Have you ever considered how many people Google your name? Employers, for example, will often search your name on Google before hiring you. What comes up could be the difference between getting the job or not. And likewise, friends, family and colleagues can search your name at any time and will make judgements about you based on what shows up.

So with this in mind: think of just how beneficial it would be to have a positive set of results about you come up in Google for your name, just the way you want … with no negative information or anything you don’t want. Having articles highlighting your achievements or giving good references is very likely to create a favourable impression each time someone Google’s your name.

RepSpinner is designed to help you do just that. Unlike most “reputation management” firms, they are very easily affordable and can get your project done fast. So you’ll be getting bang for your buck and the comfort that you’ll have nothing to worry about when people search for you online.

Learn more at http://www.repspinner.com

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Read more:
SPONSOR POST: How To Make A Positive Impression On Friends And Employers

Here’s a scenario you may have experienced or may even be involved in today. You’re an Internet marketer and a client has come to you for advice about business blogging. “Great idea!” you think, always happy to help when a client comes to you asking to devote more resources toward important SEO initiatives.

And then it occurs to you that your client may not fully understand what they stand to gain from a blog.

Or there’s this scenario. You’re a small business owner and you plan to market your business online this year. You read blogs and you know a lot of people who read blogs, and you’ve read that blogs are good for business, so you’ve decided to start a company blog.

And then you realize you have some questions about what your business can really get out of a blog.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/emagic/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Like most things that are done for business, the cause is rarely “just for fun”. Before launching a new project, the goals or expected benefits of the project have to be defined. If resources are being devoted to a project, you want to know about the potential for a return on that investment.

If you could guess, a scenario like those above plays out within the Bruce Clay, Inc. office all the time. So we thought it might be useful to have a resource to point clients to when they say, “We think we want to start blogging. Now what?”

To them I say, “Your intuition is strong, my friends. Now here’s some guidance to help you get to where you’re going.”

Here are six Internet marketing goals that can be achieved with a business blog. Keep these in mind when creating that killer blog content and you’ll be contributing to a focused, effective and valuable tool for your business in no time.

Build relevant content on your site

What: One of the most obvious benefits of a business blog located on your site is the addition of fresh, relevant, regularly updated content. If your blog posts are focused on topics pertinent to themes of your site, including important keywords, the blog can act as a support for the rest of your site by adding to the amount of relevant information on the site. Plus continuously updated blog content is the kind of content search engines just eat up. If done right, new blog content can get search engines coming back to your site to crawl and index on a regular basis.

How: Be sure your blogger(s) has a list of the keywords and topics targeted for ranking your site. That way they can work appropriate keywords throughout the content or write about issues of importance to your business and its consumers. And having a list of site themes or topics can help a blogger generate post ideas when facing writer’s block. A blog should also have a posting schedule lined up from the outset of the project, whether it’s once a day or once a week, to help search engines gain an understanding of when they can expect to find new content on the site.

Promote products and services

What: A blog is a great place to generate excitement before an upcoming release or offering, or to remind readers of a product or service that exists, the ways it can fulfill their needs, or ways it fits into their life that they may never have thought about. You may have a great landing page on the site about product X, but a blog post is the place to list innovative uses for X, upcoming features for X, or any number of approaches that cause people to look at X with new eyes.

How: It’s important to remember while promoting a product or service on a blog that the approach should be personal and sincere. People’s tolerance for being advertised to on a blog is pretty low. Blog readers expect to be educated or entertained when they visit a blog, not to be faced by a full page text ad. When promoting your products or services through the blog, focus on stirring up anticipation, illuminating in a new way, and staying away from the hard sell.

Engage and communicate with your community

What: A blog gives your business a personal face. If the role of the Web site is to communicate to the visitor like a professional, the role of the blog is to talk to them like colleagues or friends. There’s a big difference between thinking of a company as some corporate entity versus thinking of a company as a resource shared by a friend. A blog also offers a platform for dialogue with readers, who are likely current or potential customers. By keeping the lines of communication open and flowing, a business can establish trust as well as a perception of transparency and authority.

How: In order to establish a personal tone on the blog, keep corporate or overly “market-y” speak out of the blog. Have your blogger write in a familiar way rather than a formal one. Have your blogger make references to daily life around the office or, if they’re comfortable with it, in their own personal life. And encourage community engagement on the blog by keeping comments open and by responding to all comments in a timely manner. Make the blog a launch pad for conversation.

Maintain (some) control of the conversation

What: That last point may scare some people. Open the conversation up to the community? Give disgruntled ex-employees or dissatisfied customers a place to bash the brand? Sorry PR peeps, but the days of full message control are over. Do-it-yourself Web publishing and social networks give anyone a voice on the Internet. However, a company blog offers a conversational medium under the moderation and control of the business. Southwest Airlines has a very popular blog and recently the company’s chief blogger was interviewed by social media consultant Debbie Weil. From the interview:

If you recall, Southwest Airlines had participated in a reality TV program called Airline for several years prior to the launch of the blog. Many people don’t know this, but we actually had no editorial control over that show. And, although there were some white-knuckle moments, the show was a huge success for Southwest, allowing us to reach a broader audience, increase job applications, and improve sales.

When the show went off the air, we were looking for something to fill that void. The blogosphere was percolating, and we dove in head first. After convincing our leadership to allow us to participate in an unedited reality show, a moderated blog wasn’t really a hard sell.

How: A corporate blog can be updated when you want, with the message you want, and through RSS feeds, can be sent straight to an opt-in group of interested readers. Make announcements, answer common questions and demonstrate your expertise in a message crafted exactly as you want it to be. If negative comments arise on the blog, remember that you are entitled to amend or disapprove comments, but also remember that a blog needs to be seen as genuine. So, if a negative comment is made or if a reputation crisis arises, the blog may be the best opportunity to minimize the effect by addressing the situation on your own terms.

Increase brand awareness

What: A blog is another way to bring awareness to your business or brand. A blog offers additional opportunities to rank in search results. It also has the potential to build a loyal group of readers if it is reliably interesting or entertaining. Subscribers to your blog will be reminded of your business whenever they sign in to their feed reader. Searchers may come across your blog content as they perform research online. A blog is yet another possibility for exposure and awareness.

How: By focusing on providing quality content on the blog, your brand can become a fixture in your audience’s mind when they think of the product or service you provide. Demonstrate your expertise. Stay on-topic. Update with regularity. Be original. Be real. A blog that does all that will gain loyal readers who may become brand evangelists, spreading the word of your business. Plus blog content can earn real estate in search results that wouldn’t have been received otherwise.

Receive traffic and inbound links

What: Of course, thanks to readers finding your blog through search or sharing your blog with their like-minded friends, your business blog can generate traffic and links to your Web site. With good calls to action, traffic to the blog can be led to convert on the site. And links to the blog can be funneled to the site via a link from the post to a related site landing page, for instance. Links are a major factor in search engine rankings, so getting links to popular posts is any SEOs dream.

How: It can be heartwarming. It can be eye opening. It can be funny. And it has to be good because that’s what gets people to come to the site. That’s what drives someone to link to it. And that’s what gets people to share it with their friends. You can consider submitting a worthwhile post to social bookmarking sites in order to get the ball rolling, but if the content is really good, then chances are someone will end up submitting it there anyway. As with anything on the Web, the key to links and traffic is publishing content that matters.

So You Wanna Reap the Marketing Benefits of a Business Blog? was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

The rest is here: 
So You Wanna Reap the Marketing Benefits of a Business Blog?

When many people think about search engine optimization, they assume that is something that they can handle on their own. They assume that they can simply tweak the wording on their respective websites and they will automatically skyrocket to the top of the search engine results page.

Well, it’s not quite that simple. In fact, there is a lot that you can do with search engine optimization that has absolutely nothing to do with tweaking your own websites and webpages. To prove this point, the folks at SEO Arbiter decided to order this review, illustrating just what is possible when you make use of their SEO services.

Professional Search Engine Optimization

As you can probably figure out, SEO Arbiter specializes in the search engine optimization of their client’s websites. You can get one-on-one consultation and they will recommend a plan and a strategy to rank for your most highly treasured keywords.

They take a comprehensive approach to the search engine optimization, approaching the project from a variety of different directions. Based on the page with the plans, they utilize techniques like directory submissions, article marketing, social bookmarking, and more.

The Power of Off-Page SEO

In case you haven’t figured it out for yourself already, search engine optimization off your own webpage is just as important (if not more important) than the SEO you do on your own webpage. My own minor SEO victory was achieved largely with off-page strategies.

For the purposes of this review, SEO Arbiter ran a case study on John Chow dot Com, trying to improve its search engine optimization for a number of keywords. Part of the technique involved a lot of article submission.

Shown above is one of the articles that was submitted to Ezine Articles on the subject of authority sites and blogging for money. As you can imagine, this article came with a couple of links back to John Chow dot Com using the targeted anchor text.

SEO Arbiter submitted a total of 51 articles specifically for this purpose. Those articles have been viewed 1,779 times with 63 clicks to John Chow dot Com.

The Proof is in the Pudding

So, how did they do? After almost two months of search engine optimization for John Chow dot Com, SEO Arbiter was able to propel the blog into the top ten results in Google for five critical keyword phrases.

For some of these, John Chow dot Com was able to move up between 14 and 25 positions in the search engine, but the SEO pushed the blog up more than 91 positions for “earn money blogging.” That’s quite the achievement in a relatively short amount of time.

You can see that for some of the other highly competitive keyword phrases, SEO Arbiter was not able to get into the top ten, but the rankings did improve substantially.

Exclusive Offer for John Chow dot Com Readers

Do you want to get the same kinds of results for your own website or blog? SEO Arbiter is extending a special offer for readers of John Chow dot Com.

Normally, you have to pay the $250 startup fee and then a $500 monthly fee for the SEO Arbiter service. However, you can have your first month of service for free if you simply pay the startup fee.

This offer is limited to the first 20 people who sign up through the special link and it expires on January 8, 2010. Based on the real world example of what SEO Arbiter was able to achieve for John Chow dot Com, it looks like they know their stuff.

CLICK HERE FOR ONE FREE MONTH WITH SEO ARBITER

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

See original here:
Search Engine Optimization Case Study with SEO Arbiter

A Guest Post by Kelly Diels. Image by Cayusa

Part 1. Blogging, Before I Got the Bright Idea to Relaunch and Rebrand: What I Did Right. Maybe.

Here’s my curse: I’m lucky. Things always seem to work out for me and even when they go wrong, they’re never actually as bad as they ought to be. I’ve never had a white knight ride into my life on a unicorn but things have never been so bad that I wished for one. Lucky, lucky me.

Why is that a curse? Because, when planning (ahem. I use the word loosely) to rebrand and relaunch my site using Wordpress and a professionally designed theme, I counted on Plan A working.

That was my first mistake.

My second mistake: When scoping (hahahahahahaha. sure. THAT’s what you call it) out the conversion, I expected Plan A to take place in a miraculous, lucky context.

The planets and stars would align in the House of Luck and the wind would be at my back and I am remorselessly killing the English language one mixed metaphor at a time.

Because I’m lucky, after all.

Lucky Blogging. The Beginning. It is Seductive.
Fortunately, when it comes to blogging, I didn’t do EVERYTHING wrong.

Here’s what I did right.

I started blogging because I needed to write. Luckily, I’m a half-way decent wordsmith so that part came easily.

Then I got lucky and people started reading my blog. More people than I know. Friends of friends. Strangers. You. I can’t believe my luck.

Then I started trying to figure out how to properly blog. I found ProBlogger and it’s archive of awesomeness.

Google and luck were on my side and also gave me White Hot Truth and I went to a fire starter and it lit me up. I thought, yes, I CAN do this. I can live like an artist, baby. I will.

Then, by sheer, random dumb luck, I found the World’s Strongest Librarian and he pushed me to start guest-posting.

(First I mulled on it for, oh, three months because although I’m sassy in text, I am ridiculously timid about making requests. My askus requestus muscle is highly underdeveloped. Offer to write something, for free, for someone else? THE NERVE. Case in point: I wrote a piece I intended for ProBlogger and then was far too scared to actually submit it. So I didn’t. I sat on the completed, undeniably awesome essay for ten days until I had a WTF moment and sent it. Luckily, Darren liked it and used it. WTF moments are important.)

Six Questions with Muhammad Saleem is a post from: Bruce Clay Blog

Search Engine Strategies Chicago will commence on Monday, launching a week of Internet marketing education and camaraderie in the Windy City. Susan will be giving us a front-row view of the sessions she attends next week, but right now we’re privy to a special sneak peak with SES Chicago presenter Muhammad Saleem.

Muhammad is the director of social media strategy at ChicagoNow, a Tribune Company blog about all things Chicago. He is the senior social media editor at SEMJ.org, a peer-reviewed journal covering the search engine marketing industry. He also writes on his blog Muhammad Saleem: Social Media Strategy For New Media Entrepreneurs.

Muhammad is a presenter during the sessions “Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News” and “Facebook Rockstars Roundtable: Marketing For the Other Internet,” where he’ll share his insights about social media marketing, online news organizations and the real-time Web. Before the show, though, he’s going to share some thoughts with us right here and now.

1. You’ll be speaking on the panel “Facebook Rockstars Roundtable: Marketing For the Other Internet.” The session description says that speakers will share anecdotes of their winning social media strategies. Is there a story you tell clients and colleagues most often in order to illustrate an important point? If not, can share a revealing story with us anyway?

The story I love to tell is the one where we started with no budget for Facebook marketing or promotion and an understaffed team and managed to grow our Facebook page fan numbers 10-fold, interaction numbers on the page about 15-fold, and traffic from Facebook to our site(s) about 40-fold, all in 2 months. You don’t need to invest a lot of money into Facebook to achieve stellar results you just need the right strategy.

2. The ability to measure effects of social media marketing is still in its early stages. Do you have any recommendations for marketers struggling with social media metrics? What is your process for measuring social media’s brand impact?

The metrics you monitor depends on what your business goals are. There are qualitative metrics like presence, mindshare, exposure, etc. and there are quantitative metrics such as unique visits, page views, time spent on brand pages, and total interactions with the brand. Either of those metrics are fine as long as they help you achieve your business goals. There are dozens of social media monitoring tools out there and the one best suited to your needs depends on the size of your company (and your target presence, i.e. How many touch points you anticipate wanting to measure) and your budget for monitoring.

3. You are the director of social media strategy for Tribune Company’s ChicagoNow, a HuffPo-Facebook hybrid for the Chicago area launched in August. Anytime a new site launches, there are always compromises to be made among team members. Were there any social media requirements you just wouldn’t bend on? What capabilities did you feel were most important to include when designing a community site for Chicagoans from the ground up?

One of the main reasons I joined the team was that Bill (my boss) told me that I wouldn’t have to make compromises. Everything that made sense to implement would be implemented, it’s only a matter of time and resources. Our goal with ChicagoNow is to have a presence in every vertical that Chicagoans are interested in, and interact with the community on any platform they’re congregating on.

4. At ChicagoNow you’re specializing in the growing intersection between local and social marketing and content. The two seem to make a natural pair, but what has the experience been like at ChicagoNow? Any early takeaways on how users prefer to interact with the news-community hybrid site?

When you’re working on platforms that are designed to be global tools with local dimensions, there are many things that are simply out of your control. Whether it be building a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, or even simply blogging. Once you create the content, you cannot control how it is shared by your community. So while we have a very strong local presence (and social media definitely helps bring some of that in), the larger audience coming from social media tends to be more national than from Chicago.

5. You’ll also be speaking on the panel “Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News,” which is focused on search marketing for media companies. ChicagoNow is doing something pretty innovative by bringing together outside blogs. It’s a fascinating new approach, but giving up control — both of the content and of the ability to optimize it –might make some businesses nervous. What would you say to them? Has your team faced any challenges in optimizing a site that relies so heavily on outside content?

There is no need to be nervous. Giving up control over editorial doesn’t mean that you give up the ability to optimize or maintain quality in any other way. We have a rigorous process that bloggers have to go through before they come on the site, and once they come on board we train them on blogging as well as basics of SEO and SMO. Furthermore, the way our compensation structure works, it’s in the best interest of all bloggers to be personally invested in the success of the project. Our bloggers are genuinely interested in learning from our experience and fine-tuning their craft and are more than happy to listen to our recommendations when we tell them what trends to look for, what kind of content to create, and how to create the content. The final decision rests with them but they have an enormous support structure if they choose to avail it.

6. Are there any other sessions you plan to attend while at SES Chicago? Where might attendees be able to track you down for a minute or two?

I haven’t made plans to attend any panels but I’m hoping to meet with a lot of people outside of panels. People can get in touch with me via email at msaleem@tribune.com.

You can also find him on Twitter, @msaleem. Thanks so much for taking the time to share your expertise, Muhammad, both with blog readers and with conference attendees. Have a great time at SES Chicago next week!

By the way, it’s not too late to register for a pass to SES Chicago. Just to sweeten the deal, don’t forget to use the 20 percent discount code 20BCLAY — applicable on conference passes as well as on Bruce Clay’s one-day SEO training course.

Read more here: 
Six Questions with Muhammad Saleem

I’ll admit it. I have a soft spot for Thanksgiving.

First, because it’s an excuse for me to bake for three days. (If you need a last-minute recipe for the world’s best chocolate cream pie, I’ve got you covered.)

And second, because it reminds me to quit grumbling and start noticing all of the amazing stuff I’ve got in my life.

Here’s my list of 10 things I would humbly recommend you add to your own “gratitude list” this year. They’ve done great things for my business and I think they’ll do great things for yours.

1. The crummy economy

I know, this seems weird. I’m not discounting the very serious and significant problems this has created for millions of people. One of whom might well be you.

But in cracking open the existing systems and shaking them like an ant farm, the horrible economy has also created some amazing opportunities.

If you think of the big companies as dinosaurs who’ve just been hit between the eyes with a gigantic meteor, remember that you’re the smart, agile, adaptable monkey who’s going to inherit the earth.

Frankly, the economy is going to suck for awhile no matter how you feel about it. So you might as well look for the angles that can benefit you.

2. The social web

Brian’s not a fan of this term, since of course everything about the web has always been social. It was built by humans, after all.

But there’s no question that a revolution in communication technology lets you be social with more people, more easily, over incredible geographic and cultural distances, with less friction than ever before.

Which means you can get the word out about what you do for hardly any money, with no special technical ability, to tens of thousands or even millions of people.

And that’s just cool.

3. The quality of free information

Stewart Brand didn’t just say “information wants to be free.” He also said, “information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable.”

What this boils down to is that a lot of smart people have put together great tips, techniques, and help for you to do just about anything. Very often, they start by selling that information at a hefty price tag, to those for whom it’s most valuable.

Then some time goes by, they keep developing their stuff, and they “move the free line” by giving away tremendously valuable information for free.

Yes, the free goodies take time to sift through. Yes, there’s a whole lot of junk.

But if you’re bootstrapping your project, you can spend a little more time and energy and find the answers you want.

Because the current ethos is “give away incredibly valuable stuff for free to build trust and rapport,” you can benefit from that.

You have to choose wisely, of course. Don’t spend your time watching or reading anything from people you don’t respect or relate to. But if you stick with the people your gut tells you are right for you, you can learn amazing things without spending a dime.

4. The quality of paid information

Because there’s so much excellent free material out there, it means that for people who are creating paid information products (membership sites, ebooks, home study courses, etc.), their stuff has to be top notch.

So when you find yourself crossing that line where you’ve got some spare money but not much spare time, you have increasingly excellent opportunities to educate yourself online.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re learning to fly fish, climb the corporate ladder, design gardens, potty train your kid, be a happier person, or even (yes) market your business online, there are terrific resources that will teach you to do that for a very reasonable fee. And you can access these courses from virtually anywhere on earth.

5. Twitter search

Companies have taken hundreds of millions of dollars in VC funding to build tools that “listen in” to the conversations buzzing around the Internet.

That’s fine, but you can do an amazing job of this for free by signing up for a Twitter account.

Too many people think Twitter is mostly about telling people what kind of sandwich they’re having for lunch today. But for smart business people, Twitter is mostly about listening.

Search Twitter for the kinds of phrases your customers tend to talk about. Maybe it’s low-carb dessert recipes or finding a karate school for their kids.

You’ll find out what they’re saying, what kind of language they use to talk about it, what bugs them and what delights them.

These are staggeringly useful things to know when you’re trying to market a product or service. And you can get it by spending maybe 6 or 7 minutes a day, for free.

6. Connections with incredible people

Whatever it is you like to blog or write about, there are amazingly cool people who like to blog and write about that, too.

They’re posting wonderful articles and interesting perspectives and asking fascinating questions. And you can get to know them just by writing about their stuff (with a link, of course), posting reasonably intelligent comments on their blog, and following them on Twitter.

The smart, funny, snarky, interesting, kind, and entirely wonderful people I’ve met by blogging have blown me away. And I’m always finding new folks. (That was true before I started writing for a “big blog,” by the way. In fact, it’s how I started writing for a big blog.)

7. Aweber

Aweber (www.aweber.com) is my email newsletter management tool. They do a great job getting mail into in-boxes (mostly because they hate spammers even worse than you do). They have useful tools, a fantastic how-to blog, an easy-to-understand interface, and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

A great email autoresponder sequence is my single favorite marketing tool (above a blog, even), and Aweber is the tool I think is best for the job.

8. Backpack

37Signals is another company I think is terrific, and I would be toast without their Backpack product.

Backpack keeps everything I do in one spot. Half-written blog posts, GTD lists, my calendar, reference notes for client projects, wild-hair ideas for new ventures, gardening plans, checklists for things I’m building, even backups of the million ebooks and audio education products I buy.

For me, they have the exact right combination of flexibility and simplicity, at an excellent price. If it doesn’t fit into my Backpack, I can probably live without it.

9. My copywriting library

A lot of those “secrets of the internet money-getting zillionaires” came from books you can buy for $12 on Amazon.

You can’t make money unless you can persuade someone to pay attention to what you’ve got, and then build a case for its value. That’s copywriting. (It’s even copywriting if you’re doing it with video.)

Classics like Scientific Advertising and Tested Advertising Methods are joined by newer giants like Robert Cialdini’s Influence and Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, and a handful of great web-based references like Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets.

Learning to write great persuasive copy is mostly a matter of studying the techniques (which don’t change much, because human nature doesn’t change) and then trying them out. There’s no “push button” service that will magically do it for you. But the truth is, it’s well within your ability. You just have to get out there and start trying it.

10. The Third Tribe

This was an idea that bubbled up on Copyblogger back in February, after we were asked the question “Whose side are you on?”

Brian and I talked about this question quite a bit, and realized that we definitely weren’t on the strict yellow-highlighter-squeeze-page side. But we weren’t on the “blog for 20 years before you dare to ask anyone for the sale” side either.

So we made up a third side.

Actually, it had been there all along, going back four years to when Brian first created this blog. But once you have a label, you find that you start to articulate what you’re doing more clearly.

That led directly to the brand-new Copyblogger email newsletter, which kicks off with a 20-part course on how to be an ethical, non-sleazy, relationship-based kumbaya blogger and still make a very nice living. If that sounds like something that would interest you, you can learn more about the newsletter here.

What’s on your list?

What are you grateful for this year? What do you think other readers would be grateful for if they knew more about it? Let us know in the comments.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

Original post:
10 Things to Be Grateful For

For 22 year old Pete Danihel, it started as a school project for marketing class. However, Peep Lotto has since taken on a life of its own. The primary purpose for Peep Lotto (short for People Powered Lottery) is to convert publicity into prize by using Twitter. The more people who follow twterlotto, the bigger the prize jackpot. Currently, the jackpot stands at $1,372.10 and if nothing happens between now and Christmas day, a follower of twterlotto will win the amount. However, by the time Christmas comes around, the jackpot should be a lot bigger.

How To Enter The Peep Lotto

To enter, all you have to do is follow twterlotto using Twitter. There is no cost or risk to enter. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can make one free of charge. There is no gambling involved what-so-ever. The site jackpot increases every time someone lands on the Peep Lotto home page, follows the Peep Lotto Twitter account, or an advertiser pays for an ad spot. You can see how much the jackpot is by checking the Peep Lotto homepage.

The concept of Peep Lotto is simple but unique and maybe the reason Danihel received a 100% score on his marketing final. The project has received a good deal of press, with write ups from Darren Rowse’s TwiTip to television coverage from CityTV, and now John Chow dot Com.

I like to wish Danihel good luck with his project and I can’t wait to see what the final jackpot amount will be. Want to help Danihel increase the jackpot? Follow @twterlotto on Twitter or better yet, become a featured advertiser. If Danihel continues to get the press he’s been receiving, it’ll be money well spent.

Peep Lotto – The Internet’s People Powered Lottery

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

View post:
Peep Lotto – The World’s First Twitter Lottery

Before you get too impressed, hear this: I did it all in self-defense.

Let me give you some quick background.

I have extreme Tourette’s Syndrome, as Sonia noticed recently. Tourette’s makes people move or vocalize involuntarily and occasionally results in unspeakable awesomeness. My motor tics range from eye blinking to punching myself in the face to even stranger things. My phonic tics range from clearing my throat to hooting and yowling and snarling and slobbering and screaming like the Tasmanian Devil.

Did I mention that I work in a quiet library?

There are only a couple of things that help when it gets bad. Guitar, kettlebells, talking, and writing — they are all forms of distraction that force the itch out of my brain for a while.

But sometimes none of them work. In September I was having a horrible time and couldn’t shake it. I needed a project to focus on. A big fat distraction.

Enter the guest post ultra marathon.

Come one, come all!

I wanted everyone to know they could ask for a guest post, but I still got a lot of “My blog’s probably too small, but . . .” I have a lot of readers with big blogs, and a lot of readers with tiny, new blogs that are still swaddled in onesies. All were fair game.

The criteria

I asked everyone who wanted a post to provide:

• A URL and blog title
• A topic
• A word count
• An interesting angle to approach it from

I said I wouldn’t write about anything I felt was unethical, morally reprehensible, or obvious spam. I didn’t want this bio floating around the web:

About the author: Josh Hanagarne is the author of Cialis Rules! He enjoys popping a few Vicodin in the morning and a dozen Viagra for lunch. His hobbies include MAKE CRA-Z MONEY FROM HOME! and topless tell-all webcam romps.

Luckily, I didn’t get any of those solicitations. Well — not many of those.

The response

Uh oh.

I published my post, subtitled “Let’s Get Stupid,” at about seven in the morning in the United States. By one o’clock my teeth were chattering with fear as I looked at my inbox: over 70 submissions.

Refresh. 75.

Refresh. 80.

Uh oh.

Who were these people? I was going to be writing guest posts for blogs about stock options, personal development, computer programmers, home schooling, study skills mentoring, blogging, advice for women, fussy academics, chemists, Capoeria buffs, kettlebell nuts, corporations in the process of building websites and trying to make everyone get along, and so on . . . .

A smarter man, a man whose brain was less of an apocalypse, might have scaled things down or extended the deadline. But this was exactly what I needed.

To work, then.

The first week and onward

I wrote 15 guest posts in week one. They all published within a few days. When the dust cleared, RSS numbers had jumped by 200 during those seven days.

The remaining six weeks were similar. Sometimes I wrote more. Sometimes less. Sometimes I wrote guest posts that I never saw again. My posts appeared with different titles, different pictures, different fonts, and the traffic just kept coming.

After about 10 days, my tics had subsided, but I was committed to the project. I was having a blast.

Lessons learned, surprises, and observations for anyone who wants to try this

By November 1 I had written over 50 posts. 42 of them had aired on other blogs. Here is what I learned:

• A lot of bloggers seem to have a fear of guest posting. Get over it or be happy with your current rate of growth.
• You will meet awesome people.
• Those people will act like you are doing them a favor by borrowing their traffic.
• You are doing them a favor, provided you give them something they can use. I love to have guests!
• This marathon approach is not for everyone. Do not try to write more than you are capable of. Test yourself but don’t flame out. I have a masochist work capacity and I still wound up with more than I could handle. I thought I would get the 80+ posts written before November 1. Life, sleep, the flu, a book proposal, and kettlebells all conspired against me.
• Don’t commit to anything that will prevent you from taking care of business at home(page). There’s nothing more pointless than writing a killer guest post and having all those new visitors land on a dancing Hello Kitty graphic that’s a year old.
• Don’t pretend you know things you don’t. If you can’t talk about stocks, either find another approach or turn it down. Don’t be a poser.
• Don’t be afraid to say no when people pitch ideas to you. You made the rules, right?

I don’t regret doing the marathon, but I won’t do it again if I don’t have to. I still have nearly 40 posts to get through before I’ve knocked out that initial batch. I’m going to honor them all. In the meantime, if you’d like to be added to the queue, you know where to find me.

I can handle it.

About the Author: Josh Hanagarne is the twitchy giant behind World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog about living with Tourette’s Syndrome, kettlebells, book recommendations, buying pants when you’re 6’8”, old-time strongman training, and much more. Please subscribe to Josh’s RSS Updates to stay in touch.

Excerpt from:
What I Learned From Writing 42 Guest Posts in 7 Weeks

I promised awhile back that I’d teach you ugly bitches more ways to build your sexy SEO Empire. With some spare time this week I might as well take some time to help your nasty hooker ass do just that. YES I will insult you through this entire post because judging from the recent comments you donkey fuckers are getting a lil too big for your own britches and need to be brought down a peg. I’m kidding of course. You guys are great. I just feel like filling this post full of as many reasons not to read it as possible and since no one gave me an excuse to do it, I just made one up. This post will be advanced and since this technique’s ability to be bulletproof feeds off creativity and the subtleties of being selfmade I’ll also only give out pseudo code instead of code samples. It is however an extremely efficient way to build large amounts of unique and self-promoting sites and is more than reusable for just about any chunk of niches so modularize your code and save it for future scaling. Trust me you’ll wish you did.

Getting Started With Your Custom Mininet Generator
It’s always easiest to start a project with an example in mind so begin by picking a generalized niche that can involve a lot of different sites along the same theme. For this example I’ll use music based fan sites. So I’ll grab a few starter domains to test with such as AudioslaveFanzSite.com MetallicaFanzSite.com KanyeWestFanzSite.com and maybe one more for good measure, JonasBrothersFanzSite.com. <- See how I was all insulting and mean at the beginning of this post and suddenly changed it around to being all considerate and using faggy bands as examples so you fags can relate to what I’m saying here. I’m not mean all the time and can in fact be quite understanding. *grin* Anyways! Now that you got your domains setup an account under a single domain on your server and add the rest as addon domains. In your site’s root make a Sources folder and another to hold a data dump. After that setup a MYSQL database to be used by all sites and put a row in a table for a single domain you bought (the rest will be inserted automatically later). I recommend you put the actual domain in some value in that row.

Build a Single Universal Template
This is easier than it sounds. You can always go 100% custom but to save time I like grabbing a generic looking premade template. I then put it into a script and disect the html to put in as many variables as I can fit. A few examples would be

$heading1

which I will later fill with the actual content and variable values. Pack the template full of as many customizations as you can so it will not only be flexible and universal among all topics in the niche but the html itself is very random and as uncookie cutter like as you can get it. Torwards the end of the process I also tend to throw in a bunch of $randspacing type variables as possible. Then i use a randomizing function to create various spacing and line returns and randomly insert it throughout just about every group of html tags. I mention this now instead of later in the post because its important to realize that you will want this template to be as flexable as possible because you’ll eventually be using that same template on a TON of sites that may or may not be doing some interlinking so you don’t want it to appear as a network. Changing colors, widths, and images around are a great way to accomplish this just don’t get too complicated with it starting out. Keep it very basic and once you got the mininet nearly done you can add as many as you’d like later. Sometimes it’s typical to throw yourself off focus and doom the project by getting too hung up on getting the same thing perfect. For each variable you place in the template you’ll want to put the same as a field in the SQL table you created previously.

Putting Together Some Content Sources
For an example such as the music fan sites mininet I’d probably jot down a few sources of content such as Audioscrobbler for the band descriptions, primary image, and discography. Then Youtube API for a few music videos for each musician. Another great source would be Yahoo Images for some band related wallpapers and Alexa for some related sites to link to. I might even grab the Google Blogsearch rss for some recent blog posts related to that artist. Starting out it’s usually best to keep your sources as simplistic as possible and not stray too far from readily available RSS and APIs. Like I said you can always get more advanced and custom later. Create a module script for each source and put it in your previously created Sources folder. Then for each source you came up with add it as a table in your SQL and put in all the fields you’ll need for each one and remember to save room to identify the domain on each one.

Building The Generator
Create a backend script that will simply be a place to copy and paste a list of the domains and their primary keywords into with a button to submit it. My domains and keywords for this example would most likely be pipe delimited such as:
GodsmackFanzSite.com|God Smack
U2FanzSite.com|U2
BeyonceFanzSite.com|Beyonce Knowles
Once the list is submitted the generator needs to insert a new row into the table and create all the randomized variables for the site such as the background colors , various spacings (and/or a brand new template file stored in the data folder) putting them in the same single row. Once the basics are done it can call all the source modules and run them using the domain name and the keywords they need to grab the right content. They will then need to put that content into the database under the proper domain’s row(s). You now have all the content you need for each site and each got its own template! Now it’s time to just build the son of a bitch.

BUT! Before I show you how I’ll give you a few examples of how I would setup my tables for each of the sources so you can get a better idea.
For my Youtube I’d probably keep it simple and just do the domain and the embed code.
Domain|EmbedCode

Audioscrobbler:
Domain|BandDescription|Albums|PrimaryImage

YahooImages
Domain|PathToImage

GoogleBlogSearch
ID|Domain|PostTitle|PostDescription|PostLink

Alexa
Domain|RelatedSite1|MySite1|RelatedSite2|MySite2|RelatedSite3|MySite3|MoneySite1

*the MySite1 would be another random fan site in your list of domains. The MoneySite1 would be a money site of yours you can insert later to help with upward linking These are foundation sites after all.

So simple even a retarded piss bucket like yourself can figure it out

Scripting The Sites
I know some of you are going to talk about dedicated IPs for each site and various other expensive ways to make sure the sites don’t get associated with each other but there was a good reason I said to use addon domains although there are other more complicated and better solutions. The first thing you should do when scripting the index page is to grab the current domain using an environmental variable such as HTTP_HOST. Once you have the domain name you can use that to grab all the appropriate data for each domain name and you only have to code one site and get it to work for ALL the sites in the mininet. For instance if someone goes to JayZFanzSite.com it’ll grab that into the variable and customize the entire site to be a Jay-Z fan site even though its all the same script controlling all the addon domains. I always start with the main page and branch all my subpages off that. For instance for the Jayzfanzsite.com I would put in a section for Jay-Z Music Videos and link to More Jay-Z Music Videos(the Jay-Z being that domains primary keyword as specified in the DB). That Jay-Z Music Videos subpage would just be more previously scraped music videos from youtube. The same would be done for the Jay-Z Wallpapers, Jay-Z Discography, Jay-Z Lyrics, Jay-Z Guitar Tabs..Whatever sources I’m using. Each would be a small section on the main page and would expand into their own subpage which would target popular keywords for that artist. Once all that is done and built into the template you can test each change among all the current test domains you have to make sure each shows up nicely and the randomizations and backgrounds all are static and neat for each site. Be sure to put in a place for your Alexa similar sites and as shown above mix in links to your other fan sites for each band/musician as well as some placements for your current and future money sites so they can all get good link volume. Once every test site looks pretty and is fully functional along with fairly unique content all you have to do is scale up with more domains.

BUT FIRST! I like to incorporate ways for each site to self build links. Such as for the Google Blogsearch posts I’d put a section on the main page for Jay-Z News listing the most recent 25 blog post results or so. Then I would build a small cronjob script to update it every day with 25 new posts or so and do a pingback on each to score a few unique links from other related sites every day automatically. This way you not only have lateral links from other sites on the mininet but links from other sites and the links are always growing slowly so each site can continue to grow in rank and traffic over time.

Buying More Domains and Scaling Up
As indicated I like to keep it simple and pick a prefix or suffix that has many open domains that way I don’t have to spend a ton of time picking out the domains I can just grab a list of several thousand popular bands and mass buy the domains then copy and paste them into the backend generator. Boom! Several hundred to, if you’re bold enough, thousands of new sites. All of which will grab quite a bit of underexposed traffic from keywords, image search and links. It will also give you tons of links and awesome pagerank for future sites you build. It’s a lot of work initially but it’s definitely easier then hand building all those sites yourself and the sites can easily become just as successful as if you did, especially if you did a good job with your sources. Once you’ve scaled up that mininet to a level you’re comfortable with and can maintain financially (it helps to build in a montenization module to the site so you can easily switch out ads among all the sites so they can create the most money possible per site) you can switch to a new group of sites using the same code, many of the same sources, and same method. The music fan site example is great because nearly the exact same code can be used in so many ways. For instance I can take the same damn code, get rid of the audioscrobbler and swap it for a widely available car DB for the description, image and car specs, and build a whole mininet for every single make and model car out there with a whole new set of domains such as JaguarXJ220specs.com, BMW540specs.com, PontaicGrandPrixspecs.com. It’s as easy as swapping out the keywords used in the modules so they become Pontiac Grand Prix Videos (from youtube source) and Pontiac Grand Prix Wallpapers/Images. All you need is a new template and a new group of domains to build an absolutely massive and diverse mininet that is actually profitable and self growing.

PS. I know I said HUNDREDS and THOUSANDS of sites all dramatically, but as with all techniques start off small. Get your scripts and promotion right. Make sure it works and is profitable on a per site basis before scaling up to any ridiculous levels.

LATA JERKS!

See original here: 
Blue Hat Technique #21 - Advanced Mininet Building