Just think of how much money is made buying and selling collectable comics that have a face value of a few cents. That’s pretty niche, but it’s still big business. Conventions exist to cater for the demand and a whole chunk of cash changes hands just in that one tiny area.

Think of eBay – that started out, so the story goes, as a way for the founder’s girlfriend to swap Pez sweet dispensers!

Well niche blogs are really just the same idea, but in the blogging world. It relates to blogs which have a fixed area of focus. It could be in the health area, or in an even narrower niche like high blood pressure. These are just examples, the actual niches can be anything. If a few people are interested in it, then yes, it’s a niche. So ‘learn to speak Klingon’ is definitely a niche (and bigger than you may think).

So just go out and set up a niche blog and you’ll be able to start attracting visitors to that blog. Easy, right? Well, not if you’re like most people (me included) and you just don’t like the time and effort it takes to produce the content. Hey, the internet is supposed to be about easy money, right? Hard work is supposed to be a thing of the past.

What if you really could start a niche blog the easy way? With quality content delivered for you. That would be quite a nice way to build up a blog real estate empire. There are people out there selling such blogs already. All you have to do is pay your money, rewrite the content and then… wait, do what? Rewrite the content yourself? More work.

Ok, so here’s the point of the post. I’ve just launched my niche blog building service. It builds niche blogs, so far so same as everyone else. What my service does that’s special is give each member their own version of the content. You’re not going to get exactly the same content as 500 other people. The full details are at the sales page at instantblogwizard.com

I’ve sent an offer to all my subscribers – a total of 7 of them will get it completely free. The first 5 who comment here and tell me how much the opening offer saving is get it for nothing (well I want you to at least take a look at the sales page!). I’m then keeping 2 copies back for later commenters, so that anyone in a different timezone still has a fair chance. I will decide which 2 commenters get the free copies.

UPDATE: As at 16:30 GMT 12th March the 5 free copies have been allocated. There are 2 more copies available and if there are more qualifying comments than that I’ll pick the 2 commenters who I think should have the free copies. I’ll leave the comments open for a while to give people chance to make their comment and get a free copy of the system.

UPDATE: As at 22:11 GMT 9th March the first 3 free copies have already been allocated.

Please note, if you’re not already on my subscriber list when you make the comment you will not qualify for a free copy – so sign up now if you haven’t already done so. You can do that over on the right of the page.

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Your comments were very welcome and I’m sending everyone who did comment their free copy of my shopping cart script. I’ve just finished tidying up a couple of little things on it and I’m waiting for the source code to be encoded (should be done today/tomorrow) then I’ll send it out to everyone.

I’ve got something pretty special planned for my next ‘real’ blog post. Well, I think it’s special and I hope you will too, so keep an eye out for that announcement on Tuesday 9th March. Genuine value of the freebie is well over $444 in the next 12 months – but I don’t want to give too much away today.

What I will say is that the freebies will go to the first action takers and I’m limiting it to the first 5 who follow the directions I’ll give next week – I can’t afford to let anymore than that have it for free!

No, it’s not a bonus to something else, it’s completely free.

To make it fair for people in different timezones (I hate it when a webinar starts at 3 a.m my time – don’t you?) I will also keep back another 2 freebies. Best 2 comments will also get the freebie. My decision as to which are best will be final!

So you have 2 ways to get your gift: comment fast, or make a great comment.

Shameless bribe? Yes, it is!

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The kicker is that it’s a WordPress theme which doesn’t look anything like WordPress. It’s designed for creating single pages that look like standalone sales pages, or landing pages. There’s none of the usual ‘furniture’ that you get on blogs, so there’s nothing to take you off the page itself. No distractions = more sales, so the theory goes.

It’s a sound theory and as far as the product goes it’s not badly priced at $47. You can take a look at it by clicking here.

Before you do though, I should tell  you that it’s relatively easy to create a WordPress theme that does this. Easy, that is, if you already know how to do it. If you don’t know how, it’s as clear as mud.

I’d like to gauge the level of interest for such a specialized theme, because if there’s enough interest I’ll create one and sell it for considerably cheaper than $47!

So how could you use such a theme?

• Have a separate and unique landing page for every product you promote
• Control all your landing pages within your WordPress dashboard
• Use suitable keyword URLs for your pages – no more hunting for keyword domains
• Avoid ‘leakage’ – once a visitor lands on your page there’s nothing else to take them off it
• Use the scheduled post feature of WordPress to change the main “landing page” for your site every week – you could offer a special deal that lasts one week and then sit back and watch as it updates itself. You’re not limited to weekly deals – you could have a different deal every day of the year, if you wanted to. You could even have different deals hourly on special days, like 4th July! Keep your visitors coming back for more!
• Create single page product review ‘mini sites’ around a central topic. You can link them if you choose, or leave them unlinked and separate.

If you’re interested in acquiring such a theme please leave a comment here.

If there’s enough interest, I’ll create the theme and offer it for sale at $17. For anyone who leaves a comment here you can have it for just $7.

So to recap: if there’s enough interest in having such a theme I’ll create one especially and for anyone who comments on this specific post you can have a copy for:

$7

UPDATE 17 July 2009: I’ve created the theme and it’s sold well at $7 and it’s now selling at $17, although I’ll be raising the price to $27 soon because of all the extras I’m adding to it. For everyone who’s commented on this post I’ve decided to give you a copy of the theme for free as a thank you for joining in and commenting. Emails should be with you shortly. If you haven’t received an email please let me know and I’ll take care of it for you.

I’m creating a plugin that will make this theme even better. I haven’t yet decided whether to charge for it, or add it to the theme itself, but I think it will add a great deal of flexibility so I’m looking forward to announcing it once it’s ready.

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Actually it’s been a while since I did anything IM related, but I’m pretty much back to normal.

I’ve had a few bouts of illness, plus a house move, which have rather done me in for updating this blog and a number of other sites I have. I don’t have a big content producing and maintenance team behind me (the team is me and my dog) so things have got held up in the meantime.

For anyone who was waiting for the rest of the mini-course on bum marketing I apologize. That post will be live in a few minutes and I’ll be posting the next one sometime later today as well, to catch up a little. I’ve decided to put the whole thing together into a free downloadable report when I’ve finished, so anyone wanting it in one go can get hold of it.

One thing I’ll be doing now I’m feeling well again and back at work is the work on my membership sites. They should have launched by now, but along with everything else they ended up delayed. I think, in all truth, I’d sooner have something delayed than try to rush it and kill myself in the process, so I’m living with the fact that my (self-)imposed timescale and deadline didn’t get met.

Once again, sorry for any delays and I promise to try not to get ill again!

No related posts.

I’ve been promising myself a new look for ages, but never got around to it. I’ve bought a blog theme that I like and realized that with the content I currently have my blog doesn’t look as good as it might. The problem is that if I wait until I think it looks fine then it will almost be time to change it again.

So I’ve decided to activate the new theme and start working on it, even though for a while it could make my blog lookg messy. Hence the apology.

The one thing I’ve learned in this life is that if you wait for something to be perfect before you do it then you’ll never do it – so take the first step and work out kinks as you go.

EDIT: Well, after 30 minutes of tweaking, I’ve taken out most of the bits I didn’t like from this theme and I’ve customized it to my liking. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while and just haven’t got around to it. Yet when it came to do the actual customizing it didn’t take long at all.

How many times do you put something off that might actually be fairly quick to complete?

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It’s a nice way to let other visitors know who’s been here and it’s a very good way of getting traffic from other blogs. If you visit blogs in your niche regularly, every day if you can, your image will appear together with a link to your site. if you visit enough blogs your face could become quite well known!

Anyway, if you don’t already have a MyBlogLog account it won’t work, so you won’t see yourself in the widget. You can get your free account at MyBlogLog.

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What do you want?

And I don’t mean that in the ‘what do you want out of life?’ way. I mean it literally. What do you want right now?

Once I know what you want, I can provide it for you. The main thing is that you get to shape what that will be by contributing. Just add a comment and let me know what you really want. If it’s within my power to provide it, or go out and get it for you and then provide it, I will.

Fair enough?

And in addition to that I’ll credit everyone who comments with a live link on the next site I put up to handle the download of whatever it is people want. Of course there are some provisos: I’m not going to provide links to gambling and adult sites, or anything that is in the least bit questionable.

If it turns out that what everyone wants is something that has resale rights, I’ll offer those for free (if it’s legal to do so) to the first person who commented and suggested it. Not the first person to post a comment, but the first person to suggest whatever ‘it’ turns out to be.

Let me know what you think, even if you don’t ‘want’ anything right now.

No related posts.

This content originally appeared in Jon’s blog and I thought it was interesting enough to share – with his permission. I hope you enjoy reading the post and please feel free to comment on it!

How long has everyone been telling you that Google loves blogs? Months? Years? Well, it’s true, and I wanted to share an experience that helps reinforce that truth to you.

The Blog That Resurrected My Rankings

I had a site devoted to a particular type of exercise equipment. The site was in the top 7 results for its keywords in Google for over six months. Unfortunately I had server problems and the site went down for a few days. Google crawled the site constantly because it was well-linked, and so big G knew instantly that the site was down. Since it stayed down for a few days, Google must have decided it wasn’t coming back up, and its rankings plummetted.

After the site did come back up, it reappeared in Google, but this time on the third page (ranking 25 – 28 for its keywords, on average). Its original page one rankings just wouldn’t come back. I shrugged it off as a lesson learned and basically forgot about the site.

Early last week, though, I was testing a tool I’m creating that helps you write and post blog posts to WordPress blogs super fast. I decided to setup a blog on the site that lost its rankings, just to test it out. I made a bunch of blog posts (they were post-dated so they would show up slowly over time), and sat back to see what would happen.

To my surprise, over the weekend my site jumped back onto page one for its rankings. I hadn’t touched that site in months, and now it’s ranking better than it ever was — at #4 for 3 great sets of keywords. This, of course, has spiked my AdSense earnings for the site.

Another nice benefit of the new blog is that the blog itself is getting some additional traffic from Google, even though the blog does not have any external links directly to it. Google is applying the authority of the site itself to the blog. Since the site is well-linked, the blog is given a bit of “trust” by Google and is appearing in the search results as well.

Scraper Sites Can Help You Rank

On a related note regarding blogs and traffic, I’ve recently setup a blog that automatically creates a bunch of posts each day based on a variety of keywords. This blog is a test for a larger idea I have in mind, and the test is working great, with the blog having achieved more than 12,000 unique visitors in the last 5 days. The vast majority of the traffic has come from Google.

As part of that same test, I setup a second, similar blog that does the same kind of thing. Despite the second blog actually having more content, it has (so far) received no joy from Google at all (it’s not even indexed yet).

The difference is in the scraper sites that are referencing the content. The keywords that I’m creating content around for my successful blog is a scraper magnet — hundreds of scraper sites are auto-posting content from my own blog to theirs, and giving a reference link back to my blog posts to try and make it more legit.

How do these scraper sites know about my brand-new blog posts so fast? Because the blog is indexed by Google’s blog search, and many scraper sites scrape results from that blog search to post to their own blogs. They also scrape many other blog search engines, and since my blog pings those search engines when I make a new post, the blog’s content gets picked up and spread around fast.

Those links from these automated scraper sites have resulted in my blog quickly gaining hundreds of backlinks from all over the web, and that means great rankings for the pages of my blog.

The second test blog I setup, however, has not attracted the scraper blogs and so hasn’t even been indexed in Google yet. It might seem strange that scraper sites can help you rank, but if they link back to the source of the content, they really can.

Trackbacks Are Your Friend

On a final note, I recommend setting up your blog to automatically post trackback links to the blog posts that you link out to. If you’re not familiar with trackbacks, it’s a simple concept: any time you link to an external blog post from within your own blog post, your blog posts a “comment” to the blog post you’ve linked to, letting the readers of that post know about your own post referencing it.

Now, not all blogs will approve your trackback link, but many will, and I’ve received literally thousands of visitors from a single trackback link appearing on a popular blog. So make sure you setup your blog to automatically post trackbacks to the blogs that you link out to — it can often result in a flood of traffic.

Have any more great blog-related traffic building ideas? Care to share your opinion about this post? Please post your thoughts in a comment below.

Source: Jon Leger’s blog

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For example, on your home page you could have the latest entries appearing – or some of the oldest if you wanted to breathe a bit of new life into posts that you wrote some time ago.

Of course if you install your blog directly into the root of your domain this doesn’t really apply to you because your posts will show up there anyway.

But if you have your blog elsewhere it’s a great way to freshen up your home page every time you make a new post. I’ve just added that to my own home page and it works a treat. I had to do a little reading up on it to find out how to do it and found this page quite helpful: corvidworks.com

I actually had to modify the example code a little because it didn’t work for me. I used <?php endif; ?>
rather than <?php endwhile; ?>

You can see the effect on my home page. I’ve set the display to show 3 excerpts with links to the full post. If you wanted you could put the full post, but it seems more sensible to me to give a taste of the post and then let the user decide whether to read more.

It’s not limited to the home page. You can display blog entries on any of the pages on your site, so if you focus on a particular topic you can point your visitors to other, pertinent information.

And last, but not least, there’s a definite SEO benefit to having regular fresh content on your home page. If you use the excerpt facility well and pull in a couple or three of your latest posts your page(s) will always look interesting

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That opens up a number of possibilities for what you can do in your blog posts. I’ll be installing it later today and putting it through its paces. Since I have a number of scripts, php and javascript, from Robert Plank,  I’d like to try them out on my blog.

You can read the full details about the plugin and download it from here: automateyourbusiness.com

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If you don’t already know that link building is an important part of building traffic to your website, it’s time to start.

Because arguably nothing is more important. Yes, good content is definitely important, but the best content in the world is of no use if you get no visitors.

Blogs are a great way to get some traffic because right now Google just loves blogs. It’s true. They love blogs.

So all you need to do is make a blog and some posts, right?

Well, not all, no. You should still concentrate on link building. And one way you can do that is by making posts that refer to other blogs posts – that’s beneficial to your readers. But just as importantly you can get a valuable link back to your own blog, if trackbacks are enabled on the other blog.

However, finding blog  posts that are trackback friendly is time consuming. And that means you can only do so much of it. You’re limited in how much link building you can do by the fact it takes a lot of time and effort. What if you could do 5 times as much in the same time?

Do you think your results might be 5 times better? I do.

Have a look at this blog post – it’s about a new piece of software that’s going to be available pretty soon.

I have to say I’m waiting for the launch day because I’ll be waiting with credit card in hand ready to bag a copy. The video that shows the application in use is better than any sales page, in my opinion. To paraphrase the great line in “Jerry Maguire”, you had me at Hello!

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Whether the method we use is congruent with our message, in fact.

And why should that matter?

Well, I suppose for me it’s true to say that there are some sites that I absolutely want pushed my way – Seth’s is one of them. And there are others which would have me reaching for the angry email button if anything got pushed to me from them.

Ethical marketing – and Seth has been talking about permission based marketing for years – does need to consider the consumer at the other end. Long term, sustainable business with solid growth is hard to achieve if you alienate your customers.

So, which end of that coin do you belong to? And more importantly, why?

No related posts.

It’s an easy and effective way to promote your blog and get some traffic. You just drop a small piece of code into your sidebar and a widget appears that has links to other, related blogs. In turn, your blog will appear on a similar widget somewhere, once for every time you show a widget on your blog page.

Inevitably there have been some problems. Most services with such rapid takeup have a few teething troubles and this is no different. My take on this is that in a few weeks time it will be a fairly solid little service. I’ve signed up already – no sense hanging about when it’s a free account anyway.

Created by the renowned John Reese, Blog Rush is set to re-circulate a lot of the traffic that is currently wasted on blogs. When a visitor moves away from your blog, why not encourage them to move to another site that gives you some credit for the traffic?

You can check out a little more about Blog Rush by clicking here

Blogged with Flock

Tags: blog, JohnReese, Blog Rush, widget, web traffic

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So what lessons can she teach us on how to make more money on the internet? Well, before I get into that let me tell you a story that will help you to understand.

I watched a family comedy this evening. The opening scenes were of a young woman – not an actress I know – but there was something about her that was eerily familiar. Then I realized that she was virtually the twin of Julia Roberts, but a blonde version.

Now I happen to love Julia Roberts – she’s a great actress and I always enjoy her films. And let’s be honest, she’s very pretty. So when I saw what looked like her blonde twin I immediately felt that I would enjoy the film.

That’s not actually logical, because I’ve never seen this actress before, but my emotional response was exactly the same as if it had been Julia Roberts. I guess, if you want an explanation, that the part of my brain that recognizes faces kicked in and sent a message to my anticipation center that Julia Roberts was in the house – so to speak.

When the actress spoke she also sounded like Julia Roberts so that made the connection even more. In the end I had a very good time watching the film, it was thoroughly enjoyable and a good time was had by all the family.

At the end of the film I got to thinking how really good marketers use the same phenomenon to make more sales. Let me explain…

If John Doe comes to you with a sales pitch, you will view him with some degree of neutrality, or possibly even negativity, because you don’t know him. But if a member of your family recommends something enthusiastically, you tend to listen with an open and receptive mind. The issue of trust has already been established.

The very best marketers know that it’s cheaper to sell to your existing customers than it is to acquire new ones. Why is that? Well, you already have a relationship with them, based on some degree of trust. They parted with their money and you provided them with a product, or service. If you did a good job of that – and you should – then they’ll be more inclined to listen to you the next time you have something to say.

That’s also one of the reasons you see so many marketers all pushing the latest product launch for someone else. I may not have a relationship with Mike Filsaime, for example, but I probably do with one of the many affiliates he has. If someone known to me promotes the offer, I’m far more likely to pay some attention even if I’m not really interested.

So by using the existing connections of their affiliates – ‘friend of a friend’ – the big marketers can maximize their sales dramatically.

What about the small marketer? He may not have huge numbers of customers. Then keep building your list. And make sure you contact your customers regularly, preferably with some information of value. That way, when you promote a product, they’ll be more likely to consider the offer because they will have a feeling for what you’re all about.

Pretty much the same way I felt about an unknown actress who made me think of Julia Roberts.

It’s one of the oldest pieces of advice in the book, but my experience is that businesses generally do not put enough time into exploring the value of their current customer base. And if you only have a few people on your list you can still market to them. You’re likely to get more sales than you would by approaching the same number of strangers

And that’s what visitors to your website are the first time they visit – strangers.

So it really does pay to maintain your relationship with your customers because they are, without exception, your best business asset. Protect them as you would money in the bank.

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There are several things you need to have in place to make money online.  A website helps, although it’s not essential. A product, or affiliate link is a good thing too. And you must have web site traffic. That’s the magic ingredient that can give you the sales you so desire.

So, how can you make money online and increase web site traffic for free? Well, there are tons of ways, but I’d like to talk about one way to increase web site traffic with a link to a web site traffic promotion offer that is, well, free.

How many places do you know that will give you free web site traffic? I mean really free web site traffic?

And quality web traffic that is worth having?

I found one such site today, while doing some general research on keywords – another of the important things to get right for good web site traffic.

There’s a website called Make Money Online with John Chow Dot Com. Wow, that’s a mouthful of a name. But the site itself is full of good content. I won’t say I agree with every item and I definitely don’t agree with every comment, but there’s enough in there to get your imagination going.

And what John Chow does with his advertising revenues of that one blog is just insane. If you read about it you’ll understand what I mean.

So, here’s the deal:

John Chow dot Com is a blog that can help you to learn how to make money online.  Since John is making pretty good money online with his blog, you’d better believe he knows what he’s talking about. And if you’re willing to carry out a review of his blog, he’s offered to make a link to your review and send you some traffic.

So that’s a free link that you can use as a web site traffic promotion strategy to drive more web site traffic to your own digital real estate.

Personally, I’m going to implement some of John’s ideas for advertising on a couple of my other blog sites. He’s done a lot of hard work testing and it seems like a smart move to learn from others who’ve already done what you want to do.

Why re-invent the wheel?

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He makes an interesting point about storing up a few posts in advance of when you need them, just in case you can’t get to your regular schedule for some reason.

I’ve seen that same advice in a number of places on the web and I’ve never really put it to use. I’ve always preferred to post organically, but with a growing number of blogs and websites to maintain, I think I really should put the good advice to some practical use.

The interesting question is whether that will improve the quality of any posts, since when you’re on a roll and writing well you could churn out quite a few articles all with better readability. Especially compared to days when you’re off your game.

As most internet marketers know, fresh content, regularly updated is a boon to doing well with the search engines. But just like a supermarket that keeps a stock of product in the back, ready to roll out as soon as a shelf is empty, there are no penalties for having the content ready ahead of time!

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