I wanted to make this a list post, but then quickly decided that I have no idea what all I will come up with. Most likely, it will be more than the number I would have listed. The funny thing is that I came up with the title and post idea in a split second. I never think my posts through and then decide to write. I go to the post-new page, and then an idea comes to me. Strange I know.

Anyway, I write this as I listen to the Rock station on music.yahoo.com radio page. As a matter of fact, a song that was playing made me come up with the topic on ideas for creativity. The reason it just clicked is because of my background as a songwriter and recording artist with BMI. I can tell you that the first idea for creativity is to use music.

Music tends to bring out the creativity in all of us. It stirs up emotions in us that nothing else can. Suicidal people use music to give them the courage to carry it out, or to make them think hard and change their mind. How do I know this? Nevermind.

Back when I was a teenager, I remember standing on the enclosed porch at my grandmother’s house and there was construction going on outside right across the street. The loud noise actually somehow created a rhythm and melody. I stood there and wrote songs in my head, and I played them over and over until I memorized the music and lyrics. The problem is that eventually I had to quit making music. With my sorted childhood, and even experienced in my adult life made me suicidal, and the only way to last longer was to quit cold-turkey. I still feel the music inside of me, but am terrified to start writing and recording again. There is a such thing as an overload in creativity.

Use these techniques to give yourself a positive creative outlet, and blogging as well as business will come easy you to like hit songs come easily for me.

Ideas for Creativity

• Music is a major outlet – I already discussed this, but give it a try. Find music that isn’t just some noise to you. Find something that touches your soul, and makes you actually feel something to the point of having vivid details about your thoughts. This is where the really inspiring stuff comes from. Don’t neglect this method. It’s powerful.

• Think about a time, or a person – There may be someone out there that inspires you. Or perhaps it is a time in your life where you can remember in detail how it made you feel. Find that person or time, and translate it to text. Even a place can bring out the best in your creativity. I am from the City of Chicago, but I love a country setting in the outdoors where it’s quiet and you can hear nature. I especially like sitting next to a lake in the grass and watching the tiny waves created by the breeze or a bug.

• Movies aren’t unproductive, they’re reproductive – This will sound sick to some people, but my youngest son was conceived during the watching of Fight Club. I don’t know why, but the movie brang out the freak in us. Damn, I hope my wife don’t read this post… Anyway, there might be a movie that just inspired you somehow. You may have went to the theater one day, and walked out saying “wow”. That type of experience can make you produce some quality content for your blog. …. By the way.. we didn’t conceive the child at the theater. Thought I would mention that before someone asked.

• Create something else – You may be sitting there thinking hard about something to write about, but what if you took out an hour or two and carved something out of a stick and sanded it? Ok, this may not be for everyone, but it was fun for me when I was a child. I know I would like it again if I tried now, and it gives you time to think and be creative doing something completely different. It will give you ideas for your blog.

• List your likes – You can actually list everything you like, just like you would make a list post. Except you aren’t thinking of post ideas. You may be able to take one of the things you really like and somehow turn it into a post by comparison to your niche.

• Take a drive – Fine. I am guilty of contributing to pollution. But I find it very inspiring to go for a night drive with the radio on and the window cracked (or open depending on the season). I also love to drive in the rain. Something about that drive really makes me think. I actually conceived an algorithm that would beat Google in relevance if I were to develop it, and I came up with it during a 30 minute drive. Take that PHDs!

• Play in the rain! – Some people really hate the rain. But for some reason, I am obsessed with it. When it rains, I get excited. I want to play in it. Or at the bare minimum, I will pull up a chair and sit under some roofing while it pours. It’s great!

I hope these items really gave you some ideas. They are things I use all the time, and if you read my blog regularly, then you know they work. Got ideas? Feel free to share them with others below!

Today, I spent a lot of time replying to lots of comments left on my blog over the past two weeks. I am still not done responding to everyone, but I’m working on it. When I was done with my current round of replies, I suddenly realized that this could be used as something to talk about. What made me realize that was my belief that comments should never be closed.

I have discussed this idea in the past, but I have a different (yet similar) spin on it this time. My whole reasoning behind closing comments are two key points.

1. Fresh content is key to Google showing your site love. Comments are fresh content. If an old article is receiving fresh content, then Google will show that article even more love. Even a blog with lots of traffic should never close comments under the false pretense that they are eliminating spam. If you use Akismet with Conditional CAPTCHA then spam is not even a factor, so there is absolutely no excuse in that argument.
2. Closing comments will piss off new potential readers. There have been a number of times where I went to a blog because of an article I found while searching Google, and after I read the massive article, I went to comment and it was closed. Do you have any idea how much that pissed me off and made me never go back to that blog?

Closing comments closes doors for you in many ways. But my new spin on this is the fact that you should be focusing pretty hard on where your traffic comes from. One major source of your traffic if you are a long term blogger, should be Google and other search engines. My Google traffic is increasing daily by the hundreds, and that made me realize that by replying to comments adds that fresh valuable content to my blog, which may end up turning into first page Google rankings.

Do you know what this means?

If means that if you were to immediately go back to your older articles, and make sure that you reply to commentators, then you could be adding additional traffic from Google because something new that you say may get ranked!

This also means that there are many other things you need to check to make sure you are not neglecting them. One of those things are closed comments. Go to your settings and make sure right now that you have it disabled.

Another issue I have written about before is the “noindex” and “nofollow” tags you may have on categories and tags. Make sure they are not there. If you have an seo plugin in operation, then make sure those settings are not checked. If they are, then opening them up for indexing will immediately change the dynamic of your blog. You should start seeing an increase in traffic from Google within 2 weeks in your Analytics or other stats tracking platform.

Do you take vacations? If so, how do you deal with your blog while you are on vacation? I know a couple of people who recently went on vacation and didn’t post anything while they were gone. What this did was ended up killing the progress they made with their Alexa Traffic Rank. It also made regular blog hoppers to that blog no longer check it for updated content.

If you are going away for an extended period of time, it is vital to your blogs survival that you schedule some posts. Write an article to automatically be published every two days, and if you can, make sure you stop by at least every 72 hours to reply to comments.

Blogging is a new breed of animal. It is a job that is supposed to be fun. So if that’s the case, then why would you want to take a vacation from it? When I go on vacation, my laptop comes with me. The last thing I would ever do is abandon my blog, even if it’s for two weeks.

If you know me, you know that I believe in scheduled posts. Not only for scheduled vacations, but also for times when you are feeling burnt out, or you just want to take a day off to do something else. In such cases, I have also recommended posting guest posts from others on your blog. As long as your blog is not neglected, then you will do fine.

Established & Lazy

There is a thing I like to call “established and lazy”. What this means is that you have worked hard to build traffic, and your blog is doing great with commentary and subscription. What happens? Well in most cases, the blogger tends to stop blog hopping as much as they used to.

It is completely understandable that as an established blogger, your time is spread across a lot of different things. You probably have tons more commentary to reply to. You are probably writing lots of guest articles and articles for EzineArticles or other places.

The trick is to balance all of the above with your old activities that made you successful in the first place. If you have stopped blog hopping as much as you used to, then you can instantly increase your traffic by huge numbers if you were to go back to it. Dedicate one day every week to do nothing but comment on blogs. One day will not kill you, or hinder your ability to perform your other marketing activities. I promise you this.

After you start doing what you stopped doing, you can see the fruits of your labor in your stats most likely the next day. Now that you are established, you should have to problem analyzing that data to see if it’s worth integrating into your new lifestyle. Chances are that you will see how this would be beneficial, and stick to it from now on.

Think About It

Is there something that you are neglecting which if changed, you will probably see an increase in traffic? What are you going to do about it?

It’s the beginning of the year, and I wanted to write something meaningful. Not only meaningful, but inspiring and hopefully life changing. I want you to be as inspired as I was when I was homeless and reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad at the library. After you read this article, your entire way of thinking should be changed. If you feel that this has helped your mindset into the right place, please share it as much as possible so that someone else can also be inspired.

I want to give you all a little background. I have not always been a successful marketer, and blogger. Before I started working from home, I had no home… literally. I was a grown kid. That doesn’t really make sense until you have learned about my past. My entire life has been spent helping others. As a matter of fact, it has taken over my life in a way and has been a major setback for my personal advancement financially. There have been times when I didn’t hesitate to loan someone $2,000 and get them an apartment, moving truck, and physically help them move because they had only 48 hours to get out of a property before being thrown out by the sheriff.

My personal past isn’t silver spoons either. The $2,000 didn’t come from a trust fund. It came from my daily working 24/7 on the computer while trying to hold down a regular job and still somehow get sleep. There have been many times that I was forced to decide on car insurance or the gas and electric bill. Those times suck hard, but they are defining moments that will make or break you. What you do in tough times tells others and yourself about your character.

An example of my stuggle of a past was a time when I was 13. My brother and sister (both older) worked to get my parents permission to move out. They moved in with my grandparents. I was never allowed to move because I was the youngest child, and my mom didn’t want to lose me too. Anyways, when I was 11, we were forced to move because the house we were renting was bought by an invester. They wanted to knock down the house and rebuild. We tried hard to find a new place that would allow a dog. We ended up having to give up the dog I had as a puppy. We moved in with a drunk woman who did nothing but cause trouble. We did end up with an apartment for a couple years, but lost it (at 13) when my dad got drunk and mixed it with his heart pills. He thought I was someone bad and came out of a dead sleep to throw a sword hanging on the wall and barely missed my throat.

Right after that, the cops barged into our apartment kicking in the door, and arrested my dad while he was unconscious. My mom tried to get their attention and she touched one of their shoulders. He snapped on my mother and put her in handcuffs for assault. Stupid right? That’s the kind of corruption on the police force in Steger, Illinois. But their corruption and drug use is a different story. I got mad at them handling my mother and I snapped on them. I ended up assaulting the cop myself. He should not have touched my mother. You wouldn’t believe what they are willing to do to a 13 year old who pushes them. They beat the crap out of me right there, threw me down 3 flights of stairs, then slammed my head on the car while putting me in the back seat handcuffed.

After this, we ended up moving in with the drunk woman again. Soon after though (maybe a month), we held a yard sale. I sold all of my stuff because none of my parents stuff was selling. We bought a tent, propane heater, propane stove, and a little portable toilet that went in the tent with us. A friend let us live in the back yard for awhile out in the country. That’s when I started thinking about suicide seriously for the first time.

I didn’t tell you this story for sympathy. I have lived worse than that. I just wanted to share where I was coming from. I was a depressed, suicidal gangbanger and I thought that I would be dead by now. If not by my hand, then by someone elses. Later in life, I became homeless as a new adult. I was discovered by Max A Million because I was a songwriter and recording artist. Music was my escape, but I had to quit because it brought out the suicidal thoughts in me. That’s when I looked towards self-employment.

I knew that self-employment was my only option. As someone with a lack of personal relationship skills and social skills, I had to find a way to avoid working for someone else and losing my job on a regular basis. Have you ever argued with a customer who brings back a rental movie 10 days late, then complains that it doesn’t work and they want a refund? Clearly, customers are NEVER right in retail. But you can’t say that because you will lose your job.

I work hard today with my blog and my web design / seo business because it’s what I love to do. It is something I can do by myself with my headphones on and time to release some creativity.

What are you good at in 2011?

This is a very important question. You may not even know that you are good at something, but I promise you that you are. If you don’t believe me, then stop by my consulting site and let me help you start a home based business right now. Your success is my promise, because I simply cannot sit back and watch while you work hard building a 40-year career just to lose your pension in a new Enron-type scandal.

Everyone is good at something. I have watched while my wife said she had no marketable skills, and at the same time I watched her put together a magnificant wedding plan. I have watched a friend go from wanna-be blogger to keyword research expert. I have watched many people overcome the odds and work toward a killer goal.

Don’t hesitate to think big

Recently, a Facebook game called CityVille surpassed FarmVille in monthly users. This is crazy because they are in the multi-millions. That translates into a TON of people paying real money for fake items in a digital game and advancing faster than the rest.

You can do something just as big. NEVER think small! You can also create a viral Facebook game if you wanted. If you didn’t know where to start, but had the $20k to invest, then contact someone like me who creates viral Facebook game concepts. It really is easy to get into if it’s something you want to do.

Don’t stop there though. People have come up with many ideas. Some have bottled a secret sauce, and worked hard to get it on the shelves of major retail chains. They are now sitting pretty with a multi-million dollar business.

Not proactive? Then take an idea instead. You can actually buy patents from brokers, then go after technology licenses when a manufacturer wants to develop the patent into a workable product. There are companies out there that buy patents, then sue Microsoft and other companies who are already using the technology without the rights to it. They earn millions in royalties this way.

The ideas are endless. Do you have some?

Maybe you want to get into something huge, but you have no idea what, or no idea how. You can start or join an investment group or a think-tank and work on creating a concept that will ultimately lead to monetary rewards.

Actually, if you think about it, this is a great way to get the investment cash if you don’t have all of it yourself. Investment groups can put together thousands of dollars to partner on business deals, then share in the wealth.

Don’t give yourself negative talk

Negative talk sucks something horrible. It is the kind of talk that can lead to depression. That’s actually why I don’t hang with some people anymore. I got tired of hearing them tell me that something couldn’t be done.

Anything can be done. You just have to create your goal, stay positive, and stay persistent. If you deviate from those steps in the slightest, then you risk losing everything. Nothing is too far out of reach if you truly believe. But it can be tought to actually live that thought process. You may have been in the life situation I was in, and your outlook is grimm. But I have been there and done that, I can tell you with absolute truth that it’s possible to get out of and get into something better. The trick is telling yourself that depression is no longer fun, and taking it seriously. There were times that I have locked myself in a room, laid on the floor, and cried because it made me feel great. The problem with that is that it tells you depression is good. But depression will only lock you into a mode of not taking action.

Any opportunity can be successful

You have seen tons of MLM scams, or affiliate product ebooks out there. But let me tell you, none of it is really scams. They are called scams by people who simply didn’t know how to monetize the opportunity. MLM programs can make you tons of money if you only knew how to grow your network and promote the products. Giving up in a week or two and calling the opportunity a scam is just easier though, so many people do it.

Choose an opportunity and really put yourself into it. There are plenty of things you can do with zero start-up costs and turn it into a profitable business. The key to that kind of success is opening your mind to learning. Learn how to market. Learn how to network. Learn how to think. Then you will learn how to grow rich.

Never back down

If I can tell you anything from what I have learned throughout my life, it’s that you can never give up. Giving up is like committing suicide. You are at the minimum killing your entheusiasm, and that is murder!

Are you committed to changing your life? 2011 is the year to start! Please share your goals, and your successes in a comment below.

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For those of you just starting out, this may not be the article you are looking for. However, if you are a long-term blogger that has been doing it for awhile, you may be interested in tracking how much of your traffic is coming from Google.

Remember firstly that traffic must come from multiple sources. Never keep all of your eggs in one basket. If Google were to drop your blog, then you would be out of luck unless you went at your marketing from many angles. But to this day, Google is my biggest traffic supplier and the amount of traffic they refer grows every single day.

Your ultimate goal should be to get a minimum of 5,000 unique visits per month from Google (low amount) which is realistic when you have hundreds of articles published on your blog. If you opted for the larger articles, then you should be able to land more Google traffic with less articles. That’s how it works because Google simply loves content. If I had a chance to start over, I probably would have posted less of the smaller articles, and more of the larger ones. Luckily, I have tons of both types and they all bring me traffic from natural search engine rankings.

Many people don’t understand the logistics of blogging, and what makes it work over time. It’s not just the fact that you are establishing relationships with other bloggers and general readers. That is a very important aspect of growing your blog, but it’s just a small piece in the big picture.

What makes a blog grow easier over time is the search engines that bring you traffic. Why? Because as your blog grows with more content, your blog has more entryways for search engines to refer traffic. Consider your blog to be a house that is constantly growing and creating more doors. The more content you create, the more doors you have. You may end up being ranked for keywords and phrases that you would never have expected to bring you traffic.

The key steps to growing your Google traffic is:

• Create Content Regularly – It goes to reason that if you are going to be a successful blogger, you need to create content on a regular basis. Anything done differently can be considered blog abandonment. Work hard to establish a schedule for writing articles. This used to be a tough job for me back when I started because I looked at it as a job. Now that I have been doing it since forever, it just comes naturally. It is just something I do to make my days entertaining.

• Opt for larger articles – It is ok to write small 300-500 word articles if that is all you can crank out. But if you want that search engine traffic to come sooner than in 2 years, then you need to work hard to make your articles between 1,000 and 5,000 words each. You can easily do this by talking about the things you wrote about in more detail. Explain why they are important, why you like them, how to do them, etc. Help yourself extend a post with a list in the middle of it. Break it up with pictures or videos to make it more entertaining to both you and your reader.

• Use tags and categories – The more tags and categories you have, the more content and doorways you have on your blog. Make sure your tags and categories can be indexed and followed. They are NOT duplicate content, but rather an extension and filing method for your articles. Don’t be afraid to create multiple relevant blog tags or categories and using multiples for a single article. It will only work in your favor.

• Google loves Twitter and Facebook – So should you. It’s smart to assume that the more Twitter posts and Facebook shares pointing to your blog, the likelier that Google will assume your content is relevant and make it appear higher in the natural organic search results. That’s one reason why you should take your social networking seriously. It may be about the initial traffic at first, but as a long-term blogger, you will learn that those relationships will ultimately make or break your organic search traffic.

• Keyword Research – As I previously stated, you never know what keywords and phrases will end up bringing you traffic. However, that does not mean that you do not have to try and target certain keywords that are relevant to your blog. Work on your keyword research, and find out what is popular. Don’t assume that because there is a massive number in competition, that you can’t receive that traffic. When you build up a blog with lots of unique content, you can easily compete with the big guys and steal some of their traffic. Better yet, we can call it shared traffic because those readers will consider you to be one of the gurus too.

• Diversity in brand – Did you think that EzineArticles and Associated Content were only good for backlinks and direct traffic from article marketing? You were wrong. There is a thing that is a ‘secret sauce’ to local search engine marketing. It is about saturating the market with your brand. The more you can get your brand out into the front, the likelier you are to get that targeted traffic. For instance, if you have your blog ranked #1, your EzineArticle #2, and a review site #4 in Google for the same search term, then the reader will most likely click on one of your links, and ultimately your blog. That’s because they assume that because you are on multiple sites, you must have the most relevant information. When I do local search marketing for my clients, I work hard to get their brand on article sites, review sites, press release sites, and their onsite search engine optimization at the same time. In the end, they are likely to get the customer, and I am likely to keep my search engine marketing client.

• Blog SEO – Probably the obvious out of all of the things that I mentioned here. But I have come across some blogs that still don’t even have permalinks setup. Dynamic URLs are not cool, and neither is the lack of a plugin like All-In-One-SEO-Pack which can do all of the meta tags for you. Fine, you are not an expert at search engine optimization, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn the basics and get your blog search engine friendly. Do a little blog seo research, and get yourself on track for Google rankings. You will thank me later.

In early 2010, I wrote an article on the popular blogging topics for the year. I wanted to start 2011 off right with a new list of blogging topics that will be very popular this year.

To kick this off, let’s start with the ultimate controversy. In 2010, Wikileaks was a major development and a huge test for freedom of speech. Any blogger that can pull of some major controversy like that will blog up instantly. I know this will be a tough one. Especially seeing that my wonderful United States Government is falsifying evidence and calling for people to be assassinated for posting such content online. But if you can manage to get past all of that, you too can be popular.

Other popular blogging topics this year will include:

• Job Postings – So many people are out of work these days. If you posted about finding work, and you managed to stream jobs from multiple websites (similar to what indeed.com does) then you will have an explosive blog.

• Business Ideas – Because everyone is out of work, many are pushing towards self-employment. Zero in on a niche for telling people what kind of business ideas are working, and you will draw a decent crowd.

• Coupon Codes – Everyone wants to save some money. If you can help them by posting coupon codes for various online stores, you will get lots of repeat traffic and referrals.

• Marketing Tips – Not the same old’, same ole’. Come up with some original marketing tips that have not been regurgitated many times online, and see how long it takes before you have 1,000 subscribers.

• Viral Game Strategies – Let’s face it. Facebook games can be an addiction. Feed that addiction by posting your best CityVille strategies and you will end up with loyal readers that actually pay cash for info products that you publish. CityVille, FarmVille, and other games that reach 50 million monthly users are a force to be reckoned with.

• Contest Listings – More and more bloggers are holding contests these days. It’s simply a great way to receive traffic. If you were to allow visitors to send you information on their contests, and you published them, you would have multiple bloggers promoting your blog in order to help themselves receive more traffic.

What doesn’t work…

Being rude and starting fights with other bloggers. Alex Whalley and I had some prick posting crap about us on his blog because he felt that us gurus were only in this to peddle affiliate offers, and none of our marketing strategies work. The problem with that? Well, he didn’t use our marketing methods and his blog gets ZERO comments other than the one article where he talked crap about us and had our readers over there telling him what a jerk he was. That was his only success… a short lived traffic increase. I occasionally stop by his blog now to see if it’s gotten any better, any traffic, or just anything at all. Nope. Nada.

Starting fights with other bloggers will simply not work. It may have in the past, but frankly, nobody wants drama these days. You will get a lot further by networking and respecting others. That same blogger could have taken a different approach, and possibly received reviews, backlinks, and traffic from Alex and I. FAIL!

Doing the same ole’ will also not make you a successful blogger. I have watched as many newbies got into this thinking that they can just copy someone else in style and content, and get away with it. Their blogs always end up closing down.

Come into this with a desire to talk about your niche, and to do it in a way that hasn’t been heard before. I know it may have been over-stated, but originality and persistence pays off. Don’t believe me? Well tell it to my butt while I walk into the mall with my family and my cash.

The third thing I want to mention that does not work, is to spend more and more on information rather than taking the free info we established bloggers give you and apply it to your own situation. I see many people buying ebooks on building twitter followers, traffic generation methods, search engine optimization, and everything else. What they end up with is an empty wallet because they did nothing but look for an easy button to get rich quick. The simple fact is that this is not a quick thing. Money does come, but it comes from patience, lots of hard work, and actually doing what’s required.

Many people do not want to actually do what’s required. They hope that they will find some magical piece of information in an ebook, and it will instantly make them rich beyond measure. DO! DO! DO! You want Twitter followers? Get your butt out there and build them. Get a SocialOomph account; get a Twellow account; search for “follow back” on Twellow and add them in chunks of 50-100 a day; do guest posting; publish articles; ASK for followers. It really is that simple.

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In 2011, I will be releasing my newest ebook jam-packed with tons of traffic methods. I felt it proper to supplement that sooner than later with an article on traffic generation. The idea here is to take a blog from brand spanking new to flooded with gigs of bandwidth use in a short period of time. This will also help existing blogs increase traffic ten-fold and potentially renew your interest in blogging full time.

As you know, I am a full time blogger. At first, I was not. This blog was new, and it took a lot of trial and error to make it what it is today. I love writing these tips because it allows YOU to essentially learn something in a single day that took me months to realize. Learn from my mistakes, and find out what actually works so you can slingshot your blog into a huge success.

Over the past two months, I have been featured on ProBlogger a couple of times, with many more that I will be sending to my friends Darren and Georgina over there. The thing I love about ProBlogger is that it is a website that packs a punch when it comes to traffic. The last time I received a major influx of traffic that can compare in a single day was when someone with my same name died, and it was a major breaking news story.

Google is still my number one traffic source though, and will continue to be no doubt. That’s because my blog is well established, and I have tons of unique content in my database. The other reason is that a lot of that content is contained within longer articles which Google seems to love.

Mastur… Master…. baiting?

My most recent ProBlogger article was about link-baiting and how to create link bait content. Hence the title with masterbaiting in it. It was a play with words, and no I was not trying to be dirty minded.

Link bait is something to be taken very seriously. Good link bait means that articles will be plastered across the internet, and you will get tons of one-way backlinks. My ProBlogger article for example was “stolen” many times and reposted on various blogs across the web. You would think that may have pissed me off, but it actually didn’t. Do you want to know why? It is because all of those blogs kept the links in-tact and I am generating a massive amount of one-way links to my blog. Not only that, but they reposted by desired anchor text with my guest article credit. This has helped in cementing my Google rankings, which couldn’t make me happier.

Link bait comes in all forms. But the form I love to use consistently is list posts, and longer articles that are referenced often. You will notice that this article is on the long side. I did this on purpose. The fact is, I have a lot to say in order to cover traffic methods, and it just works in my favor because it’s something I love to discuss.

1. Do
2. You
3. Like
4. To
5. Use
6. List
7. Posts?

List posts get a lot of attention. Not only can they attract inbound links, but they also attract commentary. If you are smart enough to keep comments open forever, then that commentary will never stop. And with the use of Akismet paired with Conditional CAPTCHA, there is no reason to close comments because spam will never pass the threshhold to become moderated.

Think of new comments on old articles as fresh content. Search engines love fresh content. It should be a no-brainer. Don’t close comments!

Back to the topic at hand is list posts. It is important to find something trending, but also something that has not been saturated to the point of becoming useless. Ideas for blog posts is something that everyone writes about, but it is something that will never get old. Everyone gets writers block at some point, which is when they start searching for popular blogging topics.

Be my guest! Be my guest! You shall overcome the rest!

You already know that guest posting on established blogs is a great way to generate traffic to your new blog. But there is a way to do this in a more efficient manner and save yourself a lot of time building your traffic.

Go after the gold right away. It is wise to guest post on smaller blogs that have active readers because this shows the major blogs that you are capable of writing great content and content that is well received by readers. But that’s the extent that you should guest on smaller blogs if your primary goal is to build traffic. I have guest posted on TONS of blogs, but I wish I guest posted on ProBlogger, SmartBloggerz, RobsWebTips, and others sooner than I did. When I first started, I did not hold that confidence though, so I waited and established myself everywhere on the net before I approached these larger markets.

The smart move is to take a chance, and submit your best content to the larger blogs right away. What have you got to lose other than a bit of ego? The worst that can happen is you get rejected, and you either submit that article to another blog or you publish it on your own.

From here on out, when I go to launch a blog, I will instantly pursue the big dogs first. This will catapult my new blog to something to be recconed with.

Ad Me! It’ll cost ya…

Nope, I didn’t misspell that. I means ad as in advertisement. You will see a lot of people claiming that ad space on established blogs don’t really receive attention. But that simply isn’t true. Ads do in fact get clicked, and sales result from those clicks.

The trick is in the locating of good blogs to advertise in without costing you an arm and a leg. And if you really have the money, then opt for a paid review. Expect the paid reviews to cost you though. I charge $500 for a paid review on this blog, and will only allow one per month.

Blogs that provide paid review advertising options tend to heavily promote those paid reviews for the customer once they are posted. It is in the best interest of the blog to do so because that customer will likely return if the traffic is excellent.

Don’t underestimate the power of paid advertising. Try it for yourself, and don’t give up on the first blog that fails to deliver. Keep testing the waters on different blogs until you find a good mix that works for you. That shouldn’t be too hard at all.

Whatcha gonna do with all that junk…?

Can we say “bumper sticker”? A cheap option that you had no idea would work is a custom bumper sticker, or a sticky advertisement you can place on your vehicle. People actually remember those URLs and visit them when they go home.

You can do a quick Google search and locate a custom bumper sticker company, and you will be surprised at how cheap it can be for a marketing method that works day-to-day with no effort on your part.

If you are feeling very motivational, you can have a full-body ad created and wrapped around your vehicle, or you can pay someone else a monthly fee to place it on theirs and essentially advertise for you as they drive around.

Stay Creative

Always remember to stay creative when marketing, and your marketing campaign can actually turn viral when you least expect it.

Share with everyone below what methods you use to drive traffic to your blog(s) and website(s). Don’t keep it all to yourself…

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I didn’t want to post this, but I felt at this point that I had no choice. For my regulars, this has nothing to do with you so no worries. But for others, I have to warn you that you are wasting your time spamming this blog with keywords.

What encouraged me to write this warning was a few comments, one after the other, that got past my anti-spam tactics. They weren’t published, but they got into my moderation queue.

The fact is that the person in question was an actual person and not a bot of any kind. That’s the only reason they got that far in the first place. But as my regulars know, I do not allow comments where a person only uses keywords in the name field. They will not be approved.

I have OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), which means that I watch this blog like a hawk. If I even sniff a potential comment abuser, they might get approved the first time, but added to the moderation list for name, email, ip address, etc. That means that from then on, they would have to be moderated until I feel they will respect my blog.

I do not mind you using keywords in your name field. I allow this, and reward it. However, you MUST do it in the format of YOUR NAME@YOUR KEYWORDS and only in this format. Previously, I simply removed the keywords of spam and replaced it with NAME REMOVED if the comment itself was not spam. However, traffic has blown up to a point where I don’t want to have to manage this any more. Therefore, I simply delete ANY comments no matter how great it was because the commentator did not include their name with their keywords in the name field.

I was thinking about slapping in a warning above the comment area, and may do that. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to until the redesign is completed. But I guess it all depends on how I feel tomorrow.

Please, as a blog hopper, or marketer, respect us bloggers who actually provide lots of free original information on our blogs. Save that spamming activity for SPLOGS!

Respectfully,

Brandon Connell

When I was a kid, I would fantasize about being rich. I even knew that it would happen before I became an adult (that didn’t happen). As a matter of fact, it took years beyond turning 18 before I made a significant amount of money on my own.

As time went by, I realized the harsh reality that it was far from easy to get rich. It isn’t the actual “getting rich” that is hard, but finding the leverage to make it happen. If you are homeless for instance, you can’t just come up with an idea and have it developed. Development takes money. But is that the only way you can get rich….?

No.

There was a time when I was homeless. There was even a worse time when I had a woman and kids to take care of and we were being evicted in less than 2 weeks during Christmas! I bet you wonder how I got out of that one huh? Well as a matter of fact, I found leverage. I wrote a “nothing down” offer on a large mansion as a last ditch effort to keep a roof over our heads. That offer was rejected at first, then resubmitted a couple days later, and accepted!

My question to you is… what are you really doing to make a change in your life? You must be looking for ways of making money because you are reading my blog right now. I know that you are “trying”, but can you honestly say to yourself that you are doing everything you can?

Ways to make money

I thought I would just list out a few things that can make you money. I will not be providing a tutorial on all of these things in this post, but I will probably write about them in the future (if I haven’t already on this blog).

• Affiliate marketing
• MLM marketing
• Play the lottery
• Charge for a service
• Make hand-made products and sell
• Sell your junk on Craigslist, Ebay, Amazon, etc.
• Pick up free items on Craigslist and sell
• Sell to pawn shops
• Join tutor sites
• Do paid surveys

These are just a few ways to make some money. If you do something like offer a service, then it’s wise to invest your initial profits to market that service further. For example, taking out a Facebook ad to get some clicks.

Avoid making excuses

Believe me, there are lots of ways to make excuses. Instead you should stay positive and keep focused. Not thinking about how things aren’t working can ensure that your ideas keep flowing.

• Recognize negative thoughts and quickly change them immediately.
• Keep positives (like PayPal printouts from payments received) where you can easily see them for motivation.
• Avoid negative people. People who tell you that it can’t be done. Even if they are family members or friends.
• Do things right away, and don’t procrastinate. You can’t get rich by not doing anything with your ideas.
• Never leave a money source on the table. Lotto may be luck, but you might get lucky. What’s a buck once a week?

The real money comes in through multiple streams of income. Even if you have one successful source of money coming in, don’t stop there. Think of new ideas, and implement those ideas right away.

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An article I read today rehashed an issue I argued against on another blog a couple months ago. That issue being that content is not king. I instantly get into these debates because I find that the person writing about them is promoting disinformation which goes against everything I teach on this blog. What upsets me more is the amount of people who comment on those articles thanking the writers for “sharing the truth”.

My argument that content is king is that without content, you have nothing. But it isn’t as simple as that, and people need to stop making these generalizations and leaving them at that. If you want to write about what’s king, then you need to get in-depth and not just leave lame advice which stems from inexperience. I will not call anyone out here, especially because the person that wrote it is someone I consider a blogger friend.

The actual facts behind content and what makes it king are as follows:

1. You need content in order to #1) have something to offer your visitors; #2) obtain organic rankings.
2. You need good content in order to make people want to read it.
3. You need to drive traffic to that content in order for people to know it exists.

Failing to acknowledge all of these points means that you are basically spreading your inexperienced knowledge to others with inexperience that think you actually have experience.

Who Is Inexperienced?

I won’t lie to you… I have visited thousands of blogs, and a lot of the blog owners are friends. We communicate on a regular basis which is why I call them friends. But how many of those friends are actually making money; pulling in traffic or whatever type of conversion they are shooting for; or actually reaping the rewards of the topics they are blogging about?

There are blogs out there who are basically posting articles about topics such as what works in blogging and what does not without actually experiencing these things in-depth and on their own. They read an article on the topic, and they felt a need to share that knowledge, even if that knowledge is not factual.

How Can You Avoid Spreading Disinformation?

The number one rule here should be to only blog about things you actually know. The thing that determines what you actually know vs what you are inexperienced with is that you have heavily played with something.

An example is would be if you went out to build links, and you didn’t attack that task at every angle such as publishing articles on 3rd party sites, blog hopping, reciprocal linking, buying links, etc, then you are not experienced. You then post an article on building links and claim that reciprocal doesn’t work because Google doesn’t like reciprocal links. You would be pushing disinformation out there because those of us who actually have built reciprocal links on sites currently, know that it does in fact work.

Stressed Points

• Research a subject, not only by reading about it, but by doing it.
• When you do something, go all-in or not in at all.
• Blog about subjects you went all-in with, and stick with what you know.
• Do not blog about topics you haven’t actually explored to the depths. Doing so will only make you non-credible in the eyes of readers.

So you probably came here looking for photos of my butt. Sorry to disappoint. What I meant to say was that I am going to get in late on Alex Whalley’s and Moon Hussain’s niche site challenge…. and kick both of their butts. This should be fun.

I haven’t technically chosen a niche, and frankly I just thought of doing this just 4 minutes ago . I am confident in a green energy niche though, and I am thinking about going with solar panels. I will be pushing an excellent product from ClickBank, and I will probably even use a free host and a sub-domain just to show off a little bit.

I believe solar panels and wind power are the energies of the future, and near future. They will save us all from being pushed out of a torn ozone and into space.

As far as seo goes, well… do I really have to talk about my skills? It will only make me blush.

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