The Online Business

Imagine being the first to comment on a new post from your favorite high-traffic blogger. What kind of traffic do you think that would draw to your own website or blog?

What does it take to be first to comment? Usually, when I’m online and scanning through my RSS feeds for new posts, I’m way too late to be the first comment. By the time I get there, 50 - 100 others have already left their thoughts.

Check out this free download from Comment Sniper that will notify you the instant your favorite high-traffic blogger has published their post. This allows you to jump in and make your comments before anyone else has the chance.

Be sure that your comments are useful and of benefit to the other readers. No “great post” or “that was helpful, thanks”. Put something of value so that other readers may want to follow your link to check out your website or blog. Then start counting the traffic that comes to you through that post.

I usually make it a point to add graphic images to give a visual life to my blog. Mark Wilson’s post on his blog, The 6M Profit Method, identifies a useful website for finding appropriate Web 2.0 icons to use on your site.

IconFinder is a library of web 2.0 images that are sorted in a very simple searchable format. Bookmark this site with your other blogging tools and refer back to it often.

A friend of mine shared with me a great way to build my list of prospects and it’s 100% Free. I had to pass this on to my readers.

You will never be asked for money or to join extra stuff and there’s no monthly fee.

This is very different…

It is so simple and the funny thing is I am surprised no one else has done this before.

All this is about is building your list of prospects to advertise to.
It’s free. Nothing more…

Check it out yourself…

Facebook can be an amazing marketing tool. I can’t think of better ways to get your message out to your targeted market

That being said, be careful how you use Facebook. If you are an ignorant fool, the results of posting on Facebook can be devastating. Just ask Kevin Colvin.

John Reese just put up his blog traffic exchange, “Blog Rush“, for testing. My first impression is that he has hit on an amazing idea that will take the blogging world by storm.

When you have signed up for Blog Rush, they provide you with the code to add a widget to your sidebar, like the one you see to the right that says “From the Blogosphere”. For each page view the Blog Rush widget gets on your blog, your link will be viewed on someone else’s blog. This can put backlinks to your blog all over the web.

There’s much more to it than I have just described. To get more details, go to the Blog Rush website and watch the brief video. This will knock your socks off, so be ready. It’s one of the most amazing Web 2.0 tools I’ve seen, yet.

While scanning my feeds in Bloglines, I came across an article on ProBlogger about an interesting tool called TouchGraph. With this free tool you enter a keyword or URL and it returns a graph of all the top results and their connections.

When I entered “brainoffthrottleon.com”, it returned these results:

Naturally, the tool is very dynamic. You can zoom in and scroll around to see much better than the picture here on the blog.

I see this site as very useful for market research. Imagine putting in a search phrase then quickly and graphically viewing the type of competitors that are using that phrase.

Please comment with your thoughts on other uses of this tool.

As part of the Thirty Day Challenge, I set up a page on Tumblr. I followed the instructions of Ed Dale and Dan Raine as carefully as I could. I was about 95% satisfied that I had put together a useful site, but was continuing to upgrade and perfect the content.

Two days later, my account was suspended.

At the point it was suspended, I had reached #5 on Google for phrase match against 657 competing websites. How cool is that?!

When I found that Tumblr had taken my site down, I felt a little like someone had slugged me in the stomach. I had been passionate about reading and listening to all the training, following all the directions, and fully expected to be rewarded by winning the challenge. I had spent hours at my computer, neglecting my family, striving for my goal of successfully completing this venture.

My emotions ranged from embarrassment, to frustration, to disappointment, to anger. The problem was that I didn’t know where or at whom I should direct those feelings. Was this my fault? Was it Ed and Dan’s fault? Was Tumblr the bad guy here?

I went to the Thirty Day Challenge Forum for answers. There, I found that the same thing had happened to most 30 day challenge members. And misery loves company, right? Well this group wasn’t miserable at all. They were mostly grateful for learning a technique that works. They were all talking about solutions to the problem.

Then I found out that it even happened to the teacher. Do you recognize this link:

howtobecomeaweddingplanner.tumblr.com/

My theory is that Tumblr was overwhelmed from being inundated by several thousands of new websites over the past couple days. They probably weren’t geared up to handle the throng of internet marketers from the standpoint of bandwidth nor from the attention they were getting. Rather than face the challenge, they chose to turn and run.

Here’s what I learned from the ordeal:

• Always have a backup plan.
• The system works.
• Ed and Dan are geniuses.
• I will never approach internet marketing the same as I did a month ago.
• I can still complete this year’s challenge.

They can’t stop us. Let’s finish this thing.

I just happened upon a post at the Mashable Blog that contains quite a large collection of Wordpress tools.

Not only is it a large collection, but they are arranged in a manner that makes this list very useful for finding what will be valuable for your own purposes.

I did a Google phrase search, just now, for “Don Wilson”. To my dismay, I couldn’t find a link to myself in 200 results, before I finally gave up.

Within those 200 Google search results, I found:

• a Don Wilson who is a superstar kickboxer
• a Don Wilson who owns a music company
• a Don Wilson who is a high level Quixtar guru
• a Don Wilson who is a professional baseball player
• a Don Wilson who co-hosted for Jack Benny
• a Don Wilson who is an orthodontist in Novato
• a Don Wilson who is a web developer
• a Don Wilson who is a builder in Southern California
• a Don Wilson who is a photographer in Seattle, WA
• a Don Wilson who is an insurance agent in Spokane, WA
• a Don Wilson who is the pastor of Christ’s Church of the Valley in Peoria, AZ
• a Don Wilson who is curator of mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History

And the list goes on and on and on…..

Because of what I’ve learned in the Thirty Day Challenge, I know how to take care of this problem, now.  I am going to test some of what I’ve learned from Ed Dale.

I’m going to call on my friends to view this post and let me know what they think of it.  In a couple weeks, I’ll check again and see where Don Wilson shows up in a Google phrase match.

I didn’t realize how long it had been since I have posted on my blog. Wow! I have been totally engrossed in the Thirty Day Challenge. Every spare moment, I’m listening to Ed Dale and Dan Raine give us loads of free advice for marketing your business on the internet.

It isn’t just any old information. No way! They are giving us meat. This stuff is fresh, new, and very robust.

Take, for instance, the GTrends Tool at WordTracker. This tool takes hours off the time that it takes to complete your market research. It combines the power of WordTracker and GTrends to help you identify exactly how much free traffic one could expect to receive on their site if they attain the top ranking in Google. And it’s free. How awesome is that?

I was reading Sam Hansen’s 30 Day Challenge blog and noticed that he had, also, written about this tool. In fact, Sam has done a fabulous job journalizing his Thirty Day Challenge activities.