Google Appication and your email

Google’s apps includes hosting premium applications (of which the biggest thing is Mail) for $50 per user per year.

I have been curious about switching for quite some time but thought the flexibility of having my own server outweighed the benefits. Well, 2 weeks ago I finally decided to make the switch. And now I have to say that although things have been great for the most part… there are still a few quirks that frustrate me.

Like most things on my blog, I will take you through my experience in switching over. Hopefully it can help you if you decide to convert one day, too.

Step 1) The setup.

Setup is SUPER easy.

I started out by purchasing 5 accounts. At first, you have to specify 1 of the accounts as the administrator. I made the mistake of making an admin@ and using that for an administrator instead of just using my own email. (Later I figured out that I could just use my own email as the administrator.)

With Google’s really simple walk-through on what to change for your DNS, I was able to quickly make the right changes. (But if you have already run your own mail server, this should not be a big deal anyways.)

During the setup process, you can also make a catchall account. (A catchall account means that you can specify 1 user as the catch-all for anything you forgot.) I started off using Brienna’s email for that but it got so much junk that I used info@ for this instead. Also for the Auto-Responder (out-of-office) purposes, it’s much better to have a seperate account for catch-all email rather than just using filters (which I will cover in a bit).

Step 1.5) Special NOTE

If you are an IMAP email user and do not store mail locally right now, you’ll have to remove all accounts from your desktop client. Your mail will be on your old server and you’ll have to migrate it. (But if you leave desktop clients setup, it’s going to be a clusterfuck - trust me.)

Step 2) The Migration

The administrator can setup the old mail server and then start to migrate all your folders.

*IMPORTANT* Gmail does not let you make new “folders” as you know them. They have an all mail folder which ALL MAIL goes into then things can be labeled (which will appear like folders and ACT like folders on your desktop client). All of your newly imported mail when you first import it will look like INBOX/Travel or INBOX/Sample.

Once your import is complete (it took over 24 hours for mine to fully complete), the only things you still need to do is move/delete your old sent mail and trash. (DO ALL MOVING ON GMAIL!)

Then rename your labels … instead of INBOX/Travel just rename it to Travel. Repeat this for each label.

With Gmail, the email is not stored in these “labels” - it’s just organized there. Essentially, all your mail is set in the All Mail folder. These labels will appear like folders in your desktop client later, but just know that if you delete a label, the emails with that label will not be deleted. They will still be in the all mail folder. You are just deleting the label. Also, you can have more than 1 label per email (which really makes this cool). I know, I know… some of this may seem redundant to you if you’ve used this for a while - but it took me some time to fully understand how this works. I had never used Gmail before.

Step 3) Contact Migration

Even if you are going to use a desktop client 99% of the time, it’s very handy to have all of your old contacts available. There are guides on Gmail for everything under the sun except for Apple Mail.app users. Don’t worry - there is an easy converter (like stupid easy). The application I used is called A TO G and it’s free (although donations are appreciated). I still think that dude should charge $50 for it though, because without it the process sucks…

Step 4) Client Setup

Now you have all your mail setup how you want it INSIDE Gmail and your migration is finished. (You can now delete the migrated mail label if you want - it has just labeled all the mail that’s migrated.)

On each of your desktop computers, set up a new IMAP account with:

incoming server: imap.gmail.com (secure port)

Username: username@yourdomain.com

Outgoing (SMTP) server: smtp.gmail.com

Username: username@yourdomain.com

Password: the password for the user you’re setting up (DUH).

Step 4.5) Don’t set up all your desktops at once.

I currently have 6 different computers I could possibly check mail from. 2 laptops, my office mac, home mac, home/office mac, and Windows PC. I made the mistake of trying to set them all up the same day and started getting errors… it turned out I was exceeding my daily bandwidth limit (who knew?). So instead, I setup 1 per day and since then they have all been fine.

Step 5) Don’t forget to check in on your old stuff.

Inside Gmail, go to your accounts and pop mail from old accounts or other accounts. I setup a .forward on my old mail server for each of our users just incase something goes there.

Step 6) Setting up the cool shit.

Be sure to check out the Google Labs. I would suggest enabling the following “must have” labs:

Canned Responses - I try to answer every email I get and 95% of the time I am just repeating myself. Canned responses have dramatically sped up my email response time. You can also use canned responses in your filtering. It’s kind of like an Auto-Responder/out-of-office message but only for certain people. For instance, let’s say someone emails me through the Contact Us form and somewhere in that message the terms ”paid links” or “paid review” are found. I can then make a filter that will allow me to reply with a canned response stating that we do not sell paid links but we do occasional do paid reviews with no follow links for a particular price. And bam! Just like that I’ve answered the email. That’s nice.

Send and Archive - This is probably one of my favorite features. It gives me a extra button inside my mail window next to the Send button. This feature allows me to both send a response and then remove the mail from my Inbox. How many times do I really want to save something I have already responded to?? Yea, never. Also, archiving is NOT deleting. It’s simply putting it into the All Mail folder.

Offline - This app let’s you access your Gmail (the last sync of it) without an Internet connection. This is pretty hot.

Reply To All Default - Setting this up makes it so the default button to reply/forward is actually “Reply To All”. For about 99.9% of all my emails, I WANT to reply to all. With email, I often forgot to do this so I’m loving this feature.

So … pretty big step for me. I migrated myself and 4 other users (dillsmack is still not convinced yet). Am I glad I did it? Well, in the beginning I was not so sure. At first, I didn’t really get the labels idea and man… when I first saw that crap saying my bandwidth had been exceeded, I started thinking, “Oh, great!” (Thank god it hasn’t happened again.) Other things that still bug me include:

1) Flakey connections. While checking or sending mail, occasionally I am asked for my password. (But hey, maybe it’s because I leave myself logged in on multiple boxes? Not quite sure.)

2) Return path header. After racking my head trying to use the filter/canned response and out of office/vacation feature, I noticed it was replying NOT to the reply-to or reply email, but rather the return path header. Dillsmack made a thread in Google groups and while this is against the RFC, it looks like Google is keeping it (as retarded as it is!).

3) IMAP Downtime. Occasionally the IMAP servers are just unavailable. It doesn’t seem to last long and has not happened much. Maybe it’s just been a fluke. I can always tell I am not alone just by asking on Twitter or using Twitter search.

4) It’s also $50 a person.

Let’s look at the positives.

1) 1 less server to maintain. This is huge IMO. It’s one less machine we need t0

* Maintain Hardware

* Update spam rules

* Update software for security

* Administrate

2) Spam filtering - AMAZINGLY AWESOME. I now get 1-2 spams a day. I used to get between 20-40 a day.

3) Simple things. Before, doing a out-of-office meant writing a special rule…. Nothing too hard but the more our business grows the simple things start to have a big expense in time and what it’s taking time away from.

4) Mobile application. The Gmail Blackberry application is SO NICE. In fact, I’ve given up on the default Blackberry and now this is the only one I use. Searching through folders/labels and looking up contacts is so slick. It also integrates nicely with the other applications.

5) Branding - no need to say more:

PitchEngine Social Media

PitchEngine is a great free service that allows to create a social media release for your business news. The site is easy to use and offers quite a few great features you will love.

Basically, with it you can create a page on your company news fully customized for distributing it around your social media networks. Some nice features include:

* Google-news friendly (that gives you better chances for more exposure);

* Social-media friendly (can be posted to Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook with one click of your mouse):

Pitch Engine

* Fully customizable;

* Views stats and control panel inside.

Let’s have a look at what you can do on this page:

* Add a link to your company (prior to writing a release you should create your company’s profile and specify its web destination; this information will appear in the right sidebar of the published social media release);

* Add as many links to relevant sites as you want (after writing a release, you can add links at the bottom of it);

* Add images (add your website logo, site home page screenshot or any other imaginary to customize the look and feel of the release);

* Add videos (embed your company video to the left sidebar of the press release).

Let’s have a look at a few examples:

* California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Announces Winners of the 2008 Stem Cell Image Contest (via CIRM): notice the imaginary to the left, a large “About us” abstract and in-text links (the release editor allows HTML);

* FreeShipping.org Rolls out New Web 2.0 Features (via FreeShipping.org) includes a video of the newly introduced feature described.

* Social Media Tools in Crisis Communications - includes a very smart Twitter pitch in the beginning.

Increase Traffic to Get Money

Over the last four years I have made all of my money by getting website traffic and turning that traffic into dollar bills. People ask me all the time how to increase website traffic, so I figured I would offer some honest, straightforward advice.

Social Traffic Isn’t Worth It, In Most Cases

If you just want to throw up huge numbers there are a lot of ways to do it. StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit can send you huge numbers of visitors. Many of you have already chased that traffic and some of you have probably succeeded. I personally have been able to get loads of traffic that way so I’m a good person to listen to on the subject. The honest truth is that it’s incredibly difficult to make money from those traffic sources. Those individuals typically have very short attention spans and will leave your site just as quickly as they found it. If you don’t believe that, I highly doubt that you’ve tried to sell to them before.

When you go through the process of learning how to increase website traffic, I want you to focus on the most important type of traffic there is - search traffic. Once a stream of traffic starts coming from Google it will come day after day after day, whether you continue working or not.

There’s only one type of person that can make social traffic work and that type of person is naturally gifted. If you are an extremely gifted writer or personality, social traffic might be an awesome fit for you. If you aren’t it’s going to be an enormous waste of time because you won’t be able to influence the short attention spans that will find you.

Search traffic is honestly a lot easier to work with. There’s a huge difference with search traffic because they are already looking for you. Since they already want what you have to offer, the process is a LOT easier.

How To Increase Website Traffic From Search Engines

Getting more traffic to your website from search engines is actually fairly easy to do. I want to keep this lesson fairly simple for you so I have organized the basics into four separate tasks:

1. Researching your market.

2. Choosing keywords.

3. Creating keyword-optimized content.

4. Getting links to your content from relevant pages.

Most people go wrong because they don’t do any research in the first place. To fully understand this process, I want you to take a look at how you found this article. You probably did a search in Google for ‘How To Increase Website’ traffic, or something similar (or you are a regular reader of mine). You found me because I anticipated that people would be searching for this, and created a solid article on this topic.

Researching Your Market

You may be curious about how I was able to anticipate that you would be doing this search. This is pretty easy if you take a look at the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You start by typing on topics that are related to the content of your site. In this case I started by searching for ‘website’ because I help people to learn to make money with websites. The tool showed me a bunch of keywords that people search for and are related to websites. Website traffic was one of the terms that came up. Since I understand a lot about getting more website traffic, it’s obviously pretty easy for me to write about.

Hopefully you can see why this article came to be. I want to be found by people who want to get more targeted website traffic.

What you need to do is use the Adwords tool to take a look at topics that people are searching for in your market. You will obviously know your market better than I would so you need to think about different aspects that people need to understand. Type those terms into the tool and take a look at what comes back. Expand on the terms that come back and you’ll probably find some winners in there.

Choosing Keywords

Choosing keywords to me is a matter of looking at your competition and deciding how strong it is. I wrote about this concept extensively on The Keyword Academy: Choosing A Topic For A Website. I was actually talking about choosing a topic for a site, but the same concepts apply. You can use those metrics to choose topics to write about that you can realistically get ranked for.

Where most people go wrong is that they only choose the super competitive keywords that everyone else is using. Finding the easy ones will make your life a lot easier so I would definitely start there. Increasing traffic to your website becomes one of the easiest things ever when you write about topics that have weak competition.

Lately I picked up a site that’s about food and honestly it’s one of the easiest things ever. I’m barely trying and getting ranked really well. It’s so much easier than my internet marketing topics it’s not even funny. If you can try to find keywords that aren’t that competitive it will be a lot easier. Obviously you don’t want to write off topic, so your search will be limited to the scope of your website.

Creating Keyword-Optimized Content

Creating content that will rank well for a keyword is honestly really easy. I have written extensively about this and so I’ll point you to an article I wrote about this: How To Target a Keyword With a Post Page. The only thing I want to add to that is that the better your post, the better it will work. If your post excites people enough to get them to point some links at it, it will rank better and it will rank more quickly.

Getting Links To Your Content From Relevant Pages

If you’re starting out, this might seem like it’s pretty difficult but after you get going, it really isn’t. The first thing you should try to do once you create your website is find some friends in your industry. This will help you a ton because when you need to get some extra links, they will be there to help. There are also a lot of other methods that you can use. You can write articles for EzineArticles and they will allow you to link back. For that matter, you can write articles that can be submitted with Unique Article Wizard, or a similar service.

Getting links is often as simple as asking. When I started CourtneyTuttle.com, I looked through all of the make money sites on Technorati to find beginners who had sites similar to mine. I then participated on their sites and made friends with them so that we could help each other out. We have helped each other a lot over the last few years and the links we have passed back and forth have made a huge difference. Now that I have some people reading my site building links has also become a lot easier. That said, I started out with zero traffic just like everyone else and overcame that with hard work.

How to Keep Fresh Content Delivering in Your Site

“How do I keep posts flowing on my blog?”

This is a question that most bloggers face at one point or another - particularly bloggers who have been blogging for 6-12 months.

The reality is that there comes a point where most bloggers feel either uninspired, unmotivated, that they’ve got ‘bloggers block’ or that they’ve said everything that there is to say on their chosen topic. This is something that we’ve all felt at one time or another - so what does a blogger do about it?

The first thing that I want to encourage you with is that all is not lost. Every blogger has this challenge at one point or another (in fact most of us face it regularly) and it is possible to break through it. They key is to persist through the tough times - something that many bloggers do not do.

At this point it is important to sit down and work out how you will generate content going forward. There are a number of strategies that come to mind for doing so - all of these I’ve used at different points and I hope that some will give you inspiration and a way forward:

1. Mind Mapping

My favorite technique for coming up with new topics is using mind maps. I outline my mind mapping technique here but in short the technique is that you take one post idea (one from your archives perhaps) and then brainstorm ways that that topic can be expanded upon into numerous new topics. You then take some of those new ideas and think about ways that they too can be expanded upon into new posts. This technique can literally help you identify hundreds of new topics to write about.

Whether you use Mind mapping or some other kind of brainstorming technique the key is to set time aside to do it. I try to do this at the start of each week and find that if I do that the writing task for the week ahead is a lot smoother - sometimes just coming up with the ideas is as hard as the writing of posts.

2. Involve Readers

One of the resources that a blog who has an established readership has (remember we’re writing this series for these types of blogs) is that it has a knowledge based within it’s readership that can be drawn upon in a variety of creative ways to help create content for your blog. There are a lot of ways to do this - but here are a few:

* Guest Posts - in every 100 or so readers there is bound to be 1 that has the knowledge, expertise, motivation and skill to contribute posts to your blog. The key is to identify them and give them the confidence to contribute a post to your blog. Pay particular attention to those leaving comments on your blog. You’ll find that some comments just go the extra mile and contain wisdom and depth that are not far off being the standard of actual blog posts. Also don’t be afraid to invite contributions by writing post asking for guest posts or having a page linked in your navigation inviting contributions.

* Reader Questions - stuck for a topic to write about? Ask your readers to ask questions. A post inviting reader questions can draw out some great ideas to write about.

* Community Written Posts - one of the things that I’m loving about Digital Photography School at the moment is that some of our best posts are actually ones that our readers provide the majority of the content and teaching for. My role is not to ‘write’ the content for these posts - but to ask a question and set some boundaries for a discussion - and then open it up for readers to add their suggestions. Examples: How do I take band promotional photos?, How Would You Photograph a Funeral? and How to Photograph Grandma?

3. Explore new ‘Voices’

One way to break out of a rut as a blogger is to experiment with new types and styles of posts. Sometimes doing so can unleash creativity and new ideas. So if the majority of your posts are ‘tips’ posts - try an opinion piece. If you always write ‘news’ type posts - why not try something with a bit of humor or controversy.

Further Reading: I’ve outlined 20 types of blog posts for bloggers battling bloggers block here to give you a little inspiration.

4. Update Previous Posts and Topics

Even after a few months of blogging you can hit a point where you feel like you’ve covered most topics in your niche. Many bloggers get to this point and simply give up the blog - however I’ve found that most posts that I’ve written in the past can be expanded upon, updated, improved or rewritten with fresh insight.

Also keep in mind that many of our old posts will only have been written by long term readers and your new readers will not have seen these posts.

Further Reading: The Why and How of Updating old Blog Posts.

5. Guest Posts

The decision to allow guest posters onto your blog has both good arguments for and against it - but it is certainly one way to keep the flow of content going on a blog when you’re a little low on inspiration or don’t have enough time on your hands to be writing content (see also Why Guest Bloggers are Great for a Blog).

Getting people to submit guest posts on a blog is not always achievable when a blog is very young and the blog has little profile - but once you gather a readership and build your reputation as a growing community it becomes easier to attract contributions from other bloggers and freelance writers looking to grow their own profile.

If you’re new to the idea of finding guest posters for a blog - start with your own readers (as described above - look in the comments section of your blog) and then also look at other blogs in your niche or even forums that are on a similar topic to your blog. I’ve also had some real success lately with finding guest posts for Digital Photography School from non bloggers, particularly pro photographers who are looking for a little extra exposure to their business sites.

Further Reading: How to Find a Guest Blogger for Your Blog

6. Hiring Writers

Another way to approach bringing others onto your blog as writers is to look at hiring a blogger (or team of bloggers) to help you create content for your blog. This has some cost associated with it - but can (if you do it right) increase the quality and frequency of posts as well as decreasing some of the admin of relying upon guest posts.

Basic Things for being Successful Internet Marketers

Given the rise in popularity of internet marketing, wouldn’t it be great to know exactly what it takes to be successful at such an endeavour? Here are 5 traits of successful internet marketers. How do you measure up?

1. Broad Knowledge Base - A successful internet marketer should be, at the very least, a well-rounded person. He should have a wide base of general knowledge and be able to use that knowledge to his advantage by drawing on it to come up with new and innovative ideas. Critical thinking and problem solving skills are a must since the prime tasks involves analyzing problems and finding solutions to them.

A background in English is particularly helpful since a successful internet marketer must be a master with words and know how to tell and use stories. A successful internet marketer understands design and how humans are influenced by what they see. He must understand basic human motivation and behavior, so a rudimentary understanding of psychology is key.

Finally, a successful internet marketer understands interpersonal relationships, and how those relationships function given the rise of social media.

2. Technologically Proficient - A successful internet marketer doesn’t have to know everything there is to know about internet technology, but he should have a fundamental understanding of databases, HTML, Flash, and style sheets. This sort of understanding is necessary if an internet marketer is going to have a firm grasp on how search engines and the Web work together. Most of all, the successful internet marketer should be pretty fascinated with technology and have a desire to use the latest online tools whenever they become available.

The successful internet marketer should have a realistic view of the capabilities of technology and, most of all, he should be aware of their potential. He should even be able to dream up new ways to use such technology, even before his counterparts come up with great ideas themselves.

3. Solid Skills-The successful internet marketer has supurb communication skills. Not only can he express his ideas, but he can explain, in laymen’s terms how web technology works. He has to be a great writer and must be able to write formally and informally, for experts and laypeople, and persuasively and factually. He has to be good at research as well, since he will have to understand those to whom he is marketing in order to be successful.

4. Lots of Experience-The online experience is driven by searching. When we need to find information, we use a search engine to hunt it down. Therefore, the successful online marketer must have experience in search engine optimization and marketing campaigns. He should also be a prolific blogger. One of his most important tasks will be to create high-quality content, build a loyal following, and participate in the conversations that take place around the content he publishes.

He should also be an expert in social media and how to use social networking for marketing purposes.

5. A Penchant for Problem-Solving- The successful internet marketer loves to encounter and solve problems. He should constantly be looking for ways to do things better and faster, and he should have a hunger for learning new things all the time. He should enjoy the trial-and-error approach to conundrums and, therefore, should be very patient. Most of all, he should be interested in getting the job done right.

Build Your Strengths as a Blogger

This post belongs to the ‘taking your blog to the next level‘ series which looks at tips for bloggers whose blogs have got a start but want to take it up a notch. Read the intro here.

Analyze why Readers Come to your Blog….. and then Build on It

The first thing that I’d highly recommend medium sized bloggers do when I speak with them is to set aside some time to analyze the current performance of their blog and particularly to focus upon the successes and strengths that the blog has.

While there’s a lot to be said for identifying a blogs weaknesses in order to improve I think many bloggers spend so much time working on improving the negatives (patching holes and fixing problems) that they fail to build upon their successes.

Here’s a ’secret’ of success that I’ve observed in quite a few successful bloggers…

They don’t do everything well, but what they do do well they keep doing it over and over again.
3 Examples of Blogs that Build Upon their Successes

Many successful blogs illustrate this principle. Let’s take a quick look at three:

i-can-has-cheezburger.png

* I Can Has Cheezburger - these guys are geniuses, I don’t know when they discovered that putting captions on pictures of cats would draw hundreds of thousands of readers to a blog - but when they did they focused upon that. Their blog design might not be the sexiest and they rarely write a post with more than a handful of words - but they worked out what their readers wanted and kept giving it to them. In fact they’ve taken the LOLcat formula and have rolled it out for Dogs, Celebrities, News and Politics etc.

* Post Secret - in some ways this is a similar story to I can has Cheezburger - Frank discovered that the idea of posting people’s ’secrets’ on postcards captured people’s imagination. Again - I’m not sure where the idea came from but Frank latched onto it and has continued to keep his blog focused upon what works. In fact he’s expanded the idea into books and traveling exhibitions - all focusing upon the same thing - postcard secrets.

* Smashing Magazine - this blog has seen incredible growth in the last year or two and a lot of it is by building upon what works. If you analyze their posts you see certain types of posts that are repeated again and again. Check out their post 35 examples of animals photography for example - a post filled with great images on a theme. They do these weekly and they always generate lots of interest on social media sites. In fact this ‘list’ type post isn’t just photographic - they do lists of tips, resources etc. They’ve worked out what types of posts work with their readers and they continue to apply it again and again.

I could go on with most successful blogs. They identify something that works and repeat it over and over again. This doesn’t mean that they simply repeat the same content - the key to their success is to find new ways to apply the same formulae.

So what has worked on your blog? How can you do it again and even improve upon it?
Let’s Get to Work and Do Some Analysis

Here are some questions to ponder to help you to identify these points of energy on your blog that could be worth expanding upon:
Questions about Content

* What posts have had the most traffic to them?
* What posts have had the most comments?
* What posts got the most links from other blogs?
* What posts did better than others on social media sites?

When you’ve compiled a list of these posts that did better than others - do some analysis of WHY they did well.

* Was it the topic?
* Was it the style of post?
* Was it the title that you used?
* Was it the use of an image?
* Was it the posts length?
* Was it the use of humor?

There could be any number of factors that contributed to a post’s success - but there’s usually one or two that stand out. Do this analysis on a number of successful posts and you might just discover that the same things come into play in each case. Identify what these factors are and you’re in a great position to develop more of this type of content.
Questions about Traffic

Another type of analysis to do is asking questions around the ’source’ of current traffic to your blog.

* What are the top sources of traffic to your blog?
* What other blogs or sites are linking to your content?
* What social media sites seem to be liking your content?
* What search engines send you traffic?
* What keywords are people arriving on your site as a result of searching for

Looking at the source of traffic coming to your blog is a powerful technique to help you grow your blog further.

I’ve found that when you see a significant source of traffic to a blog that there are almost always ways to build that traffic further. For example:

* When you notice a lot of traffic coming to certain posts from Google it can be helpful to optimize those pages for the keywords people are searching for to increase the traffic (looking at keyword density, linking to the page from other parts of your blog with good anchor text, tweaking titles etc).
* When you notice another blog linking up to yours there’s an opportunity to build a relationship with that blog. Get to know the blogger, thank them for the link, submit other posts that they might find useful, link up to them etc
* When you notice a social media site has been sending traffic it is a signal for you to get involved in that site. You might want to do some analysis on the type of content that does well on that site, you could educate your current readers on how to use the site, it might be worth adding a ‘voting’ button from that site to encourage readers to vote for you etc.
* When you get a lot of traffic for certain keywords from search engines it can be a hint to write more content on that topic. Pay particular attention to ‘questions’ that people are typing into search engines as these can be ready made post titles and topics to write about.

What is Affiliate Marketing

Many people have heard of affiliate programs, but only few of them actually know what they are. Affiliate programs are business programs, also sometimes referred to as business opportunities. In a way, you will be selling merchandise for another company, allowing you to make money without having to sell your own products.

A large number of companies participate in affiliate programs, namely retailers. Once you make the decision to join an affiliate program, you may have to file an affiliate partner request form. This form is usually small, but it is almost always required. Most of the retailers, in charge of running an affiliate programs, are well known; therefore, they want to protect their image. This means that before officially joining an affiliate program your website has to be reviewed. If your website is approved, which most legitimate ones are, the next step will all depend on the company in which you are working with.

Most of the retailers or affiliate advertisers will have customized links or banners. These banners will need to be placed on your website. These advertisements will vary from company to company; however, most advertisements showcase merchandise or special sales. If one of your website visitors is interested in learning more, they will click on your link or banner. In doing so, your website will be flagged. This flagging is often done to ensure that you will receive the proper credit for bringing in new customers. If an internet user, who clicked one of your affiliate links or banners, makes the decision to purchase anything, you will receive credit or money for that purchase.

How To Increase Traffic with Forum

There is no doubt about the fact that Forum posting works when it comes to driving traffic to our site or blog. The goal of every forum post you make is to get as many people to subscribe to your líst! Posting to forums is a very fast and powerful way to build your base of subscribers in as little as 30 minutes. Here is the guide for you to do:

1. Find Forums About Your Niche Very Easily

Just use the search engine like Google, yahoo, Ask, etc, and type the following:

"your niche" + forum or "your niche" +"discussion board"

For instance, if you want to look for Forums in the Internet Marketing field, you only need to type "Internet Marketing" + forum.

2. Join the Forums and Set Up Your Signature

Signature is another name for your resource box, so... remember to include your website address in your signature. Your resource box is just like an 'about the author info'. This appears at the end of every post you make and drives traffic to your website.

3. Read the Rules and Regulations of the Forum Before Posting

This ensures that your posts are not deleted by the Administrators of the Forum. Now, don't go about spamming all members of the Forum with your website advert. In fact, I will advise you not to post an obvious ad. It's a pure waste of time because it will be deleted.

4. Ask for Input

Approach from a weak man's position. Assuming you've written an article on your site entitled "13 Ways to Drive Traffic to a New Site." You could make a post asking folks to check out the article and see if you missed anything. Or you can ask for additional points to add to your article. Of course you'll have your opt ín box at the end of the article with a compelling offering.

Let's say you've written an article on meeting the right partner. You could post a message like this: "If you had a chance to learn how to meet your right partner now, what would you do?"

It's a great way to get the attention of forum members to your article. You also get them engaged in the article by asking for their input. And who knows, you may also get other publishers who would use your content in their ezines, thereby getting more exposure for your site.

Forget Expensive PPC Advertising - There is an Alternative!

5. Ask for a Critical Assessment

If you are the type that is not easily hurt by honest feedback even when it hurts, you can go to a forum and ask for a honest critique. You may think this will not make people sign up for your líst, but I tell you, many people will end up subscribing to it. It's a more indirect and acceptable way to ask people to check out your site without blatant advertising.

Plus, the feedback they give you may help to make your squeeze page even more compelling. Ask them if it would persuade them to give it a try, assuming they were in your target market (of course, you already know they are by the forum you selected). And, if they say no, ask them why. You can get valuable information on what they want (and don't want) this way.

There are two types of forums where you should ask for critiques: the niche forum itself and a marketing forum. You'll likely get more sign-ups from the niche forum and good advice to test out from the marketing forum.

6. Ask Your Target Market What They Want

Unknown to most people, this is one of the best ways to develop products and services. And most times, Forum members are ready to tell you what they'll buy and give you ideas for articles, auto-responder content, your blog posts, whatever you need. People guess the products their target market will want and create them only to discover no one is interested in the product, but with this approach, you have real people telling you what product they want, how they want it and how much they are prepared to pay for it.

The way you would use this technique to get them to subscribe is to post something like, "what's your biggest question about loosing weight?" Or "what's the single most important thing you'd like to know about building a business?"

Don't forget to ask if they're willing to pay for solutions to their problems and have them give you an indication of how much they would be willing to pay. Powerful stuff!

Let them know you've already answered 10 questions (your 10 step mini-course loaded in your auto-responder), for example. Then they'll be more likely to sign-up. Make sure you point out that you'll add to your mini-course with the answers to the questions they've provided, and that they'll get answers to the existing questions in your mini-course PLUS the new ones when they subscribe. Everybody wins!

7. Provide a Step-By-Step Guide or Video Tutorial

If someone asks how to create an ebook, give them a progression of steps they can take. Or, make a Camtasia tutorial video showing them how. Now that you've got them to your site, you'll want to "make them a proposal they can't refuse."

Provide a Líst of Resources and Websites

In addition to checklists, resource lists with website URLs make a great site for them to bookmark! Make sure you supply more than just links. Make it a huge info-page of information. A collection of resources, links to everything you have - articles, video, audio, your blog, other useful sites, tools, you name it.

Solve a Problem for People

If someone asks for help or asks a question, provide your experience and try to help them. But to maximize your odds of getting both the asker of the question and everyone else who reads the post to subscribe to your líst, try to phrase your answer in one of the following two ways:

1. Give them tips, techniques, shortcuts, secrets, or anything that offers both the promise of exclusive information and fast results. A shortcut to success.

2. Whenever possible, supply them with specific results. Think about it. When you want to learn how to make income online, you go to someone who is making revenue online to guide you. This quickly establishes you as an authority in that area.

And by helping them, maybe - just maybe - they'll click on the link in your signature to check out your website. If you direct them to a blog post or article you wrote to answer their question, they'll be even more likely to investigate.

That's all there is to it but at the end of the day, it's a failure-proof way to drive serious traffic to your website using Forum Posts. Apply it and see your traffic soar through the roof.

Low Interest Rate Loan Tip and Trick

A mortgage is a huge responsibility, one in which almost every family undertakes. The length of a mortgage amortization is generally 20-30 years. Think about that for a moment. If you took on a mortgage at age 30, you would pay off your house when you’re 60. With that length of time the interest payments rack up to excruciating levels. The amount could add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars between a low interest mortgage loan and a medium or high rate. That’s why it’s crucial to get low interest rate mortgage loans.

Low interest mortgage loans don’t always present themselves when applying for the mortgage. There are things ways to make sure you have the lowest interest rate mortgage possible. One way is to know your credit score before applying for the mortgage. Another is to save for a hefty down payment. The single biggest step you can take is reducing your debt to income ratio.

If you’ve applied for any credit recently and been turned down, you should know you’re entitled to a free credit report. While the information may help reduce debt to income ratio, it won’t help much when determining what you’re eligible for in terms of interest rates. In order to determine which level of interest rate you’re eligible for (there are high and low rates), what you need to know is your FICO score. This score is determined with all the information on your credit report and it’s the biggest determination of what interest rate you’ll be paying, how much you’ll be lent, what down payment is required and the length of the mortgage. There are new credit assessment scores, like VantageScore, but banks most often use FICO scores.

Your FICO score is a compilation of your payment history, how much credit you have, or have had, the length of time you’ve used any types of credit, what credit types and how many applications for credit you have open. Scores range from 300-850. Lenders will not lend to you if you have a score less than 550~. Anything between 550 and 649 are the borrowers that receive the highest interest rates. Borrowers with scores above 650 are offered low interest rates.

While FICO scores are a big part of the determination, they aren’t the only part. The amount of your down payment plays a big part as well. A large down payment shows the bank that you have a serious investment in making payments and keeping in good standing on your mortgage. It also reduces the amount of money the bank needs to lend.

In order to find out your FICO score you have to request a specific type of credit report. The free one will not contain this information. The reason it’s important to know the score, is so you can judge if the interest rate the bank is offering is worthy of your credit score. Remember it is in their best interest to give you a higher interest rate.

Reducing your debt to income ratio (your monthly debt divided by your monthly income in percentage). This percentage of DTI (debt-to-income) must be 36% or lower. A 28% DTI can basically ask for the lowest interest rate mortgage possible.

Simply reducing your DTI percentage and increasing your credit score and your chances of a low interest mortgage loan increase tenfold.

Number One Advocate Brand

Who needs to be my number one brand advocate?” The guesses range from my current supervisor, a trusted mentor, a current client or a leader in the industry. Some, even after going over the ”18 Critical Connections You Need to Know” still ask, “is there one that stands out as more important than anyone else?”

The answer is yes. Yet, it’s not one of the ones on the list nor is it any of the really good guesses. Simply put – it’s you. The biggest sale we make on any given day is the sale we make to ourselves – we either sell ourselves on our strengths and our great “you can do it attitude” or we sell ourselves short and buy into the many weaknesses, obstacles, should-ofs, would-ofs and could-ofs.

Where people fall short is in HOW to be your best brand advocate. It doesn’t mean getting really good at spouting your unique value or promise (although that doesn’t hurt). And, it doesn’t mean being so promotional that all you do is talk about yourself. (I’m reminded of Bette Midler in the movie, Beaches, whenever I broach that subject where she states to someone who has been listening to her drone on and on about herself, “well I’ve talked enough about me; now it’s your turn – tell me what you think about me?”)

Here are three things you can do immediately to be your best brand advocate:

1. Ask for documentation. What I mean is start asking for documentation of your strengths and your great accomplishments. When you volunteer for an organization, while the plaque or t-shirt is nice or even a mention in a newsletter is appreciated, you must be proactive and ask for a letter documenting what you did. I’ve worked with many organizations and have even declined them creating a plaque for me and encouraged them to save the money and put it towards the “cause or cure” by just sending a letter on the organization letterhead to me that thanks me for helping them with their walk, event, gala, board of directors, volunteer team – basically whatever I assisted with. Why? Because I cannot put a plaque or cute mug, into my personnel file. I cannot flow the comments onto my blog, or include it in an online bio or a LinkedIn profile. A letter, however, can be reproduced, excerpts can be used for quotes on website, blogs, profiles or brochures and it can be reviewed at evaluation time

Be sure to keep the original and then you make copies for your immediate supervisor and one for the personnel department so they can place it in your permanent personnel file. That is your job to do – not to hand off to the personnel department or supervisor for if they lose track of the original then you lose a valuable piece of documentation. If you’re an entrepreneur, keep it in your testimonial file, use it on your blog, website and any online portfolio.

It’s your job to be your best brand advocate and this includes documenting all of the great things you’ve done – from volunteering with the boy scouts, belonging to a Rotary club and providing a quick speech or walking for a cure. Asking for a letter is a relatively easy document to ask for and to retrieve. Look into your calendar for the past year or on your desk/bookshelf and see what other forms of recognition you’ve received that would serve you best in letter form. Then ask! In the nine years I was employed by non-profit organizations, only once did anyone ask for a letter documenting their service. I would of gladly written hundreds of letters instead of having to peruse promotional catalogs for days looking for paperweights or cool framed certificates to give. And, worse yet, expending the hard raised funds on ‘thank you’s’ that could go towards eradicating, alleviating or advocating for the cause.

2. Create an “I love me” wall. I know how narcissistic that must sound! Yet, when people walk into your office, cubicle, space, store front or any place you conduct business this wall speaks volumes to them without you ever having to say a word. Now, while I call it a wall – it can be a bookshelf or a counter top or even the flimsy press-board of a cubicle privacy separator. What it showcases are all those certificates and plaques that you’ve already received BEFORE you started asking for written documentation. (Understand that even as you start asking for letters and declining any plaques or framed gifts – there will still be organizations that give you that – regardless.)

3. Collect your documentation. A little different from the “ask” recommendation – this is collecting all the “atta-boys, kudos, good jobs and gold stars” you’ve ever received and put them all together. Some companies have slips like “catch them doing something right slips” or they have a “suggestion box” or some other types of employee recognition programs. Collect those documents. Make sure you have copies of each of those and that the personnel department has copies of them.

Did you make period sales three months in a row? Do you have that documented or was it merely applause and an announcement during a staff meeting? Did you help reduce expenses or eliminate a line item? Make your evaluations, whether it is an employee evaluation or someone evaluating hiring or doing business with you. more than just discussion about – what have you done for me lately. Give a full and complete rendition of brand you!