Brute Force SEO got me on the front page of Google!

If you click on the image below you will see that my site, www.nursingschoolprograms.com, is on the front page of google for Nursing School Programs against 1.43 million competing sites. Why am I excited about this? Because I tried to get ranked for that term for almost a year on my own, writing articles on ezinearticles, blog posts, squidoo lenses, and I could not come anywhere near Google’s front page. There are very well established, much older, much bigger sites that rank for that term and I just could not budge them.

Then my Ozzie pal Peter Drew, to help me out, did two things that made the site shoot up through the search engine pages and finally grab me that coveted page one spot, which has greatly boosted my traffic and my adsense earnings. He submitted my site’s URL to a bunch of RSS syndication sites and he submitted a Youtube video of mine to a bunch of video sites. And voila, the next day my site was on page one. It was like some kind of freakish SEO voodoo.

Now, I literally never promote other people’s products, but this just works too well for me not to sing its praises. Go search for nursing school programs on Google right now; www.nursingschoolprograms.com was on the front page minutes ago when I checked.

And being on the front page of Google translates to a lot more money and a lot more traffic. I like money. I like traffic.

Brute Force SEO just briefly opened up their membership again; Peter caps it at 1000 members but he has some spots open. If you want in, here is the link to the sales page which explains it better than I can : Brute Force SEO

Lots of useful tools

Okay, some of these may be more amusing than useful:

Make your own chat room:

http://www.chatmaker.net/

Upload a slideshow and share it:

http://www.slideshare.net/

Online Alarm Clock - Thanks, Chris Hunter from Twitter and the Warrior Forum

Online alarm clock

Run a search on your name:

http://addictomatic.com

http://www.socialmention.com/

Shorten, share and track links on Twitter & Friendfeed:

Tweetburner

Here is a list of OPEN ID resources

http://mashable.com/2008/08/26/openid-resources/

Here is an RSS Mixer

http://www.rssmixer.com/

A link cloaker

http://www.click2cloak.com/

The Blog Herald - 5 Sources For Free and Legal Images:

http://www.blogherald.com/2008/10/06/5-sources-for-free-and-legal-images/

This isn’t even an affiliate link, I just think Peter Drew rocks and using two of his techniques made my site shoot up in google rankings:

www.bruteforceseo.com

This helps you get interviewed by media

http://www.helpareporter.com/

If you need cheap, royalty free pictures for your site:

www.istockphoto.com

http://us.fotolia.com/

Creative Commons pictures on Flicker:

http://flickr.com/creativecommons/by-2.0/

Create a custom mix tape:

http://favtape.com/

Big Page of Free Web Tools:

http://dombom.com/iframes/bigpage.htm

Online customisable radio stations:

www.blip.fm

www.last.fm

www.pandora.com

Streaming free music and videos:

http://www.dizzler.com/

Will you need an umbrella today?

http://umbrellatoday.com/

List of DoFollow Sites:

http://www.squidoo.com/dofollow

Is the website down for everybody, or just me?

Is the website down for everybody, or just me?

You fell asleep watching the DVD

You fell asleep watching the DVD

Free voiceover service

http://www.radiodaddy.com/

Make an anagram of your name:

http://wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html

Awesome free online photo editor, I am almost positive I got this from Chris Brogan -

http://www.picnik.com/

Your online task manager:

http://www.rememberthemilk.com/

Useful search & social media tools:

http://reportr.net/2008/09/10/31-essential-online-tools-for-journalists/

Cool Twitter Tools

Here is a list of cool Twitter apps & links that I’ve learned about from Twitter folks - enjoy!

Created by my good friend Big Mike, a great tool for managing your Twitter friends:

http://tweetybot.com

This shows the 100 most popular Twitterers:

http://twittercounter.com/

This shows you who just unfollowed you and what your last Tweet was before you unfollowed them:

http://useqwitter.com/

This is a Twitter app for Blackberry:

http://www.orangatame.com/products/twitterberry/

This is a Twitter app for iphone:

http://twitterforiphone.com/

This is a Twitter app for your Firefox browser:

http://www.naan.net/trac/wiki/TwitterFox

This is a desktop Twitter app:

http://www.twhirl.org

This list groups Twitterers by their interests - gardening, beauty, real estate, etc.:

http://twitterpacks.pbwiki.com/

This allows you to upload your pictures to Twitter:

http://twitpic.com

This is a wordpress plugin for Twitter:

http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

This is another list of Twitterers by interest - travel, career, aerospace, arts…

http://www.twellow.com//

This shows you what URLS are being posted on Twitter:

http://twitturly.com

This shows you who the Twitterers with the most followers are (Obama just cracked 100,000)

http://www.twitterholic.com/

This is a Twitter cookbook with SHORT recipes!

http://twitter.com/cookbook

This is an Adobe Air desktop app for Twitter:

http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/

This lets you unfollow people who are not following you, those fools:

http://friendorfollow.com/

This is a Tweetcloud of popular topics on Twitter in real time. Words shrink and grow.

http://www.twitscoop.com/

Like Tinyurl - shrinks URLS so you don’t waste precious characters:

http://twitturls.com/

This lets you schedule tweets to be posted at a later date, also can auto thank and autofollow new followers:

http://www.tweetlater.com/

This has a bunch of Twitter icons:

http://thenextweb.org/2008/09/16/twitterkeys-enhance-your-twitter-conversations/

This lets you search Twitter for specific topics:

www.search.twitter.com

This is a Twitter app for OUtlook express - useless for me as a Mac owner -

http://www.techhit.com/OutTwit/

This helps you find Twitterers with a similar interests:

http://crazybob.org/twubble/

This lets you bulk unfollow all of your unfollowers:

http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/

This lets you follow a conversation between 2 Twitterers!

http://tweet2tweet.com/

Hot Bloggity Goodness

Here’s a couple of sites I really like: Mari Smith’s www.whyfacebook.com and Michael Martine’s www.remarkablogger.com. Anyone who uses social media will find these sites extremely useful. In fact they’re so useful that if you go there you will read for hours before you can tear yourself away. Don’t go there. Don’t read Michael Martine’s great posts. Don’t read Mari Smith’s awesome posts and don’t check out her blogroll of helpful relevant industry blogs. Don’t, I say!

And for the love of God do not go to www.copyblogger.com and start reading or I may never see you again.

And don’t go to the home of the babyfaced assassin,  http://www.affiliatextreme101.com/xtremeblog/or you’ll make so much money you won’t need me any more. We can’t have that. 

God, why do you tweeple not listen to me? 

Tags: Social media blogs, social networking

Workout tunes for my ipod

This is what I’ve got so far, but I need more - suggestions? I should clarify by the way - my workout tunes are completely different than what I usually listen to. When I work out I need something with a fast energetic beat.

My regular music list - The Old 97s, Freakwater, Son Volt, Billy Bragg, Marianne Faithfull, Rolling Stones, Spoon, Starsailor, The Dandy Warhols…

My workout music list- cheesy peppy dance music from all eras.

Tags: itunes workout songs

Free PLR articles

So what is PLR, and who can benefit from it?

PLR stands for private label rights. Webmasters buy private label rights articles when they want content for their websites but can’t afford to pay $20-$30 for every article or blog post.

Well-written PLR (and I’ll be the first to concede that there is a sea of garbage PLR out there, written by people who think that if they can type, they’re writers) can be used like this:

You can take the PLR article directly and put it on your affiliate or adsense website or blog. PLR generally costs about 50 cents or $1 an article so you can fill up your blog or website very cheaply, with targeted, well-written content (if the writer is, say, a fantastic writer and former reporter, like, ahem, me) ; the catch is that the writer is selling the same PLR articles to dozens of other people as well. 

Since dozens of other people have purchased these same articles, will this be seen as duplicate content by Google? Well, first of all, most people purchase things and DON’T use them. Think of all the stuff gathering virtual dust on YOUR hard drive.  So there’s not necessarily going to be a lot of copies of the same article out there. And secondly, it’s not unusual to see two copies of the same article on the same page of Google.  So using the PLR article as-is isn’t the worst thing that you can do.

You can use the PLR article as inspiration when you are burnt out and running out of article ideas. Let’s say you have an exercise website, and you buy a PLR pack with an article on 10 best outdoor exercises, and an article on the dangers of over-hydration, etc. You’ve just gotten ideas that you can use to write your own blog or website posts.

You can use a well-researched PLR article (like mine, ahem) - and mine the information from it, which saves you precious time. If I write a PLR article saying that low calorie diets tend to fail long term, I’m going to cite the University or hospital study which says so. Take that factoid and quickly write your own original article.

To get some free PLR articles and to be notified when I have PLR articles for sale - AND ONLY THEN! No spamming, honest to goodness! - go to:

http://plr-list.blogspot.com

and follow the instructions there. No catch, no obligations, etc. 

HANDY TIP - I JUST STARTED PROMOTING THESE PLR ARTICLES SO HARDLY ANYONE ELSE HAS THEM! GO GRAB ‘EM!

What I learned at Blog Orlando

1.) Most important lesson:  You can’t beat face to face contact for developing client relationships! I met at least 5 potential new clients. Get out there and mingle, people! Remember your business cards - so 20th century, I know, but hey, sometimes the old way is the best way. Local chamber of commerce meetings or other business oriented meetings are also good for making contact if there isn’t a blogging or social media conference going on near you any time soon. 

2.) All the cool kids have Macs. I swear I think that 90 percent of the people with laptops had Apples. Next most popular seemed to be Toshiba. I did see an incredibly adorable little Acer, which was exactly the size that I think all laptops should be.

3.) Ted Murphy, co-founder of http://izea.com/ talked about monetizing blogs. (No, he’s not paying me for that link, although his company is based on paid text links!)

He listed a bunch of methods - text link ads, banner ads, CPM, CPC, etc. Someone in the audience who said he made more than $10,000 a month briefly shared that he sold about 18 different ebooks that he wrote and that he had multiple income streams. Ted agreed that this is the way to go, saying that everyone is going to have an off month in one area or another…one month your CPC will be slow, one month your speaking engagements will be slow, another month your ebooks will be slow…you definitely never want to rely on just one stream of income.

Ted also said that unless you are a really big playa, it’s hard to profit from cost-per-impression - CPM. 

Also Ted always wears a cap. Good personal branding move, in my opinion.

4.) Co-working is starting to really take off in popularity. Basically it’s when a bunch of people who work from home or on their own all get togehter, pool their resources, rent a big office space together, and work from there. You bring your own equipment, you pretty much just get a desk and internet/phone connection.

Why do this? Working from home is a lonely business and there’s far less opportunity to make new business connections, pool talents and resources, brainstorm, together, and just interact with adult humans. 

There is probably a coworking group in  your area. Check it out! http://coworking.pbwiki.com/

5.) Reputation/Brand Management - Leah Jones gave an interesting talk in “Beyond Google”. When her company did some research into the online buzz on Omaha Steaks they found out that customers weren’t just excited about the steaks - they went online talking about how cool the dry ice is (the steaks arrive packed in dry ice. Damn, now I want some).

Lesson learned - You may not know what your  customers REALLY love (or don’t love!) about your product but by checking on relevant forums, blogs, wikis, and search engines, you can find out. 

6.) I really need to put my Twitter name on my business cards. And so should everybody else. Everyone who handed me their business card said apologetically “My Twitter name’s not on there…” 

Tags: Blog Orlando, Blogging, Coworking, Izea

Am I following too many people on Twitter?

I’ve had a number of people ask me how I can possibly follow so many people on Twitter, and they say they worry that if they follow too many people, they won’t be able to interact with them all.

That is very true, and I know some people only choose to follow as many Twitterers as they can personally interact with. 

I choose to follow a lot more Twitterers than that - currently over 1300, and I plan to add more - for several reasons.

One, I am Twittering for business purposes. I quit my newspaper reporting job, and support myself with ghostwriting and freelance writing. I’ve found many excellent clients on Twitter. The more people that I am following, the more people follow me, which means -  the more potential customers I have.

And then the fact that I am following so many people means that every time I check in on Twitter, I am walking in on hundreds of fascinating conversations from people all over the world. And I can choose to join in on any of those conversations, or not. I value that immensely.

And finally I can favorite people whose Tweets I find particularly interesting, or relevant, so the people that I particularly like don’t have to get lost in all of the noise. 

Tags: followers, Tweets, Twitter, Twitter followers

Never do THIS on Twitter

This bad Twitter behavior is guaranteed to get people to unfollow you as fast as they can click the little unfollow box. 

You can make a heck of a lot of money by using Twitter wisely, but Twitter is not the place to spam people with affiliate links. Read on to find out what sets many Twitterers teeth on edge. 

Read more…

Tags: Twitter, Twitter etiquette

Twittervangelist

If you aren’t using Twitter for business, you should be! I’ve gotten half a dozen lovely ghostwriting clients from there. I gave my Warrior Forum pal Ryan Leisure some tips on how to use Twitter…and he got clients the first morning he was on there. (It took me about a week to get my first client.) 

The important thing to remember about Twitter,  though, is that it is a SOCIAL networking community. It’s as if you are at a business convention for the weekend in a room full of potential customers. If you are smart, you would chat people up and get to know them before you tried shoving business cards in their hands.

When you are on Twitter, don’t make the mistake of acting like a virtual Amway salesman and constantly sending out Tweets trying to sell, sell, sell. It makes people really dislike you. And un-follow you. 

On Twitter, the idea is to “Tweet” about what you are doing or thinking right now. If you happen to casually discuss what project of yours you are working on right now…and you have an attractive, professional website that you can refer people back to…then you are likely to get clients this way. Works for me.

More on what NOT to do in my next post. 

Tags: social networking, Twitter