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Blogging in Action Updated for WP 2.6

WordPress 2.6 brought with it some questionable improvements. Personally, the release methodology of combining bug fixes with new functionality is a poor practice, as it requires the user to open himself up to more bugs to download patches to existing bugs. It’s a MSFT-esque strategy that is alarming, but it doesn’t change the fact that WordPress is still the best blogging platform on the market, regardless of its recent bloat.

Blogging in Action has now been updated to reflect these latest changes, and includes an additional 10-minute QuickStart video detailing each significant change.

Additionally, the Six-Figure Plugin Suite has been updated for WordPress 2.6 compatibility, and will soon be available for public purchase.

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Wordpress Blogging Resources

Recommended Learning Products

Recommended Web Hosts

Other Services

SEO / Blog Promotion Resources

  • Blog Traffic in 30 Days: get traffic fast. Proven, heavy-hitting, big results for little cost marketing geared specifically for blog traffic. Outlines easy-to-implement tactics and a 30-day plan to get visitors to your site fast. The ideas in this book will make your traffic explode.
  • SEO Bible: dry and doesn’t contain many specific marketing tactics, but it’s the most comprehensive overview of SEO available. Great desktop reference.
  • Search Engine Marketing: comprehensive strategy for search engine marketing, but much of the book revolves around paid links. Valuable content on planning and tracking a paid keyword marketing program.
  • The New Rules of Marketing: web site marketing for the 21st century. Think podcasts, viral videos, product placements, and the like.
  • WordTracker keyword tool: hands down, the best keyword research tool on the market; get a free 7-day trial here
  • Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool: free keyword research tool; only use for general research, not specific targeting
  • Keyword Elite: my favorite keyword tool. While I love WordTracker results, they can get very tedious to manage, and that’s a task Keyword Elite handles with aplomb. It also includes free lifetime access to WordTracker’s free keyword tool, which gives you Wordtracker’s great results within Keyword Elite’s powerful interface. See it in action and claim two free e-books on how to leverage it at the provided URL.
  • Six-Figure Plugin Suite: a suite of plug-ins for your WordPress blog that will help you drive traffic through referrals, social media, and RSS feeds. Completely automated-just click and go.
  • Directory Submitter: software to help ease the work involved in submitting your site to numerous web directories.
  • Article Submitter: software to help ease the work involved in submitting your articles to article directories
  • Unique Article Wizard: content spinner, account manager, unique article creator, article publisher and syndicater

Monetization Resources

Auto-Pilot VRE: my favorite off-blog monetization method is to use auto-pilot sites and blogs to supplement my blog income. As a gold member of Hyper VRE, I am allowed to distribute their software for free, so grab your auto-pilot site case study and your free software and try it out!

Six-Figure Plugin Suite: a suite of plug-ins for your WordPress blog that will help you earn money through affiliate programs, eBay, and Amazon, and also manage your AdSense ads. Completely automated-just click and go.

Recommended Theme Providers

Other Free Theme Directories

Free Plug-ins

Premium Plugins

Popular WordPress URL’s

Blogging Tools and Resources

  • Aweber: e-mail list management service
  • InfoGoRound PLR Service: large selection of above average PLR content and tools
  • PLR Pro: best PLR content available on the web
  • SEO Elite: the leading search engine optimization program available
  • Instant Article Wizard: article research and writing assistant
  • GistWeb: research tool for article writing
  • WinSCP: easy to use FTP client
  • FileZilla: popular FTP client
  • WinZip: popular zip archive tool
  • WinRAR: popular zip archive tool

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Get Hundreds of Easy Backlinks

Hundreds and easy, yes. High-quality, not so much!

If you are a member of any of my other groups, you know that I’m not a big fan of reciprocal linking and directory submission. However, I make exceptions for auto-pilot sites.

Let’s face it. These are sites that we setup once, and automatically drip content into month after month. I generally like to carry out a 20-point marketing effort and then I let the site drift. In these cases, I use both directory submissions and reciprocal linking.

Today I have two FREE tools you can use for these tasks:

Directory Submitter

Create a project, add in several descriptions, several titles, several anchors, and then run through Directory Submitter’s extensive list of free and paid directories. When you click a directory name, you are taken to a pre-filled submission form. Click, click, you’re done. Move on to the next directory.

My favorite part is to sort the directories by Page Rank, and then submit only to the free directories with highest Page Ranks. Drip your links in at a 10 to 20 a week pace.

Ethic Links

There are several levels to Ethic Links, starting with free. You can also get free platinum access if you purchase any of JP’s products. I use Niche Video Site Builder and Niches in a Box, so I’m able to add unlimited reciprocal link exchanges to my sites and blogs. The best part is that you choose categories of links, so that they are more relevant that typical exchanges, and . . .

The higher the package level you get, the more ONE-WAY links you get. Start with the free service to see how it works.

If you decide you like the service, purchase Niches in a Box or Niche Video Site Builder and get free Platinum access. By the way, I use Niche Video Site Builder on almost EVERY new auto-pilot site I set up. It literally takes 5 to 10 minutes to add a thousand videos and syndicated content to your auto-pilot sites.

If you do choose to use a video site builder, make sure you use JP’s (the one linked below). There are others on the market that use an old version of the API, and these will cease working later this year!

Conclusion

I market all of my auto-pilot blogs in at least three steps. For my most promising ones, I follow a 20-step process. But all sites are marketed with:

  1. Article marketing
  2. Directory submissions & reciprocal links
  3. Forum marketing

So get the software above. It’s free, and it will really help you get the word out about your sites.

Good luck!

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Blueprint Steps #10 & 11: Promote & AdWords

Generating traffic is a book in itself — in fact, I currently have a traffic book in editorial review as I write this — so I won’t even suggest a full traffic plan. Rather, I’ll give you some ideas of what is very effective, and follow up on specific techniques that you might want to look at further.

1) Download Directory Submitter and submit your niche sites to directories. Free for 300+ directories; one-time fee to upgrade and submit to 2000+ directories. The free version works great, the paid version works even better.

2) Rewrite several niche pages as articles and submit to article directories. Download Article Submitter to automate the process. Free for the popular directories; one-time fee to upgrade and submit to all directories. The free version works great. Unique Article Wizard is also a fanatastic option — it costs money, but it allows you to syndciate your content, gaining you lots of backlinks.

3) Post comments on RELEVANT blogs. Or pay someone to post for you.

4) Post comments on RELEVANT forums. Or pay someone to post for you.

5) Answer niche questions on Yahoo answers with content from your site.

6) Add related links to relevant Wikipedia entries, provided your site is an AUTHORITY on your niche. Just don’t spam.

7) If you established a niche site, establish a blog and automate regular posting. If you set your niche site up as a blog, rewrite private label content and automate weekly blog posting.

8) Submit your blog to blog directories and claim it at Technorati.

9) Submit an RSS feed to all RSS directories.

10) See the Hyper VRE member area for a list of resources you can use to promote your new niche sites.

Search Traffic

If you SEO’d your niche sites properly, and used a good keyword tool to select your niches, your content should push you to the top of the SERP’s for your target keywords. If it doesn’t, then you’ve done something wrong, and the most likely culprit is your keyword selection. Back to the drawing board — use a good keyword tool this time!

Google AdWords

You will want to dominate the PPC listings as well as the organic SERP’s, but if your niche was carefully selected, this should remain both inexpensive and profitable. I’d highly recommend that you read the e-book “Google AdWords Made Easy.” If you don’t already have a copy of it, you can join my keyword analysis group and get the e-book as a freebie for joining.

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Blueprint Steps #7 and #8: Link and Cross-Promote

We’re going to look at the best way to link your niche family for search rankings and cross-promotion today.

Once you have your programs selected, we need to establish your network. The short version is that you’ll place your high-ticket affiliate products on your parent niche. The goal is to funnel lower-level niche traffic to this parent niche. This is important. This is why program selection is so important. Your lower-ticket items will be placed in the child niches.

In the below explanation, I’m going to assume you have one parent niche (P) and three child niches (C1, C2, and C3). Here’s how you’ll link your niche sites in this example:

C1 links to C2 and P. C2 links to C3 and P. C3 links to C1 and P. In other words, the children link to one other child each; and they all link to their parent. Make sense?

If you haven’t already done this, be sure to check out these two programs to help select your affiliate programs:

Free Software, Graphics, and Books

By the way, if you want to get your hands on all kinds of software and books to help you build your VRE empire, join the Auto-Pilot Premier member group. I give out hundreds of dollars worth of tools, templates, graphics, and books every month for the insanely low membership fee of $4.95!

What might surprise you is that I make next to no money on this program. Why? Because I spend almost all of those $4.95 membership fees to develop or purchase rights to products that I give to you as a member.

In essence, when you join the premier group, you are joining a buyer’s club. In fact, members get to request the types of content they’d like to see available for download!

I don’t know how I can be more fair than that. Join us today .

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Blueprint Step #6: Choose Affiliate & Advertising

We’re moving on to affiliate program selection today, and this is where things get fun.

Some affiliate selection is rather obvious, some is less so. Your best bet is to sign up for a range of affiliate services and browse their inventory for offers related to your pages. There are two important points to consider:

1) Your offers must be incredibly relevant, I mean SPOT ON relevant, or they won’t get clicked. If you can find an offer that mimics the keywords in the page, then you’ve done well.

2) Your offers must have value. That means that you have personally checked them out, gone through the signup process, and done your due diligence. This is not a requirement, but if people are clicking on your links, make sure you send them to a deal that they can use, not just one that will make you money.

That’s the point of niche sites — you’re finding a need and serving it. Yes, you make money in the process, but you don’t want to make money without providing your visitor a good experience. Keep your sites valuable, informative, and on the level, and we all benefit because people will be more likely to click.

You’ll want to sign up and browse affiliate programs at places like Amazon, Commission Junction, Clickbank, and Linkshare. You’ll want to create accounts at advertising sources like Kontera, Chitika, AdSense, WidgetBucks, and TextLinkAds.

Optimizing each of these services for profitability is outside the scope of this group, but it is something I cover in detail in “Blogging in Action.” That one chapter of the book is something that other people would sell as a full product!

Now we’re crossing over from pure auto-pilot sites to affiliate marketing, and you know what? This is where you can earn some money. Affiliate programs like Amazon have low commissions but high conversions, whereas other programs have lower conversions, but extremely high commissions. We’re going to discuss finding those winners in the next e-mail.

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Blueprint Steps #4 and #5: Create Your Sites

Today we’re going to discuss creating your auto-pilot sites, albeit very briefly. The folks at Hyper VRE do a better job than I can at explaining how to work their software, so you’ll want to leverage their resources should you need help getting started. If you haven’t yet viewed the software videos , now would be a good time.

You can also find the user manual on the computer where Hyper VRE is installed. Click Start > All Programs > HyperVRE > HyperVRE User Manual.

With your first niche family, you are now going to create one auto-pilot site for EACH family member. If you have one parent and three children, you should end up with a total of four sites. Take your time and get the site just right.

For each niche in your niche family, find the corresponding keyword list. Sort the list by KEI descending and note all keywords with a high KEI. Do the same for R/S and total searches. Hopefully you have a list of 20-30 (or maybe more) high-quality keyphrases, and a supporting list of 20-80 more keywords. I usually shoot for somewhere between 50 and 100 total keyphrases. Hyper VRE has a lite keyword tool built-in, but I always import my keyword lists, as my imported lists almost always are better targeted than Hyper VRE’s lists.

Choose whichever options you like, but I find that the magic formula consists of a mixture of custom and duplicate content. Obviously, purely custom content will work the best, but we only have one day to put this site together, so that’s not an option. Here’s what my “magic formula” might look like for a 50-page site:

  • For my five top keywords, that is, the best of the best, I create completely custom articles. I use an article wizard to create each of these articles in under 30 minutes. I don’t remember what life was like before this tool, but I can guarantee you that I will never go back!
  • For my remaining high-quality keyphrases, I use private label rights content (or here) that I rewrite and optimize for the specific keyword for that page. These usually take me about 5 to 10 minutes each.
  • I then import content from leading sites and article directories, almost always including several GOOD RSS feeds.
  • For all appropriate niches, I create video pages that consist of You Tube videos. I work hard to attract searchers, and these video pages pay off big time, but indirectly. I find that the video pages themselves generate average ad clicks; but on sites with video pages, the sites overall get more page views and visitors staying longer, which means more clicks on other page ads. I use this tool to create a solid video page in about 10 minutes time!
  • And I always take advantage of Hyper VRE’s keyword pages, even if they’re just gravy. No use leaving any potential search bait on the table!

All-in-all, this creates a site with fresh, unique content that is frequently rotated and valuable for readers.

Then upload your files, open Keyword Elite, and perform an analysis of your custom-built pages (just the ones you created manually). You want to score off the charts, so pay attention to keyword density and latent semantic indexing (LSI). LSI is beyond the scope of this group, but is a fascinating topic. Tweak your pages until Keyword Elite ranks them highly.

These steps will likely require quite a bit of time, but in a nutshell, you should be creating a new site for each family member niche; then you should be creating a new, highly optimized page for each keyword that is closely related to that niche. That’s it — it just sounds like much more when you throw in all of the other details.

I’ll give you a few days to digest this e-mail before I contact you again, but when I do, the fun really begins. After this step, the hard work is done, and it’s time to start the enjoyable aspects.

Good luck creating your sites and please contact me if you have questions. Let’s get some sites cranked out!

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Blueprint Step #2: Keyword Analysis

Today we’re going to discuss the single most important thing you can do to generate the income you want from your auto-pilot sites. This is truly the make or break step. Don’t take any shortcuts, use the best tools you can get your hands on, and research each and every keyword. Choosing the right keyword in the right niche is over 75 percent of the battle.

With the list of niches you created yesterday, brainstorm 5 keyphrases. Think like a searcher — what would you type in a Google search box to find the niche?

Plug your keyphrases into your keyword tool of choice, and use the tool to expand your keyword list. You are likely to find quite a few keyphrases that would have never crossed your mind.

Analyze each of those keyphrases, pulling out the KEI score, the number of searches, the number of search results, and the R/S ratio. There is no hard and fast rule for choosing a specific niche over another, but here are some guidelines:

  • Don’t choose a niche that is loaded with competitive search results
  • Don’t choose a niche with a very high R/S ratio or a very low KEI
  • Don’t choose a niche with very low or high traffic
  • Do choose a niche with low to moderate traffic
  • Do choose a niche with a low R/S ratio and a high KEI

Of critical importance is your keyword analysis tool. My tool of choice is Keyword Elite. You can review this tool in action by downloading the books here.

If you’ve never used a keyword tool, or if you are considering using one, I would recommend that you visit that link and join my keyword group, as you’ll learn lots of great ways to use keywords to dominate the search rankings and improve your web properties. Keyword tools separate the pros from the also-rans!

You can also get a free 7-day trial to Wordtracker, which should at least help you get your first niche site established.

Although not nearly as accurate as the above tools, you can also get by with Google’s keyword tool in a pinch, though you’ll have to guess at some of the calculations. The biggest problem is that the
calculations won’t be consistent enough to make a truly informed decision, so use at your own risk.

Your keyword analysis is of vital importance to your niche blogs. Proper keyword research is easily the one step that kills auto-pilot blogs more than any other. Whenever anyone approaches me with a failed auto-pilot blog, I immediately look to the original keyword selection. Choose wisely and earn. Choose poorly and spin your wheels.

So take your time and DO YOUR KEYWORD RESEARCH!

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Blueprint Step #3: Create a Niche Family

Today we’re going to discuss creating niche groups. I won’t go into too much detail in this tip; instead, I’ll explain the concept to you, and let you run with it.

You should have decided on several niches to pursue, after what should have been EXTENSIVE keyword analysis with a good tool. :-) Choose one of those niches to move forward with. Choose wisely — this decision will make or break you. The R/S ratio will be vital to getting the organic rankings that you need to make this work, and the KEI and competition will be vital to your PPC campaign. Don’t skimp on this step because it could cost you hundreds down the road. Keyword Elite is your friend.

What we’re going to do is create a niche family. To keep things simple, we’re going to create a parent-child family, but we could easily extend the concept to three or four levels. Your parent niche is going to contain your higher-ticket products, whereas your child niches will be monetized primarily with contextual advertising.

Starting with your selected niche, determine if it can be specialized even more. If it can, then your chosen niche is the parent. Choose three or four children. If it can’t be specialized further, then this is a child. Choose two or three sibling niches, and go up one level to choose a parent. This will be your niche family, so the concept is that for each niche you want to pursue, you should be creating a niche family. We do this so that we can optimize our rankings and cross-promote products on our auto-pilot sites.

As an example, I have a small niche family launching this week revolving around birthday party planning. The birthday party planning web site is the parent, and the child niches include cake decorating, balloons, outdoor play activities for children, summer cooking recipes, and crafts for kids. Each of the children feeds into the party planning web site, setting it up as the “authority” in this niche. The child niches generate contextual advertising revenue, but the parent niche generates sales.

Make sense? Simple and powerful, so shhhhh, don’t tell anyone.

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Blueprint Step #1: Choose a Niche

Today we’re going to review step 1 of the blueprint, choosing your niche. Yes, this is a boring step, but it’s vital. Your niche can make or break your profitability so take your time here.

What is a Niche?

A niche is like a topic, but it has a very narrow focus. A niche is your space in the blogosphere. Your goal is not to occupy this space, but to own it. Your goal is to be the defacto destination for anyone looking for authoritative information about the subject of your niche.

Your niche blog:

  • Has laser-focused content
  • Has a narrow scope
  • Has unique material
  • Has outstanding search engine rankings

Why focus on a niche?

You focus on a niche because:

  • It’s easier to market when you know your exact audience
  • It’s easier to create content for a focused audience
  • You dramatically increase conversions with relevant traffic
  • Action-oriented and product-oriented advertising converts like crazy in a niche. This advertising is known as CPA or cost per action, and offers can be found in many affiliate networks.
  • You effectively reduce the amount of competition for your traffic

Choosing a Niche

Answer these questions to begin finding your niches. This is just a brainstorming session. Write down everything you think of. You’re not looking for your final candidates, you’re just trying to create a list that you can whittle way in the next step.

There are two approaches here. In approach 1, you create a niche auto-pilot blog on a subject that you have an interest in or know about. This makes it easy for you to add your own custom content to
the blog. The advantage of this is higher search rankings and more organic search results. Another advantage is that it makes it very easy for you to verify the structure of the finished site. In approach 2, you simply choose a niche that you think will be profitable. I usually like to start with the first approach.

  • What do you know a lot about, and have a passion for learning more about?
  • What do you like to do in your spare time?
  • What have you been interested in learning more about, but couldn’t find on the web?
  • What do your friends in family say that you are good at? If you don’t want to ask, what do you think they’ll say?
  • What are your hobbies and interests?
  • What do you collect? Build? Create? Shop for?
  • What are your goals? Do others have the same goals?
  • What do you believe strongly in?
  • Go to http://dir.yahoo.com. Drill down into each of these categories. What piques your interest?

Sample Niches

  • ART is not a niche. DIGITAL FRACTAL PATTERNS is a niche.
  • GADGETS is not a niche. QUIRKY CUBICLE TOYS is a niche.
  • ANIMATION is not a niche. CLASSIC DISNEY CELLS is a niche.
  • CONSUMER ELECTRONICS is not a niche. HOME-BUILT WAR ROBOTS is a niche.

It’s very unlikely that you can choose too narrow a niche. There were over 1.5 billion users online as of late 2007; regardless of how narrow you think your niche is, chances are there are tens of thousands of people out there who are completely aligned with your niche. That’s tens of thousands of viewers who can generate clicks and purchase products on your behalf. Now that’s opportunity!

Conclusion

The importance of choosing your niche can’t be overestimated. All of your future efforts will flow from this decision, and it is the single largest factor in determining the relevancy of your blog, which is directly related to your search engine rankings, your blog traffic, and your profitability from monetization efforts.

Your goal at this point, however, is quantity. We’ll worry about narrowing down your niches to find only the most profitable ones in the next step of the blueprint. For now, just create a nice long list of niches, and we’ll review them in a couple of days.

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