Making them understand that you know their needs, pains and troubles would help to intensify their eagerness to listen because they believe that you have the solution. When the connection is established, they can give you their full trust, and from there, you can fully give your message.

It Captures Your Audience’s Attention

Like how Carl’s company uses colors, creative headlines, and animations on their web design services, our goal as a speaker is to capture the audience’s attention. They say that the first 60 seconds of the presentation is very crucial. That is why the best way to establish undivided attention is to say important opening statements that will somehow connect you to them.

Start by conditioning their minds and hearts that the message that you are about to share is something they can relate to. Tell some specific experiences to get an emotional response, add drama if necessary. Just make sure that the message is simple and clear and they will pick up the cues.

It Makes Selling Easier

Did you know that most customers buy a product based on emotion, simply because it feels right? You can easily upsell or downsell to a customer by using their emotions. In the Art of Persuasion, appealing to the human side of the audience makes them act according to your advice. Some even consider the “connection” is more important than the logic of doing a specific thing.

Salespeople present their products by creating wants, making their prospects feel that they are missing something in their lives and they have the solution. They focus on negative issues and give hope. So, before they would present their product, they have already intensified the emotions of the customer. Few more information about the advantages of the product would lead to a big SALE. In addition, maintaining such connection will earn you loyal customers who would even recommend you, your product and services to other people.

It Helps the Audience Remember

Art of persuasion includes making a blunt message exciting and easier to digest. The audience won’t listen to same old pitches about the company. Make the audience’s emotion as your focal point to make sure that they absorb the message, they respond and soon take an action in your favor. It is not important that they like you as a speaker. What’s important is for them to open their hearts to you and eventually use their emotions to make decisions.

It Increases Engagement

Touching the hearts of the audience will not only give you a response during the presentation. It helps gauge the extent of your influence. When you finish your speech, some would love to mingle with you because you have made connections with them.

They would tell you how they feel about the presentation and you have the opportunity to dig deeper into their hearts and know what’s on their mind. This is where a lasting connection should start. These kind of opportunities are should not be wasted.

The post Importance of Emotional Connection in the Art of Persuasion appeared first on Carl Ocab.

Social signals? Does it really help increase SEO rank?

Google’s Matt Cutts said that social signals do not affect search rankings. Perhaps. However, if something you posted on social media becomes viral, your page will be talked about, which means that your website gets exposed, which will gather a lot of traffic, which will help you get links.

It may not be a search engine ranking factor but social signals still can have significant effects on your SEO. So how exactly do you get a post viral and on top of the SERP ranks, how do you make people like, share, vote, pin, or view your post? Yeah, you can pay advertisements to market your post, but the best way is through making sure that the content you post is engaging, free, and fun. Lucky for you, I know exactly what to do.

Know Your Audience for Your Audience Knows Best

Make content that targets a specific audience, spy on them if you have to, just make sure that you are aware of their demographic data and understand their interests and preferences, this will allow you to create quality content that they can easily associate with. Understanding where you post is also important. People on Twitter and Facebook would love humorous content, but I doubt that comedy would be appealing on Google+ and LinkedIn.

Be Imaginative with Your Content

Explore the various types of content. Use images, videos, infographics, and memes. Also, consider conjuring up challenges or contests, most people are innately competitive, remember the Ice bucket challenge?

Asking your audience a question and making a poll where they can vote is also an excellent way to engage your audience. Lastly, provide some tips and some incentives. These are highly effective ways to make your post get noticed.

Be in the Moment

You need to make a content that is base on recent news and breakthroughs in your industry. Follow trends that your audience is also following. People long for information that is currently hot, popular, and in demand.

Regularly Connect with Your Audience

Don’t forget to reply to comments and provide feedback on inquiries. Be sure to you let your audience know that you appreciate their participation. Flirt a little by liking-back, sharing, and retweeting some of your audience’s posts. Consistently create high-quality content and make updates so that your audience will easily be familiar with your brand. Familiarity is an excellent way to get followers and make fans.

Don’t Fear Controversy

Create controversial content. Topics that most people have strong opinions about tend to go viral. Don’t provide your personal opinion, rather, be neutral. Let your audience square off their views and don’t take sides.

The post How to Create Engaging Social Media Content That Gets You Higher SERP Rank appeared first on Carl Ocab.

Google’s Safe Browsing initiative have been protecting loads of people from sleazy websites and phishing attacks for 8 years. Last November, they announced that Safe browsing would protect us from social engineering attacks as well. Thanks Google, how thoughtful!

What Are Social Engineering Attacks?

These are the deceptive tactics that trick users into clicking a button or image which installs unwanted software or make users reveal personal information, such as passwords, phone numbers, or credit card information.

These deceptive embedded content are those that disguise like a trusted entity which tries to lure users into making a horrible mistake. They pose as trusted images which make them dangerously deceitful. Here are some examples of deceptive content.

Those that mimics a dialogue from FLV software developer: Install button

Those claiming that your software is out of date: Update button

And in most file-sharing and streaming sites: download button and play button.

How many times have you clicked on those only to be redirected to harmful sites which push unwanted software downloads and updates or offers subscription traps, job-opportunityand quick money making schemes. Don’t worry, you are not alone. These fake buttons blend in and are often not recognizable from the rest of the page. They mimic the site’s look.

Thankfully Google, in their newest announcement titled “No More Deceptive Download Buttons“, said that they would be expanding Safe Browsing protection and would be targeting all those issues mentioned above.

While under the protection of Google, those users who use Chrome browser who encounters social engineering attacks will be presented with an image having this kind of message.

Google will flag down websites that contain social engineering content. This protection will create a much safer browsing experience and will protect users from frustration, bad advertisers, scammers, and maybe even viruses.

The post Google Now Protects Users From Deceptive Pages appeared first on Carl Ocab.

Link building is a challenging task. In fact, the link building tactics of an SEO agency may be the defining factor of an experienced agency to an agency that’s just full of promises.

Backlinks are still the #1 search engine ranking factor. That’s why caution must be implemented because search engines take this very seriously. Some people tend to forget that search engines are almost omnipotent these days compared to 5 years ago where there are tons of loopholes to manipulate.

Link Building is a strategy. There are numerous ways to get backlinks. There are good ways and bad ways. We must learn the proper guidelines and which strategies to avoid. Misguided efforts to build up links cause more harm than good.

Here are 3 Link Building Failures and the ways to avoid them.

1. Spam – Because It’s Only for Eating

Spamming is a common black hat strategy, there are numerous kinds of spam and some of the most common spams are:

A. Forum Spam

This refers to posting on forum threads for the sole intention of getting backlinks. Webmasters who uses this strategy creates profile spams, joins different forums and posts their backlinks on different threads.

Here’s What You Can Do Instead

Don’t join communities just to post backlinks. Simple right. Genuinely join communities, be legitimate and contribute. Also, avoid joining forums that don’t monitor spam content. If the community is full of spammers, then there’s a risk that you will be branded one as well.

B. Trackback and Comment Spam

Trackbacks allows bloggers to communicate between websites. You wish to write a post and link to another blog but also want your readers to see your post. A trackback is a way for you to ping the other bloggers and let them know that you wrote a post that links to their blog. They will receive a trackback notification and will decide whether to display it as a comment or not. If shown, the comment will include a title, excerpt and a link to your blog post.

What spammers do is to generate countless automated scripts or scraped contents to send tons of trackbacks to different websites hoping that they could leave their links on websites where trackbacks are not being monitored. Comment spam, on the other hand, is done by posting random, irrelevant, nonsensical comments on a blog article.

Here’s What You Can Do Instead

If you wish to send a trackback, make sure that what you post and the blog you link with is in high quality, relevant, and is related. Some authors monitor their work so if you post something on their blog that looks spammy they may report you. Avoid this by writing comments that matter. Be authentic. Same goes to your blog. Monitor your blogs and the trackbacks you received and make sure that you don’t get penetrated by spammers.

C. Article Directory spam

An article directory is a site where you can submit articles with anchor texts linking back to your site to obtain backlinks. Once the articles are uploaded users can download it and use it on their own website. If they publish your article, you will get inbound links from their website, this becomes a spam when webmasters upload inappropriate contents, spin-off articles, and uses irrelevant anchor texts, hoping that other websites publish their work, which resulted for search engines to become critical of this link building strategy.

Here’s What You Can Do Instead

If you wish to use article directories, then make sure that the content of your work is relevant, unique, and with an appropriate anchor text. You should also make sure that the article directory where you put your article is a high-quality directory.

2. Buying Links

Buying links are easy, quick, and convenient. Purchased links can get you many links with the proper link text pretty quickly, and could give you a boost in search engine rankings. A powerful link with a high page rank and many outbound links will cost more but will garner better results. It’s an extremely effective link building tactic. Unfortunately, search engines are very strict about it, and we strongly advise against it. It’s not worth risking for the penalties can be severe.

Here’s What You Can Do Instead

Never buy links. Invest in good content instead. Use your money to hire a great writer. Do inbound marketing. Create infographics. Remarkable content is the most effective way to build links.

3. Private Blog Network

A private blog network is a set of blogs that is owned or controlled by a single individual or company. Usually, PBNs are created by getting expired domains that has links pointing to it. A webmaster uses this as a link building strategy. They buy numerous expired domains, and they “revive” those by adding trash content for the purpose of funneling links to their main website which, in return, increase the SEO ranking of that site. This worked for quite some time a few years ago but Google took action against private blog networks and penalizes sites that are using this tactic.

Here’s What You Can Do Instead

PBNs are not entirely bad. It’s only wrong if you create it for the sole purpose of link funneling. There are ways to utilize PBNs without being penalized. Instead of buying expired domains, it would be better if you create new ones. Refrain from making many microsites, keep it to a minimum and make sure that you actively promote and market each, and create unique and valuable content on each of the websites. In fact, the popular blogs LifeHacker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, and more are all part of a blog network.

The post 3 Link Building Failures Your Business Should Avoid appeared first on Carl Ocab.

When making videos most people are more worried about the actor/presenter, the scenery, the make-up, the lighting, basically the visual appeal of the video, than the script. Yes, those things are important and necessary. However, before exhausting all your energy on those elements, the first thing you should think of is having a great script. To get the most out of videos you have to start with an engaging script, that once turned into video, could captivate any viewer.

So do you make a great video script? What are the things you should consider? It starts with the right preparation. Know your audience, your message, and your aim, then follow these 5 tactics that top YouTubers use in making a video script that is precise, creative, and compelling.

1. Be Natural and Use Conversational Tone

When writing a script, imagine that you’re just having a conversation with a person or with a group. Don’t be too formal on your script, it’s better to be natural it makes videos more engaging.

2. Keep the Script Short

Short and straight to the point sentences will allow you to emphasize more on certain key points and will enable your audience to grasp your message easily. It will also be easier for the actor to memorize and find the flow and natural cadence of the script.

3. Don’t Overuse Jargons and Try to Use Simple Words

Use simple words. Yes, big words make it look more intelligent, but it also makes it difficult for the audience to understand. If the use of jargon is inevitable, use the most commonly used term that the audience would likely understand

4. Tell a Story

Statistics, facts, and other data are good, but unless you want to bore your viewers to death, I suggest that you put some story into the mix. Lifeless content won’t drive your viewers into action. Tell a story or share an experience, it’s real and more compelling.

5. Get Other’s Opinion

Read your script out loud and ask others to read it to you. Listen and make sure it’s pleasant to the ears and that the key points are easily picked out. Also, ask for other people’s opinion. Other people can provide some additional necessities to include. Sometimes we get too familiar with our words that we overlook our mistakes.

The post 5 Tactics Top YouTubers Use When Writing a Video Script appeared first on Carl Ocab.

Content marketing is a marketing strategy technique directed to the creation and distribution of highly valuable and relevant content that can attract a targeted audience and retain that audience. Basically, the purpose of content marketing is to provide information that can persuade customers to buy your products or avail your services. But how exactly does it work? What are the things you must keep in mind to be successful?

Here are 5 points to bear in mind for content marketing success.

1. Use These Popular Types of Content

The first point to consider is to learn the types of content, actually, there are numerous types, you don’t necessarily need to try them all since different content types suit different brands in different ways. But for your learning and understanding here are some of the most commonly used types of content.

• Infographics – Its name sums it all up. You present certain information or data in a visual manner. Infographics are used to quickly communicate messages, to simplify large amounts of data, to draw out patterns and relationships, and to monitor changes over time. Check out CreativeBloq’s infographics compilation for ideas.
• Meme – A meme is a growing internet trend that pairs an image with a catch phrase to create humor. It may also include GIFs and videos. Marketers attach brand messages to memes making it easier for audiences to remember and relate to the brand.

• Videos – videos are a great way of giving information and the same time it’s great with social media. Uploading a video in youtube or facebook can gather many audiences. You can upload different kinds of videos such as vlogs, explainer videos, presentations, and interviews.
  
• Product/Service review – Product reviews can help you build authority in your industry. Every industry has numerous kinds of products and making a review will enable you to engage with key developers and service providers.
• Link pages – A link page is a post that provides links to great resources around the web. It’s great in providing your own site with authoritative SEO signals, and asserting your thoughts within your industry.

There are still many different types of content I suggest you learn them all so you can utilize it based on your needs.

2. Learn How to Target Your Audience

The second point is to know your targeted audience, before even starting to create a content make sure that you know your audience as much as you know your brand. You will base a portion of your content on the needs and the wants of the audience, that is what sells products.

A key in sales is knowing what your customer needs more than what he believes he needs. Learn your audience’s interests and preferences, remember that your targeted audiences are your prospect buyers. So how will you determine your targeted audience? Simple, create an audience persona, this is an imaginary profile for your buyers. Aside from the interests and preferences, age, gender, language, income bracket, and social values would also matter.

3. Be Meticulous on the Content You Put

The third point is to analyze exactly what you put in the content. Your content should be able to answer any question that a customer might think of. Information is good, but a story would be better, so don’t just include details about your products, self-reference would be counterproductive, rather impress them through compelling stories that illustrate the benefits your business has to offer, people will be more attracted to view your content if it’s creative and exciting. You should also include visual aids in your content. Pictures and videos are some of the most effective types of content. Not only will this help you attract audiences it will also increase your SEO authority.

Now you know the types, the audience, and the content, would that be enough? Of course not. A great content is nothing without a great marketing strategy. So the 4th and 5th point is all about the marketing strategy and the relationship you need to build with your audience.

4. The Marketing Strategy

The fourth point is the basic internet marketing strategy. Here you have to consider the schedule, the team, and the allotted budget. You have to create a marketing plan. Follow marketing schedule, this will enable you to be consistent with your marketing plan. You should also have a management team that can create, monitor, and distribute content. A team that can handle the SEO, manage social media and email marketing, advertise, and target an audience. These will help you distribute your content and will allow you to expand the reach of your brand. More audience, more authority, more sales.

5. Consistency Is Key

The fifth point would be maintenance. One great content and that is marketed very well is never enough. If you really want to sell your product you must consistently make great content and market it in a strategic manner. Go beyond the basics and don’t rely too much on direct promotion. Build relationships and be authentic in online interactions this will allow you to maintain your customers. Having loyal customers means making money without even selling, so make sure that you retain your old customers and constantly seek for new ones.

The post 5 Points to Keep in Mind for Content Marketing Success appeared first on Carl Ocab.

Listen now, because this is gonna be important and life changing.

Last August 26, 2009, Carl wrote an article about how he’s got a secret: and that is “Content Is Not King” – it’s marketing.

It’s been about 6 years when he said that, but given that I believe what he said is true ‘till this day, this got me asking:

“How do you simplify marketing to someone who’s just starting out?”

Now, if you’re like me, I don’t want to get overwhelmed by lots of information.

Imagine a little kid who wants to learn about marketing – I bet he won’t appreciate the confusion of information overload also.

So, in this case… here’s what I’d say.

There are only three walls that prevent people from making that decision to buy from you. And those walls are:

1. Not listen
2. Not believe
3. Not act

People will not listen to your message, will not believe your message, and will not act upon your message. Break these walls and you’ll be making more money online and offline with your marketing efforts easier.

This “3 walls to break principle” is the cornerstone of what I call Auto-Smash Strategy.

Literally saved my life, but that’s a story for another day.

For now, let’s look at how to break these walls:

1. Smashing the “Not Listen” wall

In order to make people listen to your message, you have to use a good “headline”.

A headline could exist in different forms depending on the advertising medium, but this is the general idea – your headline is what your audience reads or hears first in an Ad.

For example, in radio and television, your headline would be the first few spoken words in that Ad. In print, it would be the first words (usually written in bigger and bolder fonts) that your audience reads.

A simple structure of a headline would be to start with a question directed towards a problem – something like:

Still Struggling to Make Money Online?

(Followed by a benefit driven promise like:)

Discover 3 Simple Methods
to Cash-in on the Internet Craze
Within the Next 24hours

Pretty simple and straightforward, but that just works.

2. Smashing the “Not Believe” wall

People are sceptical, and that is good. If you know how to make them “believe”, then you get advantage in the market place.

Use stories. Tell specific numbers. Show pictures that paint the scenario as believable. Use testimonials. Use phrases like “believe me”. And so many more.

Just ask yourself – “what would make me believe if I was to hear this pitch?”

3. Smashing the “Not Act” wall

This is, in a sense, the “closing the sale” part. A lot of people drop the ball here – being afraid, shy, or whatever about “asking for the sale”. If your product would help people out, then do it. Simply say…

Here’s what you do next…

(then tell them what to do: buy, like, share, open, click, etc)

Easy… right?

If a long-haired work-at-home dad like me can do it, so can you:)

Forget about AIDA – because it doesn’t tell you to make people “believe”. Forget about the 4Ps… well, because literally my small brain just can’t remember what those 4Ps are.

This is pretty much what Auto-Smash Strategy is all about. This is what I’d share to someone who’s just starting out with marketing or someone suffering from information overload.

Believe me, I used Auto-Smash Strategy myself while I was just starting out as a copywriter – and it worked great as we we’re bringing in hundreds up to thousands of people in our seminars while I was working for the Philippines’ #1 Success Coach.

I hope you find value to this sharing. If you like what you’ve read…

Here’s what you do next…

Study this sales page I wrote (as of this writing, you can’t buy anything from that sales page because I haven’t launched the product yet). You’ll notice that this “piece” follows the same principle I shared to you just now – break the three walls not listen, not believe, and not act.

Check the sample page here:
http://headlineswissknifemethod.com

(or check out Carl’s Headline Swiss-Knife Method Review)

Sincerely,
Dexter Paglinawan

www.dexterpaglinawan.com
UDEMY INSTRUCTOR
From way up high Philippines’ City of Pines

The post Move Over AIDA, 4P’s – Break These Three Walls To Sell More Instead appeared first on Carl Ocab.

Dual Streams – Home + Street

If like most people, you have an account on Facebook, you’re familiar with the term “stream”. Most social networks have one (or the equivalent). On Facebook, your stream shows all the updates of your friends and the various pages you’re connected with and you can choose either “most popular” or “most recent”. Twitter’s main stream is similar. Even G+ has a stream – you can choose to view all your circles or individual circles for the updates you want. Zurker offers something a little different.

Zurker offers a Home stream and a Street stream. They’re quite different and switching between them is easy. On your main page (reached by clicking the Zurker logo), you’ll see a button for each. Home will take you to your home stream and the updates that affect you directly, including comments others have left on your posts and more. Street will take you to updates from contacts and subscriptions.

Tags

How many times have you logged into Facebook or Twitter and groaned in frustration as you have to scroll through page after page of inanities just to find the information you want? It’s frustrating, but what can you do? Actually, Zurker offers a pretty innovative way around this. With Zurker, you can use tags to your advantage for both incoming and outgoing information. Zurker requires that you tag every connection on the network and that’s important. Ever feel like you’re being overloaded with information? Uncheck a few tags (family, friends or whatever tags you’ve decided to use) and you won’t see updates from those people until you turn the tags back on.

Own a Piece of the Network

While tags and the dual Home/Street stream are both pretty cool features, there’s one thing about Zurker that really stands out. The network gives you the chance to own a share (or more than one) of the profits. While other social networks court big investors, sell stocks on Wall Street or make it easy for big business to earn money, Zurker is more about courting you, the user. Buying vShares lets you own a piece of the network, and can be bought with cash or earned by inviting friends to the network using your referral code.

Giving Back to Users

In addition to vShares, Zurker is about giving back to users in other ways as well. While Facebook and Twitter might take your loyalty for granted, Zurker realizes that users make the network’s world go round, and offer rewards for your loyalty in the form of promotions and giveaways. For instance, the New Year Promo for 2013 gives all users the chance to win a free iPad or Microsoft Surface tablet, just for doing what you already do – using the network. By accruing zurks (the Zurker equivalent of a FB “like”), you can earn a chance to win your choice of tablet.

Cons to the Network

While there are a lot of innovative features to Zurker, new users might find that there are a couple of things lacking. For instance, currently, there’s no way to search the network for users. Likewise, there’s no built-in chat feature. All communication with other members has to go through comments on posts and photos.

Try Zurker Today!

In summary, Zurker offers quite a lot of innovation and has the potential to grow enormously. Between vShares, iPad giveaways and the ability to customize the updates you see rather than overloading you with updates, it’s a pretty cool place and one that you should definitely check out.

The post The Social Network YOU Own – Zurker appeared first on Carl Ocab.

“Are you qualified to make money blogging?”

Blogs are frequently updated. If you’re not willing to update your blog frequently, you’re not going to make any money from it. It’s as simple as that. If you’re looking for a way to make money without doing any work, blogging isn’t for you.

Blogging is also about social interaction, though that aspect of it is a bit different from what most people consider social networking to be these days. The social functions on blogs can oftentimes be integrated with social media sites, however, something that will be discussed in greater detail later on.

For the moment, suffice it to say, blogging is about publishing good information on a regular basis. It’s also something that you can make money at, provided you understand how to go about it.

Making money with blogs is a popular way to make money online because the investment required to get one started is very small. It’s very similar to building an authority site. Particularly compared to the investment required to start most other types of businesses, blogging is very affordable.

There are resources you can utilize to expand your blog a great deal, to get information and perform other tasks that come at a price but, when you’re just getting started, you won’t have to worry about that right away. The costs of starting a blog are mostly those required to get a domain name and to get a web hosting account. These are very small investments; probably less than you pay for your Internet subscription every month.

1. Find A Specific Topic To Write About

Finding a niche is one of the most basic elements of most successful Internet marketing. Remember that you’re marketing your blog, so your niche is going to be a group of people who enjoy consuming a certain type of information. That information will likely be relative to an activity that they engage in or an aspect of their lifestyle that further defines them as being a member of that niche. For example, mothers of elementary school children who attend private schools are a marketing niche.

Identifying a niche can be hard. One of the things you have to take into account is how much competition there is for that particular group of people. You may not want to try to compete for the niche of people who enjoy golfing in Florida, for example, simply because that is such a huge niche to go after, which means that a lot of other sites will be competing for that demographic. Scale it down a bit. Consider, for example, people who enjoy golfing in Florida but who are allergic to regular mosquito repellent. That’s a very specific— and likely very small—group of people to whom you could direct blog content. Obviously, this is only an example, but you’ll need to choose a niche that you can realistically reach better than your competition and that you can speak to with at least some authority.

Read the news, pay attention to trends and it won’t be long before you will be able to identify many different niches. If you have somebody you work with in your business, or just a good friend with whom you like tossing around ideas, try brainstorming.

2. Get A Domain Name & A Web Host

A domain name is what you type in your browser when you want to go to a website. For example, Google’s domain name is “www.google.com”. Technically, because you are putting up a site that is intended to make money, you should choose a .com domain name. If it suits your target demographic, however, you may want to consider getting a different top level domain. Top level domain (TLD) is the technical term for the letters that follow the “.” in your domain name. Some other domains – such as biz and .us – might make good choices, as well. It’s not a bad idea to consider purchasing the .net and .org variations of your domain name for future campaigns.

Now, a web hosting account is what provides you with the server where your website lives on the Internet. It is where the files of your website or blog are stored. Hosting plans are extremely affordable these days. You may have to accommodate site growth at some point but, generally speaking, the best hosts out there offer you unlimited bandwidth, even at their lowest levels of service, so you should be able to stay with a simple web hosting plan for quite a while, even if you’re getting a lot of traffic and a lot of money out of your blog.

You can get a domain name and a web host at HostGator. Their web hosting packages come at very low prices. Starting out, you should be able to get by with the most basic hosting plan, which is usually available for around $9 per month. The basic HostGator plan comes with unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth for less than $9 per month, making it one of the better deals available.

When you go to HostGator, click the “View Web Hosting Plans” button:

Choose your web hosting plan. I recommend getting the Baby plan so you have the option to add more domain names in the future.

SPECIAL DISCOUNT!

After choosing your plan, select a domain name. Enter the coupon code “carlocabdotcom” and get 25% OFF on any hosting package. If you prefer to get $9.94 OFF, use the coupon code “carlocabdotcom2” making your first month on the Hatchling or Baby plan free!

After you sign up for HostGator, you will have a domain name and a web host. This means you have all of the basic tools you need to start a blog, assuming you have a computer, of course. The next step will provide you with the single most important tool you have for running your blog but won’t cost you a dime.

3. Install WordPress

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world. It’s also a powerful content management system: a backend control panel and series of menus that allow for the very efficient administration of websites. With WordPress, you don’t have to worry about programming. You can post articles, change templates and do almost anything you can think of to manage your blog without touching any code.

If you’re new to installing content management systems, installing WordPress can be confusing but on your HostGator account, WordPress is included as an option on your hosting package. All you have to do is log into your administration panel and click on the option to install blogging software. WordPress will be one of the options. From there, it’s only a matter of filling in options – the title of your blog and so forth – and clicking through to the next step.

4. Make Money With Your Blog

Monetizing or making money with your website means adding advertisements, for the most part. Adding affiliate links and tools that allow you to capture e-mails are other parts of monetizing a blog. Monetizing a blog can be a bit complex. Some of the results won’t come right away, or even easily, for that matter. You’ll want to make certain you give each of your programs time to work, but you also need to know when to back out of a program if it isn’t working for you.

Here are some of the most common ways that people monetize blogs:

AdSense

AdSense is a program run by Google and it’s the most popular pay per click advertising service in the world. The way it works is simple. People bid to have their advertisements published on websites that are within the AdSense network. They only pay the amount that they bid for the advertisement if somebody actually clicks on the advertisement. This is called pay per click advertising.

You can customize the advertisements that show up on your site and you’re given plenty of options as far as tools to track the success or failure of your campaigns. The advertisements displayed are chosen based on how appropriate they are for your site. You can filter out certain types of ads, if you wish.

There is no set up fee involved with this program, it’s extremely easy to set up and Google takes care of everything for you. This is absolutely the first thing you should do to monetize your blog. It’s too easy to pass up.

ClickBank

ClickBank provides affiliate links that you can use to monetize your blog, as well. This is a very large affiliate network that processes over 30,000 transactions per day. If you sign up for an account with ClickBank, you can get affiliate links to sell items on their site. This is one of the easiest ways to make money off your blog.

Generally, the strategy with ClickBank links is to get links that relate very closely to the type of content you publish on your blog. This gives you a legitimate reason to promote the link as something that might be useful to your visitors. If you just fill your blog up with affiliate links, nobody’s going to visit it and nobody’s going to take it seriously. Using ClickBank links strategically, however, can bring revenue into your blog. ClickBank is very well established and very trustworthy, making them one of the best choices for affiliate marketing programs for new bloggers. The ClickBank product line includes over 45,000 different products: which should certainly be enough to provide for your blog.

Private Advertising Banner Sales

Selling private banners on your website is generally considered one of the most profitable ways to make money off your web real estate. It’s also one of the most difficult ways to make money off your web real estate, at least at first. If your site is well established and you have good traffic numbers, you can start asking for a decent sum of money to run a banner on your websit. You can then upsell a sponsored review. Until that time, however, people are probably not going to be willing to pay you much to run a banner on a website that doesn’t get any traffic.

As your website becomes very popular, you have to start incorporating technologies that allow you to rotate banners so that you can sell the same space to different clients. Banner advertisements, if you are very successful blogger, will likely start to constitute a rather large chunk of the money you make off your website. It might take you a while to get there, however.

Keep in mind, you’re most likely going to need a PayPal account for this. If you’re having doubts about it, read our post about PayPal’s advantages & disadvantages.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is probably the best way to monetize your blog because it is not a one time thing – you capture your visitors. When you’ve captured your visitors, when you have their email. You can send them right back to your website or you can email them ClickBank products that you recommend.

Although e-mail marketing is oftentimes instantly associated with spam in people’s minds, there’s actually a lot of legitimate and very effective e-mail marketing that goes on. If you think about it, popular shopping sites, information sites, news sites and other venues do very well getting people to sign up to receive information in their e-mail boxes. You need to do this right if you’re going to do it at all, because you can get yourself in trouble for sending spam if you don’t provide certain options to your e-mail address list members.

AWeber is a very well known e-mail marketing software that you can use to manage your mailing lists. There are over 100,000 businesses that currently use the software for e-mail marketing campaigns. It allows you to take care of things like creating sophisticated HTML e-mails for marketing, to set up an autoresponder so people never send you an e-mail that doesn’t get at least some sort of a reply, to set up your RSS feeds so that they can be e-mailed automatically and many other functions. It also allows you to manage subscribers. One of the functions it provides is the ability for subscribers to get off your e-mail list. This is something you have to provide for them if you want to do e-mail marketing the right way.

You will also get e-mail analytics that help you to analyze how well your campaigns do, which will be an important tool if you start using e-mail lists heavily. People actually do sign up for interesting blog websites with their real e-mail addresses. E-mail marketing can be done legitimately and in a way that really serves customers well, so don’t discount it as something that sounds too much like spam. AWeber will give you all the tools you need to get people to sign up for an opt in e-mail distribution list that is totally above the board, completely honest and, if you use it right, something that your readers will appreciate.

5. Post Articles To Your Blog

Blog posting is very easy on WordPress. Aside from the technical aspects, however, there are some definite tips and tricks that you should be aware of.

First, make certain that your blog posts are always on topic. Remember that a blog that’s trying to make a profit isn’t a personal blog. Don’t get overly personal and make sure that everything you write about will be interesting to your niche.

Second, make certain that you include keywords that you’re interested in being indexed for by the search engines. Don’t stuff them but, for example, if you were going after the golfers in Florida with the allergy problem, you would want to include keywords and keyword phrases such as “golfing in Florida”, “mosquito repellent allergy”, “mosquito’s golfing”, and so forth.

When you post a blog, you have an option to allow commenting. On a monetized blog, it’s never a good idea to allow people to post comments before they are approved. Comments are a good thing because they engage your audience. Unfiltered, non-moderated comments are bad things because people can use them to spam your blog or to say inappropriate things.

6. Drive Traffic To Your Blog

Your blog isn’t going to make any money if nobody’s reading it. This is why you need to get visitors or drive traffic to your blog. Here are some basics on how you go about getting people to find your website and to read your content:

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of optimizing your site to get higher rankings on search engines. There are two aspects in SEO, on-page and off-page optimization. On-page optimization is what you do to your website and the content you publish. Off-page optimization is all about the other websites that link back to you.

The most important things to remember about doing this are that you need to post regularly, your content needs to be of a high quality, your keywords need to be included in the content and your content needs to be original and not recycled. You can also engage in article marketing campaigns and other activities for search engine optimization or, when you have your site ready to go, you could get a professional to handle this for you.

Social Media Marketing

Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be tightly integrated with your WordPress site. Look for widgets that allow you to integrate your Twitter feed into your site. You can also find buttons that allow people to “Like” your site on Facebook and to share it with other social media sites. Sharing buttons are usually sold in packages—look for the term “social media icons”—and are easy to install. There is a huge variety of widgets available that you can choose from to add more social media elements to your WordPress site.

You should have a social media account at all of the major sites and you should have a link to your blog on all of them. Make certain that search engines are allowed to index your profile on your privacy settings on your social media account.

Guest Posting

Guest posting is one of the most underrated technique on driving traffic to a blog. The idea is simple, you write an article with a short bio about you and your blog at the end. You then submit that article as a guest poster to a top blog in your niche. When they decide to post it, you get traffic. The reason why they would accept your article is because these top bloggers are often times busy so when they don’t have the time to post on their blog, they accept articles from guest posters.

Commenting

Go ahead and comment on other blogs that fit within the same niche. Some blogs allow you to have a text link to your own website on your signature line on your posts. Make sure you fill this out, if it’s available.

The key thing that you need to keep in mind when you’re commenting on other people’s blogs is to make sure you’re not spamming their blog. Only comment when you have something to offer and only offer a link to your blog when it really will do the reader some good. If it adds to the conversation, it’s legitimate. If you’re shoehorning something irrelevant into the conversation just to advertise your own blog, the owner of the blog you’re commenting on is probably just going to delete your comment and maybe your account, too.

7. Take Action Today

Blogging is a great way to start making money online. If you prove to be very good at it, you may end up making your living at it. Remember that having more than one blog going is entirely feasible once you have the basic procedures for monetizing a blog down to a system. Some people manage several different blogs covering many different niches and subject matters and do quite well for themselves.

The post Make Money Blogging: 7 Steps To Start Making Money in 2020 appeared first on Carl Ocab.

With the rise of the Internet, programs and products that promise to help you leave that 9-5 grind behind seem to have sprouted up in the thousands. However, you’ll find that some of those programs are just too technical and time-consuming to be worth it, while others offer no value whatsoever. IM Fuse makes many of the same promises those other programs do, but there’s something very different here. What makes IM Fuse stand out from the slew of other options?

Simple & Effective Layout

One of the first things you’ll notice once you become a member is that IM Fuse offers a simple, effective, intuitive dashboard layout that puts everything within easy reach. You’ll find an introductory video available that really explains what the goal of the program is, recommendations about where to start and more. Definitely give it a watch – it’s informative and short. You’ll also find that this theme (simple and effective) carries over to every other part of the site.

Below the video, you’ll see the categories from which you can choose – Video Training Series, Tools and Resources. Each is distinct, filled with value and vital for your utmost success. Let’s take a closer look at each of these sections.

Video Training Series

The video training series is really the place to start. You’ll be chomping at the bit to get out and get started, but you have to have the skills and knowledge necessary in order to do so. One way that IM Fuse stands out from other options on the market is that they tell you that upfront, and then they provide you with the training you need. You’ll find six modules on offer, including:

Module 1 – Keyword Research

5 daily videos walk you through everything you need to know about keywords, how they’re used and how to find the best ones for you.

Module 2 – Website Creation

6 daily videos demonstrate how to create a website that will work for your needs.

Module 3 – Content Creation

Content is King, and these 4 videos help you understand how to create unique, original, compelling content for your visitors.

Module 4 – Backlinking Strategy

Backlinking is vital to website visibility, but it’s confusing and difficult to do right. IM Fuse walks you through the process with 8 full videos.

Module 5 – Monetization

Monetization ensures that you can earn from your website, and these 5 videos give you strategies and solutions to ensure you can do just that.

Module 6 – Testing & Optimization

You should never release your website into the wild without it being fully tested and optimized. These 5 videos show you exactly how to do that.

Tools

IM Fuse offers a truly stunning range of tools for members to use, including Contexta Custom Search, downloads and action guides, a duplicate content checker, a skills assessment, keyword review request feature and a video training series overview that lets you jump from one video to another in different modules if you need immediate information or just a refresher.

All of the tools offered by IM Fuse are well laid out, easy to use and provide tremendous value and understanding. Once you’ve watched the video tutorials, you’ll know exactly how to put these tools to work for you in boosting your online success.

Resources

Unlike most other programs out there that cut you loose once you’ve learned a bit, IM Fuse takes things a bit further. Their Resources section is jam-packed with value and utility. One of the most important tools is their Fuse Forum, where you can interact with other members, ask questions, provide advice and more.

Of course, you get access to many other tools, including the FuseCast podcast, IM News and articles, products and reviews to help you determine what’s perfect for your needs, self-development and goal-setting tutorials and additional resources and tools recommended for the utmost success (these range from recommended webhosts to platforms, themes and add-ons for better analytics).

Summation

In the end, IM Fuse offers exactly what it promises – the means to take that 9-5 lifestyle and kick things into high gear. From in-depth video tutorials to powerful tools and resources, IM Fuse really packs a punch.

The post Conquer The 9-5 With IM Fuse appeared first on Carl Ocab.