What doesn’t WordPress do well on its own? Well…
* It doesn’t tell you what to write,
* It doesn’t update its own content,
* It doesn’t serve up the right ads to your visitors,
* It doesn’t syndicate your content very well (or completely),
* It doesn’t accurately report your bounce rate to Google, and
* It doesn’t let you see what’s wrong with your site (according to Google).
It so good at so many things, but really sucks at those. But this
There’s a big difference between articles, especially with regards to article quality.In short, if you want to have any quality to your site at all, you need to set some article quality guidelines.
Now, for all of my blogs and websites that have to do with Internet Marketing, I write my own stuff. All of it. So the words you’re reading now and the words you read on any of my marketing or web development sites are all me. 100%.
But I’ve got lots of other sites, too. For example, I’ve got a website that’s all about orthopedic braces, the Atkins Diet, and many other non-IM sites. And while I don’t necessarily write all of the content for those sites, I do care that the content is of high quality, helpful to its readers, and profitable for me.
Article quality has a lot to do with all of that.
Following is an email I sent to my partner on one of those sites — a man who used to be an intern of mine but has now gone on to a successful IM career of his own — regarding articles that were written about Ankle Braces. Please read it to learn about the article standards that I require.
I’m sure it will be helpful to you when you’re having content written for your own sites.
We use the tools mentioned below (see the links) to
There are lots of ways to get traffic to your website, but I’m guessing that there is one white-hat method you don’t know much about.
You’ve probably SEO’d your site (good first step), written lots of articles (time consuming), posted comments to blogs and forums (hard to keep track of), made a few videos (Did you make Spielberg nervous?)…and a few other things, too.
And that’s all good & smart.
But did you create, aggregate, and distribute your RSS feeds?
You might be asking “WHAT’S THAT?”
Well, let me explain.
RSS is a method to “publish” your content so that other sites can slurp it up. Each time they slurp it up, they get only part of each post, and give you a link back to your site for the rest.
Your WordPress blog automatically makes
I stubled across a tweet by Jason Moffatt this past weekend, where he wrote about a video he saw by John Chow, about how John makes $40,000 a month from his blog.
Let’s do a little math.
That’s $40,000 a month, times 12 months in a year. That comes to just under a Half Million dollars a year.
Going the other way, that’s about $1,333 a day.
Now, if John was working an eight-hour day, I’d say that was a pretty darn good living he was making: about $166/hour. It turns out, though, that John doesn’t work 8 hours a day.
He actually set out with a goal of earning just $3,000 a month by working 2 hours a day.
And it turns out that he STILL works just 2 hours a day. So that’s about $666 per hour.
Thanks, John for making the video and sharing what you know. And thanks to Jason for turning me on to John.
Here’s the nearly hour-long video, in its entirety, for you to watch. Below the video is my Cheat Sheet set of notes that I took while watching the video.
If you’re a regular reader of my blog, then you probably notice that the look of TrafficAndConversion.com has changed. And what you’ll also probably notice is that it will change a few more times soon, too.
That’s because I’ve just installed the Socrates Theme, created by my friend Joel Comm, with help from his Director of Ideas, Dan Nickerson.
I won’t write too much about the theme here, but I did write about Socrates before, back in April 2010 when Version 1 was released. They released Socrates version 2.0 a few months later.
But the reason I installed it today was that the Socrates Theme gives me almost unlimited flexibility in how I set up my blog. I can pick two or three columns with the click of a button, I can choose any of dozens of headers, an infinite number of colors, and several other layout options.
Plus, you can easily insert
A couple weeks ago, I told you about a brand new WordPress theme that is designed for marketers who want to monetize their blogs the “point-and-click” easy way without having to be a designer or spend money on expensive dsigners to make the blog look like you wanted it to.
I just got word that this evening (in about 2 hours), Stu McLaren and Tracy Childers are doing a free webinar on “Plugins That Rock”.
What Stu and Tracy mean is that these are plugins that will help you build a blog that can be the hub of an online membership site.
Online membership sites allow you to bulid a *real* online business, one that you can count month after month. If you’ve ever wondered how you can truly monetize your blog by converting it into a membership site, this webinar will be invaluable to you.
Click here for the WordPress Plugins Webinar
Note: The webinar is ALREADY overbooked, so be sure to connect to the call at least 10 minutes early to make sure you get a spot. GoToWebinar doesn’t limit how many people register for a webinar, but it does limit how many people attend. That’s why you need to get there early.
And no, that’s not a gimmick.
I’ll be on the call. If you’re looking for a way to monetize your site, I hope you are on the call, too.
To Your Success,
–Mark
Yesterday, I showed you how easy it is to find and load new WordPress themes.
Today I’ll answer the question “Which WordPress theme should you use?”
(Note: f you want to watch a quick 6 minute video about this new WordPress theme instead of reading about it, go here: WordPress Theme Customization Video )
This question is one that has always stumped me when I wanted to start a new blog, because without fail, each theme I looked at had SOMETHING WRONG with it.
I mean, they were lots that were NEARLY perfect, but there was always that one thing.
For example, it could be perfect except for
Or maybe it was just plain ugly.
I dunno, it just seems that there’s always something wrong, and it was usually
Read this only if you have a WordPress blog. If you don’t have WordPress, then have a great weekend! See ya!
However…
If you do run WordPress, they added a feature a short while back that makes upgrading it very, very easy.
One of the great things about WordPress is that it makes owning and running a website so very easy. You don’t have to know a thing about HTML to make your website look very professional — and to keep it that way — because in the WordPress system, the look of the website is kept totally separate from the content of the website.
They’ve got these things called “Themes” which are easy to install and use.
Well, sort of.
Because it used to be that you had to
Over the last few weeks I’ve been dropping a few hints about the traffic course that I’ve been working on.
And so I got this question the other day from a reader of mine, Ben, and I realized while answering it that I’ve answered this SAME QUESTION dozens of times before for other people who’ve asked…and so I thought I’d answer it for you.
Here’s what he asked (copied right out of skype):
[9/15/2008 9:55:40 AM] Ben S says: What makes it
different from STSE and TS2?
“Great Question,” I replied…Why would I spend so much time and effort on a NEW traffic course, right after Traffic Secrets 2.0 and Stomping the Search Engines?
Didn’t they cover everything? Aren’t they good products? Didn’t EVERYBODY get those?
Well…
Here’s why I’m making this course for you.
In my Traffic Course, although you’ll learn plenty about getting traffic to you site, THE FOCUS IS NOT on LECTURE and education. The focus is on GETTING IT DONE. And specifically, getting your FIRST ONE done., and your second, and your third.
It’s not about BRAIN LEARNING, it’s about MUSCLE MEMORY.
So here is how the course is going to work, and why
One of the responses on my blog to the book “The Triumph Of The Stupid”, was that “Over the years I have multi-tasked myself out of a fortune”.
Wow. What a statement.
Print that out and tape it to your wall over your computer.
You need to I know that getting one thing DONE at a time is THE PATH TO SUCCESS.
Why? Because something actually gets DONE that way.
So I’m curious to know about your own struggles with multi-tasking.
For example…many people who want to get traffic to their site will