You need to learn about internet marketing and one way is to learn from others with more experience. The easiest way to do this is to read other marketers blogs. But you need to learn effectively and surfing every internet marketing blog under the sun is not an effective use of your time.
So make sure that whatever marketing blog you are reading is delivering useful information. It can be from the author themselves or just pointing you to other sources of useful information. If they've got style about them then so much the better.
Here's a collection of internet marketing blogs that I've found useful.
1) Michael Fortin Blog: Copywriting and marketing tips from a man who is too brilliant for words. Michael is an expert copywriter who has done work for John Reese and many of the other top marketers. Without good copy you can't sell a thing, so learning all you can about persuasive writing is a must for your to do list.
2) Willie Crawford: An experienced online marketer, Willie is considered one of the world's leading Internet marketing experts. Listen to Willie, he "walks the talk" and can teach you a lot about the world of online marketíng.
3) Entrepreneurs Journey: The bloggers blogger, Yaro Starak made his money just from blogging and his blog tells you how. And if there is ever a model to emulate then there's one right here.
4) Skip Mcgrath. If Ebay is your thing then Skip's blog is a must. An expert at selling items on Ebay, and an experienced author of several books, Skip covers all of the ins and outs of earning money with Ebay.
5) Jensense: Jennifer helps you to make sense of contextual advertising and helps publishers to earn more money. Topics include Google Adsense and other similar contextual ad programs.
6) Marketing Pilgrim: Originally launched by Internet marketer Andy Beal way back in 2005. This blog covers the latest marketing news, reviews and other items related to online advertising.
7) Yahoo Publisher Network: Everything you ever wanted to know about Yahoo's Publisher Network but were afraid to ask. All of your questions are answered here.
Matt Cutts: A Google employee since 2000, Matt discusses all things Google on his Blog. He also covers search engine optimization and other interesting gadgets he runs across online. If Google is your thing, all is revealed here.
9) Bruce Clay: Since 1996 way before it was cool to be on the net Bruce Clay has been teaching those about search engine optimization and online marketíng. He really knows his "stuff" and you can tell that by his concrete informative posts which go into great detail. 10) Clickz: Clickz always has the latest dish on Internet marketing. Serving news and expert advice since 1997.
11) Jim Edwards: Jim Edwards blog "I Gotta Tell You" is a multi-media blog. Covering numerous topics related to makíng money onlíne, Jim always has a funny story to tell. He has a strong personality, so if you like that you'll enjoy Jim's blog.
12) Marnie Pehrson: Marnie is the creator of IdeaMarketers.com and covers all things related to article marketing and other online marketíng strategies. Again, she's been online for years and has much wisdom when it comes to gaining traffic from your short articles.
13) Google Adsense: If you use Adsense by Google to generate an income you'll want to subscribe to this blog. Tons of tips and tutorials to improve your earnings.
14) Search Engine Diva: Ginette Degner has been providing search engine optimization and Internet marketing consulting for over 16 years. She's good and also has a great sense of humor.
15) Income.com: When you talk about Internet marketing you can't forget about John Reese. The only online marketer I know of who made a million dollars in one day when he launched his Traffic Secrets course.
16) Joel Osborne: Joel has been making a living online for the past several years and has numerous web sites and products. Another expert when it comes to learning how to improve traffic and sell online.
17) Jonathan Leger: Jonathan Leger has been earning a living online since 2004. His blog discusses search engine optimization, Adsense and online marketíng.
18) Pay Per Click Journal: This blog is written by the website marketing experts at Brick Marketing. They cover all aspects of pay-per-click search engine marketing. So if you want to learn about internet marketing then there's lots of material out there from really effective sources that will keep you up to date about the latest and most effective marketing trends. These are just a small sample of what's out there. But after reading any marketing blog ask yourself if you are convinced that they really know what they are talking about and whether it has been an effective use of your time.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=96b5a85f-5968-46e6-873b-ed274e140497)
| Did you like this article? Then subscribe now to my RSS feed: |  |
- Image by Josh Bancroft via Flickr
What's RSS and why should I bother?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication – or so they say) is a way for you to subscribe to a website and be notified as soon as new information is published there without messing about with email.
It is supposed to be a standardized format but, as always, there are a number of variations though nothing to bother yourself about.
RSS feeds are usually indicated by the orange XML or RSS buttons like the one at the start of this sentence which allow you to locate feeds quickly.
But they also come in various shapes and sizes – not usually as odd as the big guy with the newspaper to your right – that's my personal variation to grab your attention.
To know when new material is published you need to use an RSS feed aggregator or reader. This allows you to collect all the information you are interested in directly in your own reader without having to visit lots of websites.This is very convenient and saves you lots of time.
Here's a great video I found on YouTube to help you better understand the whole process.
The Google, MSN, Bloglines icons in the right sidebar allow you to add the RSS feed directly to your personal page on the respective sites (if you have a personal page, of course).
So, just like an aggregator, all the feeds you are interested in appear on your personal page just like your own personal newspaper.
How do I subscribe to a feed?
Just log in to MyMSN, MyYahoo!, Google Reader or Bloglines and click the relevant button:
These four services are the only ones you really need to care about. The benefit of using them is two-fold:
- A web-based service means your favorite feeds will remain available when you change computers
- Search engines (will) provide tools to organize feeds by topic and relevance rather than by site and date
Myself, I highly recommend Google Reader for two reasons. One, it has a list function so you can just scan the headlines to sort out what is interesting to you instead of having to read the first few lines of every entry.
Secondly, if you use it with Google Mail which, again, I highly recommend, then they are both available on a single screen within your account.
The drawback is of course your loss of privacy. If you dislike the idea that Google knows more about you than yourself, then use something else. But as I'm not doing anything shady or illegal I'm happy to use the powerful tools that Google provides.
- Try news readers one by one if you have time to waste; or
- Download Firefox and install the Wizz RSS News Reader; or
- Internet Explorer 7 has an RSS reader built in.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=a793459c-e139-4bc0-add3-f21fd0c32562)
| Did you like this article? Then subscribe now to my RSS feed: | |
There's a post over on SlyMarketing blog today about the difficulty of getting press attention to your latest and greatest idea – particularly the product or service you might be marketing. The difficulty he identifies is that the local newspaper is focused on something else, namely soccer! what else and the specific local area.
This is an extreme example but encapsulates not so much the difficulty of how to get press attention but rather the opportunity it opens up. This is a traffic generation strategy much loved by Andrew Reynolds, one of the UKs leading direct mail marketers.
His advice is not to write a press release and ship it off to every journal under the sun. Rather to research the publications that are big in your niche, study the style of their articles and then write an article for them. Note I said an article, not a press release.
The editors of most niche publications are desperate for copy. Something, anything to fill those empty spaces that will attract readers because it is the reader numbers that attract the advertisers that pay their salaries.
If you deliver to them an attractive article about the niche in which both their publication and your product belong – and you just happen to major on your product as being newsworthy; and it is written in their house style and is the length they are comfortable with so it fits into their usual page layouts then it is quite possible they will print the article without even editing it.
And what did you put into your article? Why, your website address, the product name, your company name and contact details so that the readers of that publication will have no difficulty at all in finding your website or picking up the phone to order. All in a nice subtle way, but just make sure they are there.
So what's the secret? It's the research and tailoring the article to fit easily and neatly into the editors product. After all, what editor is going to complain if a contributor makes their life so easy?
| Did you like this article? Then subscribe now to my RSS feed: | |
If you don't K.now about K.nol yet then it's time to get with it.
Ask Google what a knol is (define: knol in your Google search bar) and Google tells you: "Knol is a project planned by Google for user-generated articles on topics ranging from "scientific concepts, to medical information, from … http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol
- and as you can see it draws it's information from Wikipedia.
Apparently, Knol was announced in December 2007 and was opened in beta to the public on July 23 just 6 days ago, with a few hundred articles mostly in the health and medical field.
The Google view seems to be that it wants to build a source of knowledge as an alternative to Wikipedia. Wikipedia has it's own problems as anyone can edit the content much to the annoyance of many politicians who find their life stories being adulterated by their enemies. But it has built up a phenomenal reputation and body of knowledge. So to compete Google is going to have to pull all the stops out if it is to achieve comparable recognition.
In contrast to the peer review editing of Wikipedia, a Knol, the word Google has invented to describe their nuggets of knowledge (my phrase!) can only be edited by the author and should therefore maintain it's integrity.
But there lies the rub. What is to prevent people publishing rubbish? The wiki concept, in its pure form, applies peer review to content so that it is constantly improved. It's a shame that some people just can't stop themselves being vandals and corrupting the information
Since Knol opened its doors there has been a storm of comment and no little criticism particularly in the SEO community. Why? Because there appears to be little difference between a knol and and article when used for promotional purposes in that if you are first to get an article/knol published in your subject area then Google is going to rank it and you are going to get recognition.
So the real question is whether Google was going to allow the ranking to develop naturally and according to it's normal algorithm or whether it was going to give it's latest baby something of a boost.
The evidence so far seems to be that Google is boosting knols up the search engine rankings above existing content. Evidence for this has been supplied by Aaron Wall, a highly respected SEO operator in a post at www.seobook.com
So it looks like there is going to be lots of argument probably for months to come as Google works to either justify it's approach or to modify it's algorithm so that it's own product is downgraded. Hardly likely, is it?
From the average marketers point of view there is only one thing to do. If writing up your content and calling it a knol rather than an article is going to get you high search engine rankings then get to it. Get your knol machine in gear and start writing knols.
| Did you like this article? Then subscribe now to my RSS feed: | |
Recent Comments