1,037 RSS Subscribers in 1 Month; $33,247 From One Blog

Over the past week and a half, we’ve looked at a few important blogging topics:

• We’ve looked at the absolute importance of choosing a focused niche
• We’ve looked at why you should be blogging for the long-term
• We’ve discussed some of Google’s search and ranking intricacies

That’s a good START. But we still have a long way to go. Blogging is a broad subject, and to be truly successful at blogging, you need to know many things about many subjects. We’ll try to cover them one step at a time.

Learn the Exact Blueprint I Used to Generate 1,037 RSS Subscribers in One Month

That’s 1,037 new subscribers within one month of the blog’s release! It’s not heard often, but it can be done. It doesn’t take years to generate qualified, relevant traffic. It just takes some honest effort and a carefully constructed plan to put into action.

That’s exactly why we’ve written “Blogging in Action” and why it has received such a favorable response from readers. It is the most effective, comprehensive blogging system available today. You don’t need to purchase a book on starting your blog, another on copywriting, another on traffic, another on making money, etc. We’ve got you covered — Blogging in Action is THE blueprint to your blogging success. And it’s proven and safe.

Find Out How I Earned $33,247 in a Year From Just ONE Blog

The best part about that one blog is that it only required TWO hours effort per week to attain those results. Blogging is entirely scalable to fit your lifestyle. If you want to earn more, follow my blueprint to blog more, promote more, and find more offers. If you just want to supplement your income, follow my blueprint to run a successful niche blog. You call the shots!

Blogging In Action, not Blogging Inaction!

The beauty of blogging is that it’s an incredibly easy itch to scratch. It requires no technical expertise, limited time, and limited money.

I’m really excited to have you here with me sharing in this information because I truly believe that Blogging in Action can literally change your financial future. Having said that however, you need to understand that in order to change your future, you have to start by taking some sort of action. Action produces results.

So why not commit to yourself to try a professional blog for a period of three months, and see what kind of results you get? Follow the blueprint in earnest and watch yourself build subscribers and earn extra income. You have very little to lose — a few dollars and a few hours — but you stand to gain greatly. Try it out today!

Don’t put off your future financial success any longer. Download Blogging in Action now, and chart your path forward. You have absolutely nothing to lose!

Additional Passive Income Streams Through Blogging

About a month ago, I shared with you the secret of auto-pilot income, and how you can quickly create passive streams of income with a piece of free software. If you don’t remember that software,
you can refresh your memory here.

Although I use it extensively, some others avoid it because of its complexity. It’s not that it’s difficult to use — it’s actually an easy, wizard-based program — but it’s hard to perfect. If you are interested in creating streams of passive income, but are looking for a simpler solution, continue reading for some great options to help you pay the bills while your long-term blogs gain a toehold in the blogosphere.

Niches in a Box

The most comprehensive package in this group, Niches in a Box is a COMPLETE niche package, including a full niche site, templates, a blog, 52 blog posts, hundreds of PLR articles, and an e-book that you can sell. These sites are hit or miss — I have some that perform very well and some that perform poorly for the same effort. It includes an installer, and you can have a niche canvased in one day with this package.

Niche Video Site Builder

Made by the same people who make Niches in a Box, the Niche Video Site Builder is a very easy and fast way to get a niche video site online. What I’ve been finding that works is creating a “video” subdomain or subfolder in another niche web site, and adding value with You Tube videos. My stats show more repeat visitors this way, and it also helps for promotion purposes. Quick and painless, but revenue has been less than exciting. I’ve also been experimenting with my own video site software creation tool, but I’m not ready to reveal that just yet.

Niche Elite

Made by the same folks who make Keyword Elite and SEO Elite, Niche Elite is another complete Niche package, but this one IS TERRIBLE. No source files are included, making editing difficult (the whole
point of PLR), and if you ever cancel your subscription, they demand a fee for you to continue using the product that you already purchased.

Niche Mania

I’ve been using Niche Mania more and more over the past few months because it works. The site designs are less than stellar, but the PLR articles are very good quality, and the kicker is that distribution is incredibly limited to just a handful of people. Spend five minutes rewriting each article, add your own video with Niche Video Site Builder, add some content of your own, and you have a powerful, unique niche site. Really good stuff, and the proprietor is friendly and responsive. Unfortunately, this site has seen a lot of changes lately, and it seems to be getting more and more unreliable each time I login.

Build a Niche

Build a Niche is a unique entrant in that it interfaces with eBay, along with contextual advertising programs of your choosing. It has an amazing amount of flexibility for how simple it is to use. Login to your control panel, and follow the buttons from left to right, and follow the large numbers on each page. Voila! Site complete. Build a Niche is the easiest niche package to get started with, so it’s ideal for newcomers to VRE or page building.

Conclusion

The bottom line is don’t let any difficulties with software or tactics keep you from building your auto-pilot empire. Persevere, continue creating and populating your long-term blog, and try your hand with different programs. They all carry trial periods or money back guarantees, so give them a shot to see if they’re more to your liking.

Taking the Work out of Article Submission

Today’s e-mail is going to be rather long, but we’ve spent enough time on article marketing over the past few e-mails and it’s time to move on.

Once you have your unique articles written, it’s time to submit them to the article directories and get them syndicated onto blogs and web sites. This is where things get ugly, but the benefits of article marketing are too great to let this get in the way.

Article Submission Problems

The problems with article submission include:

• Each of hundreds of article directories have different submission criteria, and each requires a separate account, with a separate sign-up process, with a separate confirmation process. Talk about painful!
• Many article directories restrict the number of accounts or aliases you use. This is a problem if you want to use more than one resource box or want to market more than one blog.
• Article marketing’s reach is restricted to article directories. This means that in order for your article to live beyond the directory, it must be found and then manually posted on someone else’s web site. In essence, you must compete for traffic with all of the other articles out there.

Luckily, there’s a free tool that can help take the sting out of the first group of issues, and it’s called Article Submitter. You can download it here (free).

This solves some huge headaches, but causes others.

Ensuring Unique Content

You have one unique article, but now you are going to submit it to 100 article directories — goodbye uniqueness! This is where content spinners come in handy, as they rearrange and reword your content so that each submission is unique. Unfortunately, spinners can’t be integrated with Article Submitter. Also, Article Submitter doesn’t do a terrific job of formatting your articles, which is important if you want people to read them.

Plus, we still have the other problems to worry about.

“There has to be a better way,” I’m sure you’re thinking. There is . . .

The solution is to use a tool called the Unique Article Wizard. What it does is create unique versions of each of your articles, and then it automatically handles all of the account creation and alias management functions so that you can submit an unlimited number of articles, written by an unlimited number of authors, for an unlimited number of blogs. Did I say unique? That’s unique, as in each link counted by Google!

It gets better . . .

Unique Article Wizard submits to more directories and announcement lists than any other software or service in existence. But even better, it will help you syndicate your content onto thousands of blogs automatically. This is the clever part!

You see, what they’ve done is created a WordPress plug-in that anyone can use to automatically receive unique content for their blogs. Let’s say I have a blog on loans (because I do) and I use the plug-in (because I do). Whenever a new article is submitted that matches the categories I have defined on my blog, the article is automatically posted to my blog as a guest post. I get a unique post for my blog for no effort and the submitter gets a backlink from my blog as payment for that article. Everyone wins.

All the article submitter needs to do is cut and paste his or her article into the web control panel, and then submit the article for processing. Try it — the results will astound you! You might have heard me say before that “you can expect what you inspect.” What’s neat about this tool is that it publishes weekly statistics for each of your articles, showing you how many new backlinks you are generating each week.

So you get unique versions of your articles . . . submitted to a huge number of article directories and announcements lists . . . dripped in over time to look more organic to the search engines . . . and your content gets syndicated to all blogs using the UAW plug-in with a category equal to your keywords.

I’m a long-time user of this software, and I consider it one of my most vital tools. In fact, I’m also a Traffic Kahuna subscriber, which I pay $147 a month to use. That’s $147 each and every month — I do that for access to their syndication network.

Well, I just dropped Traffic Kahuna in favor of Unique Article Wizard because my results have been extraordinary. They have been going through some growing pains recently, which has been rather annoying, but I can’t deny the results.

Try it for yourself. Use it for a few months. Track your backlinks and your results. If you work this tool, you WILL get results, it’s that simple.

Also, please note that this tool is different from the Instant Article Wizard, which can be used to quickly generate keyword-dense content that can in turn be submitted with UAW. Similar names, completely different tools.

Making the Most of Your Resource Box

The most common mistake in a resource box is to link the wrong text. Because you’ve done your keyword research (you have done your research, right?), you know precisely which keywords to target.
These keywords should be the text that is turned into a hyperlink — not your site name, blog name, your name, or whatever.

For example, if you own an automotive parts store and run an auto blog, you might be tempted to close your resource box with something like:

“Dave Schnell is the moderator of the popular Auto Blog, where he . . .”

Instead, if you did your keyword research and found out that there was very high search traffic, but very low competition, for the keyphrase “vintage auto parts,” your resource box might look something like this:

“Dave Schnell helps automotive buffs locate vintage auto parts . . .”

It’s a simple thing really, but the concept is this: whatever text is linked (known as the anchor text), provides clues to the search engines as to what can be found on the other side of that link. If you build 10 to 20 backlinks with “vintage auto parts” as the anchor text, and this is a good keyword to target, you’ll find your web property dominating the search results pages.

Remember to Use This Trick

Whatever the main keyword you are targeting on your site or blog, your first handful of articles should address that keyword and point to the most relevant post or page on your web property. Your follow-up articles should point both to your web property and to your first group of articles.

This is a clever trick. By linking your later articles to your earlier ones, you are increasing their page rank, and in turn, your web property’s rank for your most coveted keyword. Additionally, you increase your article’s odds of being picked up by other blogs and ezines.

Why? Because many article services use Google’s search engine to find internal articles. So if your articles are ranked higher, they will show up higher on in-site searches, meaning more people will download and use them in their web properties, increasing your backlinks, which starts the cycle again.

Where to Submit Your Articles

The short answer is “everywhere!” Use the Unique Article Wizard to automate the process. If you’re not ready to take that tool on, then download the free Article Submitter software to help manage your submissions.

The caveat is Ezine Articles submissions. ALWAYS submit Ezine Articles by hand. They have the most rigorous approval process, and their standards are the highest, so don’t risk getting yourself on the poor content list. Always submit Ezine Articles by hand.

That’s it for the day. Sorry for the long e-mail, but it needed to be written!

As always, if you have questions about article marketing, or any other blogging or auto-pilot subject, please contact me.

Find the Best PLR Content & Avoiding the Junk

Over the past several e-mails, we’ve discussed PLR content, especially as it relates to article marketing and creating content for auto-pilot sites. But before you run out and get your hands on PLR content, I wanted to remind you of the seedy side.

Top 10 PLR Pitfalls

1) Most PLR providers oversell their content, meaning that there are thousands of copies of your articles floating around out there.

2) Most PLR content is written by non-English native speakers.

3) Most PLR content is chock full of grammatical errors.

4) Most PLR content is poorly researched.

5) Many PLR services offer content “archives,” increasing the chance that your articles will continue to drip into the marketplace.

6) A lot of PLR content is old, meaning that the niche is no longer in favor.

7) The majority of PLR content is not keyword-targeted.

The majority of PLR content is focused on niches that are far too competitive.

9) Most PLR content is “recycled.”

10) A fair amount of PLR content is at least partially auto-generated.

Nine out of ten PLR services are JUNK. And that one out of ten is probably generous. I’ve run across very few that I’m completely satisfied with. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on PLR content, and I’ve used just about every service in existence. Partly because I like to be on the cutting edge, and partly because it enables me to provide good recommendations to you.

Out of all of the PLR services I’ve used, I have maintained subscriptions to two. The two best PLR services available today, with widely varied strategies, and therefore two different purposes.

InfoGoRound

InfoGoRound takes a few unique approaches to PLR content. One, it increases the amount of content available as membership increases, decreasing the odds that all members will be using the same content. They also offer incentives to members to submit their own content, in exchange for service credits. This results in quality content written by people knowledgeable in the field.

They also offer articles, ezine articles, sales letters, graphics, and full private label books that you can use to build your business, rewrite and sell for a profit, or build a subscriber list. They offer archives, so there is a wide variety of content available. Finally, they offer several productivity tools like a newsletter generator, training course generator, and site builder for people using PLR content.

As a whole, InfoGoRound’s content is very good and very economical at under $25 per month for access to a searchable database of thousands and thousands of articles and books. The downside is that
the potential exists for many copies of your content around the web. As such, I use InfoGoRound’s content for lower-value niches and I make sure to rewrite the articles thoroughly.

Learn more about InfoGoRound and see their content in action.

PLR Pro

PLR Pro is easily the best PLR service available on the web, and I write that with no equivocation. Their content is simply phenomenal: well-researched and expertly written by native-English speakers. Each article pack is keyword-researched, and also includes keyword lists and related affiliate programs that you can use to earn money.

For example, if they provide an article pack on travel insurance, they would also include the highest-paying keywords, the best keywords to target in marketing, and the best travel insurance affiliate programs you can use in your marketing or site creation efforts.

Here’s a simple breakdown of what they offer: hosting, monthly templates, full affiliate research, full keyword research both main and sub keywords, SEO training, and MULTIPLE languages! Multiple languages — one of my favorite features, as you can get Page Rank for the same article in six languages!

I use this content when quality counts. Its reach is limited to just 200 people, so when my monthly packs are ready, I’m sure to use them thoroughly!

The guys that run this service are fanatical about the quality of their content. I can guarantee (and they do to) that you won’t be disappointed with PLR Pro’s offering.

I hope these options help you choose a great PLR provider for your article marketing and content creation efforts.

Don’t Make these Article-Marketing Mistakes

In my last e-mail regarding article marketing, I mentioned using private label rights (PLR) content both for article marketing and for content creation on auto-pilot sites. I’ve received a handful of questions about PLR in general, so I wanted to back up just a bit to cover the ins and outs of using PLR content.

Plus, there’s so much misinformation out there right now surrounding PLR, I’d like to help set the record straight!

What is PLR?

PLR content is any content that you can freely modify, place your name on, and use as your own — no license fees, no attribution. The only restriction is that you cannot resell it.

PLR is ready made content, but to make sure you rank highly in the search engines, you must make it your own, and that involves rewriting it. Generally it takes me around 1 hour to write an article from scratch, but I can make a PLR article my own in about 10 minutes time.

PLR content and the article wizard I mentioned in my previous e-mail are the tools that enable me to crank out nearly 50 articles a day.

Top Ways to Use PLR Content

When you purchase it, you can do anything you want with it (aside from reselling it), but the three most common uses are:

1) Use it as web content. Some use it on niche blogs, and some on sites. I use it to populate my auto-pilot sites. I even chop up the content and use paragraphs on the eBay partner stores I’ve mentioned in the past. This is a great strategy to drive additional search traffic to your niche stores.

2) Use it for article marketing. This is my favorite use — after rewriting the content, I submit it to article directories. I prefer to use an article marketing tool like the Unique Article Wizard (this is different from the article wizard I mentioned above) so that each directory receives a unique copy.

3) Many people chop up this content and put it into a e-mail newsletter.

Top PLR Mistakes

So if PLR is so easy to use, how do people make mistakes? Well that’s easy . . .

1) They join a service that is sub-par or is part of a wholesaling network.

There are a lot of services out there that offer sub-par quality content. It’s written by writers who don’t have English as their first language, or in some cases, give content that is less than third grade level. Nine out of 10 PLR services are GARBAGE.

It should be obvious you don’t want to join these kinds of PLR memberships.

The other thing is that there have become a few wholesaling PLR networks. What this means is that a membership can offer PLR material that other memberships are offering. They get their articles all from the same source, and the articles are identical!

Why do you stay away from these? Because the service might say “limited to 300 people” but the reality is that there are 10 or 20 other places out there that are offering the same material to the same number of people!

2) They join a service that has too many members or offer backlogs to their articles.

This should be quite obvious, but places that are open to 1000 people, just aren’t the place to join (unless you are getting it really cheap!). The reason is that the more people that have the content, the more people you are going to be competing with, and the less likely people are going to rewrite their content.

3) They forget about the fundamentals of building sites

Sometimes people get into this building frenzy, which makes them just want to build site after site after site. The problem with that is that on the internet the phrase “Build it and they will come” just doesn’t apply. When you build a site, make sure that you keep the on page SEO factors right, and that you are building the site over time, slowly uploading content, and building links.

Important stuff, but it needs to be remembered.

4) They don’t make it their own.

You should never purchase PLR content and then paste it into your articles. Unless you spend the time to make these articles unique to you, they will be rejected by the respectable article directories, and they won’t rank in Google for the others.

By following the rewrite process that I’ll mention in a future e-mail, your articles will be made unique. Or, you can use an article checking tool for a more objective assessment of the uniqueness of your article. A good tool will tell you the percent different one article is from another, and will also tell you the keyword density of your article. Where do you find such a tool? Just click the link below — Blogging in Action’s Article Sheriff software is free for all members of this group.

So, that’s it for today. Look out for the next e-mail soon, and we’ll resume how you can use PLR content for article marketing.

Options for Creating Article Content

Today’s e-mail focuses on a specific piece of article marketing: creating articles. You might be tempted to cut and paste your best blog posts and use them as articles, and this does benefit you with backlinks. But you risk diluting your unique content by spreading it across the web. Better options include:

• Rewrite your blog posts: you can completely rewrite your blog posts so that the content on your blog remains unique while you submit the rewritten content to directories. The disadvantage to this method is that it’s time consuming.
• Rewrite PLR content: you can rewrite private label content and submit it to article directories. The disadvantage to this is that you don’t know how thin that private label content has been spread, so you can’t be completely confident of its uniqueness.
• Hire a ghostwriter: you can always hire someone else to write articles for you to submit to directories, but ghostwritten content is usually poor quality.
• Write articles yourself: the best option is to write new content from scratch, but this can be time consuming.

Personally, I use a combination approach. I write all my keystone articles from scratch with the help of an article research and writing tool; and I write all my secondary content using PLR content as a base. Note that these articles are used for marketing purposes or auto-pilot content only; NOT for creating posts for long-term blogs.

Article Research and Writing

Writing a good article usually takes an hour or so. Because I know that the benefits of article marketing are huge, I write many articles, and the tool I use to speed this process up is Instant Article Wizard. With it, I can research a subject and write an article in under 10 minutes, and my articles always turn out to be high quality.

I type in my research phrase, e.g. “article marketing is,” and my article wizard generates all of the research I need to create an article. It suggests content for the introduction and conclusion, and even presents me with subtopic research I can use in each of my paragraphs. I then point and click several headlines, point and click to arrange my article, and adjust the transitions. Voila! Unique, high-quality content in minutes! Look at this video to see how this works.

This is the perfect article generation tool to use in your article marketing efforts. Forget about wasted time, writer’s block, and painful research. Save that for your blog! For writing articles for article marketing, I want two things: 1) fast results, and 2) keyword dense content. The article wizard is an indispensable tool for this effort.

Rewriting PLR Content

There are PLENTY of places to find private label content online, but most of it is garbage. I subscribe to two service for PLR content: one I use to populate my niche websites and auto-pilot blogs, and the other I use for article marketing.

InfoGoRound is a perfect candidate for article marketing because of the wealth of content that is available, and because of the overall high quality of the content.

For populating auto-pilot sites, I wouldn’t be without PLR Pro, which is hands-down the best private label content provider around.

I’ll describe private label rights content in more detail in upcoming e-mails.

Article Writing Approach

Depending on the size of your niche, I’d recommend writing 8 to 12 articles per keyword grouping. If you have a tightly focused blog, then just 8 to 12 will do. If your blog covers a few topics, then make sure to address each niche.

Write three to five primary articles first. These are your keystone articles that you know are the most profitable and will drive the most traffic. You know this information because you DID YOUR KEYWORD RESEARCH, right? Then submit your keystone articles for syndication (we’ll cover this in more detail later). Your resource boxes on these articles should deep link into your blog, and the link titles must be optimized properly. For example “click here” is not a good link title; “find travel discounts” is a good title (provided you have a travel blog).

Conclusion

Whatever you do, make sure that the articles you submit for article marketing are entirely unique. The best way to do this is to research and write articles from scratch using the article wizard. Private label content is another good option for secondary content, but always focus on your completely unique articles first. Don’t forget to check out Instant Article Wizard.

Article Marketing is a Blog Promotion MUST

To continue on with the blog promotion theme, another highly effective way of redirecting traffic to your blog is through article marketing. I mentioned article marketing in the Blogging in Action book, but I wanted to call attention to it again because it’s a technique that I strongly recommend you utilize in your promotion efforts.

Short of purchasing links, article marketing has the potential to build more valuable backlinks than any other promotion method. I’ve been able to generate over 100 NATURAL backlinks in six months through the use of article marketing. These links “drip” in, giving them a very organic and valuable pattern.

To give article marketing the breathing room it deserves, I’m going to devote a few tips to it, covering strategies for article marketing, the directories to target, how to syndicate your content onto relevant blogs, and more.

For today, I just want to touch on a technique I use to make article marketing more effective.

Remember, from your resource box, you get a backlink from the article directory itself, and you get a backlink from each web site or blog that uses your article. But you can make those links even more powerful by targeting a subset of your articles as the keystone articles. You do this by posting your main keyword article first, deep-linked to your blog. Your supporting articles are posted later, pointing to your original articles and to your blog. This builds the PageRank of your keystone articles which in turn builds your blog’s PageRank.

Simple, clever, and almost no one does it! We’ll discuss this technique and a few other clever ways to build lots of traffic through articles in the coming days.

10 Sure-fire Ways to Redirect Traffic to your Blog

Okay, today we’re back to business and we’re going to talk about what might be your best friend or your worst enemy: traffic! I’m going to briefly discuss several ways that you can redirect traffic
to your blog, and we’ll review each of these ways in more detail in future tips.

Before we start, I want to remind you of an important concept related to traffic: you don’t push traffic, you don’t drive traffic, you don’t pull traffic — you redirect it. You can’t force it to go where you want — you find the source and you alter its path so that it meanders to your destination.

SEED YOUR BLOG PROPERLY: Traffic starts with content, so the best thing that you can do to redirect and KEEP traffic is provide your readers with exceptional content.

POST NEARLY EVERY DAY: You must post frequently if you want to create a six-figure blog. After six months, you’ll begin to notice declines in your levels of traffic that correlate directly to pauses in your posting frequency. As a side benefit, if you post frequently and update your XML sitemap after every post, you’ll soon see Google visiting your site within 1 hour of any updates you make. It really CAN be that simple.

USE TRACKBACKS: if you’re using Wordpress, this is handled automatically for you. If you’re not, make sure that you add a trackback for each article you reference. Also, make sure that you’re writing posts that are candidates for trackbacks — not every post, of course, but at least once a week.

USE THE BLOG LOVE FINDER: use the Blog Love commenting tool to leave comments on popular blogs. While there, if it’s highly relevant, mention a few direct links to your blog posts. It’s a legitimate way to earn both traffic and search rankings, provided you stay on topic and don’t spam. You can also use Comment Kahuna, which is free software, to help you find good blogs to comment on. Just make sure that your posts are on-topic and helpful!

BEST: Use an aged domain; GOOD: Use your own domain. You really must use your own domain name. It is a highly effective way to begin future-proofing your blog. You should also be using a quality platform like Wordpress. This is not to disparage other platforms, but Wordpress just happens to offer better features and performance, and will be around for the long haul.

Ideally, your own domain is also an aged domain; i.e. your domain has been registered for several years. I have some anecdotal evidence that shows that Google lets blogs out of the sandbox faster and backlinks are counted more quickly when using an aged domain.

USE YAHOO! ANSWERS: for each of your anchor posts, search Yahoo! Answers for related keywords. An easy way to do this is to analyze each post with a keyword analysis tool (you ARE using one by now, aren’t you?). When you find a question related to your post, answer the question and provide a link back to your post.

Hint: we offer a book, video, and audio course on Yahoo! Answers to owners of the Blogging in Action program.

ANNOUNCE YOUR BLOG WITH A PRESS RELEASE: the best free PR services are i-newswire and openPR. Be sure to read up on the format of a proper press release before submitting one!

WRITE FOR BEGINNERS: whatever your niche, be sure to include posts for newcomers to the niche, and use your keyword analysis tool to make sure that you’re serving all new readers, e.g. “Your-niche
101,” “Your-niche newbie,” “Your-niche beginner guide,” etc. Beginners make up the majority of readers and are hungry for your information. They are the most likely to become long-term subscribers.

BLATANT RSS FEED ICON: make your RSS feed icon big and bold so that it absolutely, positively cannot be missed. End each post with words similar to “for more blah blah, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed.” Sometimes that’s all it takes.

USE KEYWORD RESEARCH to effectively target your blog posts. Yes, keywords are THAT important. You should use keyword tools to help determine your niche, to help determine your content, to help
determine your blog post titles, and to determine the keywords that must appear within each post. Read more about the advantages of keywords.

Avoid the Web Hosting Landmines

Wow, choosing a good web host is way more difficult than it needs to be. If you’ve ever tried to find one yourself, you know what I’m talking about. There are many different kinds of hosts, and they all come with plans packed full with acronyms. At the end of the day, you just want a hosting plan that works and is easy to use. Am I right?

What makes it even more difficult is that all of those “top hosts” sites you see on the web are either a) run by the hosts themselves or b) run by someone with a financial interest in the host. I smell a conflict of interest!

The last thing that you want to do is get stuck with a bad host, because moving hosts requires effort and time, and that effort and time should be spent blogging, building traffic, and making money.

I use different hosts for different purposes and currently have shared, VPS, cloud, and dedicated plans. Even for shared hosting, I use several different hosts.

For my quality blogs, I’m more concerned with stability and support. For my auto-pilot blogs, I’m most concerned with price.

Anyway, it appears I’ve gotten long-winded again. The purpose of this e-mail was just to let you know that I’ve created a free report that describes my trial and error process for finding a good host. You can download it here.

I welcome your feedback. If you have any experience with the listed hosts or any others, please share them with me. I like to experiment so that I can provide only the very best information to you. What can I say, I’m a glutton for punishment.

Comparative Review of Popular Blogging Programs

Today I wanted to share with you some of the popular blogging programs available on the market. Being a thorough person, I have purchased and consumed just about every published book there is on
blogging, including those books published by competitors in this field.

Blogging in Action

Knowing the competitive landscape, I can say without reservation that Blogging in Action is the definitive resource on six-figure blogging. Here are a few of the reasons why I feel comfortable saying that:

• It’s comprehensive, so it’s the only book on blogging you’ll need to start, run, promote, and monetize your blog
• The techniques are ethical and white hat, so you won’t get into trouble with the search engines
• The blueprint is highly effective, so following it will guide you through all of the stages of your blog’s lifecycle, producing maximum results during each stage
• It’s technically accurate, so you won’t be chasing your tail trying to figure things out
• It’s respected, so following its blueprint will lead to respect and credibility in the blogging industry

Blogging to the Bank

Blogging to the Bank is a get-rich-quick book, but is horribly outdated (that goes for both version 1 and version 2). It describes techniques that might have worked several years ago, but are far from effective in today’s marketplace. Book 2 reviews newer tools, but the underlying strategies are still ineffective.

The niche selection and keyword targeting sections are very good, and as you know, I’m a big advocate of proper keyword analysis and selection. The content strategy consists entirely of duplicate content taken from free article directories. I’ve mentioned several times why duplicate content is a no-no for long-term blogs, and why it adds little value for passive income blogs.

While technically unsound, there is mention of a clever linking technique. The technique is used for black hat purposes, but can easily be modified for a legitimate white hat campaign.

Atomic Blogging

Atomic Blogging has similar goals as Blogging in Action, though it’s much less comprehensive. The sections on starting and configuring your blog are very similar, but after your blog is started, there is little additional information for optimizing your blog, garnering traffic, or monetizing it. What little there is in the form of “bonus chapters.”

I do have a lot of respect for the author, as he seems to take good care of those who purchase his book, but there are numerous technical inaccuracies that appear to be based on outdated information, even though the book is recently published.

The course ships with a custom Wordpress plug-in that integrates with a popular social directory submission site, a free keyword tool, and a popular theme optimized for AdSense (same theme as the one offered through the next program).

Wordpress AdSense System

The name of this book is a bit of a misnomer, as it focuses much more time on blog start-up and configuration than using AdSense. Wordpress AdSense System is easily the program that deals with blog installation and configuration in the most detail. It covers just about every aspect in print and in video.

I think this is a valid approach for some new bloggers, but I feel that the majority will skim over many of the details, as they are relatively mundane and apparent. For those who need even more detail of the start-up steps than I provide in my book, this program might be an option to consider. Though once you consume it, you will still need an additional book on the many other related blogging topics.

Several good bonuses are packaged, including a keyword tool and a set of themes optimized for AdSense (same themes as those offered in Atomic Blogging). All-in-all, I’m a big fan of this author’s products. He pays attention to detail and you cna be sure that whatever he packages is top-quality.

Wordpress Goldmine

Contrary to what you might expect by the title of this book, it’s not about blogging, but rather affiliate marketing. Wordpress Goldmine outlines a blueprint for breaking into affiliate marketing, and using Wordpress blogs to promote affiliate offers.

The blueprint described is sound, and will work if you apply it diligently, but it doesn’t break much new ground. Affiliate marketing is the subject of countless books, and I myself dabble in affiliate marketing, but I use a different blueprint for my results.

Blogging for Riches

This program reminds me a lot of Blogging to the Bank. It discusses establishing niche sites, populating them with duplicate content, and monetizing them with AdSense. I am not against niche sites — in fact, I use them frequently to fill the gaps — but I am against niche sites that offer no value to readers.

The greatest profitability through blogging is by establishing a long-term reader base, and niche sites won’t do that for you. They will, however, pay a few bills while you set up your primary blogs. A more ethical, reader-friendly way to do this is to create auto-pilot sites populated with rotating content that can be monetized. These sites garner higher search rankings, are valued more highly by readers, and in turn earn more money.

All of that said, there is still some valuable advice in Blogging for Riches, but I question the price tag for what you receive.

Conclusion

I mention all of these programs to you so that you are aware of your options. While it’s hard for me to remain objective about these offerings, I have tried to review each of these programs from an implementer’s perspective. I would readily stack Blogging in Action against each and every one of them without hesitation.

If you have any specific questions about any of these programs, please ask. I will do my best to answer them as completely and objectively as possible.

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