I knew this title would get your attention. I have to stop writing these kinds of articles because it creates stalkers who want to experiment on my brain. But anyways…

So you want to steal a cool article and use it as your own. But if you did that, you would surely have a ticked off blogger at your doorstep with a double-barrel shotgun waiting for you to check your mail. Right? Nope. I am going to tell you how you can steal an article, and actually make a friend out of the blogger you steal from!

The trick here is to not actually steal it, but do a hybrid review/expansion of that article. What I mean by this is you would find a great article by another blogger, but you read it in-depth and realize that there are points that have been left out of that article. The first thing you want to do is show your appreciation of that article before you do anything else. Once that is done, you start a draft on a new article in your blog.

Ok, so about the new article…

The new article would praise the first article, and link to it directly talking about the things that you liked about it. You would then tell your readers that you had something to add to that topic, or you want to expand upon it. You would then proceed with your version of that article.

The cool thing about this is that you will get the immediate attention of the blogger who wrote the first article. They are likely to come to your blog and comment on yours. In addition, you would probably get a pingback link on the original article. Depending on that pingback, the link might be DoFollow. You also benefit from the traffic on their blog that follows that pingback.

In addition to the above, there is a good chance that the first blogger will promote your article via social networks like Twitter and Digg. Their readers will also do that because it helps promote the original blogger that they follow.

Go out there and steal some articles!

I am going to spend this week helping fellow bloggers analyze their blogs to see what they can improve upon. I don’t want to be out of reach for some readers, so I will keep the price low. $50 per blog and I will provide a detailed PDF report specifying the things that can be improved upon, why, and how.

The analysis includes but is not limited to seo, plugins, layout structure, social media usage, monetization methods,
and various marketing aspects that you may be leaving on the table.

My blog is dedicated to teaching others how to make money blogging, being the best at internet marketing, and all things in between. But why have I chosen a niche that is so hard to turn around into being the #1 source online? Let me explain…

You all know that there are a ton of blogs out there that teach you how to make money blogging. You will also know that most of them are rarely updated, or updated on a strange schedule. I continue on as predicted, and sometimes even more than predicted. The simple fact is that I chose a topic which has the best chance of attracting commentators. Why? Because every single blogger out there who has an ad on their blog is looking for the information that I teach.

Because my readers are bloggers, I don’t have to choose a blog to comment on based on it’s niche. You can write about travel, and I might comment on your blog. You would see my comment, and follow back to my blog to find information on blogging. This is the exact reason why I knew this blog would be successful.

You may not know a thing about making money blogging, but it is nothing to worry about. You can choose your niche, and still target multiple readers. If you write for health, you have a target of literally anyone who is concerned about their health. You can aim to reach mothers who want to keep their kids healthy, or elderly who are naturally concerned about their health. If you write for travel, your readers are going to be travel agents, and anyone who wants to go on vacation.

When you decide to make money blogging though, make sure you stop by here.

I bet you are wondering how in the hell can someone stealing end up earning you money? Well, I will tell you but not yet. Keep reading and I will get to it in good time. Piracy can be a major setback for someone who is trying to protect their copyright and ensure they are paid for licenses to their work.

You may know piracy best for it’s role in movie distribution, and music downloaders being sued by the RIAA. There have been some very big developments in the piracy age that has brought the topic into the spotlight. What you didn’t expect to see on the news that even elderly people were downloading music instead of buying it. There have been reports of parents, not even knowing their kids were downloading the content, being sued for their child’s activities.

This sort of thing has to have you questioning whether or not you can keep a copyright and make some money by selling digital goods these days. Everybody after-all, is stealing.

Well you can…

You can make a fortune by using piracy to your advantage. The method used for a lot of pirating is called Torrent downloading. There is this file called a Torrent, with a .torrent extension, and it allows you to download media from multiple sources at once. When you upload something, you allow for it to be downloaded by at least one more person. Then what happens is that person continues to stream the download for others to grab. If all goes well, it will be streaming from hundreds of sources at once. If it does, the download will be available to downloaders much quicker than it was at first when you were the only source.

If you were to bank on the fact that piracy was running strong, you would want to take advantage in some way. Well you are in luck! You can market your product as something that is so valuable, it should be stolen immediately!

I know you’re thinking “why should I want people to steal my product?” Well, because you need to think of piracy as mass distribution and nothing more. Now I do have to say that you don’t want your money-making products to be stolen. If you sell an ebook for $47, then you want to continue selling it and making a profit. But what about those ebooks that you give away with a newsletter subscription, or as a free download available to anyone directly from your website?

By putting your product in the torrent system, you are making it available to millions of potential downloaders. You will have to view a torrent description the same way as you would an Amazon description though. Make your ebook stand out fromt he crowd with a nice cover, and formatted words that make people say “I have got to download that!”

How does this make me money?

Ok. Now listen carefully… If you created an ebook properly, you most likely referenced your website inside of it at least once. You may have included affiliate links to products you mentioned. You may have mentioned your newsletter, or your rss feeds. Maybe you mentioned your social networks. Now assume this file is downloaded by a million people or more. What kind of traffic, and affiliate sales do you think you will get?

Piracy can be used to your advantage. You don’t have to be the angry copyright holder that grubles every time someone downloads their product illegally. You can turn the frown upside down and make some serious doh! off of it.

How you get started is by downloading a free program called BitTornado, and using it to create a torrent file for your ebook. You would then open up that torrent file, and BitTornado will stream it for you. You can go to a torrent site such as IsoHunt or MiniNova and announce your torrent. This will allow it to be indexed by torrent directories everywhere.

Keep an eye on your torrent, and watch as people start to grab it. Check the directory you announced it at for stats showing how many downloaders there are, and how many seeders are sharing it at this time. Then sit back and watch your traffic and affiliate stats rack up points!

Are you leaving a traffic source on the table?

Incoming search terms:

• how to make money pirating
• how to make money from piracy
• how pirates make money
• make money pirating
• piracy money making
• how to make money as a pirate
• earn money on piracy
• making money at home torrent
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This is an update to a previous post. In the previous post, I was discussing claiming your blog in services like Technorati. I told people that 43Things was a legitimate traffic source, and I warned people to make “good use” of the services as they are intended.

I later commented in the comment section that 43Things closed my account and said that I was violating their terms of service. Here is my comment on that post…

Ok well scratch what I said about 43 things. While my #1 thing that I added was to build my blog into the best in the niche, I had every intention of using their service to build the community. I just attempted to login and was notified by the system that my account has been closed.

Now just imagine this… I was logging in to comment on other peoples lists of things they wanted to do. I was going to add some valuable insight into their goals. But how was I rewarded? With a F-You message.

Now let me tell you, I never even received an email notification from 43Things that my account was closed, nor did I receive an email questioning my activities. My response? Well, just like I gave Sphinn a bad review, and posted an offending IP address for a spammer, I am going to follow tradition and say that I am officially boycotting 43 Things unless I get an apology and an assurance that they are fixing their system so that they actually ban spammers, and not those intending to help them grow as a service.

This post happened on the day that I sent 43Things.com an email questioning their suspension of my account. Now, 3 days later I receive a reply to my email…

Hi Brandon,

Thanks for writing. Your account was closed because of your commercial/self promotional post:
“Make my blog #1 in it’s niche
My blog http://www.brandonconnell.com is dedicated to teaching others how to make money blogging. I am climbing to #1 fast! Just waiting to reach my goal.”

On the Guidelines for our site we mention: “If you sell or promote products, services or yourself through your 43 Things page, we will suspend your account.”

http://www.43things.com/city_hall/doc/guidelines

The terms of use make clear to our users that we have the right to remove their content for any reason

http://www.43things.com/about/view/terms

Our apologies if you don’t approve of the outcome, but 43Things just isn’t a great site for promoting your blog.

Good luck.

Josh

My reply was…

No worries. I had fun reviewing your “service” on my blog which helped
others avoid the hassle of wasting their time with it. I was not attempting
to self promote. It was a goal. I logged in the day after to add 10 more
real goals, and to comment on others.

Good luck!

I am very lenient with things. But when even a “free” social network decides to treat their users like crap without explanation, I take offense. What happened was 43Things decided to shut me down without letting me know about it. I had to find out by logging in and seeing a “F-U” message. No email notification or anything!

On top of that, they have the nerve to wait 3 days to respond to my email! It is companies like this that I hope the masses get wise to. I report spam as much as the next guy, but having a blog and a goal of establish that blog is not a reason to discriminate. If someone were to post a goal of wanting to become president, should I shut down their account? If not then why? Isn’t that goal self serving? Aren’t all goals self serving?

What really has me bent out of shape here is the fact that I didn’t say “hey people, want to make money blogging? Check me out at http://www.brandonconnell.com”. Instead I stated my goal, and referenced my blog.

What I say to 43Things is this. If I ever become a billionaire and decide to buy your piece of crap called a service, I am firing every idiot who makes bad decisions like the one they made with me. — UPDATE TO THIS LAST COMMENT. That is how small they are, and how much I didn’t know about them. 43Things is comprised of no more than 5 people. LOL. http://blog.robotcoop.com/about/

Incoming search terms:

• 43 things review
• how does 43 things make money
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• 43 things ervaring
• 43things money
• how 43things make money
• how does 43 things make money?
• how much money does 43 things make?
• how much revenue does 43things generate

A question by a fellow blogger the other day had me thinking about starting up a few blogs for the sole purpose of being a squeeze page to build my newsletter list. I did some serious research into the matter, and found that there are no effective free themes on the market that have the capabilities or features a professional like myself needs. Hence, I was determined to find the best (and cheapest) solution to my new-found problem.

I ended up finding this excellent theme that motivates me to want to put up a few… say a hundred squeeze pages. Click on the link or the picture to see the actual theme in action.

Now the cool thing is that this theme can be used for sales pages and squeeze pages. Whether you want to sell your latest ebook effectively, or you want to collect a few thousand email addresses, this theme will definitely make it happen for you.

Why I am impressed with this squeeze page / sales page theme:

The cool thing about this theme is that it is coded so that the <h1> tags and bullets are attention grabbing. They are meant to hold the reader while you make your pitch. The header tags allow you to optimize for search engines without affecting the user experience. I find so many people making pages for search engines these days rather than for the readers. So it stands out when you find something that allows you to do both without compromise.

I am personally going to be using this theme to build my newsletter by offering a pre-sale price on a new ebook I am writing which will detail every single method I use to setup, design, market, and build traffic and comments for my blog(s). I will be offering the presale price only to subscribers when I am ready to release it.

The reason I am even more excited about this theme? Free upgrades for life! If they update this theme to be compatible with future WordPress releases, I can download the update for free! It’s pretty cheap in the first place, so free upgrades just put me over the top on my decision to buy.

Disclosures:

• Yes, I will make a commission if you buy this theme.
• Yes, I intend to use this theme myself for a very long time.
• No, I would not promote this theme even for a million dollars unless I am impressed with it

Now go buy this theme before they up the price!

Incoming search terms:

• how to make a squeeze page in wordpress blogs

When I first set out to start taking blogging seriously, my biggest concern was where the traffic was going to come from. Yes, even an internet marketing expert with 15+ years of experience was terrified about how long it would take to generate traffic to his blog. But it didn’t take long for me to discover the secret to amassing a huge amount of traffic, and benefiting from inbound links at the same time.

The big secret? Guest posting. It’s not really a big secret. Actually, the big professional blogs out there tell you that if you spend a month doing nothing but guest posting, you will have a huge gain in traffic to your own blog in a short period of time!

Well I set out to start guest posting. It wasn’t as simple as posting on my own blog though. Some people think that if they just post an article on a high traffic blog, they will benefit from that traffic. That isn’t so. The key element for grabbing that traffic is to write your best work exclusively for the guest post. Yep you heard it right. I said to give away your best work! Why? Because you want to establish yourself as an expert, and a professional writer in front of a potentially huge audience. Do you want to risk turning off readers who would have never heard of you without your featured article on a blog they visit already?

Now, guest posting shouldn’t just be done on large blogs with massive followers. You should focus your initial efforts on guesting for smaller blogs in your niche. This way, you can grab a trickle of commentators to your blog, and benefit later on when that other blog gets bigger! So many people neglect this method because they are thinking in the now. They would rather alienate their peers for a chance to be seen on an established blog. Me? I would rather create long lasting relationships with smaller bloggers who may turn out to overtake me with influence one day. That’s when I can call them up and ask for help

When guest posting, don’t ugly up your article by attempting to include affiliate links. That honor should be made available to the blog owner you are guesting on. I prefer never to link to anything of mine, or anything I am affiliated with unless it is relevant to the topic and required as a “further reading” resource. You should never guest post with the intent of making a quick buck. You are building your brand, and a guest post should reflect you at your best. Your only link(s) should be an author credit on top and/or at the bottom of your article. This is less intrusive to the blog you are guesting on, and frankly it is more professional.

I hope you use my advice immediately and start working on your best material now. You will thank me in 30 days!

Let me know below how your guest posting experience went! And as always, don’t forget to sign up for my free newsletter for additional tips & tricks @ http://www.brandonconnell.com/about-me/free-newsletter/

I love lists. But even more, I love to break a list down into some serious meat and potatoes. That’s why I created a 7-step program for becoming a leading blog. This is kind of like an alcoholics anonymous program. If you stick with it, you can be a leading blog in 6 months or less! If you break away from the program, it can mean the ultimate doom of your blogging future..

My 7-step program is based on a few of my past posts, and I decided to bring them into one gigantic article for your convenience. I hope you enjoy this article, and please leave a comment below.

The 7 Steps

• Your Layout Must Stand Out
• Collect Subscribers From The Start
• Establish Your Content FIRST
• Communities Take Care Of Each Other
• Being A Graceful Guest
• Utilizing The Entire Tool
• Make It Manage Itself

Your Layout Must Stand Out

Utilize your layout. It will be pretty tough to stand out if you have a layout that isn’t customizable and has been downloading by a few thousand other bloggers out there. If you download a free theme, get one that allows you to upload a new background and adjust other styling features. Or at the least, get one that stand out in asthetics. If at all possible, hire a designer to create a custom theme for you. I currently charge $699 to design custom WordPress themes (this may change by the time you read this).

If you ever want to stand out, you really have to make your blog memorable. You also need to ensure that your best content is reachable with little effort on the part of your readers. This might mean that you have to place the popular posts as a top widget in your sidebar. Your best content is what will receive the most comments. It just makes sense to place those in front where people can see them. This helps you establish your authority in your niche and will help you grow your followers and subscribers.

Obviously, if you are going to grow your followers and subscribers, you need to make sure you place your newsletter signup and twitter link front and center to make it easy for them. People love convenience, and by placing your newsletter on top, along with a 1-step process to subscribe, you are likely to secure a new subscriber.

Your layout is your image. You don’t have to change it on a regular basis, but you do have to create a brand for yourself that’s lasting.

Collect Subscribers From The Start

I actually made this mistake, and learned from it before it was too late. The mistake? Not having a newsletter from the beginning. If you want to be a leading blogger, you need to build your list RIGHT AWAY! Your list will be your biggest and best marketing tool that will allow you to:

• Notify readers of updates and new articles.
• Promote your affiliate offers and get clicks/conversions.
• Sell direct advertising on your blog and within your newsletter.

Your newsletter is very important, and delaying putting one into motion will be detrimental to your blogs success.

There are some major blogs out there that teach what I teach, but they tend to tell bloggers that it is a good idea to send a couple of free info packed newsletters, and then one affiliate promotion a month. I will never and in no way send out a newsletter with nothing but an affiliate offer in it. If I wanted to direct a subscriber to an offer that I deemed worthy, I would link to it within my info packed content. I despise newsletters that send out even one issue that had nothing more than a sales pitch. Those are the kinds of newsletters that I hit the “unsubscribe” link on, never to return.

I love my newsletter, and I am careful with what I send. I am so worried about losing even one subscriber, so I take care to do a few rounds of quality control checking before I hit the send button. Don’t worry about frequency with the newsletter, just worry about quality. It is good however to do it weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Daily should be avoided unless you have a 1-week program or something in order to create a quick demand for your newsletter.

Establish Your Content FIRST

When you first start out a blog, it is nothing but a blank canvas with the words “hello world” on it. Turning that into a community jammed with traffic is no easy process. You have to realize that you need to provide the quality stuff right from the get-go, even though you have absolutely no readers to be impressed by it. Don’t worry. If you follow my 7 step program in it’s entirety, this will not be an issue as you will have even those first articles packed with comments in no time at all.

Your best content should be published every single day. If you have to wonder even for a second if it is worth of posting, then chances are it’s not. Whether or not your articles are short, medium length, or in great detail, you need to ensure it is your best. If you make a mistake of publishing less than worthy content, don’t have a panic attack. It happens to the best of us, and it is something you learn by.

I like to write content like this 7-step program because lists to great with readers and commentary. It allows you to look at your topic in a bulleted list, and break down that content in a way that keeps the readers attention. Your content is a translation of the thoughts in your head. Do you want people to think you are a nutball?

Most importantly, quality control your content. I often see articles with some major misspellings and grammar issues. I am a subscriber of a few major blogs, and I recently downloaded one of their PDF blogging guides to see how they are faring. It turned out that they had some serious misspellings and missing words within the first paragraph which made me shutter.

Communities Take Care Of Each Other

New blogs seem to lack the love that established once seem to be teaming with. But not to worry. Even if you have a single great article on your blog, you can get it jumping with traffic and commentary with little effort. My wife did! When you first publish your article, it is time to go out there and comment on other blogs. Commenting on other blogs is what will bring you immediate traffic to your own blog.

How do you go about finding said blogs? Search for them. Do a Google search for your niche subject along with the word “blog” and see what comes out on top. Go to a blog with lots of comments and comment on it. Then go to the blogs that belong to the people commenting on that blog, and comment on their blogs. This is an easy process, and will result in people clicking on your blog link and commenting on yours!

So many people fail to understand how important it is to comment on other blogs. I wrote a short article recently and sent it out in my newsletter about this very subject. If you are not a subscriber, you are missing out on free tips by the way.

At first, I failed to take my own advice. But as soon as I did, I noticed that my commentators were regular. Now, I spend every single day commenting on other blogs. It is easy to find articles to comment on too. The great thing about my niche in “making money blogging” is that I can comment on pretty much any blog out there. My entire target reader group is blog owners!

Being A Graceful Guest

This is a major traffic generator. The great thing about guest posting on other blogs related to my own is that I only have to do it once, and that article will bring me traffic from then on as long as that blog is still in business. Another great thing about guest posting is that you get to introduce your writing style to an already established readership. That readership becomes your own if those readers love what you write.
I have recently guest posted on multiple blogs, and I notice traffic from those guest articles every day. I also notice that the referrals end up turning into commentators on my own blog.

Guest posting means that you have to write your best content exclusively for another blog. A bad move would be to write an article as a guest post, then republish that article on your own blog, or some article site. That sort of conduct will result in you getting a bad reputation. Guest posting is about sharing your knowledge with others, and providing unique content for the blog you guest post on.

While it would be great to be able to guest post on the biggest blogs in your niche, it is not your main goal. Your goal should be to guest on blogs with small and medium readerships because those are the ones that will be likely to accept your article, and become long-standing friends with you to help promote your work in the future.

Don’t underestimate the power of a small to medium sized blog. One day, that blog might be a leading content source. And with them as your friend, you will realize that you have a powerful ally.

Utilizing The Entire Tool

Ok Guys. This doesn’t mean what you think it does when I talk about utilizing the entire tool, I am talking about the features of social networks and other websites that allow you to network with others.

An example of a tool that I have under-utilized in the past is Twitter’s search feature. When I post an article on my blog, it automatically published a partial description and link to my Twitter status. What I failed to do was to tag it with #Blog which will help me get found for that search word. The great features of Twitter allow you to tag search phrases, and also direct your message at a person you want to see it with the @ symbol. This will help you get Twitter followers because when that person replies to you, their own followers will see it and may potentially follow you as well!

Another recent tool I have decided to utilize was my Facebook Fan Page. I started it because I have a pretty big network on Facebook, and that number is growing closer to the maximum every day. Who am I to neglect this potential traffic source? So I created the fan page so that I can provide unique content just for it. Then I can draw the fans back to my blog and turn them into regulars and subscribers. Never underestimate the power of a 3rd party tool which was developed to help you network socially.

Make It Manage Itself

The great thing about WordPress is that I can use it’s various features, and the plugin functionality to take care of redundant tasks for me. An example would be to automatically link certain keywords and keyphrases to pages or other sites. Even affiliate links. An example of me doing this would be with the phrase “my newsletter” which will direct you to sign up *HINT*HINT*!

Another great tool I use with my blog is OIOPublisher which allows me to automate the sales of my direct ads here on the blog. If you want to buy a text link in the sponsored section of my right sidebar, then it is as easy as one – two – three. You input your information and pay. Then wham bam thank you mam! Your ad is good to go on my blog!

Automating tasks that would normally take precious time from your ability to comment on other blogs and write great content for yours would be ignorant to pass up. It is plain sacrilegious to do it any other way.

Summary

Your blog might be a blank canvas, but there is no reason for you to be lost in the crowd. Think of your blog as one of your greatest assets and take out insurance on it. Also, during the 7-step process, make sure to make a daily or multi-daily backup of your blog files and database like I do. It really sucks butt-monkeys to wake up to a message that says “You have been hacked by Allah!” That crap just makes me want to join the Army. But when I have backups, I am less focused on revenge and can go back to making my blog great.

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter and subscribe to my rss feeds!

I have been using Adsense for as long as I can remember. I used to build mortgage lead generation sites, and Adsense did me good on those at times. I have even experimented with those bulk MFA sites you buy off of Ebay. Suffice it to say, I have plenty of experience with making money with Google Adsense.

The reason for this article is to explain the advantages, disadvantages, and workarounds to make Adsense work for you. As you may know, Google Adsense ads aren’t very attractive. If you don’t believe me, just look at the ones I have on this page you are reading below. The trick is to include them into articles in a non-obtrusive way so that you still get clicks, but keep readers too.