Bare All: What IM Guru Are Reluctant To Tell You

If you’ve been on the internet on the 90s to the early 2000, you will know what I mean by what IM guru are reluctant to tell you. Those are the days when the phrase ‘making money online’, ‘get rich online’ and ‘be your own boss’ was really famous and many got scammed online.

I am not talking about online scam but the real IM guru that sell products for you to start blogging. Blogging is a famous term then. By blogging it means that you start from scratch and write anything that you are interested in like hobbies, occupation or even talent that you had. 

Famous gurus from the 2000s were big names like John Chow, Pat Flynn, Jeremy ‘ShoeMoney’ and many more. I love these guys and I even bought some of their product. Some work and some don’t but it depends on your part also. If you are lazy and broke, you can’t hope for anything.

It is during those days that I realize that making money online is not an easy task. You must have some skills and passion to draw your internet success. But what’s still pissing me off until today is the way that the gurus are presenting their making money online products. They made it sound so easy that any school children can follow their instructions. 

Honestly, I bought their product because they tell their readers/customers on how easy it is to set up a website. I didn’t purchase because of greed for money or anything. I just want to learn something. I have passion for IM and I will learn about it no matter what!

The moral of the story (in my case), every business no matter where do you plant it, will get a rough start and this is including IM. I learned my lessons well and thinking back about it will surely made my day. Anyway, here I want to bare all what are the things that IM gurus are reluctant to tell you.

1. IM Guru said: Build your own website

Bare all:

There are many types of website. The most famous website for making money are micro niche sites (MNS), authority sites and e-commerce websites. Blogging will get you nowhere. Well, it will but for a long period of time.

2. IM Guru said: Buy a self-hosted domain and hosting (usually they will recommend Hostgator and Bluehost)

Bare all:

There are a lot of other cheap hosting provider out there. Hostgator and Bluehost are not bad hosting but it is expensive for newbies who just wanted to take their first step in learning. For example 123system offer $4 hosting per year. But cheap hosting are usually not the best hosting. I have bad experience with 1and1 hosting.

There are also a few types of hosting. The cheapest and that I would recommend for newbies are shared hosting. For full control of the hosting, buy a virtual private server (VPS). Search Google for more information about web hosting. 

For domain, if you register a domain with a different provider, you will have to learn the steps to point the domain to the hosting. You will not encounter this if you have the same provider as your hosting company. For this, I personally, use different domain registrar and different hosting provider for security reason.

3. IM Guru said: You can get a cheap domain for $0.99

Bare all:

This is absolutely true, however you will sometimes need a discount coupon for that. In rare cases, you will stumble with $0.99 promotion while you were registering for a new domain. That $0.99 is just for the domain name. It is not including whois privacy protection. Without this, people can see your details if they check the domain name.

4. IM Guru said: Choose a profitable niche (topic) to write

Bare all:

The Google Keyword Tool is long gone. This is the best tool so far to find a profitable niche. The topic not also must be profitable but with low competition. Keyword research and the right keyword is the most important thing for a website to go explode. 

At this time, the most popular keyword research tools are Long Tail Pro and Market Samurai. Most people now use LTP because it can count the competition and it can generate long tail keywords. You can try LTP for a 10 days trial, one-time payment of $97 or with monthly subscription of $27 (pro + platinum). 

Market Samurai comes with only one time payment of $149. The trial version is for 14 days and if you purchase before this trial is over, you will have a discount of $50 and Market Samurai will cost you $99 for a one-time payment. Even Market Samurai is not a popular choice anymore but I still use it because it has a good user interface with different colors to examine competitors.

5. IM Guru said: Build backlinks to make your website famous

Bare all:

You can build backlinks by building web 2.0 properties, using Private Blog Network (PBN), blog commenting, forum posting, using social media, guest posting and many more. That is only for one website, yes, one only. That is really a tiring work for just one website. To make it worse, Google regularly update their algorithm for their search engine ranking.  

People nowadays outsource this kind of stuff. A SEO package for a website is not cheap. It can cost about a few hundred dollars to thousands. You can find such package in the Warrior forum or BlackHatWorld forum. Those guys’ rocks.

6. IM Guru said: Write often on your website

Bare all:

The recommendation varies according to which guru you learn from. Some recommend once a day or a few times a week. Again, this is only for one website. If you have 10 websites, it will give you a total knockout.

You will also need to outsource this. It is easier than done. Cheap articles are always crap. You have to edit them yourself to make it readable. For tips, buy articles that cost more than $5 for a 500 word article.

Read More

Top 10 List About Things You Should Never Forget If You Have A New Blog

You set up a blog or you bought one, get your post ready or at least some ideas, post it to your blog and everything should be fine, right? Wrong! I’ve been doing this for a few months but I can’t seem to get traffic to my blog. It bugs me for a while then I realize I didn’t do anything to improve the blog’s SEO and keywords.

Being a blogger means that you always do the same thing with a new blog in your possession. There are no other ways to get traffic to your blog. Doing the same thing every time can make your brain forgetful. Sometimes you are too busy with your personal schedule and you will tend to forget about small stuff about your blog.

I was truly devastated knowing that I don’t have good traffic to my blog for no apparent reason. But it’s not anyone’s fault. I’m only tired and couldn’t remember to set up the SEO pluggin and everything else. The only thing I remember was just to post my article every two days. Then I have to continue with my work and study. 

This is not a long post. I only want to remind you about the things that you might forget to do with your blog. Remember that you should always keep this list on your note so that you would not forget. Here is the top 10 list:

• Do keyword research
• Set up your SEO
• Wait for your blog’s traffic results
• Do a few experiments with your tweak to get the best result
• Test your blog again
• Comment on other blogs/competitor
• Join forums
• Be active on the internet/be social
• Update your social account often
• Build your relationship with readers

 

Read More

All In One SEO Pack Pluggin Tutorial And Configuration

Read More

2014 Resolutions For Bloggers

It is almost the end of January. Have you thought about your resolution for 2014? Even a blogger also have a resolution or few resolutions. Remember that blogging is a business. You must have a goal for your blog. Do it slowly but it is a must. Don’t waste time blogging if you are not in to it.

If you like blogging, I guess you already have a resolution for this year. Resolutions are different for each blogger. It is according to their achievements. If you failed to achieve your last year resolution, you can also do it this year. No one is forcing you to do something because that is your own duty.

For my resolution this year, I want to draw more traffic to my blog including this blogger blog. I love this blog even though it is not perfect. It is a place where I can write my personal emotions about blogging and my blog development. If you need help to find your resolution, you can read take note below:

Start a new blog

Register to another mailing list service

Changing the entire template

Sell old blog

Changing SEO style

Give more comments on other blogs/make friends

Driving more traffic

Get more sales

Increase more profit

Finding sponsors

Register new affiliate programs

Learning new techniques in web development

Learn some HTML

Create a landing page

Work more on social network

Get your article published in article directory

Increase blog security

These are only examples. You can choose one if you are interested. If you already have your own resolution, get it going now. Make sure that you can finish it before the year ends. Start your engine immediately.

Read More

How To Add Hostgator Email To Microsoft Outlook

I found this video on Youtube to share with everyone. This is a simple explanation on how to add your Hostgator email account to Microsoft Outlook. The video is only a few minutes long and I guess that you will be setting your email for that period of time also. Enjoy!

Read More

Methods To Promote Your Blog For Free

Bloggers are so crazy about visitors. Many bloggers check their blog visitors every day to see how many people are visiting their blog. This is because all bloggers want other people to read what they are trying to say and their personal opinion.

No one creates a blog for the sake of blogging without anyone visiting them. That is what a blog is all about. Blogging is socializing. You don’t have to be a great writer to start a blog. You blog because you want to hear other people’s opinion and also show others what is your opinion on a certain topic.

Bloggers that have extra cash to spend, they sometimes spend big only to bring people to their blog. One of the most popular place to advertise your blog is through Google Adword. If you don’t know what you are doing, you can create a hole in your pocket through the wrong step you take.

Don’t feel down with competitors that have the cash. You can go slowly in driving traffic. The best way to bring traffic to your blog is through free methods and not by spending so much in ads. Don’t get me wrong. If you have the money, you can go the faster way.

In the other hand, I prefer free traffic through free methods. I hate to pay for ads except for driving traffic to a landing page. That is a different story because you are trying to sell something. You will usually get your money back if you can sell something. Here are the free methods that can make a difference to your blog:

Blog commenting

Leave your comments at other blogs that have the same topic or niche as you are. Keep the blog’s address for you to go back in the future. It is a good idea to make friends with people who have the same interest as you. 

Blog commenting allows you to leave your blog’s address when you leave your comments. Don’t do this to spam other blogs or they will block your comments. Leave quality comments so that other people who read your comment knows that you are not a spam bot.

Use social media

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter are use widely around the world and the best part of it is you can use it for free. Post something that people love to read about for instance something funny, sad and touching story. When other people likes your post, they will help you share.

Blogging style social media such as Tumblr, Pinterest and Squidoo also plays an important part. You can write something about your blog or about your topic and leave a link there. If someone is interested in your article, they will click your link and you will have free traffic.

 

Article marketing

For me, this is the hard part but this is the best way to make your blog known to others. English is not my first language. That means I will have grammatical errors everywhere on my article no matter how much I check my article. for this reason I stick with social media.

If you think your English is great and you know how to format your article, you are good to go. The best way to send your article is to Ezine Article. People always look around Ezine to find free articles and probably they will find yours. Ezine is just an example. You can send your article in any article directory website that you prefer.

Word of mouth

This is a traditional way of promoting. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t intend to ask you to promote your blog to anyone you see (that also works). What I meant here is when your blog is popular and worthy to read, people can introduce your blog to their friends. 

If you have a business card, you can write down your blog there. Some people start a blog for business purpose and giving business cards away with their blog’s address is a pretty normal thing to do. Don’t be so down in promoting your blog.

Read More