Archive for 'November, 2009'

It’s been 18 months since I first posted JTPratt’s Guide to Twitter. Twitter is more mainstream now than ever. When you see the Today Show and Sportscenter saying “follow us on Twitter”, you start to understand that maybe it’s not something you can ignore anymore. I got a lot of comments from that post, and I’ve ready plenty of blogs where people think twitter is still a fad, a waste of time – something they can’t figure out how to make any money from. It doesn’t help much when someone like Shoemoney posts he makes $15,000 per month by tweeting. This is not normal, and I’m not here to tell you how to be the next person to “cash in on the twitter money making machine”. Rather, I’d rather point out that by not using Twitter you’re missing out on starting a “conversation” with potential customers and clients.

Twitter is important. If you don’t have a Twitter account you should get one for your blog, business, or brand. If you don’t think so – it’s because you still don’t understand how powerful it is, or what you can do with it.

Twitter is also fun, trendy, and “what all the cool kids are doing…”. Let me give you a few examples to show two years later what it has evolved into, and why it can no longer be ignored.

Backlinks, backlinks, and more backlinks

First of all, your twitter profile page links back to your web site. This is possibly the most important backlink you can get – and I’ll show you why. In backlinks, just a handful of high pagerank links can be worth more than thousands of low or no pagerank links. You might think that your twitter profile page has no significance – but then you’d be wrong. A twitter profile starts out as unranked in google, but let me show you a pattern I’ve uncovered lately…

jtpratt.com: pagerank 3
twitter.com/jtpratt: pagerank 3

wp-dir.com: pagerank 2
twitter.com/wpdir: pagerank 4

shoemoney.com: pagerank 6
twitter.com/shoemoney: pagerank 7

johnchow.com: pagerank 5
twitter.com/johnchow: pagerank 6

johncow.com: pagerank 4
twitter.com/johncow: pagerank 6

Do you see a pattern here? Your twitter profile can easily (over time) outrank your web site home page (becoming one of the most important backlinks you have). In addition – if you link to your posts and pages from this high pagerank page, this is an unbeatable source of promotional juice!

Connections and Networking

When you start out on Twitter you have no followers, and you’re following no one. Do you honestly think that by following 10,000 people means you’re going to be able to spam them with affiliate offers and make a wheelbarrow full of cash? Everyday life doesn’t
work like that, why would twitter be any exception?

Instead of following a bunch of zombie losers who’s only goal is to over-inflate their “followers” in search on money that will never come in – focus instead of people that you can learn from. Find and follow people that know more than you, and use twitter for what it was intended for: a conversation. Where else can you find and connect with experts this quickly and easily? My advice to you is to think of and use Twitter as a business tool – not a fad. Don’t use Twitter tools that give you useless facts and garbage charts. It doesn’t matter what someone’s follower to following ratio is. What matters to me is how many tweets they have and if they actually look like I can learn something from them. Would this be a good person to network with? If so, chances are they would be good for my business and brand, and their followers probably would be too.

Check out a Twitter app called Klout.com. It allows you to gauge in a very scientific way what kind of twitterer you are connecting with. Take for example the twitter request I got the other day from Chris Voss. I don’t know much about him other than he has a lot of followers and he’s on a lot of lists. Here’s what Klout has to say about him:

It says that Chris Voss is a “Persona”, someone that’s built a personal brand around twitter. He doesn’t just have a ton of followers, he engages with his audience. I think that Klout saying he’s a “Personal” is dead-on, he’s almost a Twitter celebrity – isn’t he? But what does that really mean, is he really a valuable person to follow? Let’s see what other stats Klout has gathered about Mr. Chris Voss:

The initial stats are suprising to me. His “Klout score” (1-100) is very high, but his “true reach” is zero. True reach is measured by the number of followers following less than 2,000 people. I guess Klout feels you can’t follow more than that number and really read their tweets anyway, and most people with that many followers are promotion whores and maybe not as important. I guess that’s a subjective stat – but interesting nonetheless. The @mentions and retweet scores are a compound of the Klout scores of the people that mention Chris Voss and retweet him. Klout has other stats available on that page:

These stats can help you understand how often someone engages with people, how often they are retweeted, how often they are mentioned, etc. I should point out, it says these stats for Chris Voss are from July 27, 2009 – updated ones would probably be much different. I think it’s very interesting to see that usually people that are “connectors” give lots of very useful information, but they don’t engage a lot with people on twitter. People that are very high “Personas” tweet CONSTANTLY, but usually very few of them get retweeted. Maybe it would be best to try and be somewhere between a Persona and a Connector. Check out the Klout stats for John Chow and Shoemoney – I think they’re very interesting (both are Personas).

Next let’s take a look at the Klout profile for Laughing Lizard:

Laughing Lizard (Mark Ghosh) of weblogtoolscollection.com is “Connector”, a constant source of information. His opinion is respected, and his judgement is trusted.

You can also compare Twitter users as well:

So far we’ve used Klout to investigate someones Twitter stats, but it has another use, and that’s it’s ability to find people to network with.

Just do a Klout “Topic Search” like I did above and find influencial Twitters to follow quickly and easily. You can also use a Twitter App like Tweep ML to find lists of Twitterers on topics related to your business or brand – and follow them all at once!

Conclusion

Just like everything else I’ve ever blogged about, you get out of Twitter what you put into it. You can easily use it to connect with potential customers and clients, build an audience, engage with people in your market, and more. Follow people that are worth following. Tweet information that’s worth tweeting. Use Twitter as a tool to improve your online marketing efforts, and treat all claims that “it’s the next cash cow” as if it was Carlton Sheets trying to sell you “twitter with no money down…”.

Also, I would like to thank Avinash Kaushik and his recent post of Social Media Analytics: Twitter for pointing out new tools for measuring true Twitter metrics.

The evolution of my work online has taken many twists and turns. I’ve worked in corporate IT, small business, and even an ISP and web host. I’ve worked online for 15 years now, and I’ve been blogging off and on for 8 or 9. This blog is now just about 2 1/2 years old – and I started it kind of as an online journal of sorts to document my journey of making money online. When I started this site the title originally was “JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakes”, because I was documenting my anticipated multiple failures blogging and trying to make money blogging – anticipating that I would eventually succeed.

This path has been great for learning about all the different ways to make money online. I can’t count the number of “research binges” I went on trying to learn different techniques for monetization. I read about Adsense for days (weeks even). I was obsessed with niche stores for over a year. It was the same with affiliate stores and affiliate marketing. If you look back through my archive of posts you’ll see all the things that I wrote about are an outline documenting this journey.

Because of the path I’ve taken, I’ve read a lot of blogs and reviewed tons of products. I’ve also answered thousands of comments and emails from clients, bloggers, and other online marketers. I’m realizing more and more that my blog is a hybrid. It brings me business (clients), income (products I recommend and review), AND it also brings me a lot of garbage. People looking for an online “get rich quick” scheme, people looking for shortcuts, people that actually believe that for $39 they can buy software to get to #1 in google and hit it big – or people that think that they can hire me for $200 to build them an auto-pilot web site that will make them thousands+.

Look, if it sounds too good to be true – it is. If I had software that made thousands – why would I sell it to anyone? If I could make you a web site that makes thousands+ for $200 – why wouldn’t I just make myself 100 of them and move to the Bahamas? P.T. Barnum said – “There’s a sucker born every minute…”, and it’s so true. But on the other hand, I have to ponder – WHY DO I attract people that ask these kinds of questions? I know a lot of online “GURUS” that would welcome this kind of traffic because they know they could profit from it. Then again, just because you have enough sales skill to be able to take two $20 bills out of the purse of a soccer mom who believe she can “blog her way to financial freedom” doesn’t make you a “GURU”. It makes you shady. No better than a snake oil salesman, slimy – and on the same level as a televangelist. The ability you have is the sales skill to extract money from someone based on emotion and an outcome they want to hear, rather than honest ethical talk about how hard it is to succeed online. You could have a mansion and 3 Ferrari’s from this kind of marketing – I’m sorry, you’re still scummy. Nothing better than an online con-man.

My goal is to do as much “sticky marketing” as I can in 2010. I am going to surround myself with successful people, and build a network of contacts that are the best in the business. I will learn from honest marketers that are banking on the success of their knowledge, and not profiting by selling products that are more “get rick quick” schemes than actual successful systems. If your 2010 is to be successful – you have to ask yourself the same questions, who are you surrounded by? Who’s in your network? What kind of marketing tactics are you using?

I have to say 2009 was GREAT for my consulting business, and I have attracted many great new networking relationships, partners, and clients because of the kind of blogger I’ve been. I think with some trial and error (and more sticky marketing), I can attract more quality content in the future. I’ll be blogging a lot more about this concept, and hopefully you’ve already subscribed to my RSS feed, so you don’t miss a thing.

How to SEO

“How to SEO” is one of the most frequently asked questions I get. The majority of the work I do on a daily basis for clients is SEO work. I can’t teach you everything about SEO in one blog post. In addition – in the future I’m putting together some eBook products that will have step by step instructions for “DIY SEO” and I don’t want to give all my secrets away. I can however, give you a great overview of how you can quickly SEO your blog posts, and that alone will put you light years ahead of most of the other web sites online.

How to do Keyword Research

Some of you may be reading this and thinking – I thought this post was “How to SEO”, what’s with the Keyword Research How to? One of my pet peeves is that some web sites and blogs teach SEO without keyword research. SEO is optimizing a web site for search engines. But how do you know which keywords to optimize for? Some clients I have crack me up because they “think” they know the right keywords to target. Little do they know the keyword phrases they picked only get 5 searches a month (*lol).

Every time you put up a web page or write a blog post you’re making a deposit in the search engines. Whether it pays you back at 0.3% interest or 20% is up to you. Just a little simple research before you hit “publish” can be the difference between making money or not. I’m going to show you how to figure that out. Get to know the Google Keyword Research Tool. Bookmark it, it’s your friend and you should visit it often.

I’m writing this post about posting on one of my other blogs The Smorgasbord. I’ve had that blog since 1999 (in one form or another), and today I’m writing a post about wireless routers. I post all kinds of things to that site (technology related), but this particular post was written with the intent to make money. It’s a review post, which is a great opportunity to link to products using affiliate links. What I’m going to do is throw all my product names and the best keywords from my article (that’s not published yet) into the google keyword research tool.

Here’s an image of my results:

How to Do Keyword Research 1

What google does is give you a list of keywords (and suggestions) with the average number of searches per month last month (first column) and average globally per month (second column). With this (free) tool you can easily pick select keywords to use throughout your blog post or web page. I usually enter a few keywords to get started, and in this example I entered my 3 products I’m reviewing. First the product name, and then again the product name with “review”. I also entered terms to look for a good title like “wireless n router review”, etc.

Now again – I can’t teach you everything about SEO in one blog post, but you usually want to choose a keyword phrase that’s more than 1,000 search per month (3,000+ is better), but less than 100,000. Over 100,000 the terms can be harder to compete for, and what people are looking for can be more broad and vague. There are exceptions of course, like when a product is new – and doesn’ t have many search yet and want to beat the market and get indexed on top right now.

How to SEO a blog post

After a little research, I chose 4 different keyword phrases to target on my example page. I chose “dual band wireless router” for the title because that phrase gets 60,500 searches per month. I’m glad I didn’t just make the title what I thought was best, since I might have called it “Dual Band Wireless N router review”. All 4 keywords would still have been in the title, but “diluted”. They are more powerful when in the right order.

I took the other 3 keyword phrases and placed them in html header tags above each product paragraph. I write the text of my article, and page introduction to be SEO friendly. The most important part, however, is my SEO plugin All in One SEO pack. With this plugin installed, under the content box in any page or post in WordPress you can write custom HTML titles for posts, and add custom meta descriptions and keyword tags.

How to Use All in One SEO Pack Plugin

Above you can see how I added the keywords I chose in the HTML title, meta description, and meta keywords tags.

How does Search Engine Indexing Work?

Most people have no idea how search engine indexing works. I’ll give you a brief overview. A search “crawler” (software robot) visits your site, and when it visits your pages it looks for an HTML title first. This is not the heading or text on your page. It’s an HTML “tag” called title, and WordPress automatically populates your HTML title with the name of your post or page. That same post Title (in WordPress) also becomes (depending on your theme) usually the heading title in the body of the page. This “title” is also the title of your search engine listing for that page. This is why it’s smart to use All in One SEO pack – you can customize the title (if you want) to have one HTML title (for the search engines) and another (heading title) for readers. **Make a mental note, search engines can’t use more than 75 characters or so, writing titles longer than that is a waste of time.

The next thing a search crawler looks for is a meta “description” tag. This is also an HTML tag, and it’s what a search crawler uses for your description in search engines when indexing pages. If you don’t have this tag, the search crawler just grabs the first text it finds on a page, even if it’s just navigation or menus.

A search engine listing is like an advertisement in the (online) phone book. The title and description are what entices somebody to click (or not). Here’s an example, check out this this page in the HP online store. Now, I’m going to google that exact same page to see what the listing for it is:

How to SEO google results

See how the title is good, but the description is a bunch of gobbledy-gook? In their defense, HP actually had a description tag for this page, but they had some bad code turn it into this. It’s still a good example of what can happen when you don’t have a meta description tag.

Here’s another example, check out the latest post on ProBlogDesign.com. I want you to see this one because, this site actually has All in One SEO pack installed – but google isn’t using the meta description written for the post at all.

Here’s the listing in google for that page:

How to SEO Google Results 2

It kind of looks like the google crawler took some random text from the top of the page for the description of this page in search results – doesn’t it? First of all – I know better, Michael runs one of the best blogs about blogging online – he wouldn’t “not” have an SEO plugin installed. I checked the HTML source code of that page I googled from his blog and I see that he does in fact have a meta description – but it’s uber-long. Most search engines use a maximum of 160 characters for the description. I think google might have an algorithm to detect if you try and use too many words, because the meta tag for this page is 727 characters long:

meta name=”description” content=”One of the most important elements of your blog, is the content that you painstakingly put together to gain readers and keep the online masses surfing your waves. So why do so many bloggers not take the extra time and give more attention to their archives? Afterall, without an easy to navigate archive section, then all of that great content that you crafted will become lost in the backpages of your post progression as you continue to crank out the content. It seems that once a post has served its initial use for us, that we carelessly discard it to the forgotten areas for the post to die, rather than institute an accessible archive that will allow those past posts to continue to deliver the punch you packed within.”

Why the google crawler didn’t just use the first 160 characters of that is beyond me – but this is pure proof (in my mind) that you should stick to 160 characters of less at all times in your meta description (or google may just ignore it). I’m not going to comment a lot about the meta “keywords” tag, other than some hotly debate whether this tag even does any good anymore. What I can say is this…in my experience if you choose to “SEO” a page, here’s a little checklist:

• Target 4 or less keywords phrases
• Use your main keyword phrase in the title
• Make your title under 75 characters
• Use your keywords in the description and your keywords tag
• Make your description less than 160 characters
• Use your Keywords in headings in page content
• For best results have your page content be 400 words+
• Make sure your keywords aren’t more than 30% of the content
• Try not to repeat specific keywords more than 3-4 times per page

Of course there’s a LOT more to it than this, but this is enough to get you started. Believe me, it’s more than 95% of the web sites and blogs online do. If you want to read the post I was writing on my other blog as the example here, read my Dual Band Wireless router post.

It’s time to meet the second person I’ve selected as my Online Marketing Intern for the next 5 months. Be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed so we can post their progress throughout the months. This blog is one of the few places you’ll be able to watch me teach people how to create and make money from successful web sites online! No bull, no guru garbage, just pure experience and real world information.

Meet Prince Singh:

Here is a brief introduction about myself. My name is Manpreet Singh, however, among friends and family I am known as Prince, the nick-name which my mom gave me the day I was born. And no, I don’t think it has anything to do with the artist formerly known as Prince. I think it is more like the fairy tale Prince.

I was born, raised and educated in a northern state of India, Punjab. I am almost 36 now, and moved here to the United States before turning 21. In fact, I celebrated my 21st birthday here in California.

My educational and technical background is about as colorful (or colourful, ) as it can get. And what makes it even more interesting is the fact that in my life there is no distinction between work and hobbies. They are all the same for me. I don’t do anything that I won’t do as a hobby, and that makes the work feel more like a hobby, and when I get paid to have fun, it makes it even more fun.

My formal education in India lead to a college degree (BS) in the field of Electronics, with Physics and Mathematics as minors. Then here in the US, I went to a private institute to get trained on Cisco Networking systems, and obtained a CCNA certificate, which led to employment as a network and systems engineer with the then world data center leader Exodus Communications. Further training (employer funded) opportunities were available during my tenure with Exodus, and I don’t think that I missed one single one of them. I got trained on firewalls, load balancing equipment, various competition brand routing equipment, telecommunication equipment, etc; but the one that was a major addition to my technical qualification was the Sun Solaris System administration training and certification conducted by Sun Microsystems at their own facility.

I am also a professional pilot, and a flight instructor. The formal certifications in this line of work, or hobby, include Airline Transport Pilot certification by the FAA, with Airplane single and multi engine, and both land and sea plane ratings, a Flight Instructor certificate with single and multi engine airplane, and instrument airplane ratings, a ground instructor certificate with advanced and instrument ratings, FAA aircraft maintenance technician certificate with airframe and power plant ratings.

There is a list of self taught tools of the trade as well; and I will just mention a few relevant ones: WordPress, Joomla, HTML, linux and windows server installation, management and security, internet SEO and website marketing, etc. And I did I mention that I am in love with WordPress? Well, I am. At this point in my life, WordPress is a friend, family, addiction and an obsession for me.

I love to write. I love to write about a lot of things. Some of the important ones are WordPress, religion and spirituality, relationships and parenting, aviation news and training related topics, consumer and aviation technology, travel, countries and cultures, and politics.

I love to create things. I created my own flight school business in 2002 with almost nothing in pocket, and grew it to be worth $4.5 million within 5 years. Recently, I have been working on various blogs, and want to create something special utilizing the blogs this time.

I am not working at the moment. You know, the official work thing, like go to work everyday? Well, I am taking a break from it, and am focusing on blogging full time. Like I said, I love blogging, I want to create something special with them, and it does not feel like working. On the contrary, blogging for me is relaxing, soothing and a calming experience.

There is a lot more to write “about me”, but if I do all that here in this one post, then what would I write in the book “about me” that I am planning to write sometime, and why would you buy it?

Few other things you should know about me though, before I finish up this post, is that I am focused, hard working (when the work is fun and hobby at the same time), believe in team play, insomniac, go-getter and helpful. When it comes down to being helpful, I have been accused of sometimes overdoing it. But do I care about it? No. As I know what goes around, comes around. And maybe this is why I ended up here with John at JTPratt, and he decided to help me!

Well guys, I think this is enough for now, but stay tuned. As we continue to develop this project, I will write more, and share more with all of you. Writing and sharing is the reason why we blog anyways, don’t we?

I’m sure many of you have been patiently waiting to see the outcome of my Online Marketing Internship applications. I received dozens and dozens of applications and last week I selected the two most qualified people for this project. I was going to select 4 people originally – but the quality just wasn’t there, I wanted people I was certain could commit to completing the work.

So – please meet Online Marketing Intern Bill Field:

Hello,
My name is Bill, I’m in my late 40s and I live in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. I’m married for 20+ years now and have a son and a daughter, both in college. My son is majoring in software engineering and my daughter is dual majoring in criminology and psychology. Some of the things I enjoy are wood working, digital photography and any type of outdoor activity. I’ve been teaching myself to play the guitar, which I really love even if I’m not that good yet. Next summer my wife and I plan to start doing some long distance touring on bicycles. I’m really looking forward to that, probably more than she is

For the past 18 years I’ve worked in the AIDC (Automatic Identification and Data Collection) industry. The past 6 years I’ve been an application engineer. For 16 of those 18 years I absolutely loved my job. We were a privately held company and I had great respect for the owners. However, nothing ever stays the same. Two years ago we were purchased by Honeywell. About the same time Honeywell also purchased one of our major competitors. Since both companies did roughly the same thing there was a lot of job overlap. Many people from both companies lost their job and many others left on their own to work elsewhere.

It was about that time I realized I probably will not be able to work at Honeywell until retirement. I also thought I should be able to have a business of my own and not have to work for “the man” the rest of my life. Even if it was just a part time business to make some extra money. There had to be something I could do to supplement my income and save some money for that inevitable day.

I’ve always been an internet junkie and have always realized that people are making money on the internet and thought I could do that – but I had no clue how. So I started researching. I spent countless hours, days and months trying to figure out what it was people were doing to make money. Eventually I found out about internet marketing. Wow – what a relief, haha! Because next I started researching internet marketing. I spent as much time trying to learn internet marketing as I’d spent trying to figure out what to do online. I subscribed to email lists for every single internet marketing guru I could find. The emails rolled in day after day, boy did they roll in. Fifty to a hundred emails a day I was getting from all these gurus. And I’m still getting them. By no means was it a waste of time. I learned a lot going through all those emails. However, I found myself chasing every single secret method, new hot opportunity, the next get rich quick business model. But, I never did pay anything for any of these systems. I simply took whatever free information they were willing to give and added it to my arsenal of knowledge.

Which brings me to today. For the most part I’m happy where I am and what I’ve learned in my journey. Until that fateful day two years ago I had never built a website, I couldn’t tell you how web hosting worked, had no clue what internet marketing was and didn’t know what an affiliate program was.

Although I’ve learned a lot, I have not learned the technique. I’ve got so many different thoughts that go through my head I don’t know where to begin. What’s the best way to do keyword research, what’s the advantage or disadvantage of long tail keywords, how do I pick a product or market to go after, who are my competitors, WordPress or custom built? The list of questions goes on and on. I’ve known for awhile now that what I need is the opportunity to work with someone that has been there and done that. Someone that could give me the skills I need to make the correct decisions. That’s why I’m very grateful for this chance with John. He’s been there and done that and knows the angles to go after and the pitfalls to stay away from. I’m looking at this internship just like a college class. I’m not worried about making a lot of money, but I’ll admit, anything I make is nice. What I am really hoping to get is an education in internet marketing. If I can get that then I can embark on the next leg of my journey with some direction.

There are literally hundreds of ways to customize your post order and the way that they are listed in “the loop” on your WordPress pages. You can change they way they’re displayed on your home page, post pages, paged pages, tag or category pages, search results page, or custom theme pages!

This post is part of my 30 WordPress Hacks in 30 Days series!

Most WordPress themes display full posts for the blog homepage. When WordPress shows your homepage it looks for a file called “home.php” in your theme directory – and if it doesn’t find that it uses “index.php” instead. Look for home.php in your theme directory, if it’s not there edit index.php using “Appearance->Editor” in your wordpress dashboard admin.

Look for the following line of code:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

This is where “the loop” starts. A little further down you’ll find a line of code like this:

<?php the_content(__('Read the rest of this entry...')); ?>

It may look a little different but you will find a line with the_content. Just change the_content to the_excerpt like this (and save), and your homepage will show excerpts instead of full posts. If you change the text “Read the rest of this entry…”, you can customize what it says at the end of the excerpt.

By default WordPress posts are displayed from newest to oldest. Let’s say you want them to be in reverse order from oldest to new. I need this recently for a page of lessons – and I wanted them to display from the first lesson to the last. All you have to do is add one line of code just before “the loop” like this:

<?php query_posts($query_string . "&order=ASC") ?>

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

Maybe you want to show more or less posts per page (the default is 10). You could use code like this before “the loop”:

query_posts(‘posts_per_page=5′);

<?php query_posts('posts_per_page=5') ?>

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

Maybe you want to order your posts alphabetically – you could use code like this:

<?php $posts=query_posts($query_string . '&orderby=title&order=asc'); ?>

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

If you have an multi-author site you could use code like this to get posts for specific authors:

<?php $posts=query_posts($query_string . '&author_name=neo'); ?>

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

Remember that you can use this code in any wordpress theme page to change the order or display of posts, like your single.php, page.php, index.php, home.php, search.php, archive.php, etc.

Online Marketing Internship with JTPratt.com

Are you interested in an “Online Marketing Internship”? Read my story, and then in you’re interested in becoming an intern for a successful online web site – apply below!

One year ago I was working at Ford Motor company IT and my boss came to my desk and told me that my last day would be at the end of the year. I was a programmer and content management expert and it was the end of my tenth year working at Ford. Ford, like many companies in the area where I live, South of Detroit, Michigan – had been cutting back for several years. You’ve probably seen in the news the state of the auto industry in the US. What you may not know is that it’s not just factory workers they’re letting go, it’s engineers, programmers, project managers, server admins, database experts, and web designers as well. What this means for me is that in my market there are 15-20,000+ technical people out of work that can do what I do. Recruiters I have met with tell me of potential candidates for have doctorate degrees in computer science willing to work for $30-40,000/yr just to have a job.

Luckily for me, during the 10 years I worked in the corporate environment, I had a passion for learning about blogging and making money online. I probably spend as many hours at night working on web sites as I did my day job, and worked full time on the weekends for myself. I became an expert in WordPress themes and plugins, and learned SEO and social marketing from the ground up. My personal web sites had always been for me, a hobby, a sideline, and it was never important if the money came in or not because I had a regular paycheck and benefits. I did make money each and every month, but sometimes it was $1,600/mo and sometimes it was $5,600/mo. I jumped from project to project, idea to idea, I was never very focused – because I didn’t have to be.

Earlier this year when I was first unemployed it still for some reason wasn’t completely apparent what I should do. I guess I somehow still held out hope that there would be a job somewhere for me. When you have had a regular paycheck for 10 years, and you know exactly how much money you’re going to get on what day – you get used to that consistency and security. You depend on it, and without a regular paycheck – you panic, like someone free falling without a parachute. I still jumped from project to project when I was unemployed while both my money and time ran out – literally!

One sunny day I had an idea that I should put my expertise to use online rather than just try “make money online” 150 different ways. I had skills in programming, web design, SEO, project management, marketing – and I used that experience to seek out clients to do freelance work. Within 6 weeks I was doing billable work every day of the week! My clients range from small businesses to corporatations, from dentists and doctors, to affiliate marketers, e-commerce stores, and niche store owners.

In a way – working with clients was the best thing that ever happened to me. It forced me to do for them, what I never could seem to do for myself. On my own working online for fun for many years I was always looking for “the next best thing” to make money. I was like a mexican jumping bean going from one project to the next. I had all the necessary experience to be successful full time on my own – but I never put the pieces of the puzzle all together.

From th 150+ clients I’ve had in the last 8-9 months, what I’ve learned is that they all pretty much had the same end goal no matter what their business. Whether their budget was $500 or $5,000 – the questions were always the same:

“How do we get found more in search engines?”
“What keywords do we use?”
“What is SEO and how do we use it”?
“How do we use social media?”
“How do we increase the ROI on our company web site?”
“How do we find people looking to buy products like ours online?”

The difference between working for a client and working for myself is that client work forces me to focus on their web site and products. No longer could I jump around from thing to thing because I had to get their job done or I wouldn’t get paid. I also found that no matter how big or small the business, I could apply nearly the same exact process and principles for them to be more successful online. I not only developed a pattern for working with clients, I developed specific “Phases” and modules to teach them what I was doing as I went.

At the end of the summer I started to apply the same principles and techniques I used on clients to some of my longstanding personal web sites with outstanding success! I had finally developed a plan for success online that worked! I’m at the point now where I’m ready to employ these successful techniques on 4 new concept sites that will be guaranteed money makers within 6 months of launch. I cannot do this on my own, and while my business is growing rapidly – I’d rather not take on new full time employees just yet.

What I want is people that are HUNGRY! Hungry for knowledge, hungry to learn what it takes to make money online from someone that has that experience! I remember back in high school they had a business club that was called “Junior Achievement”. You paired up with an experienced businessman and brainstormed a new product. It was your job to figure out how to get in manufactured, how much it would cost, what the profit would be, and how to market it. The businessman helped you through the process, and once 100 were made – you went out and sold whatever your product was. At the end of the project you got to keep 25% of the profits and the rest went back to the club.

Internships are usually unpaid, very few actually give you money. You put in your time for the privilege of gaining experience you can use to be successful in the future. What I’m about to offer is the deal of a lifetime. I’m now accepting applications for 4 Online Marketing Internship positions with JTPratt.com. This is a full time position, but you will be able to work from your own home at your own pace – but you will be expected to work at least 40 hours per calendar week. You will be assigned a running WordPress web site with a theme and plugins installed and I will give you a complete course of instruction to take it from nothing to a profitable business in just 5 months.

All Online Marketing Interns will Learn:

Phase 1: Site Analysis

How to Setup a Web Site for Indexing
-setting up robots.txt file
-creating an XML sitemap
-registering with search engines

Phase 2: Competitive Analysis

How to find the best keywords to use
How to research the top competition
How to analyze the effectiveness of paid marketing for this project
Formulating a Business Plan to get on Google’s top page for the keywords you want

Phase 3: SEO Setup

Setting up SEO plugins
Making a theme SEO ready
How to SEO pages and posts
How to create Linkbait
How to Write the most indexable content

Phase 4: Linkbuilding and Content Writing

Setting a routine for writing content and scheduling posts
How to build pagerank
Blog Commenting Best Practices
How to use social media
Submitting to Directories
How to use guest blogging
How to use article marketing
How to create mini-sites for links
How to analyze stats for traffic patterns
Using stats to refine the business plan

For incentive:

• Each if my Online Marketing Interns will be paid 25% of all profits raised from their assigned site
• In addition to that a $1,000 bonus will be paid for any site that makes more than $5,000 profit during the 5 month project.

I will provide web hosting, a domain name, and complete instructions during the 5 month period.  All interns will need:

• Full time access to a computer and high speed Internet connection
• Excellent English speaking and writing skills
• The ability to work independantly well and complete tasks
• At least 40 hours free per week availability for the project

Applicants should be 18 years of age or older, background is unimportant as long as you are computer literate, willing to work hard, and have above average writing skills.  There is no guarantee of payment for this Online Marketing Internship – if you make money and how much you make solely depends on the effort you put forth during the 5 months.  You will be given all the tools for success, it’s up to you to put them to use.  At the end of the 5 month internship you will have enough knowledge to market nearly anything online and be successful.

The type of experience you will gain from this hands-on internship is something you cannot read in any book or learn from any university course.  To pay for this kind of training from a membership site or “web coach” could cost thousands.  What I will teach my interns over 5 months is what everyone wants to know – “How do I Become Successful Online?”.

If you think you have what it takes, and you’re willing to invest the time and work hard, please fill out the form below to apply for one of my Online Marketing Internship positions with jtpratt.com.  It’s FREE – all will ever be asked to invest is your time.  I’m not building a list, nor am I selling any products, but I am limiting this to the four most qualified people I can find.  I don’t care if I get 5,000 applications – I’m only taking on 4 interns, period.  I also don’t care of you are a factory worker, stay at home mom, displaced woker, a retired person, undergrad student, or if you work at McDonald’s – as long as you have above average writing skills and a desire to succeed!

This particular offer is now closed, but we do take new internship applicants from time to time. If you are still interested please fill out our contact form.

Well, well, it’s been a long time since I saw one of these! It’s a good old fashioned blogging contest! Link Money is running the contest and first place is $200 cash AND the Google Sniper program. 2nd places is $100 cash, and 3rd place is $50 cash. All you have to do to enter is comment on blog posts, write a post about the contest, signup for the email or RSS feed, stumble the page, etc. There are other prizes coming in as we speak (I just donated some copies of WP EASYBAY, as well as 2 hours of my WordPress Consulting time. The page will be updated later today with all the new incoming prizes! I think this contest is going to be pretty big, and it’s so easy to enter! Check it out, it might only take you 5-10 minutes to win cash money!

If nothing more, you should make a point to comment on this page, because once it gets stumbled and bookmarked – the contest page will get it’s own pagerank in google and that one comment alone could be one of the best high authority links you get for free!

Will Work for Backlinks

I will work for backlinks! There, I said it. I own 48 domains and I have 28 online working web sites. Due to the time constraints of working online for a living – I just don’t have the time to build all the links I need for all my sites. Building backlinks is a manual, time consuming task. It’s tedious, and something I don’t always like to do – so I put it off. I could hire someone in another country to do this for pennies per hour. I have perused a lot of listings on those “freelance” web sites. Instead – I’d like to try something a little more interesting.

Do you know how to build links? Can you comment on blogs, submit to directories, write articles for article directories, post in forums, or build links through social media? If you can – we might be able to work something out. The thing I like the most about working online is the “barter system”. Like the ads on Craigslist that say, “I want an Xbox 360, willling to trade 2 kittens and a 1978 rusted Ford Pinto”. I’ve worked out many deals in the past for online work. I’m willing to barter my services for your backlink building time.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have a full time roster of clients that keeps me busy from dawn to dusk – and my time as a Wordpess Consultant and SEO expert is valuable. But as long as you can follow directions to linkbuilding purposes (and have a little time to spare), I can trade some hours each week for backlinks.

Things I would be willing to trade for backlinks:
-wordpress upgrades
-wordpress security work
-SEO work
-wordpress theme hacks
-online marketing help
-content
-quality one-way links

Interested? Have a little time to spare? I will work for backlinks – just use my contact page to make me an offer!

link juice from blog comments

Would you like to get more juice from your blog comments? I’m about to show you how simple that can be!

The greatest thing about blogs is that they’re interactive. You write posts, and people can leave comments and carry on a conversation right there on the same page. Blogs are like part web site, part forum. Sometimes the post comments are more interesting than the post itself! The first goal is to get comments in the first place, and I wrote a post about that long ago “Rock Star Comments in WordPress in 12 Steps. The more traffic you get the more comments you receive, and a lot of people ask me, “when will I start getting traffic on my blog?”. Well, my rule of thumb is usually most blogs go from obscurity to a steady flow of traffic at about the 6 month / 100 post mark. This is enough time to be through a google update or two, and with 100 posts indexed in the search engines, you’ve got 100 shots at getting found in online search. I believe every post you write is like a little deposit in the search engine bank.

So back to the original topic – “How do you get the most Juice from Blog Comments?”. Well, comments aren’t like a blog post – you don’t just approve them and leave them site there on your blog. Like your own posts, pages, and content – you can re-use comments in many convenient ways you may not have previously thought about.

• Use a Widget: This is probably the simplest thing you can do, add a “recent comments” widget to your sidebar. It shows your blog is active and people are leaving comments. Simple, yet effective.
• Create a page Listing Most Commented Pages: This is one you don’t see very often. Create a page on your web site and list the most commented and active page, like my Active Discussions page. This is pretty simple to do with the Active Discussions Plugin.
• Use Comments in a ‘Testimonials’ page: Everyone gets comments like “Thanks, exactly what I was looking for!”. If you have a product or service on your site turn your comments into Testimonials! Create a testimonials page and copy them there, then link back to the original comments (building internal links in your site at the same time!). How? Download the WP-Testimonials Plugin, that’s how!
• Reply to Comments: This is pretty much a no brainer – reply to your comments! Tell people thanks, answer their questions, and reply to their comments. Comments get indexed in search engines too you know, and the comments you add in reply to your comments the more content the search engines have to index from your site. Also – people like to know that you are reading their comments, and furthering the discussion(s) makes them want to come back. THIS is a GREAT way to build loyal readers!
• Reward Commenters: Use plugins like Comment Luv, Top Commentators, and DoFollow. Commenters will come back more often when they know their link juice “counts”. In addition, you get listed on sites that list blogs that have these plugins (building backlinks for you!). I get a lot of traffic from being listed on this list of commentluv blogs.
• Email Commenters: If you see someone commenting on your site relentlessly for weeks and months – connect with them! Send them a simple email and say “thanks – I see you’ve been commenting a lot, and I really appreciate it”. If you owned a brick and mortar store you’d be smart to treat your regular customers this way – why wouldn’t you do the same on your own blog?
• Challenge Commenters: Run a contest of some kind and challenge your commenters to become part in it!
• Recruit Affiliates: If you come out with a product or service, recruit the people already commenting on your web site to be part of your new affiliate army! They already know you and your content, and probably wouldn’t mind making a little extra cash as an affiliate of your products.
• Hire Guest Posters: This is a no brainer. I’ll never understand why more web sites don’t recruit guest posters. Authors build great back links back to their web site, and you get great traffic and content in return! In addition most authors always link the article they wrote for you (instant backlinks) – and what better way to find quality guest posters than from active commenters you already have on your blog? It’s like the flowers recruiting the honeybees and saying “hey, since you’re here anyway…”!

Like I said in one of those points, your blog is like your “storefront”. If you actually owned a store, and customers can and visited 24 hours a day you would do everything you could to market to those people and increase your sales. Most stores use direct and indirect ways of marketing to customers that are already there. TV screens at the checkout and throughout the store, ads plastered on the floor, ads in carts, coupons on the back of receipts, checkout coupons. All of these methods are trying to “engage” the customer in yet another way to influence his or her buying decisions.

Think of your blog comments as your checkout clerk. It’s the last thing the customer does before he leaves the store – he “checks out”. Why do you think most stores ask the clerk to do certain things while ringing up your goods? They say things like “did you find everything you needed?”, “would you like to apply for our credit card and get 10% off this purchase?”, “would you like to signup for our free catalog?”. In some stores the checkout clerk is the only actualy person a customer interacts with before leaving with their purchase. Comments are the checkout for your blog, are you getting everything you can from them at the one point they are engaged and connected with you?

Are you using squeezing every bit of juice out of your blog comments?