Rather Genius Blog Posts 2

[W]elcome to my second list of excellent material I didn’t write. The following posts really got me thinking about various opportunities, business strategies and the real opportunity that exists at your keyboard every day if you just grab it.

The headings are pretty clear. Short list, excellent content. By the way, if you have some epic post for me to consider here, then use my contact form and send it my way. No promises, but you get a free PR3 dofollow link, so why not?

Backlink Opportunities

Sometimes I wonder which sites to get links from – I like to have a variety. I suggest you don’t have patterns. I never do the same exact thing, like some pattern.

Instead, I have various strategies I use and I want to keep it that way – natch linking profiles don’t all come from the same 4 places on every page in a site unless you’re an eggplant. Even then, how many varieties of eggplant are there?

More than 4.

Anyway, I’ve been mixing things up with some copy cat SEO (copying my competition’s higher PR links) using Market Samurai. There’s an export feature when you do a PageRank analysis of your competitors’ links – sweet!

500 Places to Syndicate and Get Backlinks

On top of that, Kim Roach offers a list of 500 backlinking opportunities (by category no less). I never want to hear you say you have no idea where to get backlinks from.

Budget Link-Building

If that didn’t give you enough ideas, Ana Hoffman (who is somewhat dominating my list this week as you’ll see later) came out with a post entitled, How to Make the Most Out of $100 Link Building Budget.

Shameless Plug for Cheapskates

And of course, I wrote a book called Duct Tape SEO which is the cheapskate’s guide to ranking well in search but I’m sure you’ve heard me mention that a time or two. :)

There is a special price on the book for the Pond forum members – 30% off through November 15th, and by the way, the Pond itself is well worth the $10/month (check it out for a month at least).

One of the better forums and communities where I’ve personally participated in. Good times for making money online types. Check out the Pond here (no, there’s no affiliate link, it’s just a good place to be).

AdSense Pros and Cons

I have my own post set to drip-feed on my thoughts of why I don’t use AdSense as a targeted business model (except for some web 2.0 sites), but to stir the pot a bit, I found a couple of opposing views.

Leo Dimilo against AdSense?

At least I’m not the only one. Many of you remember me from Mike Iser’s blog (MikeIser.com), since I first started out reaching for the lowest hanging fruit. Face it, AdSense is easy.

Mike Iser’s blog was all about AdSense, the XFactor method (old school, what I cut my teeth on).

AdSense requires no sales acumen, requires little strategy other than optimizing your ad placements and using smart themes like the Clickbump Theme pack, and just a little bit of keyword research.

But Leo and I share a low view of AdSense (though I know for a fact he’s made more than I have on that platform – I think my great-great-great grandfather, who was buried before the internet arrived, did better than I have on my recent AdSense ventures). Read his post, Making Money With AdSense is a Zero-Sum Game.

Spencer Thinks AdSense Rocks Though

A hat-tip to my friend, Anton, who told his readers about this blog that’s all about AdSense optimization…

The guy running the blog is named Spencer, I’ve enjoyed his insights – to me they remind me why I don’t do AdSense but again, not trying to be rude here – my post will come out in due time.

BUT all my belly-aching aside, I read posts like his earnings statement for 2011 so far and drool just a little. Read his Year To Date Income Report for September 2011.

The result for me was a brief discussion with my wife about the notion of my tinkering around with the idea I’d get back onto AdSense.

I won’t spoil it for you. Post about it later. But Spencer did make me second-guess my “forget about AdSense” business plan.

Got Traffic?

I recently acquired a couple of new courses on traffic generation ideas that I’ll need to experiment with and report on as I actually carry out those plans, but for now I want to share some great traffic-generation posts with you.

These aren’t “fresh out the kitchen” as Ice Cube might put it, but they’re still good ideas. Hopefully some of you haven’t read them (I just recently stumbled across them myself). Otherwise humor me.

Twitter Traffic

Twitter is not something I natively understand, I was a slow adopter and even now, though I use HootSuite to manage it, I still have a lot to learn about how or why I should bother. One of my projects is a giveaway of my Twitter tips, but honestly I don’t use it enough to bother with such a guide (I’m pretty sporadic)…

So instead I’ll leave it to some experts in the field.

Ana Hoffman tells how she got Twitter to be her number one source of traffic…which boggles my mind as an SEO-guy. Twitter Traffic Generation

Corbett Barr compiled 17 “A-Listers” to give their ideas – and my personal favorite comes from Glen of ViperChill.com for its simplicity. 17 Traffic Generation Ideas

My wife got over 3,000 visits from one Tweet. Granted, she flits about online (meaning she is very busy, but when she is online, she makes it count). So read how she used Twitter properly here.

EBook Creation

Pat Flynn’s Free Ebook on Making Ebooks

If you want to create an ebook at all, I’d really suggest you check out Pat Flynn’s free guide on the subject. You need to sign up to his mailing list (he doesn’t sell to it) at SmartPassiveIncome.com. Great guide!

My YouTube OpenOffice Mentor

One thing about Pat is that he suggests using premium tools, with a nod to other tools (I don’t think he mentions OpenOffice, it’s been a while since I’ve read his book)…so I had to teach myself, cheapskate that I am, about how to use OpenOffice.

OpenOffice, in case you don’t know, is a free tool from Oracle that lets you do a whole heckuva lot that would cost you hundreds if you paid for the tools (like MicroSoft Office and Word, etc.) – it’s a cheapskate’s dream suite…but it sucks because it’s not intuitive to use.

I used it for Duct Tape SEO and what you’ll learn from Pat is a lot of style tips. You’ll notice from the guy that he has a style of his own, pays attention to it as a branding issue in everything he does. I’m more practical – so no real fluff (have you seen my header lately?) – but the OpenOffice (and GIMP) tutorials from this YouTube channel will help you get done what needs to be done in making an ebook to your liking.

He has a slow Southern-ish drawl and I love it – be patient, he knows his stuff – it was the best tutorial I found (I went through about a dozen).

To make a clickable Table of Contents, I used this video.

Free Ebook Creating Plugin?

Finally, Marcus Sheridan of the Sales Lion blog just had a great post on using a free WP plugin called Anthologize. That plugin essentially takes your posts that you choose and makes them a PDF…and you get to edit it before exporting as PDF (with a Table of Contents in the recent version).

Pretty solid way to get a lead magnet list-building thingy out of the way for a few mouse clicks. Read the post here:
Anthologize: How to Build an Awesome eBook With Existing Posts

Marcus points out this is a good way to create a lead magnet – a giveaway for building a list. It’s how he generated an ebook for inbound marketing that weighs in at around 230 pages (almost as long as my SEO book). Smart marketing, Marcus!

Kindle Publishing Success Story

I haven’t started publishing on the Kindle, but when I do I figure I’d either go into marketing, parenting, marriage or fiction. Why fiction? Well it’s what drew me into a love for writing in the first place – I like “how-to’s” and practical stuff, but fiction writers have a lot going for them.

That is, if you can break into it.

If you’re planning on doing some Kindle publishing, and fiction writing is up your alley, read this interview between Onibalusi (Oni for short) and his guest, Sean Platt from WriterDad.com and GhostWriterDad.com on Publishing Fiction on Kindle.

The key is in the marketing (assuming you have a great story).

3 Favorite New Tools

Got two three cool tools recently…this isn’t really a ‘link round-up’ but more like a ‘I really dig these tools’ type of thing.

Flexsqueeze

For a long, long time I was using an ugly theme called the X-Factor theme for AdSense optimization called “SuperOptimized” (wow it worked, too, ugly as it was). I broke some rules then and used my first AdSense site running that green and black ugly theme to sell affiliate products (to a high-end product costing around $2k).

Then for the longest time I was afraid to change the theme since it was “working.” One day I changed it to Flexibility 3 – and reluctantly bought a license to that theme. I’ve never looked back since (this blog has been running Flex3 for a while).

The thing about it is that it has everything I want to create pretty varied themes (more or less). So I’m adept with it…only lately I re-checked my first site and thought it could use an update. So I bought Flexsqueeze, the Flexibility 3 upgrade.

wow. that’s all i can say.

It looks much more credible. I’ll be updating this site to Flexsqueeze, and I almost got Catalyst or bought another Genesis skin (Genesis is fast loading, I use it on some of my sites) – but I like the graphics package with Flexsqueeze (reminding me a little of OptimizePress but not quite) and the tons of options it comes with.

For creating affiliate websites – I’ve tried to use Clickbump but it’s not an affiliate theme. It’s great for AdSense but that’s no longer my model – so Flexsqueeze (which does optimize for AdSense if you want) just made my day after fighting with my Clickbump theme for the past 5 days.

CouponCode Plugin

When I see something that can profit my business, I usually go through a process of denial. “I don’t need that.”

Then I’ll chew on the possibilities a bit…

“Maybe I could use it…”

Then something happens and I finally decide to buy it. In the case of Flexsqueeze, that process took over a year. In the case of this plugin, it took one email and I was sold (I’m not an affiliate for it).

I had to share that Chris Guthrie recently came out with a coupon code tool that allows you to create a coupon for readers to click a button and then simultaneously be taken to your cookied affiliate sales page AND it copies the coupon code to their clipboard…

I think I got it for $17 at the Warrior Forum, something like that. Have to say this is a pretty cool idea, and I have no affiliation with Chris. See it here in action…

The first is to my 25% off coupon to HostGator:

This one goes to the October Namecheap coupon for new com/net/org/biz domains – for hosting you’d save money via my HG coupon above, though Namecheap is offering 10% off some hosting packages):

The WSO for Chris’s plugin (which I’ll be using for my sites) is here.

(Again, I’m not an affiliate, it’s just a cool tool for ensuring you get your commissions vs. simply sharing a coupon code and losing the sale.)

Get CommentLuv Premium Free?

The second tool is CommentLuv Premium, which I’ve already reviewed, given my strategy for – and now I’m giving away a copy of the premium plugin to a lucky reader. :D

The thing is, CommentLuv Premium isn’t for sale right now – I didn’t realize Andy was going to shut down the sales page and re-launch, but he has.

So I’m going to give away one copy to a lucky winner in a contest…details shortly to follow, I’m still working the details out with the developer.

Special thanks to all you who bought the plugin during the 7-day launch sale, and if you’re not familiar with CommentLuv Premium – it’s one of the better ways to get targeted links and gain some traffic for just a minimal amount of work (blog commenting).

I owe it to blog commenting really (and the free version of the plugin) to build the traffic to this blog – so I’d recommend you read about the plugin here at my CommentLuv Premium review.

For my own strategy using it, read my CommentLuv Premium Strategy.

Contest details will be announced soon, please spread the word when it goes live, would ya?

Your Turn…

Have you seen any blog posts or forum threads I should include here? All links are dofollow, and should relate to making money online, traffic generation, leveraging social media, SEO or conversions – even alternative ways to make money online.

Whatever your ideas (even if it’s your own site), use my contact form and I’ll check out the posts to give you some link love. Some call these a link round-up, call it what you will – I’d like to point people to great content so share it with me already!

Thanks for readin’.