Beginners Archives

Digital Marketing 101: A Beginner’s Guide to the Online Marketing Space

In the ever-evolving digital world we live in, understanding digital marketing is crucial for any business owner looking to engage with customers online, which all businesses should be at this point. So, this post is tailored to help business owners navigate through the various facets of digital marketing — from SEO to social media and beyond.

Understanding Digital Marketing

Digital vs. Traditional Marketing: While traditional marketing typically uses print, radio, and TV — digital marketing mainly utilizes online platforms. The advantage of digital lies in its ability to target specific demographics, track and analyze data in real-time, engage with customers interactively, and so much more. Traditional marketing, while still relevant, offers a broader approach with less immediate measurability, and often times less overall success these days.

Key Components of Digital Marketing: This encompasses a variety of strategies, including; SEO, PPC, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and more. Each plays a distinct role – SEO for organic reach & search visibility, PPC for targeted traffic, social media fosters community engagement, content marketing for brand authority, and so on.

Role of Technology in Digital Marketing: Modern digital marketing heavily relies on technology and is advancing daily. Tools like AI, machine learning, and big data analytics are reshaping how we understand and interact with audiences. They enable hyper-personalization of marketing messages and predictive analytics for more effective campaign planning, and help businesses understand & cater to their customers more effectively.

Here are some of the more mainstream methods that fall under the digitial marketing umbrella and a little bit about them…

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is about optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results (such as Google) and is one of the most important things any business can do for creating an online presence and getting consistent leads coming through their website. At its most basic level this involves keyword research to understand what terms your audience uses, on-page optimization, and off-page optimization.

On-page SEO: Focuses on optimizing elements on your website such as content quality, keyword usage, HTML tags, and more. There are many of these elements that need to be implemented to improve search engine rankings.

Off-page SEO: Involves actions taken outside of your own website to impact your rankings within the search engine results. This includes link building, social media marketing, outreach, PR, etc.

Local SEO: Tailors your online presence for a local audience. It’s crucial for companies with a physical location or serving a specific geographic area; especially small businesses to implement local SEO strategies. This would include optimizing your Google Business Profile (aka GMB, Maps) and getting local citations as well as implementing core SEO strategies you would for any website.

Also, staying up to date with Google’s algorithms is crucial for SEO success. They update often and this means a change in “best practices” on a regular basis.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC is an advertising model where you bid on certain keyphrases and pay a fee each time your ad is clicked. It allows for immediate visibility in search engine results and offers precise targeting options. Effective pay per click requires understanding your audience, selecting the right keywords to bid on, and creating compelling ad copy.

Platforms like Google Adwords and Bing Ads are commonly used for PPC campaigns. This can be amazing for traffic and sales for any sized business if done correctly.

Keyword Research: Selecting the right keywords is crucial for a successful campaign. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner for research.

Ad Creation: Focus on creating compelling ad copy and strong calls-to-action. Visual elements in ads can significantly enhance click-through rates.

Landing Page Optimization: Ensure your landing page is aligned with your ad in terms of content and call-to-action. A/B testing can be used to determine the most effective elements.

Display Ads

Display advertising uses visual ads on blogs, apps, social media, and other websites. They can be targeted based on user demographics, interests, and browsing behavior. Retargeting, where ads are shown to users who have previously visited your website, is a powerful tactic in display advertising.

Retargeting: This strategy involves displaying ads to users who have previously visited your website, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Ad Networks: Google Display Network and Facebook’s display advertising are popular platforms. They offer extensive reach and varied targeting options. But there are MANY others of course.

Video Marketing

Video marketing involves using video content to promote your brand, product or service, and engage with your audience. This can range from brand storytelling to product demonstrations and so much more. Platforms like YouTube and social media channels are popular for hosting marketing videos. Effective video marketing requires understanding your audience, creating engaging content, and optimizing videos for search engines and social platforms.

Platform Selection: Choose platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, or social media based on where your audience spends their time.

Content Creation: Focus on creating engaging, informative, and concise videos. Adding subtitles can increase accessibility and engagement.

Social Media Marketing

SMM is about leveraging platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc… for brand building and customer engagement. It involves creating content that resonates with your audience, engaging with followers, and analyzing your social media performance. A successful social media strategy aligns with your overall marketing goals and speaks to your markets interests and needs.

Content Strategy: Tailor your content to fit each platform. Use analytics tools to understand what resonates with your audience.

Engagement: Regularly interact with your followers through comments, messages, and social listening.

It’s not secret that social media is now an integral part of our daily lives and is not going away any time soon — probably never. So, it only makes sense to utilize social media marketing in your business!

Copywriting

This is about creating compelling content that engages and persuades your audience. This can range from website copy and blog posts to email marketing content and social media posts. Effective copywriting requires understanding your audience, crafting clear/concise messages, and including compelling calls-to-action.

SEO in Copywriting: Incorporate keywords naturally to boost SEO while ensuring the content remains user-friendly.

Tone and Style: Adapt your writing style to match the tone of each platform, your brand voice, and what your audience responds to best.

Email Marketing

As you might imagine this involves sending emails to a list of subscribers with the aim of converting prospects into customers and turning one-time buyers into loyal fans. It requires building a subscriber list, segmenting that list for targeted campaigns, creating engaging content, and analyzing the results to improve future campaigns.

List Building: Use opt-in strategies to build your email list. Ensure compliance with regulations like GDPR.

Segmentation and Personalization: Segment your list based on user behavior and preferences for more personalized campaigns.

Other Online Marketing Strategies

Influencer Marketing: This involves partnering with influencers to reach a larger or new audience. It can be highly effective, as influencers have built trust with their followers.

Content Marketing: This strategy focuses on creating and distributing valuable content to attract and retain a defined audience. It helps in building brand authority and driving organic traffic.

Mobile Marketing: With the increasing use of smartphones, mobile marketing is essential. It includes optimizing your website for mobile, creating mobile-friendly content, and utilizing SMS marketing.

Putting It All Together

Creating a comprehensive digital marketing strategy involves understanding your audience, setting clear goals, and using various methods to achieve them. It’s important to continuously measure and adjust your strategy based on performance data. Develop a balanced digital marketing strategy that incorporates different components based on your particular business needs. Regularly analyze and adjust your strategy based on performance data and changing market trends.

Summary

Digital marketing is a dynamic and ever-changing field that offers endless opportunities to connect with customers in innovative ways, build your business, increase sales, and a whole lot more. Embrace the journey, experiment with different strategies, and continually learn & adapt. The digital marketing world is dynamic, and staying “in the know” and adjusting rapidly is important for sustained success.

Bitcoin Trading Guide for Beginners – Read BEFORE You Trade BTC

There’s no hiding the fact that Bitcoin trading is becoming a very popular topic these days, but if you want to make money trading bitcoins, you need to understand how it actually works (and a whole lot of other things). You don’t want to just jump in blindly or you will greatly risk losing your investment.

Ok, let’s get to it…

How to Trade Bitcoin

[introduction knowledge for beginners]

The simple fact is that running a trading platform with some broker is NOT going to guarantee you any sort of return. Bitcoin isn’t really a derivative or asset, and thus you have to be EXTRA careful when/if you commit to its trading. So, it’s important to get some good tips on trading bitcoins for beginners before you get started.

There are basically two ways to trade Bitcoin – as there is with any other derivative – either through ownership (long) or with contracts (short). What you do is heavily dependent on your capital allocation, and how you wish to get involved with the market.

In other words, there are only so many ways to really effectively make money from the Bitcoin craze – and we will cover one of them in this tutorial.

In a nutshell, making money with Bitcoin comes down to 4 words – buy low, sell high.

Whilst you could argue this works for *any* profit-seeking venture, the case with the likes of Bitcoin is that it doesn’t have any revenue-generating potential of its own. This makes it quite a difficult proposition in terms of it being a long-term play… simply because its “price” is based entirely on what someone else will pay for it.

To this end, if you wish to delve into the interesting world of crypto trading (particularly with Bitcoin), you’ll need to ensure that you fully appreciate both the scope and scale of what you’re getting involved with!

Bitcoin Trading vs. Bitcoin Investing

I feel this is vital to bring up before getting too far into this post.

What we are discussing here is the trading of Bitcoins — as opposed to investing in Bitcoin. It’s very important to note that, while these are similar, they are two completely different things and should NOT be confused with each other!

Keep this in mind while reading this post and/or acting upon the information!

Investing in Bitcoin is often a long-term strategy and typically involves buying & holding with the expectation of future gains. This is usually referred to as “HODL” (hold on for dear life) if the cryptocurrency space. Therefore, BTC investors are not generally worried about price volatility on a day to day basis. They are in it for the long haul – so to speak.

In contrast, your typical Bitcoin trader is likely only staying in a trade for a relatively short amount of time – anywhere from a couple hours to a few months – generally speaking. Those who trade bitcoin are also usually very price-aware, as they strive for the best entry and exit points. Their goals are much more short-term and looking for smaller (but quicker) profits on a regular basis.

These are two very different strategies, so it is important to make sure you aren’t considering them one and the same. We are talking about bitcoin trading in this post — not investing.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get on with it…

The Truth About Bitcoin’s Profit Potential

The major reason most people are involved with BTC is because of the potential profit that can be earned by trading its “coins”. Stories of a new crop of “Bitcoin Millionaires” have become somewhat more resounding, especially as the “price” of the “coins” experienced substantial growth in the latter half of 2017…

Bitcoin Millionaire Growth Chart

The point here is that “HODL” is NOT a profit making strategy when you’re looking at trading BTC. You only make a profit when you SELL your BTC – hence the idea that you should “buy and hold” is an utterly ridiculous notion for a typical trader, although may (in certain circumstances) be of value.

I hate to say it, but if I am speaking objectively then I would say that ultimately Bitcoin is – at present – a borderline scam. It has many of the same traits as a ponzi scheme, it doesn’t have any redeemable “value” (in the sense of it holding an actual street price), and has a very narrow scope in terms of how well it can be used.

Furthermore, it’s almost ENTIRELY fueled by end-user demand. This is bad. Anyone in the financial industry should be able to attest that it’s the institutional money that determines the way in which a system may be profitable / hold value. Bitcoin has none of that, and has already been shunned by the majority of highly-valued investment banks.

So, in order to understand what the hype is about, you need to perceive exactly what Bitcoin actually does, and why it has any value at all. Why does its “coins” have prices, and what does it mean to “trade” them?

Let’s get to that…

Like most new technology, the market has completely misunderstood Bitcoin.

Rather than being entirely focused on the underlying technological value of the system, people have rushed to make it out to be some new infrastructure play that’s going to change the world. Whilst this *may* happen, it will be as a result of actually applying value to the market BEFORE trying other things.

The value of Bitcoin (right now) is solely as a transfer medium. Its ability to facilitate transactions with people in different countries, without any central provider, is the real value of the system.

Obviously, you’re transferring money – which is partly where the idea that BTC has any immediate value came from – but that doesn’t necessarily mean each coin is worth anything. The market became confused with the system calling itself a “currency” (or cryptocurrency).

The most important thing to realize is that if you’re looking at the BTC token as a means to provide yourself with a profit, its value lies in its transactability, NOT in the “value” that it stores. Without getting into technicalities, the system doesn’t store any intrinsic value; it only transfers it to others.

It’s a decentralized PAYMENT NETWORK, not an actual currency; so more a competitor to VISA / Mastercard as it is the USD – in a sense…

Bitcoin Trading Strategies

Thus, when you consider making a profit from BTC, you’re basically looking at how to make money from the purchase-and-sale of its coins to other people. As bad as it sounds, it’s something called the greater fool theory…

Greater Fool Theory of Investments

Greater fool theory simply states that if you buy a distressed asset at – WAY over its market value – then you’ll need to find a “greater fool” to buy it from you (to make any profit).

This is not – of course – my interpretation of Bitcoin. BTC has its own merits, BUT in a completely mercantile sense, it’s a shell game. You’re buying fictitious coins (which have NO merit in the real world) and trying to equate some sort of value to them. This is where many of the successful traders have won out.

As mentioned, there are now TWO ways to trade bitcoin – either by trading contracts on the coins or by trading the actual coins themselves (through ownership). Both are reliant on the “price” of the underlying asset increasing after you bought it…

If you are more conservative, and actually want to hold onto some of the coins in case they drop in value (or are holding for a long play), you’ll want to buy the coins with actual money. This is done through a cryptocurrency exchange (most likely CoinBase for beginners), and means you’ll have to put down a significant amount of capital in order to purchase the coins outright.
If you are less risk averse, you may wish to conduct derivative-based (day) trading, whereby you place orders with a broker, who will then give you a contract. This contract is what you’re really trading – allowing you to determine the best time / rate to sell at. This process is much faster, but also leaves you exposed in case of losses (since you don’t own the underlying assets, you get stung if they drop in value). Most brokers only operate with leverage (debt) too – something to be very careful of.

HOW you do this is entirely dependent on the desired outcome from the trading.

As mentioned, the broker based route to trade bitcoin is only really for more experienced traders (typically from the financial world proper) who may have spare capital to play with crypto.

Most retail traders choose to own the assets outright, as they provide a better level / rate of growth than the likes of a savings account. In either case, it’s capital management 101.

Steps To Trade…

At the core of it all, “trading” is the same regardless of whether you use the “exchange” or “broker” method. You’re placing a trade on an equity (in this case Bitcoin), and hoping that the price of the equity rises whilst you hold it. The difference lies in the method and time frame of the trade.

Entering a trade consists of buying a POSITION on the underlying asset. This can include complete ownership (it doesn’t matter) – what’s important is that you enter the trade at a particular point.
Exiting a trade consists of selling a POSITION on an underlying asset. This can be handled in various ways – but please understand that in order for a position to be successfully “sold”, it needs to have a buyer. This is why you cannot sell a position for [much] more than market rates.

To gain an idea as to how it works, please observe the image below…

BTC Trading Chart

This is the same guy who became a Bitcoin Millionaire in December 2017.

It shows his entry at around $3k, his exit at $15k… and – more importantly – a HEDGE that he placed on the price falling.

The hedge is what’s known as a short sale. This is done by taking out a buy contract with the broker for a future price on the asset. In the case of a short, the buy price needs to be LOWER than the current market value. This allows the trader to profit from the fall in spot price of the asset, whilst not losing any money in the ownership of the item.

Irrespective of this, please remember – the underlying way to profit from ANY market-based security is to buy low, sell high (or vice versa if you’re going short). This is essentially the core of all BTC transactions – the price gains being driven by a mix of consumer demand and market speculation.

To do this in a legitimate way, the following steps should give you an overview of how to do it in the two methods I mentioned above…

Determine Your Trading Method
You need a way to place entry positions (buy a commodity). To do this, you will either need to use a broker (such as IG Markets) or a cryptocurrency exchange such as Binance.
Take a Position
Once you have a platform, you need to use it. This is done by purchasing a position with BTC – which is either done by going through your broker, or exchange.
Wait
After you’ve done this, you need to wait. The price will either increase or decrease (I don’t know your trading strategy so how long you wait for is up to you) – once it hits the price you’re aiming for, sell it.
Repeat
After you’ve sold your position (hopefully for a profit), repeat.

Conclusion

As mentioned, it’s not rocket science to read a chart and place “bets” on differentiation’s in price for bitcoin trading. The real magic comes from being able to read wider macro-economic indicators and other trends, which could indicate growth / retraction in the price of the underlying asset. Using a cryptocurrency software can also be very helpful as long as you are choosing one that is legitimate and not falling for one of the many scams out there!

Whilst Bitcoin has gained notoriety among retail traders, the simple fact is that crypto is still a “poor mans” stock market. I love it and believe in it, and I think it has a very bright future, but right now that is the reality — if I’m being honest! There’s no underlying value in the “coins”, and the various people who are still promoting everything from ICO’s to BTC itself are mainly guided by their own self-interest and ideas of grandeur.

The fact is that – like with many other opportunities – it’s the early adopters who gain most.

Bitcoin may have technical use value, but this doesn’t necessarily translate into economic potency. This means that if you’re looking at getting the most out of the likes of Bitcoin – in terms of profit – you need to ensure you’re investing into the underlying “value” of the ecosystem, and not just the “coin” itself.

Frankly, checking charts every couple minutes and placing trades based on price alone is a loser’s game. Even if you make money, it’s going to be minimal. Rather, you need to be focused on identifying the “value” of the crypto market, and fueling / supporting that as best you can. The more of that you do, the more effective each of your investments will be.

Turn Off Your TV and Get to Work!

Are you where you want to be financially in your life right now? I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess not. Do you have a bunch of extra spending money laying around? Again, I will assume that’s a big fat NO.

However, I bet you do have a television and I also bet you watch TV an average of at least one hour every day. Studies show that the average American watches about 40 hours of TV every week. That is like having a 2nd full time job where you do nothing but sit on your butt and stare at a screen.

Let’s just say you are on the super low end of what most people watch and put your TV time at just one hour each day. That is still 365 hours every year that you are wasting on something that does absolutely nothing for you. That is the equivalent of more than 2 months working at a full time job.

Now, imagine if you started your own online home business and used those same hours working on it instead!

You could be earning a very solid extra income from your business, which would give you the peace of mind that comes with not having to worry about money anymore. You could take that long overdue vacation or buy that new car, send your kids to college, save for retirement, or whatever else you want to do with the money.

Doesn’t that sound a heck of a lot better than sitting on the couch watching TV every night? It sure does to me!

So, here are the steps you need to take right now:

1) Turn off your TV. And promise yourself not to watch it anymore, or at least watch it a lot less.

2) Start your own online home business. Click here for our top recommended opportunity.

3) Focus solely on building your business every day during the hours that you used to watch TV.

4) Keep at it. You aren’t going to see any results overnight. It takes some time to build any real business, online or offline.

5) Enjoy all that extra money that you now have!

That’s all there is to it. I mean come on, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that using the time you waste watching TV on something productive — like building a home business — is a much more effective use of your time!

How to Make Money from Google

Everyone’s dream job is to work for Google, right? Well, unless you are super highly educated, incredibly skilled, very lucky, and also know someone that can help you get hired there; it’s probably not going to happen. But there is a way to get paid by Google while working from home. It’s called Adsense. And yes you can earn money online with it — A lot actually!

Is this something you might be interested in learning more about? Let’s see… Have you recently asked yourself, “where can I find a job” or “what are some ways to make money” or “how do I start a home business” or any other question similar to those? If so, this information is for you!

What is Google Adsense?

It is a program that enables website owners to automatically serve text, image, video, and rich media ads on their sites. The ads are targeted based on the sites content so visitors are only seeing ads for things they might be interested in. Google uses its internet search technology to serve advertisements based on your websites content, the visitor’s geographical location, and some other factors. They generate revenue on a pay-per-click basis. Basically you get paid every time a visitor clicks on an advertisement displayed on your website.

Before you do anything, you need to get a Google Adsense account. It’s free and fairly easy to sign up so you shouldn’t have any problems with that. Then, you just need to put the code on your site. I won’t go into detail about how to do that because there are plenty of free plugins that will do it for you if you have a blog. If you don’t that’s fine, there’s tons of free information readily available all over the internet that will teach you how to add the code to your site.

How to make money with Adsense?

After you have an account and learned how to put the code on your site/blog, it’s time to actually start earning money online from this simple program. The only real way to do that is with content.

You need content and lots of it. But not just any content. It MUST be high quality and 100% original. Stealing other people’s content or using a bunch of spun crap will not get you anywhere. In fact, doing that will likely get you banned. On top of that the content needs to be focused around a niche market. You will need to do keyword research on a topic (niche) you are interested in and know a lot about, then build a blog around that topic.

Once you have done that it’s time to start writing. You need to write and write and write some more. Keep on writing new content every day for weeks, months, or even years. Publish every bit of knowledge you have about the subject and everything related to it. When you run out of things to say then start researching more related topics that you could write about. Just keep writing and publishing content.

For example, if you are a dog enthusiast and/or dog trainer, or know a lot about dogs in general, then you could start a blog about dogs. Teach people everything there is to know about every topic you can think of related to dogs. If you get to the point where you don’t know what else to say then do some research to find what sorts of questions people have about dogs, then write about that. If you don’t know that answer search until you find it and keep writing.

Try to become the world’s leading authority site on your niche if you possibly can. Even if you can’t just keep writing more high quality content until enough people take notice. Eventually you will build up a following. As your content builds up over time so will your rankings, traffic, subscribers, and so on. That will directly lead to more Adsense clicks and more money for you!

It will be slow going at first and you might feel like you are wasting your time getting nowhere. Trust me, just keep going. It’s not going to happen overnight but you are definitely getting somewhere with each article/post you write. If you do this correctly, there will come a time when your earnings start increasing every month and might even get to a point where you are making more money than anyone you know.

At this point you can drastically slow down on the writing. You might not even have to do anymore work at all. The passive residual income will be coming in daily with very little to no extra work on your part. And all that writing you did for so long without getting much in return will be more than worth it!

Also, be sure that you NEVER click on the Adsense ads on your own website! That means not even once, ever. And don’t tell any of your friends or family to click on your ads either. Don’t do anything to try and game their system. Doing so will get you banned in no time and they won’t let you back in. It’s not worth trying. You will lose a lot more money in the long run than you will make by using sneaky tactics to increase your income.

Once you have just about exhausted all the writing you can possibly do for one site in one niche, and built it up to hundreds (or thousands) of pages of original content, high rankings, tons of traffic, subscribers, great Adsense earnings, and everything else then you can do the same thing with another site. Just rinse and repeat the same thing you did with the first one. You can do it over and over again with many sites if you want.

And that, my friend, is how to make money from Google! Find a topic you know a lot about that other people also want to know more about, build a blog about it, and get to writing.

How to Change Your WordPress Blog Header

The theme I am using on my blog right now is free. Since it is free, it means that I have to customize it myself. I didn’t like how the header was looking because it had my blog tagline overlapping with my blog title.

I had to change it for 2 reasons. I didn’t like it and I had to brand myself. I couldn’t figure out how to change, but a wordpress designer told me what I should do.

How Can You Change Your Blog Header

You need to look at the source code of your blog from your browser. You have to go to your homepage. Right click on any place on the screen (not on any link). Go to View Page Source. When the source code opens, hold Ctrl + F. This will bring the find box. You want to look for the location of the header code. In the find box, type in body. It would take you to the body code i.e. <body>

The next line in the body area is the header. In my case, it was

<div id="ja-mainwrapper">

I downloaded my theme to my pc. I went to the images folder (…../theme/images). I looked for the word “mainwrapper”. I noticed on an image that had a blue background like my header and it was called main wrap. So I decided to rename my new header image as main wrap and deleted the old image. I uploaded the theme back to my wordpress.

Then I went to my header.php. I commented out the title and the tagline. I did this by using <!– –>. The space in between the dashes is where the text I want to comment goes into.

The Pings Services that Got Me Indexed

I wrote a post that I said I got indexed in Google in 20 minutes after publishing the post. I used ping services. Ping services is a way by which your blog tells servers that you have made a new post. This would help to keep your blog fresh on search engines. The Ping services I used were

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/

To insert these on your wordpress blog, go to your Your Control Panel –> Settings –> Writing . Then scroll down. In the update services text box, copy and past the Ping services.

Get Google to Know Your Blog

If you are reading this blog, this means that you know about Google search. In the blogosphere, most bloggers refer to Google as the best search engine to get traffic from SEO.

How can You get Google to index Your site Quickly? That is easy, it is done in two ways:

1. Submit Your URL to Google – When submitting, use the full URL — in my case I would submit https://www.gr1innovations.com

In the content form, write the description of your site. The description is the summary of your site. You should put your keywords in the description. I wrote “Blog with Make Money Online skill”. From the text written on the page, Google doesn’t guarantee that every site would be indexed. Don’t be worried, I think Google indexes every blog. The sites not indexed should be gambling, adult or harmful sites.

2. Include a Sitemap of Your Blog – A sitemap shows the organization of the pages on your blog on a web page. It helps search engine bots and people to navigate your site easily. You can have a look at my sitemap. To make your site map, you can go to sitemap generator to make your sitemap. It is free for up to 500 pages. If your blog is hosted on wordpress, you can use a plugin to generate your sitemap. I use the Google XML Sitemap Plugin. Follow the instructions on the installation tab to install the plugin. Then login into Google Webmaster (you need to have a Google account, it is free). Add your blog’s URL at the form where you see Add Site. Then click on sitemap and submit your sitemap. Submitting your sitemap also helps Google to show you how it sees your blog. You can see the keywords people searched for on Google’s search engine that brought them to your site.

What Blogging Platform is Recommended

The recommended blogging platform depends on what you want. There are many different blogging platform that you can use to blog. It depends on you, the webmaster to choose what best fits your needs. There is a list of weblogs at wikipedia. Among all the blogging platforms, some platforms needs you to download and install, some are open source and free, some are proprietary software that may be licensed for a fee or have versions available free of charge.

From the choice of platform of the top 100 blogs, you will see that WordPress is the most used platform. Not only with the A-list bloggers, wordpress is the most used platform in the blogosphere overall.

Why does the A-list bloggers use their platform. I don’t know why, but I can speak from my experience with blogger, wordpress.com, wordpress.org.

1. Blogger – This is a free blogging service owned by Google. It is easy to use. This is the recommended blogging platform to start with if you are looking for a free service to get going on quickly and easily. Most bloggers start with this one to get a feel of how to blog on a software. But it has its disadvantages. One of them is that it doesn’t allow you to customize your blog very much. Register with Blogger.

2. WordPress.org – This is a free open source platform that needs to be hosted on your server. At first, it seems complicated to use, but gradually it would become easy. WordPress allows you to do anything you want. You can customize it to your taste. The only major disadvantage is that it needs constant update to keep up with security issues. Download and install WordPress

3. WordPress.com – This is the free version of wordpress.org that is easier to use but doesn’t have the full functionality. It is updated constantly by the wordpress team. The only disadvantage is that it doesn’t allow Javascript code. You need javascript code to run adsense, analytics, and some affiliate links. Get wordpress.com blog.

I recommend using hosted wordpress.org if you can afford a webhost. You just have to be sure to update it often. But for beginners, blogger is recommended to get a feel of the blogging waters.

Are There Any Domain Names of Your Choice Left?

I wanted to make the title of this post to be “Are there any domain names left?” I didn’t because there are obviously still countless names left for you to choose, but the exact domain name you want is probably not available. It is already registered to somebody. Don’t you hate it when a name that you want is not there? It is like every simple word in the dictionary is a domain name that has been registered to somebody. The only ones left are two + words names. But you have to be creative about that because someone else has probably thought about that domain name you came up with and has already registered it.

What is annoying about all this is that you have a project in mind you want to do and the domain is already registered and parked. To me, basically the domain is wasting there. It is just idle. Then if you are lucky, you would see a page saying that you can own this domain or something similar. If you click on the link, it would take you to Sedo (a buy and sell domain website). Then the owner would expect you to place a bid or you might see the domain at a ridiculous price.

This has made people to form all type of names for their blogs. If you are looking for a domain name, you can buy an existing name from somebody. If you buy from Sedo, you have to pay the owner and the owner has to give Sedo its commission for listing the domain, thereby making the domain expensive. If you want to buy a domain, you can go to any webmaster forum such as digitalpoint forum or flippa market. You can make a new thread requesting to buy a domain or send private messages to someone selling domain names. Once you have have your domain go start making money.

Another thing you can do is use a generic domain and then use a page on your site with the proper keyword URL to target the keyword. For example this person wanted the keyword “make money with affiliate programs” but that wasn’t available so they just used a page on their site.

How to Choose a Domain Name for Your Blog

If you have decided on a Niche you want to blog about, you need to choose a domain name for your blog. A domain name is the letters or words you see on your browser’s address bar. The domain name is what people would use to visit your blog. Since your blog is unique, your website link should be unique. No two website links (domains) are the same.

Here are some ways to help you make a good choice:

1. Put your keyword in – Having your keyword in the domain name is good because it helps your site to rank higher on search engines. For instance, if you chose computer as your niche, you can make your website link to be http://www.i-just-choose-computer-as-my-niche-123.com. My niche is in the domain name.

2. Type of extension – There are many types of extension. They include .com (business domain) , .net (commercial network), .org (non – profit organization), .edu (educational institutions), .info (information), .gov (government institutions), .mobi (for mobile phones) and countries abbreviation extensions. I prefer to use the .com extension. If you can avoid .info extension, you should. That is what many spammers usually use.

3. Length – Make the name to be short. It should be less than 36 words length. This example, http://www.i-just-choose-computer-as-my-niche-123.com was way too long.

4. Hyphens – People are not used to typing hyphens, so they might forget and land into a competitor’s website. This domain has an advantage of helping search engines to distinguish your keywords better.

5. Letters – There might be confusion in typing your website’s link. For instance between ‘1’ or ‘one.

The key with choosing domain is make it memorable, short and hard to misspell.