Blogs and the Humble Trackback

Blogs have a few interesting ways to build links that other types of sites do not. As well as being ranking magnets if you take the time to update them regularly, you can ping them, and get on the blogrolls of other blogs. But one of the easiest ways is the trackback.

A trackback is a notification sent to a blog when one of your posts links to it. In the latest Wordpress versions, a single checkbox selection will automatically send a trackback to any blog to which you linked. These are very useful, and don’t cost you anything more than the willingness to show some link love to your fellow bloggers before you receive it.

Trackbacks appear in one of several forms on the linked blogs:

• Some blogs, like mine, have a separate trackback section before their comments. This puts your trackback ahead of the comments, making a link to your site more visible. If that blog happens to garner a lot of traffic, you could be looking at a piece of it. These types of separated trackback sections also attract link love, and I recommend you organize them on your blog this way.
• Other blogs post your trackback as a normal comment. It will appear as an excerpt of what you wrote, usually preceded and followed by an ellipsis (“...”). It appears in first come, first served order with the rest of the comments on that blog.
• It doesn’t appear, but the link garners the owner’s attention. A link will be noticed by anyone who takes any kind of care at all of their blog. That means you might just wind up on the blogroll.

Now, traffic from trackbacks isn’t automatic. Real people have to click through, which means you’ll have to get their attention with something interesting. Since most of what you leave is a title and blog name, be sure to give the post that’s linking to another site a title that will pull people in. Plus, try to send trackbacks to blogs with similar topics of discussion as yours, and the people will be pre-qualified for your content.

If you need links and traffic to your blog, add the trackback to your arsenal of techniques. It’s easy to do, helps build blogging relationships, and can accelerate the process of getting your blog off the ground.

How To Make A Living Online By Helping Local Business Owners

Recently, my wife Jill and I started a new business that helps local businesses make more money by properly marketing their websites on the Internet. The new business has gone extremely well. We have picked up 4 clients in the first 2 weeks and we have several other very strong leads. It has been VERY COOL!

I am not sure if we could have done it this quickly without the help of a training system that we discovered when it was first released. It is called the Local Business Money Machine and the system is absolutely amazing. The training reveals how to get ideal clients quickly, how to make winning proposals to those clients, how to run your business, and how to market your client’s local businesses on the web.

Going into the training I already knew a TON about online marketing, however there are some cool things I have learned about marketing local businesses on the Internet that I wasn’t aware of prior to the training. For me the really valuable part of the training has been the “getting clients” part of the program. The system for getting clients is well suited for my wife Jill, so she has been taking care of most of the client acquisition (sales) process, whereas I have been doing the online marketing and project management part of the business. It works great for us.

Who is this program for?

I think this program is best suited for those who have been doing some online marketing and/or have some experience getting clients but have not found that perfect system for running a successful business. People who are complete newbies (less than 6 months trying to make money online) are going to find the learning curve a bit more difficult and will need to take things slower than we are. You can still use this system if you are complete newbie, but it is going to take a lot more time than those who have some general Internet marketing knowledge. The good thing is that you can do the training at your own pace and the training is very well organized.

To see a free webinar that teaches the basics of what we are doing click here.

Today the program goes live again. I am not sure how many people they are taking this time. Last time it was 100. You can see the page to sign up for the program by clicking here.

If you do join the program using the link above, then let me know and I will keep in touch with you to help you out with the program and to potentially partner with you on some projects.

Cool Tool to Make Professional Videos in 10 Minutes

I’ve received some comments and questions about the video on our new website promotion and design site. My wife created the whole video in less than 15 minutes using an awesome membership software called Animoto.

Here are the steps she used:

1. Come up with a sales message.
2. Sign up for Animoto. (Sign up for their 90 day trial if you only want to make one video, but for most of us the year long membership is probably the better deal.)
3. Go buy a few pictures from istockphoto. The small size pictures are fine, so plan to spend about $1 per picture. (Animoto does offer some free pictures for your use, but we wanted to find pictures that were exactly what we wanted.)
4. Put text and pictures in order using Animoto’s easy interface.
5. Let Animoto do the work of making your video look like it was created by a Pro.
6. Remix if you want to see other possibilities.
7. Use Animoto’s easy tool to post the video to YouTube, your blog, your website— wherever you need to impress people and get their attention.

Animoto is so easy, my 10 year old son used it to make a couple of funny videos.

The first he made using pictures of our fence damage from Hurricane Ike:

In the second one he used some of the free photos from animoto:

Can you tell he has learned something about marketing already?

If you sign up for Animoto through my affiliate link, I’ll answer three questions about Animoto through email if you have any trouble with it. Frankly, I don’t think you will since it’s so easy to use.

The Uncertainty Syndrome And GPS

Rich Schefren is having a re-launch of his very successful GPS program that teaches you how to get past the constraints in your business that keep it from being a success. I wrote about his free report “The Uncertainty Syndrome” a while back and it is still an excellent read. I highly recommend you go download it and check it out.

I also suggest you sign up to be on his newsletter and check out all the videos he is releasing. It’s really good information to keep in mind when building a successful business.

Can You Make Money Online from Twitter?

If you aren’t on Twitter yet then you are one of the few people who aren’t, and if you have never heard of Twitter then you must have been living in a jungle cave for the past year or two. Every internet marketer I know is on Twitter and it seems like that’s all any of them can talk about these days. But does anyone actually make money from Twitter? Have you?

I have been on Twitter for a while now and I have yet to see how you can really make money from it even though everyone keeps talking about how great it is for business. Don’t go thinking I am some newbie that doesn’t know anything either because I definitely am not. I have been an internet marketer successfully making money online for over 6 years.

Sure, I’ve heard a few stories here and there of people who have used certain methods to make money on Twitter, but they are few and far between. And even those “success stories” are usually only small sums of money. Plus, when you consider the excessive amounts of time most people spend on Twitter to make that little bit of money, you could utilize several other marketing techniques to achieve better results in the same amount of time.

Then there’s the argument you will hear from the Twitter faithful about how great it is for traffic. Is it really? Not if you really think about it…

Say you have 1000 followers and you “tweet” your newest blog post in hopes that your followers will go check it out. Chances are most of them won’t be on Twitter at the time you tweet it so hardly any of them will see your tweet anyway. However, let’s be really conservative and say half of them are on, so 500 might see it.

Now, most of the remaining 500 are probably following hundreds, if not thousands, of other people, so your tweet will most likely be pushed down almost instantly and very few of them will see it. But let’s be really conservative again and say half of them do see your tweet. We are down to 250 now.

This could go on and on but let’s estimate highly again and say that 10% of the remaining 250 actually do click the link to go to your blog post. You just go a whopping 25 visitors! And probably none of them will actually be targeted visitors that will do anything to actually make you money once they are at your blog.

However, I am feeling generous so let’s say you have Adsense displayed on your blog and normally get a 5% click through rate. Well, 5% of 25 is 1.25 – so you would get just one click. If you’re lucky, you might make 10 cents or so. In reality you probably wouldn’t make anything though because “social traffic” rarely clicks on ads, and traffic from Twitter is considered social traffic.

So, can you make money from Twitter? I doubt it! And even if you do there’s a strong chance you could have made a lot more by using other internet marketing techniques instead.

If you don’t want to take my word for it then give it a try and see how it works for you. If you do figure out how to make money on Twitter then I would love to hear how. Just don’t waste too much of your time trying!

Let me end by stating that I am not saying you shouldn’t use Twitter. I get on there almost every day so that would be very hypocritical of me. It does have some advantages and there are several tools you can use to automate it so you don’t waste all your time there.

The point I am trying to get across is that you shouldn’t be spending too much time on Twitter because it’s really not very productive for your business. There are many other ways to make money that are much better than Twitter and several marketing methods that will bring you a lot more traffic.

By the way, since we’re on the subject of Twitter… You can follow me @trentab to get real tips on how to make money online.

Interview With Buzz Marketing Superstar Dean Hunt

Greetings everyone. Today I’m interviewing Dean Hunt of DeanHunt.com. Dean is best known as a buzz marketing genius and blogger extraordinaire.

Hi Dean. First, thanks for doing this interview.

Q. A lot of people when at the age you started were still in school or trying to figure out what they’re going to be when they grow up. How did someone so young become so successful so quickly?

A. That is the cool thing about the Internet, it doesn’t discriminate based on age. So anyone at any age can do it. I was around 20 before I got into it properly… I was 22 before I was making a fulltime income, so like most overnight success stories, there is a lot of effort and time that goes into them.

Q. So, for those who don’t know— what exactly IS buzz marketing? Is it just the internet marketing equivalent of being a shock jock?

A. Shock is just one small aspect of it… basically, it is doing something that gets people’s attention. The easiest way to do this is to make them feel an emotion… so, it may be inspiration, funny, shock, sadness, joy, hope etc…

I actually call it “outrageous marketing”.

I tend to use humour a lot.

When you grab attention, people talk about it, and that is when your message goes viral.

Q. Is there a limit to the boundaries you can push with buzz marketing? Is there anything you WON’T say?

A. I write as though I am my audience… if I find it funny, I publish, if I don’t find it offensive, I publish… etc…

My boundaries are more liberal than some people’s, but you can NEVER please everyone, and if you try, you will become very generic and dull.

Remember, it is better that 50% of people hate you and 50% love you, than 100% think you are ok.

Q. I recently saw a video you had published on your Facebook page where you referred to yourself as someone who has, at times, given up too early on sites? What’s one site you wish you had stuck with?

A. It is more of a case of giving up on ideas… my first ever big idea was to have a cup of coffee with 1000 strangers… I called the site “Fancy a Brew?” brew meaning tea or hot beverage in the UK.

It got a lot of attention, but I gave up after just 2 drinks… the ideas and potential excite me a LOT more than the details and the journey of actually doing it.

Q. Speaking of social networking, do you think it’s possible for business owners to have a real internet presence without it?

A. Yes, but social networking is a good option for people without a budget.

For example, if you have a team of 10 staff and a 6-figure marketing budget, do you NEED social networking? NO, but regardless, I think it helps… it is the grease that makes things happen faster.

My golden rule though, is that some people just don’t get it, or are not the right personality types to enjoy and excel in the social game… if that is you, do not fight it, focus on your strengths.

For everyone else, focus on the big 4: LinkedIN, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube

Q. Is there any ONE thing that everyone trying to increase the amount of money they’re generating online should be doing?

A. Testing. Success online can be summarized by the following: test things to see if they make you money, if they don’t, then tweak or stop doing them, if they do, do more of it.

Q. What is one thing you’ve had to change radically about how you view marketing over the years and what is one thing you think will always remain constant?

A. Consumers are more aware than ever before… they know about sales pages, they know about testimonials, one time offers etc… so you have to be more authentic.

The constant is that people who can get attention and stand out from the crowd will be successful. That is why buzz marketing will always be around.

Q. Tell us about your affiliation with ConstructZero (www.constructzero.org). What’s this I hear about your life being sponsored?

A. My life was sponsored by ConstructZero.org for $1 million, most of which I will be giving to charity. It means I will wear their URL and logo on an item of clothing, at events, on video, in photos etc…

It leverages my personal brand.

They are doing some really exciting and potentially world changing things at Www.ConstructZero.org, so I recommend you go check them out.

Q. What does a website have to do to earn a “doesn’t suck” button (http://deanhunt.com/your-website-sucks/) from Dean Hunt?

It has to not suck

Just email me your website url with the subject line “does my website suck?” to contact@deanhunt.com and I will let you know.

Q. One last question— if you were to give up making money online tomorrow, what would you want to do instead?

A. Great question… I would probably consult with local, offline businesses. That or I would become a rockstar (I wish).

In reality I would probably just play Xbox360 all day, and keep posting at www.buzzprofits.com and www.deanhunt.com purely for fun.

The answer to the last question made me laugh because it’s exactly what what my wife and I are doing with our new business. Anyway, I really enjoyed interviewing Dean and I recommend you go check out his blog by clicking here.

Sneak Peak At Our Houston Based Web Marketing Company

Life has a funny way of forcing your hand. I’ve been playing around at this online thing for several years now and have made some decent money at it, but never really committed to it. I’ve talked about doing it full time. I’ve dreamed about doing it full time. But I haven’t been DOING it full time. Then a month ago I was laid off from my job as a JAVA developer. I spent some time putting together a resume and talking to recruiters before realizing I didn’t really want another job working for someone else. I wanted to work for myself. Full time.

So, after a series of events unfolded (which could be the focus of a later post), my wife and I decided to take the plunge and start our own business. So, I am very pleased to introduce MantyWeb Designs (www.mantywebdesigns.com), a full service web promotion and web design company. We will be specializing in helping local businesses with underperforming websites turn their websites into a valuable part of their marketing plan. I’ll be focusing on helping people increase traffic and improving conversion rates. My wife will be concentrating on sales.

While we are based in Houston, we’re available to help people all over the U.S. So, if you’re in need of assistance, contact me. You can leave all well wishes in the comment section.

Don’t Think With Desperation

These are not good economic times. Things are getting bad for some people now, which unfortunately means they’re getting desperate. This makes the lives of vermin like scammers far more profitable, because they have no qualms whatsoever about taking advantage of that desperation.

I spent some time bumbling around the Internet, and have run into quite a few scams. There are more of them out there than the obvious 419 scams that keep appearing in your email as spam. You know, the “I’d like to transfer some African king’s wealth to your bank account because he died, even though I don’t actually know you. I just need some bribe money first…”. Some of those scams play to those wanting to make legitimate incomes from home and on their computer because they’ve just been laid off, want to make their own jobs to help insulate themselves from the recession, or just need more money.

I caught most of them before they bit me, but I had to learn about some of them the hard way. Fortunately, there are a few tips I can give you to help you bypass some of my hard knocks.

• Massive traffic for next to nothing doesn’t really work. Oh, you’ll get the hits they promised you, but nothing more. You won’t have lost much learning this one the hard way, but you won’t have gained much either. So if you see something like “Tens of thousands of hits for peanuts” or some variation, don’t bother.
• Data Entry, Home Typing, and Envelope Stuffing won’t help you either. I mention them together because they work on the same theory. Someone trying to sell one of these programs to you infers, not directly states, that they’re a job, and you can start once you pay a fee to sign up. Once you do, you find out it’s not a job, but a “business opportunity”. Don’t touch these at all, because they’re a waste.
• Online businesses are real work. Anyone who says otherwise may be peddling a get-rich-quick scheme that won’t get you jack. So if you see a promise like “Thousands of dollars as you sit in your easy chair”, think twice.
• If it sounds too good to be true, it very well could be. Do your homework first before you spend anything. If there’s no information on it at all, don’t touch it.
• And last and most importantly, never make expensive decisions with your desperation or any other overpowering emotion like panic. It’s a good way to get burned for a lot of money.

I know it might be rough if you need money now, but jumping on something because you’re thinking with your desperation won’t help you. You’ll just be burned by one scam after another, because there are a lot of them when it comes to making money online.

My Biggest Roadblock To Making A Living Online was…

I just signed up to be on Rich Schefren’s free teleseminar Thursday night where Rich will be talking with a bunch of big-time gurus about some of their biggest roadblocks to success and strategies to improve your business.

So, in that vein, I decided to reveal to you my biggest roadblock to success.

First, I wanted to let you know that there are A LOT of things that can hold you back from success. I have been trained over the last year and half as a certified business success coach to teach other people how to get past their hurdles. It is often true that people who can help others with their problems don’t take the time to help themselves, and that was the case with me. On a recent trip to Dallas with my wife, I took a look at my business failures and learned that there were several things that really made it hard for me to have the kind of success I always dreamed of.

One of the things that stopped from achieving success was pride. Whenever I learned from my mentors pride would get in the way, and I wouldn’t follow their advice completely. I always wanted to do something differently than what they were teaching me to do. In spite of the fact that they were succeeding, and I wasn’t, I felt certain I could build a better mousetrap. That resulted in one thing – FAILURE!

Another obstacle for me was fear. While I never thought that fear was really a problem for me, when I took an honest look at things, I was afraid of success. Yes, that’s right. Afraid to SUCCEED!

There are other roadblocks I have had over the years, including lack of focus, etc. but the absolute biggest obstacle I found in the path of my business success was…

Commitment

I was never 100 percent committed to my success!

I would sit back in my cozy job and play around on the Internet. Experiment with different techniques and business models. When I started having some good success with a model, I would switch models and try something new. Or the second a potentially successful idea hit a bump in the road, I abandoned it. I used to think it was a lack of focus that caused this. And while a lack of focus contributed to the problem, a lack of commitment made it EASY to stop doing what worked and move on to something that was new. Plus, if I kept doing what was successful, I just might succeed and have leave that nice, cozy job.

A lack of commitment came close to killing my chances of success.

I no longer have a 9-5 job to fall back. I have made a full fledged commitment to my business success. I use two main business models.

1. Content Network
Content sites that promote affiliate programs and/or make money from advertising systems like Google Adsense, Chitika, etc. This the type of websites I currently make the most money from.

2. Services Business
I will talk more about the services I offer at some future point in time.

Eventually, I intend to expand into offering products, but it is likely that even my products will likely include services. So I leave you with this question:

Are you committed to your business success or are you just playing around hoping to hit the make money online lottery?

Thinking Outside of the Box

I have a little gadget called an oil filter wrench. For those of you have never seen this particular type of tool, it looks like a loop of steel hinged to a handle. Mine has grip padding on the inside, though most I’ve seen don’t. Anyway, to make this wrench work, you bend the handle in the right direction, which tightens the loop around the oil filter and helps you to remove it.

I’ve never used mine for that reason. I use mine to remove the larger stuck twist-on lids from containers like pickle jars. As it turns out, it’s just as handy for that as it would be for an oil filter. So basically, I’m a smart wimp that reincarnated a gadget to a new purpose.

I thought outside the box, which is also a good idea in your online business. You might have old work just sitting on your hard drive. You might have a problem which, at first glance, you can’t afford to fix. You have goals you supposedly can’t meet. Any of these call for a little original thinking.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to get started on that whole ‘box’ thing:

• Can you be doing something else with your old stuff? You did work to make it, so if you’re not using it for its intended purpose, could you be using it for a purpose you haven’t thought of yet? Freebies, traffic, and promotional uses all come to mind as good ways to reincarnate old stuff.
• Is there a cheaper way to solve a problem if you come at it from a different direction? So what if you can’t get a custom web site or blog design, for instance. There are plenty of ways around that.
• If the obvious solutions to problems are out of reach for you, try and make your own solutions. If you succeed, it might make a good topic for your next tutorial product!

If the normal things can’t help you, remember the lesson of my oil filter wrench. You can do more than the obvious when you think outside the box.

My Exclusive Bonus For Eben Pagan’s GURU Home Study Course

Eben Pagan is releasing his new Home Study Course today, and I have special bonus for you.

Before I tell you about my bonus, let me tell you about Eben’s Home Study Course. In case you are not familiar with Eben Pagan, here’s a little background. Eben started online in 2001. He knew nothing about websites when he started, had to learn everything himself from the ground up. Less than ten years later, he dominates several niche markets, particularly in the areas of dating and relationships. This isn’t a guy with advanced degrees in Psychology, so how does he convince people that he is the go to guy to learn about human behavior and dating? In this Home Study Course, Eben reveals his secrets to becoming the guru in your niche just like he has in his.

In March of last year, Eben launched the Guru Mastermind program. A year long training and coaching program, this program was excellent. It filled up quickly, and then the doors closed. Now, Eben has repackaged the Guru Mastermind program as a Home Study Program. You get all the structured learning of the original program at a fraction of the original cost (as much as $12,000, depending on the options that were chosen).

Only you can decide whether the Guru Home Study Course is a good fit for you and for your business. But if you decide to buy through my link, I’m going to do my part to help your success through…

My Bonus

I get a ton of traffic from the search engines. It is highly likely that you found this blog by searching for something related to making money online. If this is your first visit to my blog, then you were probably searching for the best Eben Pagan GURU Home Study Course Bonus that you could find. Am I right?

To help you get awesome traffic from the Search Engines I am giving away the following bonus to those who buy the course from my link:

1. I will provide you with detailed link reports of web sites that you should get links from.
2. I will give you a list of keywords that you should be targeting on your site for the best traffic results.
3. I will review your website home page to give you tips on improving its on-page optimization.
4. You will get THREE Follow-up emails where I will personally answer your SEO questions.

Normally, I would charge over $500 for these services. However, I am giving them away as a free bonus to anyone who pays for (and doesn’t return) Eben Pagan’s Guru Home Study Course through my affiliate link and then sends me an email as specified below.

Here is all you have to do to get my Guru Home Study Course Bonus:

1. Click here to order.
Important Notes: Be sure that the above link is the last link you click before ordering. Otherwise your order won’t count, and I won’t be able to give you the bonus. If you ask for a refund from the course, you will not get my bonus.

2. Forward your receipt to me at info @ mantyweb .com
Use the subject line: “Eben Pagan GURU Home Study Course Bonus”

That’s all there is to it. Once your refund period expires, I will contact you about the bonus.

Breathing Your Passions

The other day I read a post by Cris Garrett called “Just like Breathing”. In the post, Chris talks about a short conversation he had with Terry Starbucker, who also posted about their conversation here. In the conversation, Terry asked an AWESOME question that prompted Chris to ask the same question of his readers in a slightly different way. Here is Chris’ question:

What is so natural to you that it is like breathing? What aspect of yourself, which behavior, skill, activity, talent, is so part of you that you could not imagine yourself without it?

That prompted me to brainstorm a list of answers to the question. Here is the list I came up with:

Playing with my kids
Playing video games
Playing tennis, basketball and football (when I was younger)
Being silly
Coming up with funny kids stories
Making kids laugh
Playing games
eating
sleeping
researching
talking with people one on one

I talked with my wife Jill about the list and one of the things that I realized is that there were two common skills I used in all of the things that are “like breathing” to me:

1. Problem solving
2. Creativity

I love problem solving and I love being creative. You might even say I love creative problem solving.

There were quite a few things that almost made my list because they involved creativity or problem solving but the reason they didn’t get on my list is because they also involved doing things I hate. For instance, writing almost made my list. I love writing creatively, and I love writing about solutions to problems. However, I DON’T LOVE GRAMMAR RULES! I don’t love writing about just anything. So writing couldn’t make my list.

The things that did make my list were things that when I do them I ONLY did them in a way that allowed me to be me. For instance, when I played basketball. The thing I loved doing was being creative. When I was kid growing up some of my African American friend’s might have called me “Bird”, but that is about where the comparison ended. I worked hard at emulating Dr. J’s moves and then adding my own twist. I loved to play a very unorthodox style of basketball, driving to the basket and finding the most creative way possible to score. It was fun. I would never have enjoyed basketball if I had stayed on the perimeter and just shot the ball from long range. I wanted to be creative and solve the problem of getting past all the shot blockers and scoring over people I should never have been able to score against. That was fun.

So, getting back to the list. It’s kind of funny because after I made the list I thought to myself,
“I should write children’s books.” Now where have I heard that before… hmmmm….

If you know of anyone that breathes drawing comic illustrations that would work well with children’s stories then you might want to send them my way… who knows maybe we will both breathe a bunch of awesome books to life.

For now, I am going to take some time to think about this some more, but it was a very interesting answer to a very AWESOME question. I suggest you try answering the question as well. You might be surprised what you find. I was.

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