35 Creative Ways to Market Your Blog – Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online
I recently heard Ted Turner say that if he could offer one piece of advice it would be “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise!”.  I’m not big follower of Ted, but after I heard that on the radio I thought how fitting for blogging.  This article offers 35 goods tips on the advertise piece.

Link Building Is Like Losing Weight – Are You a Linkless Fatty?
By Winning The Web -  Talk about a grabbing headline!  I opened this article immediately when I saw it in my RSS reader.  That in itself is a testament to writing “clever” blog titles.  This article is very creative and draws some very interesting parallels between building links and losing weight!

Your Audience, Your Content, Your Sucess – Blogussion
It never hurts to sharpen up your writing skills and this article provides some valuable insight on focusing your content.  If you want to learn a little more about blog writing tips this is a good article.

101 Blogging Tips I’ve Learned in 2008 – Thou Shall Blog
This is a great list of tips that will help propel your blog to new heights in 2009.  Yan has shared some very valuable content on how to become successful in a short amount of time and what it takes to grow a strong blogging community.   I’m pretty confident you can find a couple of items on this list that apply to your site.

69 Questions to Ask to Review Your Blog – Problogger.net
Now that 2009 has officially started, it’s probably a good idea to reflect back on 2008 and form a plan for the new year.  Darren Rowse is veteran of blogging and has a ton of experience.  This article offers a great list of things you can immediately implement into your strategy for 09!

Hope you enjoy the articles this week and have a great weekend!

I’ve had a fair amount of success over the years buying and selling stocks, never enough to retire, but often times I get asked what I’m buying next, or what’s the next home run stock. Each time I respond with a simple answer, Yourself. Why are we so comfortable handing our hard earned money over to a complete stranger to invest in hopes to get 20% back on it? Even more so, why are we just as comfortable putting that money into the hands of a greedy CEO running a Fortune 500 company? Yet when it comes to putting a $5 or $5000 investment into ourselves we hesitate, second guess, and doubt the choice. If you’re like me it’s extremely hard to take that leap of faith and consider myself as the best investment on the market.

If you stop to think about the pro’s versus the con’s of investing in yourself, it’s a no brainer. Who else would you rather see succeed (except your kids or spouse) then you and your company? Take John Chow for an example; he could have easily put the money he spent launching JohnChow dot com into a bell weather stock in the Dow and more then likely be at a negative return right now. Instead he built a highly successful blog that is yielding huge returns month after month that he would only dream about getting from stocks. Take a look at his blog income report from October and you’ll see he turned $335 dollars into over $34,000 in one month! You don’t have to build a company to invest in yourself and get a high yielding return, there are other ways to invest in you as well. How about going to get your Masters Degree or training for a trade you love. That money will pay itself back many times over not to mention learning a ton along the way. It might even propel your career or give you the confidence to start your own company.

The main point is to stop looking for other people to make money for you; believe in your abilities to get to the next level by investing in Yourself. I’m not saying that having a good retirement isn’t important, in fact I do think you should save and invest, but the next time you look at your 401k or think about taking a risk on a stock, stop and ask yourself is that 20% return going to pay a higher dividend then if I buy a couple hundred shares of me?

Each month AverageGal is going to be running a contest to reward our dedicated readers and visitors for frequenting our site.  The contest and prizes will vary from month to month so check back often to get the latest details. Prize Breakdown and Criteria To Win are below this Months Sponsor.

This month, December, we are going to give away $50 in cold hard cash and 3 monthly premium advertising spots on our website to the “Top Commentator”.  The sponsor of this months contest is FullGlassLiving.  Full Glass Living is a blog dedicated to living life to the fullest and sharing these experiences with their readers.  If you like reading how to take some stress out of your life and enjoy the finer things in life then you should head over to Full Glass Living.

This Months Prizes:

1st Prize: $50 Cold Hard Cash, 1 mo. 125×125 Sponsorship on AverageGal, 1 mo. “Feature Site” Text Link
2nd Prize: 1 month 125×125 Sponsorship Ad on AverageGal
3rd-5th Prize: 1 month “Feature Site” Text Link on AverageGal

Criteria To Win:

Entry Method #1: Worth 1 Ticket Per Comment

It’s as easy as commenting!  Each and every comment that you have on this blog will count as 1 ticket into the drawing at the end of the month.   In order for your comments to count and receive a ticket, you need to find yourself in the Top Commentators section on the right side menu of this blog at the end of the month. If you aren’t in the 10 Top Commentators, you will not be entered into the drawing.

Entry Method #2: Worth 50 Tickets – Give a Shout Out To AverageGal

Simple write a full post on your blog about AverageGal, this contest, and link to this Page.  Please don’t link to the homepage, this will void the entry into the contest.  Write about the give away, about the blog, and give an honest review.  After you’ve posted the article simply leave a comment below letting us know that you have entered and you will be given 50 tickets in the drawing.  It’s that easy!

The winners will be chosen by Random.org and will be notified via email on the 1st day of the month.  Good Luck Everyone!

1. Ever heard of ROY G BIV? - You know, the colors of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet? One of the easiest ways to give your business card some character is to add some color. Time and time again I see stacks of business cards that are black and white or blue and white. Spice up your card and add a dynamic color scheme that matches the theme of your blog or website. Not only will this correlate and create assimilation between your card and blog, it will also give you instant credibility. It makes you look more professional and thorough. A word of caution, don’t over-do the color so that your card is “busy” and hard to read or follow.

2. Making it All Business – People like to do business with “friends”. It’s much easier to make a purchase or form a business partnership with someone that you feel comfortable with and have established a relationship with. Don’t be afraid to add a picture of yourself on the front of your card. This can help people associate a great conversation or meeting that you had with your business. Furthermore, it’s another way to stand out amongst the busy crowd. I would suggest keeping the photo small, business casual, and fun (make sure to smile and laugh).

3. Thanks for the Postcard - We all know that differentiating our blog from the one next door is extremely important, but don’t overlook the size and shape of your card. Changing the physical shape and size of your biz card can work out well if done properly but if you go big, you more than likely are going home! The last thing that anyone wants to do, is carry around an awkward, over-sized piece of your advertising. Make sure that your card can easily fit into a wallet or pocket; ask yourself if you would carry around a post card all afternoon at a trade show or expo.

4. Novels are for the library - While the real estate on your business card should be used to the fullest extent, don’t write a book. Have you ever seen a billboard along the side the freeway that made you pull over and stop to read it? I didn’t think so. Keep your card simple with respect to text. Be short and to the point. Have a call to action or a clever slogan, but don’t try to sell your entire company mission statement. You have 5 seconds to capture your audience, not 5 minutes.

5. Gloss is for Lips- This is a personal preference. No not lip gloss, but glossy cards. I’ve never been a big fan of them. The biggest reason I don’t like the slippery, wet look on business cards is because you can’t write on them. Many times when I meet a potential client or business partner, I want to make a quick note on the margins or back of the card. This is especially true if I want to contact them in the future and need to recall our meeting. I suggest keeping the gloss in the make-up kit.

These are just 5 tips that I find are the most common blunders when making a business card. I could probably write a list of 20; stick to the basics, add a little creativity and you should have no trouble finding your way to pocket of potential blog customer or business partner. I would love to hear any tips or insight you might have to offer!

As most of you know, I started into the world of blogging and internet marketing as a complete novice. This has been both good and bad. The worst part about being a complete novice is trying to learn all of the terms, short hand, abbreviations, and dynamics that come with internet publishing. The best part is actually learning what many of these terms and techniques are and how I can use them to make money online. As I may have previously mentioned, I use WordPress.  Today I learned how trackbacks work and how to use them effectively to promote a blog.

A trackback is nothing more than a link tracing back to your blog article that you have published. This link is the same as the url which leads you to the posted article, the difference being there is a /trackback/ at the end of it. So the real question is how are these trackbacks used and why?

Trackback urls are used when you (or someone else) want to reference an article from another blog and alert the originating author you have referenced material from their site or blog. For example, if you wanted to reference this article on your blog, you’d simply copy and paste my URL and add “/trackback/” or you couple right click on the Trackback Link about my comments section to display the trackback url. You would then write your article on your blog and post the trackback url in your trackback url section.

This is the perfect tool to use if you are trying to promote your blog via a contest. As an example you could offer your readership the ability to win a product or service as long as they reference your post with a blog entry on their site and sent you a track back. This can be a great tool if used properly.

According to Wikipedia.com, “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic“) search results for targeted keywords.”

All of the top search engines, ie Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, use a complex algorithm to calculate where your site ranks in terms of sites of like values. The factors that are calculated include, but are not limited to: keywords, meta tags, links, headings, and site structure. This algorithm assigns a specific page rank (this tool calculates the likelihood of your average web surfer happening upon your site).

It is apparent that I should care about SEO and the effects that it has on my site. Choosing to learn more about SEO and fully understanding SEO will clearly have a big impact on your success as well. I found a great explanation of search engine optimization on Wikipedia.com and I would encourage those of you who don’t have a complete grasp around this concept to visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization to learn more! As a beginner, I’d also welcome any and all comments or explanations on SEO as well!

Do you know another way to re-size images using wordpress? I’m sure that there’s an easier way, but as I said, I’m still learning and figuring this out was liberating! I was so excited about it I wanted to share with you! Let me know if this is helpful…

Another tip that I’ve picked up was that when adding RSS to a site, do not use the word “subscribe”.  Now, I know that you’ll hear a variety of opinions on this.  To me, it makes sense.  When I hear the word subscribe,  I think of paying money for a service or product.  When I have visitors to my site, I definitely don’t want them to have a negative connotation of the RSS feed before they even know what it’s about.  However, when further thinking about how to get my readers to sign up for my feed, I knew that I had to have an explanation as to what RSS actually is.  Especially for all those internet & blogging novices (aka me!) out there.  As you’ll notice, I did use the word “subscribe” when referencing my RSS feed.  I felt that since I coupled this with a detailed explanation of RSS that it was less intimidating to new users. What are your thoughts on using the word “subscribe”?

Below is my explanation as to what RSS is:

If you’re new to blogging, or still don’t have a complete grasp on what RSS is or means, read on to learn more!

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”.  It’s used by bloggers to frequently publish a variety of items, such as blog postings, news, audit and/or video in a format that can be easily and widely recognized. RSS is sometimes referred to as a feed; this feed includes either the full article or summary of the text, date published and author. Publishers (i.e. me) can benefit from RSS by enabling their readers (those signed up for RSS) to get the information posted to their blog or site almost instantaneously.  It’s beneficial for you, the reader, because if there’s multiple blogs that you’re interested in, but don’t have time to regularly check what’s being posted, you can quickly scan the postings that you’ve subscribed to via your feed.

RSS allows for a quick dissemination of information; I post the information and RSS feed sends you the alert, allowing you to monitor the articles and information that you’d like to further explore.

Sign up Today!

The Webinar that I recently attended was called “It works: 10 Tips for Email Marketing Success”. I took a lot away from this webinar, and thought that I would be very beneficial to those of you out there who are new to the game of Email Marketing as well as those of you who have been using Email marketing for a while; it never hurts to polish up! Check out the below tips and let me know if you have something to add; I always welcome more ideas to become successful!

1. Professional Appearance – Keep colors and image consistent to your website. When sending out an email, always offer the option to be read in both HTML and Plain text. This is very important to those customers you’re marketing to who use their Blackberry!
2. Action – Create a sense of urgency – “Shop Now”, “Limited Quantity Available”, or “Read now for Important Information”. You need to give the reader a sense of direction in the message of your Marketing in order for them to take action.
3. Personalization – Make sure you personalize your subject line. Your customers are getting multiple emails everyday; be sure to make your subject line one that they will want to click on and open.
4. Subject Line – Don’t have more than 50 characters. It’s very important to be specific about the subject of your email. Short and to the point is best.
5. Spam Check – Make sure to include a “Click Here to Unsubscribe” to all of your email marketing. This is part of the CAN SPAM ACT – You can google this if you’re interested in learning about all of the rules and regulations of Spam. (If you’re not up to snuff on your Spam rules, you’ll definitely want to check this out… some hefty fines can be assessed for sending Spam email!)
6. Segmentation – Know and divide up your customers by interests to get a more defined marketing base. This will allow you to be more specific when sending out emails. For example: you wouldn’t necessarily want to send out an email related to a shoe sale, when the only product that a customer has ordered is books.
7. Testing – Test your audience to see what works best to capture their attention – use time of day, day of week, promotion, all as test variables.
8. Tracking & Reporting – You’ll want to be informed about the number of people who open your email, click your links, forward the email, subscribe to your list, unsubscribe to your list, the web pages they visit, conversions to sales, click through performance, what time/day of the week this occurs. All of this information can help you to form a more effective email marketing campaign.
9. Automate Mailing – Send Welcome emails when someone subscribes; have automated emails sent out when an order is placed on your site, or when a cart is abandoned.
10. Surveys – Send surveys to your customers about how to improve their experience. Discover your customers’ wants and needs as it pertains to email marketing.

Think that Email Marketing isn’t and/or shouldn’t be an important part of your business? Think again! Email Marketing has a 7% average conversion rate – which is better than most other forms of online marketing! Solid Cactus stated that they expect Email marketing overall to have an average Return on Investment of $45.65 for every $1 spent in 2008. Don’t drop the ball with your email marketing!