So, if you read last week’s post, I talked about 3 Things You Must Know To Be Successful Online. If you missed it, head on over there because it’ll really get you ready for this week’s topic…Social Media baby!

By now, chances are you have a good idea of what Social Media is. Heck, last year it was called Web 2.0 and like Gary Vaynerchuck, the premier go to guy for Social Media branding says, “It’ll probably be called something different next year”.

In a nutshell, Social Media is just a fancy word for social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Friendfeed, etc., where you can engage and interact with your audience in a more personal and “social” way. It’s been around for several years now and frankly, it’s not going anywhere. I mean it when I say this and I can guarantee you that any business that doesn’t get into the new age of how business is done and continues to stick with the old school methods, is going to be toast.

Point blank, bottom line. There’s a lot of information out there on how to do Social Media right and then there’s people like me who love helping you profit from it. I’m extremely passionate about Social Media and over the course of reading up on a lot of different information, here’s what’s stuck the most…

If all you want to do is sell, you better change your mind…FAST! Social Media isn’t just about selling to and/or getting customers where they’re spending a lot of their time. It’s a lot more than that. It’s about getting into the conversation that’s happening and being there. Sometimes people need advice or help with this. Sometimes they need extra assurance before they purchase something. There’s a number of different possibilities and when you can engage and interact with them, they’ll look to you as a friend, an authority, someone they can trust over time.

If all you do is sell, you’ve already turned them off by just your first tweet or status update. Offer advice, be helpful, and sure, sell from time to time, but don’t stray from the fact that your customers want friends. And when you can be their friend and build that relationship with them, it’s hard telling how profitable it’ll become.

Post relevant, entertaining, and valuable information. You don’t speak politics to an infant, do you? Then find your niche or niches that you love, know about, and/or do work in, and post about that. There’s so many times where I’ve followed someone because I enjoyed their tweets about personal development and they start talking about this dirty scumbag politician. I guarantee you 98% of the people that pay attention to them could give a care less.

Now, there’s times where you post about other things, hopefully positive (Did I mention more than enough negativity can bite you in the butt?). That’s understandable and you should post here and there about other things because it gives people a better sense of your personality, a big factor in why people pay attention to you to begin with. However, when you get way off topic and stray far from your niche, it makes people start to change their minds.

Always stay true to your roots and make sure that you provide some sort of value in everything you post.

Transparency is the new disclosure. Most people can sniff out liars as well as a bloodhound can sniff out a criminal a mile away. Always be truthful and honest in your ventures and activities. There’s been so many people who could of got far in what they were doing but no, they decided to lie about things and worse of all, cover them up. Guess what happened? Things get exposed and when you get marked as a liar and someone who can’t be trusted, that sticks in people’s minds and is hard to get rid of.

By being transparent, you simply be who it is you are and just do you. You’re no one else. You’re not proclaiming yourself to be an expert, guru, master, or wizard. Let others decide who you are by your actions and what it is you bring to the table (jump back to valuable content). We’ve all heard the saying “The truth shall set you free” and it will. It’ll not only set you free but also help you build deeper relationships and make a lot more money in the long run.

Take the poll below and let me know which is your favorite.

Traffic Secrets 2.0 covers traffic generation techniques like:

• Social Media Marketing & Strategy


• Advanced Content Syndication


• Cutting-Edge Video Marketing & SEO


• Leveraging Software & Widgets


• Setting Up Automatic ‘Content Factories’


• Building An Affiliate Army


• And more.

What I found really cool was that those who buy Traffic Secrets 2.0 (at least for now) will receive the following…

• LIFETIME UPDATES To The Course


• Private Coaching & Mastermind Community


• Web-based ‘Action Tracker’ Learning System


• And more!

Once you buy your license to Traffic Secrets 2.0 you don’t have to buy it ever again. Even by the time that “Traffic Secrets 100.0” comes out you’ll have gotten all of the other versions for free. Pretty cool!

Traffic generation techniques continue to change over time so it’s great to know that you’ll be getting all the updated information and strategies for free. I am very excited about the free updates!

I am going to go buy my copy soon after I finish writing this post. You can buy yours by clicking here.

The reason is simple…

You have the wrong kind of traffic coming to your blog (or website)!

Most make money online bloggers write post after post aimed at other bloggers and internet marketers, and they try to get as many readers as possible through social websites and other things like that. However, this is not a very good strategy if you really want to make money from your blog.

The people you are targeting with your blog posts are the exact same people who are doing the same things you are trying to make money online and they are definitely not the ones who are going to click on your ads or buy your recommended products. They know what Adsense ads are and they are probably promoting the same products you are on their blogs. So why would they take any action that will make you money? They won’t!

If you really want to make money online then most of your traffic needs to come from search engines because the average person doing a search won’t have a clue what Adsense is so they will gladly click on your ads. They also don’t know what an affiliate link is so they will buy products through your affiliate link if it’s going to help them make money online.

So what do you need to do?

Stop wasting all your time getting traffic through social sites and writing your posts aimed at other bloggers in the same niche as you!

You need to start getting keyword rich inbound links with the sole intent of ranking highly on the search engines (specifically Google) so you can start getting traffic from searches. Let’s say, for instance that you want to rank highly for “how to make money online” then you need to start acquiring backlinks with that as the link text and variations of it.

Want to know what kinds of inbound links you should be getting to maximize your search engine rankings? Read my recent post on finding the perfect backlink. And read Ryan’s recent post on the subject: What Links Can You Point at Your Web Site?

You should also do some keyword research on all the various searches related to your niche and start writing some posts about the different topics that are being searched so you can get rankings for lots of long-tail keywords. The traffic you get from those posts will start adding up and can turn into a lot of visitors and a lot of money!

Getting traffic that actually makes you money isn’t rocket science, it’s really quite easy. All it takes is the discipline on your part to build backlinks and write specific keyword rich posts.

Even if you aren’t interested in learning ways to increase your website traffic I still recommend that you check out the videos, because they raise the bar on what can be done with video.

Click here to see for yourself.

http://twitter.com/georgemanty

My wife Jill told me I should use Twitter a year ago. Considering how big it has gotten, maybe I should have listened to her. One of these days I am going to remember that she is always right

I wasn’t sure what to do with my Twitter account, so I thought I would ask you what you would like to see me do with my Twitter account.

Here are some ideas I have come up with so far:

Twitter my wife’s labor
My wife Jill is due May 15th and I was thinking maybe I could twitter the whole labor. Now, sure if she finds out, she will probably kill me. Considering the way she reacted when I had a long conversation about golf with her OB-GYN when she was in labor with our second child… I guess twittering the labor is out…

Twitter my random thoughts through the day like…

“Had yogurt for lunch… when nobody was looking drove to Taco Bell and ate a REAL lunch.”

Twitter what I am doing in my business
That could be useful, but could also be boring. For instance, it could look like this:

“Spent five hours debating whether to use twitter for marketing, networking, fun or not at all.”

What should I use Twitter for?

What would you like me to use Twitter for? Or maybe the better question to ask is, “What could I use twitter for that would make you want to follow me on twitter?”

Please let me know…

Web 2.0 has created an online environment that is designed to make us spend more and more time online, which in turn can ruin your life.

Spending A Majority Of Your Free Time Online Is Not Healthy

Errr… isn’t this a blog about making money ONLINE?

Well, yes but…

You can’t spend all your time online and then find time to exercise. You can’t spend all your time online AND cultivate a relationship with your kids. You can’t spend all your time online AND strengthen the relationship with your spouse and/or find a spouse. You can’t spend all your time online AND have a relationship with God. You can’t spend all your time online AND …. (you fill in the blanks)....

You need to have balance and spending too much time making “friends” online can make you unbalanced.

That said, Web 2.0 has it’s good points. As an Internet marketer, leveraging web 2.0 sites can be a great way to make money online, but it does have a cost.

What I Learned In 2007 About Marketing With Web 2.0

I spent a great deal of time in 2007 building online relationships using web 2.0. I would never want to give up the friendships I have made, BUT…

It hurt my off-line relationships with God, with my wife, with my kids, and it also hurt my health. It wasn’t just spending time with Web 2.0 that hurt me but also spending time reading email 10+ times a day. In 2007 I spent WAY too much time checking email. In 2008 I am going to significantly decrease the amount of time I spend experimenting with web 2.0 sites and on other activities like reading email. It’s just not worth it!

But Isn’t Web 2.0 The Best Way To Get Traffic Online?

Yes and No…

Leveraging Web 2.0 is one way to get good traffic to your site, however it is not the only way to get good traffic online. There are many other ways to increase your website traffic that can be just as effective as Web 2.0. In fact, you NEVER want to rely on only ONE form of traffic generation for ALL of your website traffic!. This is so important I am going to say it again:

You NEVER want to rely on ONE form of traffic generation for ALL of your website traffic!

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you should give up on Web 2.0. What I am saying is that Web 2.0 and other advancements in technology are making it increasingly easier to lose focus on what is important. What I am saying is that spending too much time on surfing the web, making web 2.0 connections, voting on your favorite sites, etc. can ruin your life.

So, what can you do to keep Web 2.0 From Ruining Your Life?

Here are three ways to prevent Web 2.0 from adversely affecting your life:

1. Schedule Your Online Time
   Make sure you always have enough time for the most important things in your life by setting aside a certain amount of time each day that you can be online. First set aside time for the most important things in your life, like spending time with your spouse, kids, etc. Then with the remaining time set a schedule for your online time. Doing this will make you realize just how much time you are wasting on tasks that have no bearing to your emotional, financial, mental, and spiritual well being.

   As Internet marketers, it is important that we schedule our time wisely. There is something called the 80/20 rule that you need to keep in mind when you make a schedule. The 80-20 rule (also known as the Pareto principle, the principle of factor sparsity, and the law of the vital few) basically says that, for most events, 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes. In online business this translates to statements like “80 percent of your profits comes from 20 percent of your customers”, and “20 percent of your efforts results in 80 percent of your profits”. Your goal is to schedule as much of your time as possible on that “20 percent” that creates the real profits in your business. Scheduling time to work on the things that actually make you more money is crucial to your success. With Web 2.0 it is easy to focus on the “social” aspects of being online and spend VERY little time actually working on things that make you money.

2. Focus, Focus, Focus
   Web 2.0 is not all bad. After experimenting with social networks, you should find 1 or 2 (maybe 3 or 4) that you really want to focus on and forget about the other ones. When you focus on 1 or 2 social sites for marketing purposes you can become an expert at using those 1 or 2 sites for getting traffic to your sites. If you don’t focus on 1 or 2 sites, you will wind up spreading yourself too thin and not being able to make a big impact using any of them. Not focusing on 1 or 2 Web 2.0 sites for marketing purposes can be a total waste of your time.
3. Step Away From The Computer
   Like I mentioned in step 1 you need to schedule time to spend off the computer. Just like you should schedule your online time, you should schedule time to do the things that are important to you. Otherwise you might rationalize spending more and more time online.

   Take a step away from the computer and live your life. Do the things you enjoy, spend time with your family and friends. Don’t sacrifice a REAL life for an online one.

Final Thoughts

Would you rather have the most friends on MySpace or have a good marriage? Would you rather have the largest community on MyBlogLog or have a great relationship with your kids? Would you prefer to be a top rated Digger or have an online business that pays your bills?

If you spend too much time experimenting with all of the latest and greatest social networks you will find yourself spending WAY more time online in 2008 while making less money than you did in 2007. I don’t know about you, but I want to make more money online while working less, not less money online while working more.

Spending time using Web 2.0 to promote your business, make friends, and have fun can be very good, but spending TOO MUCH time in the Web 2.0 world can ruin your life and be bad for your business.

What web 2.0 site has given you the most free traffic?

MySpace (35%)
Stumbleupon (35%)
Squidoo (10%)
other (10%)
Digg (5%)
Del.icio.us (5%)
Netscape (0%)

Total votes: 20

I was a little surprised by the results. I expected more votes for Netscape and less votes for MySpace. I am not surprised at all by Stumbelupon being one of the two top sites voted on. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, since one of my sites was getting really good traffic from MySpace before I ever signed up for a MySpace account.

Tomorrow I will have a new poll for you and I will be revealing a little bit about the offer someone made this past week to buy my blog. I will also share whether I took it or not…

Personally, the best traffic I have ever received from a social media site was when this blog was on the front page of Netscape for over a week. Probably second to that would be my stumbleupon traffic.

What about you?

Let me know by answering the poll below and feel free to leave comments!

There is a wave of Web 2.0 sites flowing towards the Chinese market. Since China is the world’s second-largest and fastest-growing Internet user population, the move looks logical.

We have already seen MySpace, Yahoo! and Google making inroads into the Chinese market by either launching local versions of their sites or investing in China-based technology or social networking startups. The recent news, published in Business Week and The Wall Street Journal, shows many experts and VC’s has shown interest in the Chinese market. Rumors are that Intel Capital, the financial services unit of the US semiconductor giant, has already invested millions of dollars in fast-rising Chinese social network 51.com.

The market in China is expected to grow to 246 millions by 2011. The people in China are now more educated about internet usage and taking advantage of the Web’s collaborative potential.

So what is the reason for this wave in the Chinese Market?

If we look closely we will see there is more than a handful of reasons to support this movement. First, the growing number of people using internet. It’s growing with an annual rate of 13% for the five year period. Second, usage of online-generated content by the Chinese adult at home is appreciably greater than users in the US, Japan and Western Europe.

The only barrier which many small companies can face is government censorship. Even big giants like Yahoo, Google and eBay hit roadblocks in their efforts to extend their empires in the most populous country on earth.

Web 2.0 introduced the concept that users can play around with the content, and many seem to love contributing to and consuming that content. Many advertisers started their Web 2.0 campaigns with visions of generating more revenue than before, but the true picture tells a sad story. MarketingSherpa points out the black hole in the concept. According to the research, ads on a Web 2.0 site don’t convert quite as well as ads on traditional “Web 1.0″ sites.

When we talk about traffic, we can bank upon several 2.0 sites (like YouTube, MySpace, etc), but what we are not looking at is the maturity of an audience. The audience of these sites are still very young, so it’s not fair to draw a comparison. In my article SEO – Sandwiched between Conception and Misconception I showed some concern over the many professionals who have started believing that 2.0 sites rank better then non 2.0 sites. For me, this is also not true.

For me, the 2.0 sites have a long way to go compared to sites like Yahoo or CNN or even MSN, which already have established mature user bases and are doing well by changing and playing with various monetization techniques.

So we should give some more time before directly comparing 2.0 and non-2.0 sites.

Well, while I was working on Stompernet stuff, I did manage to read a few articles from blogs that I visit on a regular basis. Here are some of the articles that stood out for me this week (in no particular order):

Gather .edu and .gov backlinks (enhanced)
Nice post by Daniel about finding .edu and .gov links. Goes well with my 101 free ways to get blog traffic post from yesterday.

Networking Mistakes & Tips
Amanda gives a nice list of networking tips. I especially like her tip on how to handle giving advice to fellow bloggers.

Comments Capture Reader Interest
Garry wrote a good post about the importance of commenting on blogs.

What is a Blog Meme?
In response to my tag Chris wrote this interesting post about blog memes. At the end he challenges you to create a blog meme for him. Pretty good opportunity for a solid link if you ask me.

Four Effective Ways to Get Your Blog Listed on the del.icio.us Popular Pages
Maki gives a good list of ways to get OTHER people to bookmark your site on social bookmarking sites.

Are You Reading Too Many Blogs About Blogging?
Yaro’s post reminded me why I am working so hard on the STOMPERNET program, (because I have a vested interest in it).

I currently have 20 Squidoo lenses, although when I got paid I had 18. My Squidoo earnings for the month were $8.25 and my total Squidoo earnings (what I got paid) were $12.42.

Yes, that is in no way, shape, or form BIG MONEY!

Currently, I think of Squidoo as part promotional tool, part money making tool. I have talked in the past why it is a good promotional tool (click here to read more about Squidoo as a promotional tool). Now I want to talk about it as a way to make money online.

Here are a few observations I have made about making money with Squidoo:

1. Make Lots of Lenses
It seems fairly obvious, but the more lenses you make the more money you should make. This is true of normal websites as well. In general, the more content you have the more money you will make.

2. Join Groups
Typically the lenses that I make that have made the most money have been part of a popular Squidoo group. Squidoo groups are basically groups of related lenses. You can either create your own groups or join other people’s groups. If you create your own group, it definitely takes up more of your time because you have to accept and reject lenses that want to join your group. However, having control over popular groups can be useful.

3. Do Keyword Research
Create lenses on popular topics to maximize your profit potential. The lenses of mine that have made the most money, also happen to be the ones that deal with more popular topics.

4. Add More Tags
When you initially create a new lens, you can enter three tags for the lens. These tags are keywords used to categorize your lens. Your lens and other related lenses have links to these tag pages. The tag pages link back to all of the lenses that use that tag. This means that when you create a new lens your lens automaticly gets links from the tag pages on the Squidoo site. In other words, the more tags you create for your lens, the more links you will have to your lens.

Don’t go overboard with the tags, but add more than three.

5. Create Quality Content
The lenses that make me money, tend to have more content than the lenses that don’t make me money. Also, the lenses with interactive content (allows users to add links, etc), tend to have more traffic. Content is still king.

Also, I found a really good Squidoo lens about making money with Squidoo. It includes information on how your earnings are calculated. You can click here to read it.

For further reading on Squidoo, here are my past Squidoo posts:

My First Squidoo Lens – Big Money from Loan Refinancing?

My Squidoo Results

How Can Squidoo Increase Website Traffic?

Squidoo Results Take 2

I think Killer Startups is really a “killer startup” website in and of itself. I also think you can use it to keep an eye on what online businesses people are starting up, which online startups people like the most, and to help you brainstorm startup ideas of your own.

Anyway, you can go check it out by clicking here and voting on your favorite sites.

The blog I found is Brian Gardner’s blog. Brian even wrote this post about reaching the top 500 and how he was on his way to the top 100. Well now, Brian’s blog is all the way up to 71 and climbing.

How did he make it in to the top 100 so fast?

Brian designs really nice free wordpress templates. In fact, he has 14 free wordpress themes so far! At the bottom of each theme is a link to his blog. When people use one of his themes, they are linking to his blog from their blog. Technorati’s rankings are based on the number of links other blogs have to your blog. So, in Brian’s case he is getting tons of links from other people’s blogs, which is quickly raising his Technorati ranking.

What a brilliant way to get on Technorati’s top 100 list!

Anyway, if you want to do what he has done, just follow in Brian’s footsteps:

1. Create lots of free wordpress themes or hire someone to create them for you.
2. In the footer of each theme, have a link to your blog.
3. Submit your themes to all the free wordpress theme sites and theme viewers out there.
4. Watch your blog climb the Technorati ranks.

That’s all there is to it…

Here are a few blogging related posts that I read this week and found interesting:

10 Requisites for Professional Bloggers

10 (+5) Requisites for Professional Bloggers

How to Run a Blog Competition to Find New Readers and Make Your Blog Sticky

Banned from MyBlogLog

The Resource Linkbait – Using Lists to Build Authority, Traffic and Links to your Website.

Whenever I get bored with a website or blog, I stop visiting it.

One of my BIGGEST goals in 2007 and beyond is to be remarkable, and to NOT BE BORING!

You should make it one of your goals too! Stop being boring! Nobody cares about boring websites except their owners. Just stop it!

Be remarkable, Be exciting, Be interesting, Be unique, Be everything you want to be, but…

DON’T BE BORING!

For those of you who don’t know this, Daniel was nominated for the 2007 weblog award for Best Web Development Weblog.

Daniel agreed to the interview and it is my pleasure to share it with you. I am sure it will be of benefit to those of you just getting started in the blogosphere.

Q. What were the first thoughts that went through your head when you found out?

I discovered the nomination looking through my server statistics. There were 27 visitors coming from the Bloggies website. The interesting thing is that the nominations probably were released one hour or so before my server uploaded the statistics, hence why I had only 27 visitors. The next day, in fact, I received almost 1000 visitors from the Bloggies. It was quite a surprise to me, specially when I discovered the blogs that I was competing with (i.e. Problogger, A List Apart and Copyblogger).

Q. Why do you think your blog was nominated?

Sometime ago I had published a post about the Weblog Awards, with a link where people could go and nominate their favorite weblogs for different categories. I think that some of my readers headed to the website and nominated Daily Blog Tips, and probably I was also lucky for having a couple of more votes than the runner up. Either way I am really thankful for the people that contributed to it.

Q. How did you get started in blogging?

I have always played with websites when I was younger, but I never had the time to create and actually publish them. Early in 2005, however, I came across some articles outlining the benefits of blogs and explaining how easy it was to setup one. The next day I registered for a Blogger account and created a blog to share my ideas about innovation management (most of them were coming from my thesis).

Q. What do you like most about blogging and why?

In my opinion the Internet used to be a monologue until a couple of years ago. You had big portals providing information for the people, but the flow of information was unidirectional. The appearance of blogs, in my opinion, contributed to change that scenario. Nowadays you have this huge conversation going on across the Internet, which creates much more value and opportunity for everyone.

Q. If you could only give one piece of advice to someone just starting to blog what would it be?

I am afraid I will need to use a cliché here, but the single advice I would give to someone starting out is: content is king! You surely can (and sometimes should) pay attention to the design, search engine optimization, promotion and so on, but if you have great and original
content the readers will come and so will the links.

Q. In your opinion, what is the most crucial element of a blog post?

Well it is difficult to nail down THE most crucial element, but if I had to I guess I would say the title. Titles play a very important role on the reader decision about reading the post further or just skipping it altogether. Other important elements are: the post should be scannable, should not contain grammatical errors and should go straight to the point.

Q. Is there any other advice you would like to share with people looking to start a blog?

Start it today. Everyone commits mistakes, but the sooner you start the sooner you will learn your way through.

How did I find this out?

By looking at the MyBlogLog widget on my site. Here is a picture that I screen captured of their profiles (circled) on the “Recent Readers” widget for this blog:

Apparently, I am not the only one who saved a screen shot of my recent readers list. Rob saved this screen shot of my recent readers, because Darren Rowse of Problogger visited my blog and Darren’s picture just happened to show up right next to Rob’s icon in my reader list.

I really like the networking aspect of MyBlogLog, but from a “Hey that’s cool!” aspect the “Recent Readers” widget is coolest. While it does take up valuable real estate on your blog, at this point I think the “coolness” factor outweighs that.

What do you think? What is the coolest feature of MyBlogLog to you?

Are Headlines Tangling Your Readers?

Don’t Be The Best… Be The First!

Thinking outside of the box

What ProBloggers Can Learn from TechCrunch 20

Google Stops Google Bombs

Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero via (jazzcatseo)