloggers and other business minded person the parents has started to realize the income opportunity that can be made off the popular phrase and the high volume of traffic that the popular youtube video has brought. The parents are making available to the public a “Charlie bit me” t-shirt series.

It is good that the parents has come to realize the income opportunity brought about by the video before others have catched on to this craze. This should be so conidering that the short clip is starred by their kids and they were the ones who uploaded the video. It should be them that should be the first to benefit from the high volume of traffic and the popularity brought about by the video.

The video is certainly cute and the British accent adds to its appeal. (Most spoof videos of “Charlie bit me” are not cute at all; in fact I would go to the extent of calling some of them dumb)

If we were to learn something from this “Charlie bit me phenomenon” or “Charlie bit me craze” only one lesson comes into mind and that is CONTENT IS STILL KING. It’s still “The content stupid” no matter what other Search Engine Optimization (SEO) gurus say. Majority of “Charlie bit me” fans know about the video through verbal recommendations. Undoubtedly, “Charlie bit me” fans did not know about the video by searching for “funny videos” in the search engines. It is also quite obvious that the parents of these kid did not do some advertisement, or tried to increase their back links, released several press releases, bought some articles or bought text link or google ads to increase their traffic. The reason why the “Charlie bit me” video has become so popular is because people go crazy over the content. They love it so much. It’s funny and its so cute. I am not saying that we should not give importance to SEO strategies and techniques. What I am saying is that we must realize that in the end, high volume sustainable traffic to your site is mainly due to rich content.

Any by the way, if you really like the video I highly recommend that you get a “Charlie bit me” shirt.

For daylight photography many people think about
whether the sun is behind them or coming from behind
their left or right shoulder.

Try also considering the different times of the day:early morning, morning, midday to start with, takesome photos and notice the difference between the pictures. If the first day is bright sunshine then try the same shots again on a cloudy day, rainy day, misty day and so on.

It is suggested that you take these comparison
photographs as close to repeats of each other
as you can. Now is the time to compare your
photos and note the differences.

Now repeat this exercise with early, middle and late
afternoon shots and evening shots. Also on days that
are that are quite dark and the evenings check to see
how dark it can get and still give good pictures.

During daylight hours, especially when it is bright
sunshine, take some photos indoors of anything in shady
corners say a bunch of flowers, or plants on a table
in front of the window even the cat asleep on the floor
and see how they turn out. Don’t forget to try the same
shots at various times of the day and on shady and rainy
days as well.

Some times you can get a great picture but which is too dark.
Pictures which turn out too dark because of the available
light can also be brightened and enhanced with photographic
software.

Another experiment for you to try under these different
times and conditions of the days is to use the flash. One
suggestion is to take a photo of a flower in a shady spot
with a sunbeam lighting up the flower and compare it to
a photo of the same flower taken when the sunbeam has
disappeared and photograph it using the flash option.

When you feel you have enough photographs taken under
different weather conditions and differing times of the day
start to compare them and note the differences. You may find
that you prefer photos taken on one kind of day, for example
misty, and early in the morning.

Keep your assortment of photograph samples handy as
reference material. You may need to refer to them from
time to time in the future.

Everyone is a unique individual and what suits one person for trading may be unsuitable for others.  Working out what suits you is something that you need to focus upon. The basic principles are straightforward, but only you can provide the right answers for yourself. Trading is essentially very simple:

• Buying an asset when it is undervalued
• Selling the asset when it is overvalued
• Recognizing when we have got it wrong and exiting the trade before losses accumulate

The emotions we feel about the actions we have taken when we get it wrong complicate things. A winning trade leaves us feeling elated, happy, and self confident; but a losing trade causes mental pain and loss of self esteem. The larger the loss the more pain is experienced. Learning to be detached from the outcome, neither happy or sad, is part of the process of controlling your emotions. Developing the mental capacity to overcome obstacles is the focus of all personal self development courses. Recognize that:

• you are what you think
• what you think shapes what you believe about yourself
• this leads to self mastery and the control of your emotions
• managing these emotions is critical to success

Emotions are deeply rooted in our biological makeup and stem from the fear of harm to ourselves.  One method you can use to bring your fears into the open is to use a trading diary that records the emotions you feel during a trade from:

• the moment you planned it
• when you entered the trade
• during the trade as it works for you, or goes against you
• when you exited with either profit or loss.

After the trade is completed you can then use the notes to analyse these emotions and work out what you can do differently in your trading processes to overcome any negative aspects.  This may simply mean learning not to reset stop losses downwards in the middle of the trade or some other obvious mistake that undermines your trading. Life, and trading, will keep testing you until you learn from it, and grow to a new level. Mastering yourself occurs when learning the necessary self discipline becomes automatic in your behaviour.

James Forrester is a former teacher who became interested in investing and trading in the share market after retiring from teaching Business Studies courses. He is the webmaster for shareandoptiontrading.com and is focussed on education needed by newcomers who wish to learn about the stock market, investing and trading. If you are prepared to take up your own personal challenge then this site provides you with information on how to get the necessary education to invest and trade your way to a better lifestyle.

Many people start trading because they want to make money and they perhaps know someone who has done it and been successful. It is certainly true that if you master the techniques of trading it leads to an enjoyable lifestyle that permits you to live anywhere you wish, and be truly independent from the constraints of a JOB. It is this dream that starts many on this path, but statistics indicate that around 5% to 10% reach this goal and perhaps another 10% do very well. Many fall by the wayside and give up. Those that are successful have specific personal characteristics:

• a clear goal of what they want to achieve
• a positive mindset
• ability to learn from their mistakes
• persistence in the face of adversity
• possess or develop a trading plan that suits their personality
• learn how to manage risk
• establish self discipline to control their emotions
• treat trading as their business by keeping
  • trading records
  • a diary

These characteristics are essential to become successful traders and are the basis for a trading plan. You can begin its development by:

• writing out your goals and the time frames to achieve them
• determining sub goals that will become your stepping stones
• learning the tools of  technical analysis
• adopting a trading system from a successful trader
• trading only when the conditions are met and probability is in your favour
  • trade initiation signals
  • trade size and risk
• making small trades initially to learn the processes and limit risk
• making it as mechanical as possible and eliminating emotion

Trading, when based on probability patterns, is not gambling, but it does require the management of risk to be successful.

Statistically each trade is a separate entity, but our emotions take control if we get into a series of losses.  If this happens STOP TRADING.  Go back and analyse what you have been doing and make changes to your process. If necessary modify your trading system based on your learning experience. Remember that the guidance system of a rocket is continually making corrections to keep it on target. Focus on establishing a series of winning trades, even if they are small, and build your self confidence.

In my experience the only time “success” comes before “work” is in the dictionary. You will achieve success if you develop the right mindset, and this means working on yourself as you are the key factor in the process.

James Forrester is a former teacher who became interested in investing and trading in the share market after retiring from teaching Business Studies courses. He is the webmaster for shareandoptiontrading.com and is focussed on education needed by newcomers who wish to learn about the stock market, investing and trading. If you are prepared to take up your own personal challenge then this site provides you with information on how to get the necessary education to invest and trade your way to a better lifestyle.