Are Offline Marketing Techniques Still Viable?Yes! Of course they are!

I have a new guest post at Lifehack.org called Maximum Exposure for your Business or Blog.

If you would like to gain more traffic for your blog or more sales for your business, I think you will find real value in this article.

Most bloggers and many small businesses are not taking advantage of the free advertising a press release can provide. This article has 13 actionable steps for using Press Releases to build your business or blog. These steps are easy and organized.

Why not tap into the viral power that can come from offline marketing?!

Please check out this article to find out how:

Lifehack.org: Maximum Exposure for your Business or Blog

Please share your ideas and comments regarding offline marketing techniques.

 

Technorati Tags: Blog, Blogging, Marketing, Press Release, Promotion, Business

Personal Finance Carnival on Clever Dude

Life Learning Today’s “Guide to Investing” was featured in the

Carnival of Personal Finance #103: The 24 Edition

along with many other great blog articles on personal finance.

The cool thing about this carnival is that all the blog posts are woven into a alternate story for the TV show “24.”

Come on over and visit this great blog on personal finance and check out his “clever” personal finance carnival!

Technorati Tags: Money, Personal Finance, Carnival

I have written a guest post at Lifehack.org today.

If you are searching for success with your blog, I think you will find real value in this article.

This is a supercharged Mash-Up of ”Top Dog” sales habits and how they can be applied for YOUR blogging success!

Please check it out: 

Lifehack.org: 10+ Powerful Sales Concepts for Blogging Success

Please let me know if you find the ideas helpful for acheiving success with your blog!

My premier guest post at Lifehack.org debuts today.

For my readers who have a blog, I think you will find real value in this article.

The topic of Branding is not covered often so I think you will find some shiny new ideas to further hone your blog into a “subscriber-magnet.” Please check it out: 

Lifehack.org: Branding Your Blog For Success

Please let me know if you find it helpful with your blog!

 

You’re Not the Only One Wondering

I forget what is was like back when I first heard the buzz about RSS, and I hadn’t a clue what it was. I thought that since I know it now, that everyone does. Well my readers have reminded me that not everyone knows what RSS is. This is a quick guide to explain what RSS is, how to use it, and how to supercharge it on your blog.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. You probably know the word syndication from newspapers. This is when a writer’s column shows up in many different newspapers across the country such as humorist Dave Barry (who is retired now but his columns live on!) or advice columnist Dear Abby. You don’t have to buy their local newspaper to read them. They are syndicated in YOUR local newspaper.

It’s the same thing with online content. With websites, news sites, and blogs that are updated frequently, you can choose which ones you want to see in your personalized online “newspaper” everyday. Your personalized online “newspaper” is called an RSS Reader. I’ll explain how below.

In short, RSS is the vehicle that delivers your chosen content to your Reader. You don’t have to go to all your favorite websites. They come to you! Isn’t that nice!

How Does RSS Help Me?

If you are a reader of news and blogs, it will save you time. All the information you want will be on one page where you can organize it how you like.

If you are a blog owner, it will help you to amass a subscriber base. Why do you want subscribers? The more subscribers you have the more people will be reading your content, referring others, and if you advertise, the more revenue you will earn.

How Do I Use RSS?

1. Sign up for a reader account. Google Reader is rated #1 by several sources including Lifehacker.com. That’s what I recommend. If you already have an account with Google this is a no-brainer. If you don’t have an account with Google, sign up. You won’t be sorry. If you want to try other online readers you can check out Pageflakes or Bloglines or search for others.
2. Add RSS feeds to your reader from blogs and web site. Start by clicking on the RSS icon on any blog or webpage that has it. It usually looks like this. If you click on this icon you can add Life Learning Today to your reader! Once you click on this button it will ask you which reader you use. If you use Google, you can add it to your Reader or Personalized Homepage.
   
3. Add RSS Feeds directly into your Reader. On Google Reader you would type in the RSS feed URL for the site you want to add. In the case of Life Learning Today that feed would be: http://feeds.feedburner.com/lifelearningtoday/wlyf.
4. Read Your Personalized Feeds. Here are three great guides on optimizing your use of Google reader: Lifehacker.com, Lifehack.org, and Johnny’s Thoughts.

How Do I Offer RSS on My Blog?

Most blogs come automatically with an RSS feed that looks something like this: http://www.YOUR-URL.com/feed. So if you want a simple solution, you don’t have to do anything. But if you want to be able to track how many feed readers you have I suggest you supercharge your RSS.

Supercharging Your RSS Using Feedburner (don’t worry it’s easy)

I wasn’t sure about doing this when I was first starting out with my blog. Let me tell you one thing: don’t worry, do it. Feedburner is great and most of its services are FREE. Most blogs seem to use it.
Tracking with Feedburner:

• Visitor stats including geographical origin, OS, browser, screen resolution.
• Subscribers: including email subscribers.
• Page views.
• Incoming Links: how did visitors get to your site.
• Outgoing Links: to where did visitors leave your site.

Functionality with Feedburner:

• Tracking RSS subscribers.
• Tracking Site statistics.
• FeedFlares: these allow your blog posts to include things like social bookmarking links, comments links, and much more.
• Email Subscribers: your subscribers can choose to receive emails when your site is updated instead of or in addition to an RSS feed in their Reader.
• So much more.

Over time you can explore more goodies, but the basics are listed right here and the basics are pretty powerful and free. (They do have additional functionality for a fee, but I haven’t needed it.) For many new bloggers, Feedburner will give you everything you need in terms of tracking. If you want more tracking capabilities, head over to Google Analytics. Here is a guide to Google Analytics if you are interested.

Conclusion
RSS is a powerful technology that benefits both readers and publishers of content. Do take the time to explore this. You will be glad that you did. Once you become a big Google Reader user, I have a guide on how to keep Google Reader from eating up all your time.

Please share your comments and tips on RSS. All comments big and small are very welcomed!

If you found this post valuable, please SHARE THIS below with a Digg, Stumble or Delicious bookmark. Votes are always noticed and always appreciated!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Feeds, Google Reader, How To, Promotion, RSS, Feedburner

 

What’s the Z-List?

It’s a list of cool blogs that you’ve probably not seen before.

Why Should You Check It Out?

• Curiosity to find a cool blog or useful information.
• Get traffic to your site by adding your adding your blog to the Z-List.
• Have your say by voting for blogs that you like or dislike.
• Chance to win the top blog spot on the Z-List.
• Who doesn’t love feedback about their site?

Where’s the Z-List?

Click Here to see the Z-List on Life Learning Today
Enjoy! And if you have any feedback, as always, comments are welcome and I Follow!

What is the D-List?

The D-List (see below) is a list of blogs who have disabled the “no-follow” in their comments. What does this mean for you? Everytime you make a comment on one of these blogs, you will obtain an actual link. From an SEO standpoint, every incoming link that you can get will increase your Technorati ranking.

The better your ranking, the better your earning potential from the standpoint of increased traffic as well as ability to command higher advertising rates with sponsors on your site.

The DoFollow Blog list is courtesy of Courtney Tuttle and was created originally by Coleen as the D-List. This list does not include profane or pornographic sites.

Should You “Follow?” What’s In It For Your Site?

By joining the “Do Follow” movement, you make your site more attractive for readers to visit your site and comment while they are there. More comments make your site a more active place that readers will want to return to.

If you are concerned with the possibility of linking out to profane, pornographic or other sites that are against your morals, never fear. If you moderate your comments you always have the ability to delete the comment or delete the link.

How to “Follow” - “DoFollow” Wordpress Plugin

Here is the link to the “DoFollow” Wordpress plugin. It is very simple to install. Just download it to your computer and then upload it to your ‘plugin’ directory. As always, when installing new elements to your Wordpress site, make sure you have a backup before you install!

How to “Follow” - Removing No Follow from Blogger.

Here is a link to BetaBlogger who explains how to remove the NoFollow attribute from your Blogger template. As always, whenever changing your template, make a back up first!

Life Learning Today Comment Policy

• If you have opinions, thoughts, ideas to add, please share them by commenting!
• Links will be allowed in comments as long as they are relevant and contribute constructively to the site. Disagreements and differing opinions are very welcome. Mean spirited personal attacks are not.
• Links may be removed from one-liner, stop-in comments such as, “I like the site”, “You have a good site”, and “Thanks for the articleâ”?. I’m sure that everyone on the D-List would agree that these comments defeat the purpose. Most of these comments will be deleted.
• I reserve the right to edit comments for grammar and spelling errors, when appropriate, and to remove comments that are profane.

How to Gain More Links Right Now!

Check out the D-List below! Visit some of the sites and contribute valuable ideas, thoughts and opinions to the conversations on those sites.

The D-List

UPDATE FEB 6, 2008:

Life Learning Today is no longer a Do-Follow site. The reason for this is we have been receiving many comments that link to inappropriate sites and we no longer have the time to check each one before approving the comments. If you have a comment regarding this, please feel free to contact us.

If you find this list useful, please consider linking to it.Additionally, you may copy this list in its entirety and place it on your site, as long as you link back to it using the code below this paragraph which will give credit to both the creator of the D-List, Coleen, and to Courtney, who has added to and maintained this list.

This <a href=”http://courtneytuttle.com/blogs-that-follow/”>DoFollow Blog list</a> is courtesy of <a href=”http://courtneytuttle.com/”>Courtney Tuttle</a> and was created originally by <a href=”http://www.geekyspeaky.com/”>Coleen</a> as the <a href=”http://www.geekyspeaky.com/2007/04/12/do-follow-the-d-list/”>D-List</a>.

3DayMom
A Writers Words, An Editors Eye
Aaron Roselo
Advertising for Success
And to Think
Andy Beard
Ang’s Chicken Coop
Are we there yet
Army Mom:New Jersey
Art Kauffman
Article Writer, The
Ask Jason
Ask Jason Business
BenSpark, The
BenSpark 2: Electric Boogaloo
BiggerPockets
BizMark Tech
BloggingForBills
Blogging WV
Blogozine
BodyFitnessInfo
Body, Mind & Solar
Buy better - Have a Better Life
BuyMeBlog
Buzz Queen, The
By the Sea
Cade’s WriteToRight
CampingCoop.org
Candid Quips
Charmed and Dangerous
Cheffin\’ It!!
Clapping Trees
Colloquium
Comedy Plus
Confessions of a Housewife
Confessions of an Everyday housewife
CoolAdzine for Marketers
Craftblog
Crafts 4 Dummies
Curious Cat
David Airey: Creative Design
Dont Fear the Truth
DorisGoShopping.com
Down Memory Lanes
Ecomm Tips
EMomsAtHome
EMoneyMarketing
Endangered Spaces
Fibromyalgia Experiment, The
Finding Life\’s Enchantments
Flatwater Tech
Fools Wisdom
FootPrints On the Moon
Fuzzy Future
Geek Ramblings
GeekySpeaky
genki desu yo
Genki!!
gimme a break
go get global news & views
GrokDotCom
Guitar Licks
Hockey Dad, The
Home Biz Blogger
Home Office Women
Jamdo
JMH Techtronics
Jones PC
JOIN - Do Follow Bloggers **
Julies Journal
Just Not Martha
Kansha Shite
Knitting Fiend, The
Last Blogger
LeaveAmerica
Last Blogger
Life in the Fast Lane
Life Is Risky
Life Of A School Bus Driver, The
Life Passion Travel & More
Life through eyes of Krissy
Lifecruiser
LittleAmerica.us
Live Life Organics & Your Health
Magical Rose Garden
Master Cleanse
Midlife Musings
Mom is Nutz
MomReviews.net
Mothering Many
My Dandelion Patch
My Home Recipe
My Muddled Mind
My Opinion Counts
My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings
Nanashi-Inc.net
New Century Politics
No Average Mom
Odd Planet
On the Horizon
Open Road Biker
Patrick Says v2.0
Paula Neal Mooney
PBriscoe.com
Pegs AZ Life
Pencil Thin
Pink Poison Store
Pond, The
Ramblings Of An Undisturbed Mind
Randa Clay Design
Raw Vegan Momma
Reasoner, The
Sassy Southerner, The
Scribble On The Wall
Scuttlebutt Pipeline
Selena’s Travel and Culture
Shopping Flavor
ShowMeHealthBiz
ShowMeMoneyBiz.com
Simple Kind Of Life
Simplify Every Obstacle
Skeets Stuff
Solo Technology
Sophistishe.Org | Personal Blog
SQKIKs Simple Tech
Sun-Flower Family, The
Table for Five
TDZ Travel
TeaScoop
Teenage Angst Regression
Texas RV Travel blog
Thermal
TimeForBlogging
Tricia\’s Musings
Two Dog Zoo
Utterly Geek
Wanders World
Web Files, The
WebStyle
Whatever I Feel Like
Wild & Crazy Ride
Winding Threads
Wired Kayaker, The
Women Mumbles
Work At Home Mom Revolution
Yoga Blog

As always, all your comments, thoughts, ideas and the like are welcomed here! U Comment, I Follow! Thanks to recent commenters: Brian, Mark, Dee, and Paula.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Link Building, SEO, Do Follow

Are You Ready to Make Money with Your Blog?

I know I am. The last 3 months I have learned an incredible amount, but I still have a ways to go. I am studying the great leaders in the blogging field as measured by their growth and earnings.

I’ve compiled some of the best articles on making money with your blog here so that you will have a handy reference point to come back to to find all of them. You can bookmark this below with the “Share This” link. 

The articles are listed according to the different areas of focus. Enjoy! Wishing you much success!

Top Articles on Making Money with Your Blog:

General

• How to Make Money with Your Blog - by Steve Pavlina. A general article on blogging and do you have what it takes to make money with your blog.
• 5263 Words on Starting a Profitable Blog - Extensive article by Courtney Tuttle which outlines step by step how to set up your blog all with the intention of making money from your blog. Excellent must read article for beginners who want to use Wordpress.
• Moving from Blogger to Wordpress - by yours truly. Steve Pavlina, Darren Rowse and other gurus recommend Wordpress. Here’s a guide for switching over from Blogger to Wordpress.
• Beginning Blogger Tip - by John Chow. Some basics on choosing content and community building.
• The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Bloggers - by John Chow, the guru of making money online.

Content is King

• How to Build a High Traffic Web-Site or Blog by Steve Pavlina. Talks mainly about content and how to write your best to increase traffic to your site.
• Copywriting Tips for Online Marketing Success - general website on how to write good content.
• How to Make Money Online Using Niche Content Websites - by Yaro Starak. Extensive how to article.

Increasing Blog Traffic and Subscribers

• Blog Carnival Resource - place to find all manner of blog carnivals
• Driving Traffic with Free Article Services - by John Chow. One powerful way of increasing traffic to your blog.
• 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog - by Darren Rowse. Excellent resource on this topic. Why do you want more comments? Comments equals community. Community equals more readers. More readers eventually equals more revenue.
• 10 Reasons Readers Don’t Leave Comments - by Liz Strauss. Same topic as above but from a different perspective. You will learn a lot from this and how to avoid this problem.
• Is Article Marketing Worth Your Time? - by Yaro Starak. An extensive article that explains how this young successful blogger delved into this strategy and what his results tell us to do.

Link Building

• 102 Ways to Make Your Site a Back-Link Superstar - by Courtney Tuttle. This list is full of fresh new ideas that are actionable and very useful. Check it out!
• Why That Site with 50 Linkback Beats Your Site with 1000 linkbacks - by Jim Boykin. Why quality links matter.

SEO

• Onsite Search Engine Optimization - by Courtney Tuttle. Concise article with the basics.
• Offiste Optimization - SEO That Works for a Change - by Courtney Tuttle. Extensive article with clear explanations of this subject.

Monetizing Your Blog

• How to Get More Text Link Sales - by John Chow. How to maximize this revenue stream.
• 40 Ways to Make Money on the Internet - by Dumb Little Man. This article contains an extensive list of revenue sources for your blog or website.
• How to Make $100 Per Day - (that’s just her adsense revenue. There’s another $225 per day from other sources too! That’s $118k/year!) by Jane May who has grown a successful blog called Career Ramblings. This article boils down her top secrets.

Measuring Success: How Much Money Do the Blog Guru’s Make?

• Paula’s List of Blogger Salaries…Are You on the List? - by Paula Neal Mooney. A comprehensive listing of the money being made by bloggers who report their income online. Paula took the time to annualize their reportings so they can be compared side by side.
• History of a $100k Site - graphs and descriptions of how this webmaster made it to the $100k mark with his site Coolest Gadgets.
• Make Money on the Internet - April 2007 - by John Chow. A history of his very fast growing blog about making money online including graphs, revenue stats and recommendations.
• How I Make Money Online - Part 4 - by Yaro Starak. Lists all the sources of his $6500 monthly income!

Do you have a world class post about how to make money with your blog or know of someone else’s that you found really useful? If you do, please share it with us below in the comments. When updates of this post are made your article can be included.

Thank you for reading and please be sure to bookmark this post below with the “Share This” link on your favorite bookmarking site!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Make Money, Monetize, Promotion, Resource, Money

I was tagged by Courtney Tuttle on a new blog ’ship’, which is very much like a train. The term ‘blog ship’ was coined by BloggingForBills.com, which started the ship. So here is a networking link love post, where the links come with keyworded anchor text!

For this “ship” you pick the keywords of the people that you want to tag. The best way to do this is to visit their sites and choose some words from their title tag, which appears in the blue bar at the top of both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

If anyone wants to join the ship, let me know! Add the list to your site and I’ll gladly add you to the list here!

****Start copying here****

Here are the rules:

1) Write a short post about how you found this sweet list and include a link back to that blog. (This is required!)

2) COPY the rules and ENTIRE list below and post it on your blog.

3) Take the blogs in“My New Shipmates� and move them into the “The Original Shipmates� list.

4) Find 3 new blogs, make them your shipmates by linking to them with a keyword that is relevant to their site. Pick any keyword you want, just make sure it could be beneficial to them. Add them to “My new shipmates� section. Some will end up with similar keywords, that’s ok:) You can also link to specific posts in their blogs if you want.

5) Notify your new ship mates that you’ve included them so they can get on the keyword ship!

My New Shipmates

• Pick the Brain
• Enhance Life
• Bits of Life

The Original Shipmates

Business Opportunity
Life Learning
Blog Ratings

How to promote your blog
Make money online
Green tea benefits
Blog marketing

****End copying here****

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Meme, Promotion

What is Tumblr?

Tumblr is a tumblelog, a micro version of a blog, which is all about simplicity. It is for posting “quickies,” if you will. Quick links, photos, videos, chats (as in Twitter for example), text, or quotes. There are no comments, but you can stream multiple feeds into your Tumblr from Flickr, Twitter, Wordpress, and others. Ease of use is one of it’s biggest benefits.

Life Learning Today Tumblr

Setting up Tumblr?

Couldn’t be easier. Just go to Tumblr.com and it takes about 10 seconds to sign up. Then about another 10 seconds to choose your layout in the dashboard. Then you’re off and running.

Background of Tumblr

Wikipedia has a nice short description of the origins of tumblelogs. The Tumblr format was developed by Davidville, a New York web development firm which also created Senduit, a free file sharing service.

What Can You Do with Tumblr?

I suspect the only limits are how far you can go with your creativity. It’s a place for expressing your stream of consciousness in multiple formats. Here are some cool ones I’ve found to inspire you:

• Zen Habits Tumblr (this is how I learned about Tumblr. Check out his awesome blog too!)
• Totally Frank (uses Flickr & Twitter feeds. Here’s his excllent blog, SomewhatFrank.)
• Alex King (and Alex’s very useful blog about all things Wordpress.)
• Life Learning Today Tumblr (OK, yeah, this one is mine. What do you think?)

For more Tumblr blogs you can check out the Tumblr Radar, which visually displays the latest posts in other Tumblrs.

Share your Tumblr link with us in the comments. Happy Tumbling!

If you like this post, please digg it or save to delicious! Thanks!

Technorati Tags: Cool, microblog, Tublelog, Tumblr