It says “Are You Going To Heaven”.  Bit morbid don’t you think?

Does it have something to do with New Years Eve 2011?  Is it this year’s theme for the Sydney NYE Fireworks?

If anyone knows, please leave a comment below.

Tracey

P.S. They added more .. It was a message from some Church .. Seriously? Come on guys! Weird though, right!

Thanks for reading “Are You Going To Heaven” Skywriting Sydney NYE 2011. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

In this rare moment of peace I thought it was time to reflect on what happened this year and what my goals for next year are.

What happened this year?  Some Reflection …

Let’s start with having a look at this year first.  Going over last year’s goals post I planned to:

• Build more Squidoo lenses and point BMR’s at them
• Finish a traditionally published book
• Close down my Aweber account
• Write more EZA articles
• Continue to use BMR for backlinks
• Deleting many of the poor performing Amazon mini sites
• Write some eBooks

So how’d I do?

While the list wasn’t that long or challenging I did manage to complete all but one of my goals.  The goal I didn’t complete – mainly from lack of enthusiasm was to write more EZA articles.

Fortunately for me that probably saved me wasting a lot of time since Panda hit article sites like EZA hard this year and that time was better spent on my own sites or other backlinking services.

So what about 2012 – what are my plans for next year?

2012 is going to be all about stepping up. Dominating.  Becoming a force to be reckoned with.

The past year I’ve been too much all over the place.  Too many websites, too little focus.  I’ve just been putting the hours in and backlinking since that got the job done.  And while it did earn me a few pennies here and there I’m not where I want to be.

So not surprisingly my online income took a dive this year.  Not enough to put us in the poor house or anything, but enough that because we didn’t curb our spending caused us to rack up a bit of credit card debt (which I talk about in 30 Day Spending Detox).

That got me mad.  I’m supposed to be good at finance – heck I’ve got enough books and articles on the topic – so how the hell did I get into debt?

The answer.  I didn’t care enough (so my income dropped) and wasn’t organised enough (hence the out of control spending).

We are all fine and back on track again of course.  But it was definitely a wake-up call.  A big universe slap in the face that I need to get SERIOUS again.

Let’s get serious.  This isn’t a game anymore.

It’s time I need to make a name for myself in the finance niche.

So that means.

Write more books – 6 this year is the goal.

Write more awesome kickass blog posts (and more often).  1,000 words minimum.  Photos, graphs, video’s.  Whatever’s needed.

Videos.  Oh hell yes – I’m gonna step in front of the camera.  It’s about time.

Diversifying posts to catch a wider audience.  I already did this with my Christmas lights in North Ryde post.  Regular readers probably wondered WTF I was doing.  Don’t care.  It was useful.  Gained some good mentions and backlinks.  And my book sales went up – could have been a coincidence, don’t care.  I wrote about something real, unique and helpful.  So what if it wasn’t marketing related.

Taking my own pics when possible.  Originality.  Going that extra step.  Owning it baby.

Press Releases.  It’s time to bring it and let the world know.

So that’s it.  2012 is going to be the year when I jump out of my comfort zone and really go for it.

Watch this space.

Tracey

P.S. Some of my friends have already started their goals posts for next year.  Let me know by email or in the comments below if you want a link to your goals post below. 

Enough about me – here are some of my FRIENDS GOALS FOR 2012 ..

1. Tiffany’s 2012 Goals and Business Plans

2. Lis’s year in Review & Plans for 2012 & Here

3. Leo’s Year and Goals for 2012

4. Hospitalera’s Making Money in 2011 / 2012

5. James’s – 2011 Lessons and 2012 Goals

Thanks for reading 2012 Goals & Resolutions. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

The letterbox at one of the houses in Chauvel Street, North Ryde

While I didn’t know it at the time, when I first moved to this area last year it was a surprise to learn that quite a lot of the houses around here decorate their houses for Christmas.  And so every evening our family has been walking around the streets at dusk looking at some of the Christmas lights.  Some people really go to a lot of effort and one street in particular Chauvel Street is well-known for nearly every house in the street being decked out in all the Christmas flashing glory.

In fact I think North Ryde probably has the best Christmas lights in Sydney.

Which streets have the best lights?

Chauvel Street, North Ryde is where it is all at, most houses in the street decorate and some look fantastic.  There are a few streets surrounding it as well including Cutler Parade, Kokoda Street, Tobruk Street and Edmondston Street that have a few houses as well.

View Larger Map

Where To Park?

It’s best to park in Cutler Parade.  Chauvel Street can get busy and when cars park on both sides of the street it’s easy to get stuck since there isn’t enough room for more than one car to drive down it.  Instead – park in Cutler Parade.  It’s much wider and there are usually plenty of room for parking.

Then you can walk down Cutler, Chauvel, take a quick detour into Kokoda to see the one house there and decide whether you want to go into Tobruk or not.

There is usually an icecream truck at one end of Chauvel as well so make sure you bring some extra money as the kids are sure to ask for one.

Busiest nights are Friday & Saturday nights, and the week prior to Christmas Day.

Some of the photo’s I’ve taken of the houses

I’ve included some photo’s of some of the houses we’ve seen as we walk around our neighborhood.  I hope you like some of our favorite houses that have Christmas lights in North Ryde, Sydney.

And while you are in the Christmas spirit, why not check out how to decorate your Christmas tree on a budget from my last post.

As you can see some people go to a lot of effort this time of year, and I really wonder how much their electric bills would be.

Oh and none of these houses are mine.  :)

Tracey

Have your own Christmas Lights Post?  

Add it to the list below by clicking the ‘add your link’ button at the bottom of this post.  You’ll be able to choose a thumbnail image as well.  Make sure you write a descriptive name such as ‘Lights In Willoughby NSW’ so we know where they are from.

Make sure you link to your Christmas lights post and not the homepage so people can find it easier.

(You can add your link up to the 24th December, after that the link manager will be closed. I also have full discretion on who links here so please don’t link to anything inappropriate – Christmas Lights posts only please).

Thanks for reading Christmas Lights in North Ryde Sydney. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

My Name is Tracey and I LOVE CHRISTMAS.

There.

So let’s get down to the actual content of this post – how to decorate your christmas tree on a budget.  (BTW, this search get’s practically no search traffic according to the GAKT so I’m not writing this post for any monetary reasons – just because I wanted to write something Christmasy.

Cool.

So anyway…

My Christmas Tree decorating budget this year was to do the whole tree (including buying that actual tree as well) for under $100.  Success!

Here is our tree:

Batman helped me decorate the tree this year.  Bless him.

How to Decorate Your Christmas Tree for under $100

I got the tree and Christmas angel at Big W.  The rest of the decorations were made from three bunches of white faux poinsettia flowers which I cut to separate the flowers (each ‘bunch’ had about six or seven flowers on it).  The rest of the decorations were found at a discount store for $1 each.  The only real expense were the Christmas tree lights which even though they had 20% off the price at Target still ended up being $28.00 which is a bit more than I wanted to pay.

195cm Tree – $27.86
Tree topper angel – $14.98
150 x Tree Lights (Warm White from Target) – $28.00 (they were 20% off)
3 x Poinsettia Bunches @$2.99 = $8.97
Random Gold & Silver Decorations 20 x $1 – $20

Total Cost: $99.81

Not bad if I do say so myself.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Tracey xx

Thanks for reading How To Decorate Your Christmas Tree For Under $100. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

The clock is ticking .. no not THAT clock.

I’m probably fairly slow to know who some people are online, but being a member of the secret forum The Pond I ran across someone called Fraser Cain.

For those that don’t know (although I suspect most of you do), Fraser is the webmaster (is that the correct term these days) of the über popular blog Universe Today.

According to statistics it get’s 100,000 visitors per day.  Yes you read that right.  100,000 PER DAY!

Fraser’s main method of getting this traffic is not backlinking, guestposting or writing articles on other web 2.0′s or other sites; it’s simply to write more keyword focused quality content for his own website.

By writing more content for his own site he has effectively build a behemoth of a site that contains anything you wanted to know about space, physics, the universe and more.

Without building a single backlink.

Impressive.

Of course he does have millions of backlinks which he has gained over the many years that the site has been running (and I’ve just given him another one).  But these have come from other’s linking to him, he didn’t actively acquire these links himself.

All of this has got me questioning my current method of getting traffic which is write a post, build some backlinks to it (using something like BMR) and move to another blog (Yes I know I have too many blogs to keep up with).

A method while reasonably successful, has not gotten me to the levels that I really want online.

So are building backlinks a waste of time?

Should I instead be focusing any spare time I have (spare time – ha!) to focusing on just ONE website and building up content on that site exclusively.

I already use a method of keyword selection on my blogs (not on THIS site though obviously) so that isn’t new to me, and I do (for the most part) try to make the posts that I write informative, entertaining, and useful.

But what I don’t do is really take the time to build ONE site up and build lots and lots and lots of content for it for every conceivable keyword I can think of.

I’m starting to think that that’s what I should be doing.

Not spending a week here and a week there writing the odd post on my many blogs.  Which by the way I have been getting much better at – I’ve recently let about 50 domains ‘expire’ because I just don’t have the time for them.

And not spending any time on HubPages, Squidoo, Wizzley, Blogger or other web 2.0 site either.

But my own site.

But which one?  Which one do I focus on?  I’ve got so many babies (website babies that is, not real babies of which I only have two) I don’t even know which ones I should even pick to build up.

This one?

My Simple Rules Site since it promotes my books?  Any of my many affiliate sites (and no I’m not linking to my good ones from here).

Man, I just don’t know.

But what I do know is that I think Fraser Cain is a genius.  I’m thinking his method is more and more the way I want to go.

I’m starting to really believe that backlinks ARE a waste of time.  Really.

Thoughts?

Thanks for reading Are Building Backlinks a Waste Of Time?. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

This looks surprisingly a lot like me. Except for the snow.

Before I became an Internet Marketer, I was an author.  I had two traditionally published books in Australia in personal finance.  All my life I wanted to write, and even though at times I wasn’t always very good at it, it was my dream to become a full-time writer.

It was a no-brainer then that I studied Journalism and Media Communication at University (actually I did have one year in Commerce first before I moved to Journalism but I digress).  I never did get that TV job as a reporter though.  In fact most of my jobs post University were fairly standard secretarial type roles that really didn’t need any writing (unless you count boring reports).

It wasn’t until I was older (and wiser?) that I figured it was now or never and I wrote a book on the stock market (as that was something I was interested in at the time).  Fortunately it was easy to find a publisher and get it published and it went on to be a bestseller (which sounds far more impressive than it actually is: in Australia you only need to sell over ten thousand or so copies for a book to become a bestseller).

Chuffed with myself that I’d finally realised my dreams I sat back and waited for the cheques to roll in.  And I waited and waited.  A few cheques came but they weren’t all that impressive.  I found out that from my $24.95 book, I made royalties of a little over two dollars per book.  No wonder writers don’t make any money.  I did however go on to write another one, but again, while it was successful in bookstores, I wasn’t exactly rolling in the cash that I thought all author’s received.

So I got disillusioned by the whole writing books game and gave up my dreams.  It was a little after that I heard about this thing called internet marketing where you could write blogs and build websites and get paid commissions.  Heck you could even write your own stuff and have OTHER people sell it for you.  Could this be the answer I was looking for?

For a while it was.  And to some degree it still is (it still is the way I make the majority of my money online) however twelve months ago I heard about changes in the publishing world.  One of the biggest retailers in the world, Amazon, had opened up its Kindle Publishing arm to everyone.  You no longer needed a publisher to get listed on the giant, you could write a book and upload it yourself directly to the book giant.

And even better, if you priced your book between 2.99 and 9.99 you got 70% of the royalties.  Oh boy did this revelation make my heart sing again!

So around three months ago I started writing ebooks for the Kindle and published my first book on the Kindle, Nook and iPad (among others) and officially become a non-fiction indie author.

Now while book sales haven’t been breaking any records so far (I’m actually in the process or updating it AND releasing a second book) I can see the potential and with a background in internet marketing to help boost traffic and conversions I can see that this can be a very good way to make money in the future.

The world is only starting to move to reading digital books.  I recently read a statistic that only 10-15% of readers own an ereader such as the Kindle.  As ereaders and tablets become more mainstream then that number will rise.  Amazon has reported it now sells more ebooks than printed books, which is probably due to the fact that ereader and tablet owners buy more books than regular readers.  I know I buy AT LEAST one ebook a month now (often more) whereas before I’d be lucky if I bought two or three printed books a year.

With the rise in the number of readers wanting digital content the audience is only going to get bigger.

Do you have a book inside you just waiting to get out?

Doesn’t matter if it’s nonfiction or fiction (most of the self-publishing success stories so far have been fiction writers but I suspect that’s because most nonfiction authors are still quite happy to stick with their publishers at the moment).

If you’ve ever wanted to be a writer and get a book published right now is the best time to do it.  You can upload it directly to Kindle, Barnes & Noble (if you live in the US) and Smashwords (to distribute to the rest of the ereaders & tablet devices).

And you can FINALLY be getting the lionshare of profits from your own work.

God I love technology.

Thanks for reading I’m writing eBooks for the Kindle, Nook, iPad and more. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

Charming? Is That You?

Yes affiliates, it’s time to ramp up your product reviews and pages because Christmas season is upon us.

So in the spirit of giving, ‘tis the holiday season after all, it’s time I wrote another post on this here poor neglected blog of mine.

Okay then, let’s start at the beginning shall we?

Once upon a time there was a princess named Tracey. She was a lovely girl who liked to write. One day a handsome prince arrived at her door, he was gorgeous and told her that he could make all of her desires come true, he started unbuttoning his shirt to reveal a smooth .. Oh shit, wrong story. Sorry about that.

Where was I?

Oh yes. Promoting stuff.

So what do you promote? How do you find the right products?

Firstly head over to Amazon. This is where you’ll be doing all your research (no keyword tools required).

There are three lists that you will need to look at, they are the Bestsellers List, Hot New Products List and Movers & Shakers List. Each main category on Amazon has these lists. Most people just stick with the Bestsellers List because it’s easy. That’s fine. But I tend to concentrate on the Hot New Products and Movers & Shakers lists – just to be different.

Great, now you’ve got a list of the top 100 or 200 products that you know are selling well on Amazon. You could choose any one of them and do fine. However you want to find the really hot products don’t you? Of course you do.

Then it’s time to have a closer look at the lists. What you are looking for is the products that people are TALKING about. If they are talking about it, it’s a good sign that they are searching online for it as well rather than just randomly buying it from Amazon.

Have a look at the listing for this Vtech Mobigo toy:

See that little “8 Customer Discussions” link? That means people are TALKING about it. This is a very good sign of a hot product. And it’s also got lots of positive reviews. Another plus. Oh and you also know that it’s selling well because it’s moving UP the movers and shakers list.

Are your fingers burning yet?

Ok. So you’ve chosen your product. What do you write about it?

There are two areas where you can get your info – the Amazon page for the product (where most people go and still a good place for the basic information).

But remember that this product had discussions right? Well let’s see what people want to know about this product. Click the “Customer Discussions” link.

Very interesting. People want to know if it’s appropriate for 5 year olds, the comparisons between this product and the iXL and so on. Bet most affiliates won’t put this GOLD information in their reviews. Can we say long tail keywords baby?

Oh and while we are here and talking about keywords. What keywords should you be using?

Look at the customer reviews and the discussions. What are people actually calling this product? You know, NOT the manufacturers description but the actual words people use when they talk about it? Seems most people just use the word Mobigo. So that’s the keyword you want to target with your “Buy Mobigo” “Cheap Mobigo” “Mobigo Review” etc. Of course put the whole product name in your content, but your main keyword to concentrate on in this case is just Mobigo.

Alrighty then. You’ve got the product and have written a review. Oh and I forgot to mention that yes you’ll need to write it yourself. Don’t just cut and paste the text from Amazon – lazy boys and girls don’t win in this game. Try and make it long and juicy. Never below 300 words. I try and aim for 500’ish words. Just so I can get more long tails in there.

So now what? Where do you put the review? On your own site? On a web 2.0?

Let’s look at these starting from best to just ok.

BEST: Your own website that is already ranking well on G.

GOOD: Web 2.0 sites (squidoo, hubpages, etc etc) << because these will rank quicker than a new site that you put up even if you don‘t own the domain.

OK: A new site that you’ve just started. Probably won’t rank as high as quickly, but will be great for next year or the year after.

Cool.

Now let’s get that baby ranking.

Onpage SEO. Let’s start here because it’s the easiest. You want your main keyword in the TITLE, CONTENT, URL (page/post name not domain name), IMAGE ALT TAG, at least.

You also want to add some internal links using both exact and partial anchors. (Don’t use too many exact’s as it can work against you).

That will give the page a good boost on it’s own.

Now external SEO aka backlinks. If you can afford a link building service such as Build My Rank then do it. If not then you are going to have to spend a bit more time finding links yourself. You can use web 2.0’s and other sites you own etc for backlinks. Don’t bother with directory submissions or blog commenting. Not quick enough and fairly worthless for seo juice anyway.

I like to send around 10-20 backlinks directly to the money page, then write a web 2.0 which points to the money page and send IT 10-20 backlinks, then other web 2.0 property that points to the money page and send IT 10-20 backlinks. And so on and so on.

These are not going to be quality links like guest posting (which is a better way to build up your authority sites but not really relevant here for ranking quick product reviews for Christmas).

Again you want a teeny tiny few exact match anchors, but mostly you want partial anchors. Partial anchors are those that have one or two keywords plus some other words. So if your exact match you want is “Mobigo“. Your partials would be “mobigo review”, “new vtech toy mobigo”, “read about mobigo here” and so on. Also throw in a few non anchors here are there. “read the review”, “click here”, to keep it natural. So MAINLY you want partial anchors, and then sprinkle a few exact match’s and non match’s as well.

Keep your content original and useful even those that you are just using for backlinks. I don’t use spun content (yeah I know it can work, I just don’t do it, ‘k)

Oh if it’s YOUR site then use only TWO or less affiliate links per page. One up the top and one down the bottom. I’ve found reducing the amount of aff links on the page helps it rank better. Doesn’t matter as much with the web 2.0’s but still don’t overdo it and make it look spammy. ‘k?

And that’s it really.

Summary:

• Choose products that people are talking about
• See WHAT they are talking about it
• Write a good original review with long tails thrown in
• Good onpage SEO and some internal links
• Backlinks to the page using mainly partial anchors.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks for reading 100 Days Until Christmas. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

You can brand your website/name.

This is what most internet marketers are doing right now. It can range from getting a funky name that’s easy for your visitors to remember to building a perception or idea of what you want your visitor to think or feel when they visit your site.

It’s probably the simplest way to start branding because you can tie in both visual elements (your blog logo and site design) and your content together making it easy for people to instantly know at a glance what the site is about.

This works best if you know the direction that you want your site to be in and what you want to accomplish with it. Your marketing focus should be you want a person to remember your site name or brand rather than find you via search terms (which is still important but not the same as being known for your brand).

You can tell if a company is branding its name or business if you think of that brand instead of the object.

Ask someone which is the first search engine they think of and they’ll say Google. If you have to send a parcel, people will tell you to Fed Ex it. These are examples of name brands.

Branding Your Products/Services

Not everyone wants to create a name brand however, and instead build their brand around their products or services.

Apple is a good example for branding their products rather than themselves (even though Apple itself is still a strong name brand). But generally they will brand their products from placing i in front of them: iPad, iPhone, iPod etc or their Mac products which they’ve even created persona’s for as being cool hip computers.

They are branding their PRODUCTS to be the first thing that you think of when you want a tablet, smartphone etc.

Amazon also does this with its Kindle. It’s branding that as the number one e-reader.

You would want to pursue this type of branding if you want your PRODUCT or SERVICE to be the first thing customers think of when looking for your ‘thing’.

Tim Ferris did this well with 4 hour work week as one of the number one business books for entrepreneurs. (You could also argue that Ferris is also a person brand, however his focus has mainly been on his book hence why his website is called 4hourworkweek.com and not timferris.com).

Branding yourself.

Not Me.

I may have joked around about this in the past (no I actually don’t really have a tattoo on my ass guys – I’m a conservative mother of two dont’cha know – it’s really on my boob) but branding yourself is another great way of building your business.

It’s probably slightly egotistical (since you are effectively saying that YOU are more important than your product) but it can also help build your profile much faster than building a website since people connect with other people much faster than connecting with a website.

Celebrities are good examples of this (including iconic ‘person’ brands such as Martha Stewart, Oprah, Snooki) but you don’t need to be famous to be known as yourself in certain circles. Just mention ‘Griz’ in my internet marketing circles and most of my colleagues will instantly know this is. Whether it was his intention or not, he has branded himself as the guru of search engine marketing.

In fact once you get to first name basis in your ‘circles’ then you’ve effectively branded yourself as an authority on your subject and it’s just a matter of expanding on that to become more widely known.

The reason why branding is important is that it’s the first thing that people think of when they are looking for your ‘thing’. And that builds loyalty, trust and repeat business. Which leads to MONEY BABY.

Often choosing which type of branding you want to do will help you to focus on that aspect of your business. Whether that’s your biz name, your product, or you.

How to build your brand

Ok so you’ve chosen where to focus your branding; now how do you actually do that?

The easiest way to go about this is to specialise and drill down. And I mean down down down. Be specific specific specific.

So, let’s say your niche is microwave ovens. Just trying to become the best microwave oven site isn’t enough. It’s too general and isn’t really going to brand you (no matter how many ‘authority’ articles you write – sorry).

What you want to do is become, say, the best microwave oven website for guys going to college. Then you need to tightly focus your entire site to JUST focusing on that customer. Write to him. Get into his head about what he wants to do with his microwave oven. His needs are likely to be a lot different to a mother of three. For example he may only want to use it to heat ramen noodles or defrost the beer he left in the freezer (and he’ll need to be told that this is a BAAAD idea).

You want to be the first thing that guys going to college think about when they are in the market to buy a microwave. They’ll ask their buddies that they are thinking of buying a microwave and their buds will say your website is the best. You’ll become a strong brand for this niche market.

And guess what. You’ll get natural links too. Yeah you will.

Now right now I know what you are going to say – doesn’t specialising and narrowing your focus actually reduce the amount of customers that you’ll get?

Surprising no. The tighter your focus the stronger your brand will become. The stronger your brand the more you’ll be seen as an authority. The stronger you become the MORE customers and sales you’ll get. And the money will come. Oh yeah baby.

Oh and don’t be shy to tell everyone exactly what your brand is.

You can see I’ve done this with my simplerules site. I’m branding this site to not ‘just’ be about finance books. But finance books which are fun and simple (which is why I’ve put the tagline in the logo and kept the design of the site clean). This brand will build as I write more ‘simple’ finance books and eventually become an authority on easy to read finance books (well that’s the long term plan anyway).

Contrast that with my traceywrites and this traceyedwards websites where I’m branding myself as writer or internet marketer (but not combining both of them together into one site). Traceyedwards.com is very much tightly focuses on online marketing whereas my traceywrites site understands that my reader base is likely to be VERY different and expect different content so I’m keeping each of them tightly focused on two specific audiences. I’ve branded them differently (even though all sites have a similar look since I fucking love that theme right now). What – you didn’t think I could write over 1,000 words without swearing once did you? Oh yeah – that’s part of branding this site as well – the language I use.

Ok, so I’ve talked about a lot of concepts here. Let’s summarise:

1. Decide where you are going to focus your branding. Will it be your website, your products or yourself?
2. Think about your customer and make that site for them. Try and be specific.
3. Tell customers your brand to begin with. Eg. Truck rentals for divorced couples
4. Make sure your content and look and feel fits in with your brand concept.
5. Give Tracey a donation (what? How did that get in there?)

You really can build a strong brand. Yeah you can. Go forth and specialise young grasshoppers. Oh and get a tattoo – its great branding.

Thanks for reading Branding – It’s Not Just About Butt Tattoo’s Apparently. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

1. The best way to make money online post Panda is to focus on one thing, build an authority site, brand yourself and build a ‘business’; or

2. Have a few sites, spread yourself around and earn money from different ventures so that if one goes bust you still have the others to rely on for income.

Lately most internet marketers are pushing for the first. Build an authority site only – yeah I’ve even pushed that myself in this post – but I have to admit I haven’t practiced what I’ve preached.

Oh I believed what I was told and I did try and focus on just one thing for a while. But I got bored pretty quick. So I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all just bogus.

Most online entrepreneurs (me included) are ‘scanners’. We don’t WANT to focus on just one site for weeks at a time and build up its authority and brand it.

This picture is sure to alienate half my audience but whatever I like it .. purrr.

Man, that sounds like too much work, and hey True Blood is on so I might just take a break while I watch Eric .. oh Eric ..

Um, where was I?

Oh yeah. Doing more than one thing online. Can you still make money doing a bunch of different things?

A big fat YES.

And I don’t think I’m alone as who hasn’t been tempted to check out the WSO’s for the next ‘cool’ thing to do.

We don’t want to build big fat authority businesses we just want to make some fucking money. Yes I said THAT. I’m feeling naughty right now.

There is a million different ways to make money online – from investing in the stock market (<< I had to get that link in there – keywords baby) to being a freelance writer, to building affiliate sites, to taking a pic of your cat chewing a sign with a web address on it for a fiverr gig.

There are so many different ways that you can create cash it’s not funny (unless you are not making ANY money then it’s really NOT funny).

So when I’m told to just pick one thing are build that and brand yourself it makes me go crazy. I don’t want to do just one thing. Maybe I have ADD?

Nah.

Mmm. Maybe.

But right now I’m going to tell you the REAL secret to getting wads of cash to fly through your computer screen and that is that you can’t listen to anyone else, copy anyone else, or follow what anyone else is doing (unless you think it’s your thing too). (I know that seems like stupid advice since I’m actually advising you not to take anyone’s advice). Um did that make sense?

You need to follow your heart, be brave and just be DIFFERENT.

But Tracey, I hear you say, I don’t know what I want to do, so why don’t you just tell me what the fuck I need to do (OMG I’ve just cursed twice in this post – that must mean I’m really passionate about what I’m saying right now).

I just did.

DO WHATEVER IT IS THAT YOU LIKE DOING ONLINE – But do it your OWN way. Put your own spin on it. That means doing things different than 99% of the other sheep out there.

It takes guts to go against the crowd but if you do you’ll get noticed and people flock to different. I know it’s a risk to try new things, but whatever it is about internet marketing that you like (for me it’s the writing, making pretty pictures and trying new things). I’m always trying new things.

Right now I’m writing books for Kindle but next week I could be doing something completely different again. And probably will be. No need to slow down on this highway baby.

I just don’t want to build an authority site. So suck it – I don’t care what everyone is telling me I need to do. I’m quite happy just doing my own thing. It makes me happy and I make money doing it.

Follow your passion, write down that idea that you can’t get out of your head, try something you’ve never done before. Go a little crazy.

Just don’t be the same. Stand out. Be YOU.

Thanks for reading Why You CAN Do More Than One Thing Online and Still Make Money. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

Do you have a website that provides similar information, looks the same, has a similar layout than another site in your niche? Then you might have a problem.

One of the things that I’ve noticed about my sites is that the ones that do the best in terms of both search engine placement and conversion rates are those that are a little bit different to many of the other sites out there.

If a site of mine either contains a new or unique viewpoint or presents information in a different way to most of the other websites in its niche then it’s so much easier to rank and essentially get conversions (sales) from it.

So is originality or uniqueness a ranking factor in Google?

While I don’t even pretend to have any idea about what G is looking for, it would make sense that a bot would be able to determine how different your site is compared to others in a similar niche.

It’s the reason why most ‘make money online’ eBooks/courses fail for buyers, even if it did work for the original author. Once a method has started to gain in popularity it no longer becomes unique. I mean how many IPK, Google Sniper or Xfactor sites worked as well for the buyers as they did for the author? You’ll find thousands of forum posts from buyers asking why they aren’t raking in the millions even though “they followed the steps exactly”.

If you followed the steps exactly as someone else, then you are no longer original.

So how do you create a unique site?

As marketers our challenge is to think outside the box a little bit. That doesn’t mean that you have to re-invent the wheel – I mean how unique can you be talking about food dehydrators? But it does mean that you have to add elements to your website and content that other sites don’t have.

It could be as simple as using a static html site when everyone else uses blogs. Or it might be that you have to go all out and add flash elements, video case studies, unique design layouts or more.

So I’ve included a few tips here that can help your site becoming a little bit different to others in your niche.

And yes I understand the irony of providing this advice that many people may or may not follow and therefore will no longer make your site unique. I’m counting on the fact that I’m still very unknown (I like it that way) so there won’t be many of you actually reading this.

1. Add a contact page.

No I don’t mean just adding a contact form – everyone does that. I mean a fully fleshed out contact details page including physical addresses and real phone numbers.

You are probably thinking I mean YOUR address and phone number (no I don’t – unless you like getting phone calls at 3 am asking if you have ‘such and such’ in stock and yes that HAS happened to me – my partner answered and wasn’t at all impressed).

But the contact details of the companies that produce or manufacture the products you promote. If you primarily sell Bugaboo Prams then put down the contact details for Bugaboo including address, phone number, contact people (such as media or sales enquires) and email addresses if they have them on the site).

Don’t say that YOU are Bugaboo though – you don’t want any lawsuits – you are just providing the contact details FOR the manufacturers for good customer service.

Ok that was an easy one, but you’d be surprised how few people do this and how something so simple can make you look much more credible and give you a tiny boost to rankings.

2. Creating Original Images

You usually just go to Google images and save a good picture from there right? Yeah so does everyone else too.

So if you really want to stand out that means you are going to have to create your own images. If you have a camera then start clicking away. This works really well if you are writing a review and can take your own pictures of the item from different angles.

You holding the item will be a good selling feature too – it builds trustworthiness.

Don’t have the product to take pictures of? Then get a really good image from the manufacturer and make it your own by adding facts or information right there on the image.

Or if you prefer it could even be as simple as adding your own personal headers.

Oh and if you don’t want people stealing YOUR images from Google images, add this to your robots.txt file

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /images/

Although personally I don’t bother too much – it is a source of some traffic after all.

3. Adding Helpful and/or Interactive Features

How many times are you searching for information and all you seem to find are boring websites full of just lots and lots of 300-400 word keyword enriched articles. I even have a couple of these old sites myself. They suck. They don’t convert. They are not memorable.

Think about what your customer wants that they currently are not getting from other websites.

One feature that has really increased my conversions is creating pages of ‘sorted’ products. You can sort your products by price, colour, size and so on. Sorting products by price is one of my most popular features.

And no I don’t use a plugin for this – I manually go and create these pages myself. I create a list of all the products I’m promoting within a category and create pages for products say “Less than $100”, “$100 – $200”, and so on.

It’s not an article or post – It’s an actually page with the menu on the main navigation so customers can find it easily.

I check and update this monthly to make sure that Amazon still has the products in stock and they are selling in the right price bracket.

Does that mean you should put the price on your product page? No. Amazon doesn’t allow that. But they will allow you to put a price guide on your page. So you can say – Price Guide: $100 – $150 for each product. Customers like this – especially for higher priced products.

If you have a shoe site then use a sort by size or colour. A toy site, then sort by age groups. You get the idea.

Again, it’s amazing how something so simple can really make your site unique amongst the rest of the affiliate crap out there.

Ok, so far we’ve been talking about lots of onpage stuff that you can do to increase your uniqueness. But what about offpage things like links?

4. Getting Unique Links

Is it really possible to get a bunch of unique backlinks that your competitors don’t have? Yes it is. But you have to know your industry and be prepared to put in the work.

Most affiliate markets (me included) are lazy. We stick to using tools such as BMR or article syndication.

More links for less work right?

Well that can help, but what works even more is getting REAL links from REAL blogs and websites. Unique links that your competitors don’t have.

What you think no-one is going to link to your pink sock website? You’d be surprised, but it does take some work.

Guest posting is nothing new, but the way most people do it is send out a whole bunch of spam emails to related sites asking if they would like a guest article. Or they’ll do a search in Google for niche + “guest post” or “write for us”.

You’ll get the obligatory list of sites and perhaps even a few will respond. But it’s what everyone does and it usually isn’t the best way to do it.

The best way is to get noticed by the big players in your niche (even if it’s loosely related like a fashion blogger who see’s your article on cat hats for dogs and thinks it would make a good story) is to start 1) commenting on their blog regularly, 2) responding to some of their twitter posts and 3) write articles and link to them.

Yes that means being social in your niche.

How do you think I got big players like Grizz to link to me? I was a regular commenter on his blog and I wrote posts that linked back to him.

I engaged him and he responded.

Before him I was unknown by the three people that read this blog. I don’t try to get search traffic here. I don’t actually want search traffic here. I like being relatively anonymous.

But on my money sites – it’s different. I engage, chat in forums, link to other blogs in my niche. It’s easier and much more effective than spinning articles and sending out the various copies to directories.

People link to people. I have had some great blogs (including TVguide.com) link to me. Think a link from tvguide.com will help your rankings. You betcha!

Well, it looks like I’ve just hit 1,500 works so it’s probably time to go and hang the washing on the line – ahh a stay at home marketer’s job is never done.

But before you go I’d like to mention two things.

One – a big thanks to Alexis for kicking me up the butt and telling me I needed another post on this blog. This one’s for you – I hope you liked it.

And Two. Anyone a member of Threadless (the t-shirt site)? Then go and give my partner a 5 on his latest t-shirt design so his design talents can be validated.

Cool!

Until next time …

t

Thanks for reading Is Originality a Ranking Factor?. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)