Visualized.Feel.Abundance

Focus On Market Research
Market Research is usually done at the beginning of a marketing life cycle where you decide which market or industry you would like your business to focus on. Or it could be done when you are identifying new products or sub-niches to add to your current niche or marketing segment.

Keyword researches, analysis of competitors, marketing plans and strategies to penetrate a market should be a focus here. But don’t dwell on it too long as opportunities come and goes. Once you have identified what you want, plan and execute it.

Focus On Site Design
Site Design is usually a focus before you launch a site/blog but it should not stop there. Continuous improvement is a necessity in fine tuning your site/blog to make it easy for readers to subscribe your RSS, comment on your articles and opt in to your mailing list.

A Good site design makes reading visiting your site/blog a pleasant experience where advertisements are merged seamlessly into or around your content and archived articles are easy to find. It will also encourage readers to help you drive your traffic by sharing your articles through Web 2.0 buttons/link and convert readers to clients.

Focus On Content Creation
Every person has a wealth of content to share. You may think that what you know has already been shared but I can promise you that your perspective has not been shared before. It’s yours and it’s unique and that’s what your readers want to know. When they like your style and perspective, that’s when you convert them from visitors to readers.

If you think you have no content to share, then surf the web and read up on contents! Once you find contents related to your niche, track back to that article and give your views on it. Never copy and paste, unless you get express permission to do so.

So who says you have no content? Your views and perspective are your unique content!

Focus On Tracking Results
In order to know if you have done something right and to allow you to focus on what brings you the best results, you will need to test and measure. In Online business terms, it means tracking your traffic source and sales conversion. If you know where you are getting results from, you can tune your marketing activities to drive maximum results with the least effort.

Tracking Results does not take a lot of time, just set things up at the beginning and monitor it once a day follow by an analysis of the results once a week. Fine tune or discard activities that bring little or no results, focus more time and effort on activities that gives the best result or add new activities and track the performance.

Focus On Driving Traffic
Driving Traffic must be the most talk about topic in any online business. Every single site/blog that talks about internet marketing, online business or making money online will have a whole section (if not all the content) on this topic alone. So what I’ll highlight here is this, Driving Traffic is just the beginning. You will also need to focus on the next 2 items below to make driving those traffic worth it’s while.

Focus On Traffic Retention
So you have a good niche, a fantastically designed site, added great content and drove a ton of traffic. What if you did not retain them? You start from ground zero again the next day. Kind of lame right? This is exactly the case where many sites/blogs have stagnant growth - traffic surge at the beginning and then levels off, never to grow again.

What’s lacking here is the lack of a Traffic Retention policy. Offering a weekly/monthly ezine, offering full feed RSS, hosting a forum for discussion, interacting with readers that comment are some strategies to retain your traffic. Focus on these and you will build up your traffic to new heights over time.

Focus On Selling
It does not matter if you are selling a product, service or information. It does not matter if you are canvassing for a cause or charity. It does not matter if you are promoting a way of life or belief. It is all marketing and the end result is that you need to sell something.

Selling a product, service, information requires the same process as selling an idea, belief or donation. And unless you learn how to sell effectively, one of your main objective of your site/blog will not be met. So the focus you need here is a call to action.

Focus On SEO
If you have configured a self hosted wordpress blog properly, you are pretty optimized for SEO already. What you need to focus on is to optimized your headlines and articles with keywords and key phrases to attract more organic traffics. If you are not on a self hosted wordpress, it’s time you think about it.

How To Focus
If you are now suffering from information over load or at a lost about what to focus on, you need some help. On the left side bar, there is a free tool known as The Ladder Of Dreams. It has been proven to help online entrepreneurs set a clear path to their goals and keep them tightly focused on the critical activities they need to take action upon to achieve success.

Go ahead and download it, it’s FREE.

Cheers
James

Disclaimer: This post is not intended to teach internet marketing or how do you carry out an online business. It does highlight the crucial areas that an online business should focus on and some activities which are commonly neglected by internet marketers and online entrepreneurs.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Hey Folks,

This post was inspired by a post I read at positiveblog.com about “7 habits of highly ineffective people” and since I just met up with more then 700 hundred internet markets last month. I thought what I am going to be sharing here would help online entrepreneurs hugely.

Addicted To Traffic Statistic
Tracking your traffic is important to any internet marketer. It tells you what works and what don’t. It also tells you what is your traffic, sales and opt-in’s are from. But you just need to check it once a day, maybe twice. If you find yourself checking your statistics every 30 minutes. You are addicted!

Tell you something, it doesn’t matter if you check it 50 times a day or 1 time a day, it won’t increase your sales. Once a day is enough to see a short term trend or if your newly implemented tactic is working. Once a week is good enough to check if your strategy is working well enough for you and which source provides good traffic. Got it?

Addicted To Instant Messaging
I seldom use IM but I know a couple of fellow bloggers who are IM fanatics who cannot get off IM. True, it’s a good way to build relationship online and provide support for friends but there are times where IM is a pain. If you don’t know how to control your IM, it will interrupt your schedules at the most inconvenient time.

The result? At best, you take a longer time to complete your task. At worst, whatever you wanted to do never gets done. You might want to consider setting up a time where you will switch on your IM. Let your online friends and buddies know about the timing and you get to network with them during that window. This way, you get the best of both worlds

Addicted To Email
I guess in some ways, anyone with an email account are in some ways addicted to email. Similar to traffic statistic, we tend to check this all too often. Sometime people get so carried away, they just stare at the screen willing another email to pop in. It is as if you are some kind of pest control guys wanting to get rid of every pest and the emails are the rodents.

Let’s face it, unless you are working as a online tech support, you don’t need to check your email that often. The emails won’t run away and it won’t self destruct. So, just like our solution for traffic statistics, check your email once or twice a day is sufficient. I check mine once in the morning and once at night.

Addicted To Web 2.0 Site
Now the new fave of the internet are Web 2.0 sites or what is commonly known as social networking sites. It’s fun with loads of information, people to meet and interesting stuffs to do. It is actually a marketing haven for Internet Marketers to socialize and get to show off their wares. All Internet Marketers should get involved in Social Networking Sites if they are serious about their online business.

What’s wrong here is that some marketers get too addicted to a particular site and that’s all they do - Stick to one site. Now, it’s good to be focus but you need to move on after you have build up the rapport and credibility to “explore new land”. Sticking to just One or Two sites just don’t cut it. Think about it.

Addicted To Finding The Next New Thing
I know everyone is looking for the latest and greatest in Free Traffic Strategies, Viral Marketing Tool, etc. How I know? I am one of them too.

But what’s important here is when you find one, stick to it, put some time and effort in getting it to work. Once you get it to generate a decent, if not outrageous, kind of traffic then you move on. What many marketers do is to sign up and leave it on it’s own and start looking for the next big thing again.

Do you really think it’s gonna work that way? I don’t.

Addicted To Surfing
Now don’t get me wrong. As part of an internet marketers daily routine, you will have to surf the internet and surf a lot at that. The problem is after sometime, some marketers get addicted to surfing and surf for the sake of surfing! What do I mean by that?

Look, an internet marketer surfs for publicity, knowledge and relationship building. Even if you are not a internet marketer, this applies to you if you wish to promote your charity site, online dairy or share your secret. Wherever you go, leave a trace and by that I mean a comment, a remark on visitors log, a reply on a forum, a note to the author, etc.

You have already hit the site and read the post why not leave a trace? Think about it.

Are they Bad?
The 6 things above are important tools or habits for any internet marketers if used in the right dosage. Going overboard and getting addicted will be counter productive and side track you from your real goal. So take some time to think over and I invite you to share your experience and thoughts about them.

Cheers
James

Popularity: 8% [?]

Marketing, Promoting, Sharing, Advertising, Announcing, Bookmarking, Social Networking or simply telling everyone that your blog exist is as much a part of blogging as writing good content. If not, why bother to blog?

Have a nice weekend

Cheers
James & Karen

Popularity: 7% [?]

Hey Folks,

Yesterday I wrote about “Understanding Essential Components Of A Blog” - it basically explains what blogging terms such as RSS, Social Networking, Comments, Technorati, Stumbleupon, Trackback, Do Follow, etc are all about. So what did I do that and what has it got to do with the Law of Attraction? Let me illustrate by telling you my objectives:

1) I would love to attract like minded readers who wants to improve their life to our blog.
2) I would love that readers who come to my blog gets oriented and feels familiar with it.
3) I would love that readers to share our blog post with their friends and readers if they find it useful.
4) I would love that readers know that they can vote/stumble/bookmark any post that they find wonderful.
5) I want my readers to know that I love their comments and appreciate them.
6) I want my readers know that they can follow any post or comment if they are not free to drop by.
7) I want help my blogging friends to help their readers and help their blogs too.

By writing that post and sharing it here:

1) I empower readers who lack the knowledge in these areas to to gain those knowledge.
2) I empower them to contribute actively on any blog they visit, not just ours.
3) I empower blogging friends to attract more active contributors.
4) I empower blogging friends and readers to share post ethically and attract even more loyal readers.
5) I empower everyone reading to ultimately get more traffic through active participation.
6) I create an active blogging community with a simple post
7) I can talk about Law of Attraction and Blogging Tips at the same time

It’s a short post today as I just want to share my thoughts. What do you think? Do share with me, Thanks

Cheers
James

PS: So did it work? After less then 24 hours, it became my most commented post on my blog The rest I will monitor, probably too early to tell.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Hey Folks,Today I’ve been doing some fine tuning of our blog for quite sometime, I originally thought that I would just make an announcement to let you know what has been added, so you would notice. But then I thought, why not just do a brief run down on some essential component of a blog that (maybe, just maybe) newbie bloggers/readers may not know of?

So here it is, my blog announcement cum blog run down on essential components of a blog:

Comment Box
A typical comment box/form can be accessed by clicking on the post title or clicking on the “comment” link or sometimes a “read” link. Here is an example of a comment box:

The comment box is either an integral part of the post or a separate pop up form. Either one would have one of the following:

1) Name (Allows author to know who you are)
2) Email (Allows author to communicate with you)
3) Website (Allows author and readers to know if you have a website)

You can click on any names in the comment column that looks like hyperlink. It will bring you to the commentators site/blog.

Sometimes you will be challenged to answer a math sum or decipher a messy image before your post is allowed to proceed. That is to prevent/reduce the number of robot spams that the author may receive. We do want to author to concentrate on writing good stuffs instead of fighting spams right?

The last part, usually before or after the “Submit Comment” button, you may find a check box that allows you to get updates to subsequent comments from this post. It is very useful as the author/commentators may actually address or reply your comments.

Do Follow Movement

Sometimes you will hear certain authors saying that they “Do Follow” or you get a logo that looks like . What is means is that any comment on such a blog will generate a backlink to your site/blog (if you remember to fill it in). Backlinks are important to Google’s pagerank calculation and Technorati’s ranking.

This is a way an author says thank you for commenting and that they appreciate you taking time to pen down your thoughts. That said, please don’t abuse their kindness by leaving a comment with 10 links!

You Comment, I Reply

Following the Do Follow Movement, another hot community project is You Comment, I Reply! The logo looks the one on my right!

Again, it was started as a project to thanks readers for commenting but I put it down to basic courtesy :P. Blog post and comments are like a conversation, who wants to talk to a person who does not reply? So I do reply all my comments (sometimes just a bit later) even though I don’t publish that badge

Getting Updates From The Blog
Everyone loves to read blogs and get updates (especially from blogs with good content), 2 ways to get updates without visiting the blog everyday is to subscribe to the blogs RSS. If you want to know what RSS means, check here.

The first way is to get RSS delivered to your email. Feedburner and Feedblitz are 2 of the common medium that blogs used to delivered their post. Just find the subscription box, enter your email, verify it and you are set to get every single updates. But remember to go back to the site to comment if you like their post! You can find an example of what it looks like to the right of this para.

Another way of receiving Blog post update is via an RSS reader. Google RSS reader is one such example but there are many other good readers out there, just do a search.

RSS readers are useful if you frequently read a whole bunch of blogs and you don’t want to mess up your email. Another reason why RSS readers are more commonly used is that RSS via email is not commonly adopted by every blog yet! To the left, you will find an example of how an RSS logo looks like. Below is different presentation:

Just click on the logo or link and you will be shown a page where you can preview the RSS feed and select your preferred reader. Again, remember to check back with your favorite to comment and give support to the author.

Social Bookmarking and Networking

The next important and critically essential component on any blog is it’s social network! Most bloggers join at least technorati, stumbleupon, blogcatalog, mybloglog, netscape, digg or bumpzee. And if you love their article or blog post, help them spread the word by bookmarking them with your account (if you have one, if not it’s about time to get one). The one on the right contains a Fave button for Technorati, a save button for MyWeb from Yahoo and a voting badge from blogskinny!

You can fave them, digg, them, stumble them or whatever them (whatever the next big thing is) to your liking. The thing is, if you love it, share it! And you can leave a comment to let the author know about it, I know he would be eternally grateful! Below are some more examples of social bookmarks commonly found on a blog, typically within a post (i.e. you need to click on the title, comment or read link to access the single post).

This one below is bookmarking interface from Feedburner (I know , its a bit small but you get the idea). It’s usually at the end of a post:

Trackback

The last item is called trackback! If you love a post and want to share it on your blog, do it via trackback. Best not to copy, don’t rewrite just trackback and add your opinions and perspective to it. You actually do 2 things at once, maybe 3.

1) You do it legally (no copying) and give credit to the author. Thus earning his appreciation.
2) You still get to post good stuff and add your perspective which is what your readers love you for. You won’t actually lose them.
3) You gain some traffic from tracking back to the source. Your tracking appears as a comment on the source post and readers will follow to find out what you have to say about the topic they are interested in!

So as you can see, nothing wrong with tracking back! In fact it is good to trackback! Usually a post has a trackback link at the end of the post/article. Just copy that link and add it into your post (instead of the regular url) and you get a trackback. I have a picture below but it’s a bit small, so take a look at any of my post to find out what it looks like!

UPDATE : I have found this good writeup called “Wordpress Trackback Tutorial“. It should explain trackback more clearly. Another point is that certain theme may not display trackbacks in their comments. In those case, just drop them a comment telling them you like their post and have trackback. Simple?

Oh if you love this post and want to share it, Trackback! OK?

Love,
James

PS: The new additions to our blogs are the email subscription, notification of comments update, big RSS button and some minor changes. But mainly the email subscription.

Popularity: 100% [?]