I received a very clever email the other day. At first I thought it was some kind of joke or spam or something.

Why?

Because it was from top internet marketer Jimmy D. Brown, creator of the highly successful Membernaire. Why would a massive marketer like Mr. Brown be opening a ticket on my support desk?

That’s right, this wasn’t just any old autoresponder email plopping into my inbox resulting from me signing up to a mailing list. It was actually a personal message from Mr. Brown himself. Sheesh!

Jimmy told me that he’d written an article on his blog and linked to a great post that he’d found on my blog, he’d also included links to a few other posts on various other high traffic blogs.

He asked if I would be prepared to post his article on my blog so that we could mutually benefit from the traffic – what a fantastic idea!

So what’s in it for me (WIIFM) and what’s in it for him?

Obviously, Jimmy’s a pretty clever guy and if you run your own blog, regardless of the niche, take note and defintely try something like this yourself…..

Task: Find other bloggers in your niche and research blog posts that are informative, well-written and that have had a good response (check out how many comments have been received to that post). Pay particular attention to blog post titles such as

“6 Top Tips for…”

“27 Ways To….”

“101 Benefits of….”

these type of `list’ articles are very popular!

Benefit: Your readers will love the fact that you are presenting them with great content on the niche that they are interested in.

Task: Create your own blog post around the articles that you have selected, include an introduction and an explanation of why you think your readers will find the articles helpful.

Benefit: If you’re a blogger that sometimes struggles for article ideas this is an excellent starting point. Sometimes it just takes a small nudge in the right direction, a chink of an idea and you’re off and running.

Task:. Contact the writers of the blog posts you are linking to and tell them you enjoyed their post and that you have included it in a post on your own blog.

Benefit: It’s a fantastic idea to participate in the blogging community and what better way than to communicate with other bloggers. Most bloggers are delighted to get a ping back or link back from fellow bloggers. It puts you on the radar in your niche and you can build some great relationships. Who knows where it could lead!

Task: Ask those whose articles you have used if they would be willing to post your article on their blog, or at least link back to your article.

Benefit: Remember, this is all about traffic. If you linking to other blogs they will get a pingback or notification that you are doing so and they will come and check you out. If you are mutually linking, you will both benefit from the flow of traffic from both sets of readers and search engine traffic.

How have I benefitted from this?

Check out the three screen shots below. You’ll see that prior to Jimmy’s article and link to my blog, which he posted on 29th April, I was receiving no traffic from his blog at all. And the same goes for other contributors who also posted Jimmy’s article on their blogs, Terry Dean and Carrie Lauth. However, look at the spikes of traffic after Jimmy and the others had posted.

Traffic from Jimmy D. Brown’s Blog

Traffic From Terry Dean’s Blog

Traffic From Carrie Lauth’s Blog

Task: Ensure that you have some kind of sign up box on your blog to capture email addresses for your mailing list, together with a prominent RSS button so that visitors can subscribe to your blog feed. Give your visitors every opportunity to keep up with what you’re doing on Twitter, Friendfeed and other social networking platforms by displaying the relevant links and icons in prominent places.

Benefit: Why waste all this free traffic? If your visitors like what they read why wouldn’t they want to sign up for your free product or report.  If you’re publishing great content, they’ll want to know when you next post again and sign up to your RSS feed, perhaps.

Start to build a relationship with your visitors, make them regulars, get to know them via email, Twitter – communicate with them and build your following.

So, without further ado, my thanks to Jimmy D. Brown for including me – below is his excellent article. I hope my regular readers will enjoy the great content that he’s selected and if you’re a new visitor to my blog, welcome, and I hope you visit again

189 Internet Marketing Tips, Tactics and Techniques
By Jimmy D. Brown of http://www.JimmyBrown.com

“Have you ever wished someone would do all of the “research” for you so you could just cut to the chase? I know I have. There have been many times I’d like to not waste hours of my life sifting through low-quality articles and blog posts to find the occasional gem.

If only someone else had written this article for me to read a long time ago. Fortunately, I’m gonna save you the trouble of getting double vision from staring at your computer screen trying to find some good internet marketing reads.

Below you’ll find some great “tips based” blog posts that are filled with meaty ideas. Some of these authors you’ve probably heard of, some you might not have heard of. All deserve to be included for providing some golden nuggets in their content.“

10 Ways To Make $10K Per Month
By Jimmy D. Brown
http://www.jimmybrown.com/10-ways-to-make-10k/

27 Ways To Get Your Blog Readers To Comment
By Nicole Dean
http://nicoleonthenet.com/2008/blog-readers-commen/

11 Steps To Getting More Blog Traffic
By Alice Seba
http://www.internetmarketingsweetie.com/blog/blog-traffic

21 Ways to Add More Subscribers
By Terry Dean
http://www.terrydean.org/21-ways-to-add-more-subscribers/

10 Free Ways To Drive Traffic To A Brand New Website
By Lynn Terry
http://www.clicknewz.com/633/traffic-tips-for-new-sites/

100 Free Blogging Tips
By Carrie Lauth
http://carrielauth.com/blog/free-100-top-blogging-tips/

5 Simple Ways To Increase Click Through Rates
By Zac Johnson
http://zacjohnson.com/5-simple-ways-to-increase-click-through-rates/

5 Simple Steps To Effectively Promote Your Affiliate Products
By Paula Brett
http://paula-brett.com/blog/5-simple-steps-to-effectively-promote-your-affiliate-products/

]]> http://paula-brett.com/blog/189-internet-marketing-tips-tactics-techniques/feed/ 29 http://paula-brett.com/blog/give-your-blog-a-traffic-injection/ http://paula-brett.com/blog/give-your-blog-a-traffic-injection/#comments Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:25:42 +0000 Paula Brett http://paula-brett.com/blog/?p=395

Apologies for not posting for so long everyone, it’s been a bit like a madhouse here, what with Christmas coming up.

I actually have 7 draft posts in my blog dashboard, all half written and then put on the shelf  to `finish later’.  My New Year’s resolution will be `get yourself organised, Paula, and stop getting distracted’!!! I promise

Anyway, I’ve got lots to tell you about, what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks, not least that I’ve been spreading my wings a bit, getting out and about the internet more than usual and I’ve been meeting some interesting new people.

But first, though, I wanted to give you all a heads up on something that you can jump in on right now…. to get some traffic to your blogs. It’s actually something that a new online aquaintance,  Eoin O’Leary told me about…

Take a trip over to Jack Humphreys blog, Friday Traffic Report, and check out his Technorati Favorite Blogs Exchange.

All you need to do is leave a comment on his blog and follow his instructions.

More posts coming…… honest!

More and more of my I.M. colleagues and indeed new people that I meet on line are `getting into blogging’. And why not? Blogs are relatively easy to produce and use, no matter which platform you choose, and they can be a brilliant tool for internet marketers.

However, no matter how easy they are to install and use, and no matter how helpful they can be to your business, the one thing that I’ve noticed more frequently is that many people are neglecting the security of their blogs.

Now I’m actually talking in particular about Wordpress blogs here. Yes, I have used Blogger blogs in the past, and I know that many people swear by them, but I found Blogger a bit too restricitive for my liking (though I understand that things have changed a lot at Blogger since I first used them).

Because Wordpress is an open source blogging tool, meaning that it’s free and available to everyone, it’s a prime target for hackers and ne`er-do-wells. Of course, the Wordpress development team are tireless in constantly working on the script for our benefit, but none of this is any use if we don’t actually get up off our backsides and do a bit of work on our blogs behind the scenes.

It’s par for the course to worry about your blog theme, your next blog post, your readership, attracting subscribers to your RSS feed etc. etc., but do you actually think very much about your blog’s security?

I suppose that I might perhaps see more Wordpress blog security problems than most, being in the hosting business.

Did you know that probably the biggest cause of server compromisation is actually people who install Wordpress blogs and other open source scripts and don’t keep them up-to-date with the latest versions and patches?

Hackers find it easy to search around, find a way in through an old script, hack your blog, access your email accounts, start sending viagra and cure for baldness spam emails `from you’ and generally get up to all kinds of nasty things.

I can’t tell you how many panicky emails I’ve had to answer from people who’ve logged into their blog one day and have been smacked in the face by a skull and cross bones proudly proclaiming that their carefully crafted, lovingly nurtured blog has been hacked by Hound Dog Horris the Hardcore Hacker!! Great!

So I’ve put together a few suggestions that you might like to implement to help keep your Wordpress blog `safe’

Keep Up-to-Date

First of all, the most obvious fix is to ensure that you keep your blog up-to-date with the latest version released by Wordpress.

Most Wordpress blogs display a little warning in the Dashboard that tells you when a new version is released and a link for you to click to download it. If yours doesn’t, then it’s worth checking the Wordpress website fairly regularly for updates. They also invite you to sign up for email notification of updates.

If you feel a bit daunted installing updates via FTP, or you installed your blog initially using Fantastico in your cPanel, so are not sure how to install the updates, Wordpress offer quite a good set of instructions for this.

Alternatively, due to high demand, we are now offering a script up-grade service at D9 Hosting (you don’t have to be one of our hosting clients to use this service, either – everyone is welcome!)

Plugins

It’s a good idea to hide the list of plugins you are using.  Any known vulnerabilities and bugs that may occur in some plugins can be used as tools to harm your website.

Check out your blog, now… http://yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins

The chances are, you will see the full directory of all of your blog plugins, and in some cases, the date they were installed.

To hide your plugins, simply create an index.html file and upload it to the wp-admin/plugins folder. This index file can be blank or you can be really creative and add some promotions to it.

Another way that Hound Dog Hacker uses to determine whether your blog is furtile ground for hacking is to check which Wordpress version you’re using.

So, if you’re one of those that has put upgrading on the back burner, then you could be announcing that you’re ripe for a hack harvest with a huge magaphone!

How so?  Well, go to your blog… go on.. open a new tab in your browser and type in your blog’s url.  Then right click on your blog with your mouse and select View Source, View Page Source, or similar, from the drop down menu.

Check out the coding….. about 10-12 lines down, you will see something like this

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress 2.6.3″ />

Obviously the 2.6.3 version is the latest version as I’m writing this post today, and your one, hopefully, tells you the latest version on the day you check your code. However, there’s a possibility that you’ve not updated your version and an old version is showing. Naughty, naughty!  Talk about dipping your cut finger in shark infested water and inviting all the sharks for a slap up meal!!!  Slight exaggeration, there, but I’m sure you get what I mean?

Why advertise that you’ve been a bit too busy to update your blog to the latest version, or that that upgrade keeps getting shoved down your list of things to do?

I’ve been using an excellent plugin by David Kierznowski, which removes the display of your Wordpress version to help deter attacks.

Check out this page you are reading now, do the right mouse click and then view source code, you should simply see

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress ” />

So no-one knows I’m really a lazy mare who hasn’t updated her blog for about 3 years!!  Only joking, Hound Dog…

The plugin is merely one small .php file that you upload to your plugins folder, and then activate it in the usual way in the plugins section of your Dashboard. You can download it here

Block Access

A folder that Hound Dog Hacker likes to have a good old nosey around on your blog is your wp-admin folder – this is the storage place for all your blog’s most sensitive data. So here’s a quick tip to secure this directory…

Open notepad or wordpad on your computer, and add the following code:-

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Access Control”
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE

If you don’t know your IP address, you can find it here http://whatismyipaddress.com/

Next, save your txt file as .htaccess and then upload it to your wp-admin folder.

NOTE: This method might be a pain in the neck for you if you don’t have a static IP address, however, if you are with an internet service provider that has a range, you can add the range.

I have to say that my IP address isn’t static BUT, I’ve only had to add extra IP addresses twice in the past 6 months or so, to allow me to login.

I did wonder why, when I went to my blog login page whilst on my laptop that I was denied access……. doh, then I realised that my .htaccess file was denying me access from this computer. I now keep the .htaccess file on my desk top and just add an IP address, if and when it changes, to the file and upload it in seconds. So your file might look something like this

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Access Control”
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE
allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE
allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE

I hope this has helped give you some ideas, or at least galvanized you into taking a closer look at your blog security.

Does anyone use any other methods to protect their blog, I’d love to hear about them and I’m sure others would too… so don’t be shy, let us know.

Now that the subscribers to the priority list have had their exclusive 24-hour first-come-first-served period, there are a few of my limited licence PLR autoresponder email packs left.

Just upload them to your autoresponder, set and forget!

If you are looking for eBay-related autoresponder emails; fresh content to send to your subscribers… check these out… but hurry, once they’re gone, they’re gone

Grab your 3-month, 6-month or 12-month packs here

Enjoy!

In today’s Web 2.0 online environment, it’s almost impossible to land on a blog, newsletter or current website without seeing an invitation to get the webmaster’s information via RSS.

If you are one of the thousands of new Internet Marketers just dipping their toes in the fast-paced waters of the Internet, you might not understand the valuable uses for RSS (Really Simple Syndicaton) and how syndication can improve your sales and drive traffic to your offers. Believe me, you are not alone.

Every new process, or revamped old process, develops it own set of terminology and buzz words, so let’s take a look at some of the RSS terminology first.

• Syndication:

Syndication, according to Wikipedia, means that you allow your website, or a portion of it, to be available for other sites to use. This usually means “…making web feeds available from your site, or blog, in order to provide other people with a summary of your website’s recently added content (for example, the latest news or forum posts).”

Different types of syndicated content can be found all over the Web, including newspapers, commercial websites, blogs or product offers from Internet Marketers. It has become a free and easy form of advertisement that increases targeted traffic and expands your site’s exposure across normally unreachable online platforms.

Web syndication by online marketers is removing the hesitancy web surfers have with providing personal information to invisible marketers, like name and email address for signing up to receive a newsletter. Those surfers expecting to subscribe to an RSS feed instead are growing in numbers and will soon be in the majority. Don’t ignore them!

RSS and Atom are the two main syndication formats.

• RSS Feed:

To start with, an RSS feed notifies you when a web site or blog you are interested in has been updated. There are two kinds of RSS feeds, static and dynamic.

When you see the latest scores for your favorite team or are continually checking for bargain airline tickets for your vacation to Disney World, that information would be a static feed from a sports news media or an airline/ticket site.

Info from a dynamic feed would depend on your search terms to provide specific information to add to your data stream. A dynamic feed would be one from a website you are watching for new content or notices abou new products. It would give you notice of the change on the website.

• Feed Reader or News Aggregator:

Those two terms are merely names for the software that allows you to get the RSS feeds from websites or blogs that interest you and have it displayed so you can read it and use the information the way you want to use it.

At the moment I use Googe Feedreader and you can find an article about how to use it here but you can find 12 or 15 feed reader options at: http://blogspace.com/rss/readers.

• The Big Question…What is RSS?

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a format for delivering regularly changing web content and is making it easier for you to stay informed by receiving the lastest content from your sites of interest. You don’t have to visit each site individually and do not have to join each site’s newsletter by providing your private information.

More than several big name sites, like Yahoo News, the BBC News in the UK, the US government and more newspapers and other news media than you can shake a stick at, are providing free RSS news feeds for delivery to anyone. They are not doing that for no reason, but because they recognize the extended reach their message will have and the benefits that reach will return to them. Copy success!

Internet Marketers are starting to add an RSS feed to their websites and blogs. Look for a button or link that says “XML,” “RSS” or an invitation to “Syndicate This Site” if you want to start receiving their information via an RSS news feed.

Almost any information can be used to publicize updates to your website or blog… photos, summaries of your latest update or simply the title of your update with a link back to the original source.

RSS benefits both the readers and the publishers of the feed. When you update your blog post, add new content to your website or want to announce a new sales price or special bonus for your readers, they all wil know immediately about the change or special offer and can decide if they want to visit your site or not.

Internet Marketers can reach a much wider audience for their products or services because web browsers are becoming much more likely to subscribe to an RSS feed and avoid the email clutter that clogs their inbox after subscribing to a few newsletters.

All the benefits of RSS feeds are not restricted to your subscribers, but have some powerful results when used as a marketing tool. When you use an RSS feed to market your products, you are attracting visitors and customers who are interested in your products and want to receive your information. This Win-Win process protects you from a spamming accusation.

The new techniques and requirements of using RSS to get your message circulating may still intimidate or confuse some of your customers. It is a good idea, for customer service, to offer both the RSS feed and emai notification of your website, blog or product updates. You do not want to immediately exclude a set of customers who prefer one method over the other, regardless of the reason.

As a tool to increase targeted and focused traffic to your site, RSS feeds work great for this top-of-the-list marketing need. If the content update interests your reader, many will want to read the complete story on your website and will click the link to do just that. When that happens, they arrive at your website already interested in your product… marketing gold!

Getting comfortable with this vibrant and ever-changing Web 2.0 tool will expand your reach and increase your conversions. More and more people are switching to RSS feeds everyday to make their lives less cluttered and to put the information they receive in their own hands and not those of random marketers. Don’t ignore this grass roots movement… join it!

Why not try it out by subscribing to my feed?

Related Article: Catch Up on Your Favourite Blogs in One Place

My goodness! I can’t believe it’s been so long since my last blog post – that really is disgraceful!

Thank you so much to all those wonderful readers that have been emailing me asking if all is OK. Fortunately, I haven’t been ill – just totally snowed under with off-line`stuff’.

I did, however, manage to to work on one project which proved to be very popular…

I always get a lot of emails and PMs from my subscribers who want to know about building their own list of subscribers. This, of course, is fantastic news. However, many people were saying that they were getting bogged down with worrying about what sort of emails they should send to their subscribers. What should they talk about?

Yes, many potential list owners are anxious and often put off starting their own mailing lists because they feel that they don’t know what content they should send in their emails and include in their newsletters.

And it’s not just newcomers to building a mailing list. You might find it surprising to know that even veteran list owners suffer from the occasional `brain freeze’ when it’s time to send out a newsletter.

So I decided to create a starter pack of Internet Marketing-related pieces/articles/emails full of helpful content, ready to just load up into an auto-responder and send to subscribers.

Initially, the pack contained 12 great IM articles – so if, say, a list owner wanted to stay in touch with their subscribers once a week, there was 3 months worth of messages. But I also included an extra 12 to make a 24-piece pack – that’s six month’s worth of auto-responder emails, (or if you’re only sending monthly, then one whole year of content for your readers)

Of course, the articles were not just exclusive to using for auto-responder emails, they could be used for anything… what about weekly blog posts? Simply load them into your blog and set the date and time that you wish your blog to publish them, daily, weekly, monthly…

I decided to make these packs a strictly limited edition, which meant that they would be exclusive to only 35 people. Once they were gone, that was it… they would never go on sale again.

I thought they would be quite popular, but I never imagined that they would all be snapped up in a matter of hours. So I do apologise to those of you who missed out on my email or who didn’t get to the payment button on time before it disappeared.

I’m now working on a few more packs. These too will be limited edition, though, so if you’re either looking for a way to get your list started, or just a kick-start for an email topic to an already established list, you’ll want to get on my priority list to be the first to know when a new pack is released.

Everyone on this list will get first refusal, if there are any packs left after that, then I will advertise them here on my blog

Many of my subscribers have asked me for autoresponder emails that are NOT internet marketing-related, and I’m more than happy to offer these, in fact, I’m already working on a few other other niches.

Here’s where I want to ask you a big favour…

I’d be really grateful if you could take a few moments to answer a very short questionnaire that I devised related to other niches that you’d like me to create packs for – if you’ve got a spare minute or two, please CLICK HERE and let me know which niches you want.

Many thanks for your help

BlogHer partnered with Compass Partners to do a sweeping social media benchmark study. Out of 6,000 women half said their buying decision was influenced by a blog and 36.2 million women actively participate in the blogsophere every week.

read more | digg story

Great news if you’re stuck on chosing a theme for your blog. There are so many of them, aren’t there?

You could go in to browse and not emerge for a week!!

Red, blue, green, 2 columns, 3 columns, right navigation, left navigation???????

The layout is good but the colour is naff. Navigation is awful but love the colours and images … and it goes on!

Now you can create your own theme and, when you’re done, download the zip file and install

Check it out here

On the other hand, if, like me, you’ve been coveting one of the amazing REVOLUTION blog themes from the talented Brian Gardner and his team, there’s more great news.

If you’re not happy to shell out $79.95 straight away and want to have a play around first, you can now download a free Revolution theme here (check out the live demo to see how great it looks).

Happy theming!