Michaela Cernescu’s Blog

Tools We Need For Productivity.

Yesterday I imported this blog to Facebook, in my notes page. It is a very easy procedure, I described in great details, how to do it, in other Blog Post.

The feature I like the most is that  all the time when I’ll update this blog, automatically I’ll get a post in my Notes Page in FB:

http://affiliate-marketing.crabbysbeach.com/blogs/facebook/import-your-blog-on-facebook/

So I am looking now for other tools which can free my time.

I suggest to look it over to Mandossian’s:

http://www.facebook.com/beproductive#!/video/video.php?v=416203408812&ref=mf

You can find how to “Auto-Tweet” your articles.  Each time you have a new article published on EzineArticles you can have it automatically announced on your Twitter page. This is a great example of AI – Auto-Integration, and is a great example of  “automatic re-purposing”. take advantage of it!

Another brilliant site is  Mashable, where daily bases you will get what is hot and what in not. And by the way I like their style, they “report you decide” what is good for you, and it is gone in a professional way without to twist an arm and a leg!

http://mashable.com

My favorite pages are: Social Media and Tech.

Until next time be well informed

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We already establish that content is the king, and we have to keep the Blogs up-to-date, write frequently, and this is a way of getting constant traffic to our Blogs.

Blogging has truly revolutionized the way we communicate, it seems no limit to what we can do with the help of blogs.

We can communicate:

• The smallest aspect of your daily personal life like recording journal entries
• Talk about our dreams, projects
• Communicate with competition
• Engage in discussion, debates: customers, sellers, curious people, gurus, and novice; all of them can use the blogging platform to the same extend
• Branding our business
• Erase any differences and obstacle between people – this is huge and very appealing aspect of blogging
• The sky is the limit

More tips for blogging:

1. It is recommended to start some of discussions yourself, this is how you will find what the competition is thinking, doing, and make the buzz go around about what you are doing it
2. Do a lot of surveys to find out the interests of your readers, it is priceless
3. In this blog, the posts with a lot of comments were the ones I created as a response of a reader request/question, so…
4. You always respond to your readers
5. Don’t be shy, you can earn some money while blogging, it is nothing wrong about this, it is an interesting and attractive aspect of this platform. If you blog well enough for people to come and read it, you earn good chances of making quick money, by just going about your daily activity of posting blogs. Do you know other platform which will offer you an equal chance? I don’t!

What to do to make sure that your blogging activities get rewarded by more than just comments, compliments, and backlinks?

You could get yourself registered with a search engines. But keep in mind that you must do it only if you are confident enough that your blog gets good traffic. That way, the higher the ranking your blog achieves, the more you get paid.

While writing your blogs you also need to keep in mind your blog readership can increase so that the ranking of your blog with search engines go higher.

Here are a few tips that should get you through this:

• Keywords: Using the keywords of your posts frequently increases the search ability of that particular article of yours which in turn leads more people to visit your blog
• Post Title: A catchy post title or headline is recommended. It can glue a reader to your post almost immediately. However, avoid misleading post titles, or you will lose creditability
• Reader Friendly Content: This is the basic rule in marketing. At all costs keep your content reader friendly that should keep more and more readers interested. Your reader must feel that he is gaining something out of reading your post
• Worthwhile: Never let the reader feel that he has been tricked into reading your articles or clicking on your blog link. You are blow away all your long term chances of that reader coming back to your blog, in which case your blog rankings will suffer
• No errors: If you can, proof read your blog. A small typo here and there can be understood, but make sure you don’t make any major errors
• KISS = Keep It Short and Simple. This is an essential rule. Your blog will be much more appreciated if you put your thoughts simply and shortly. Make sure you put your thought clearly before the readers so that it does not become tedious for them to read
• Interesting: This is a subject mater, but make sure that you hold your reader’s attention by making your posts to point immediately in the course of your article. Your articles must not be written in a tone that is tiring to read. Write using short sentences and keep them crisp and precise
• Colloquialism: it is great to write in a friendly tone, but avoid using too many slang words

So, be consistent with your blog content and watch traffic growing to your blog!
To complement my article, I’ll give you 3 good sources of inspiration about writing content on Blogs:
SEO content writing how to write that perfect article
Writing content to make users feel welcome
Blog writing tips how to post to your blog often with good content

Until next time be well

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I was asked:  “do you really think that a blog can be profitable?”

So… Yes, and can be done in a simple way or in a convoluted way.

Let’s look it over to the simples way.

The relevance of the article according to the key words used in your Blog;  the number of times a page has been linked and viewed; are just a two simple factors which will influence ranking of you Blog.  With just a careful look into them the rankings of your Blog can increase considerably.

Those are very easy steps to follow:

• Get your Blog posts linked through various other pages. The more the pages are that contain your links, the better ranking they will receive
• Consider and plan how often you update the content on your Blog. Frequently updated sites receive higher ranking in search engines than those that have not been looked at by the owners for ages
• If you have a static website you can add a Blog to your website, as a Blog will function as a forum for people to come and discuss the ideas that concern your website too. This is how you create a platform, as well as become a journal whereby you can also post updates about your business and your website. The advantage is that the Blogs are more flexible, they aren’t restricted only to text, but pictures and videos can be posted too with great ease, and the functionality of Blogs are without limit
• The combination of having a website plus a blog is working well and long run help you to create a traffic wheel

The next easy steps as described below will take you through how to create your own blog and what are the things you must look out for:

• Cost can never be a problem because free blogging services are quit popular, you can choose sites like Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress  and you are sure to get exactly the kind of platform you are looking for. They are absolutely free
• For minimum cost I suggest to use Wordpress as they also allow you to use the platform and create a Blog in your own domain. In this case your expenses are: buy a domain, and have a host.  With very little money you are free, as you are the one who own the blog. If you use the free sites, they own your blog, so think about this
• Don’t be worry about web designing techniques. Creating your blog with Wordpress is not as complicated as designing template for a website. WP blogging service provide over 1,400 templates from which you can choose the one most suited to your Blog, plus over 9,000 plug-ins which provide huge functionality
• You must also use your discretion while blogging. Especially if you are incorporating your blog within your website, or creating a blog to increase awareness of your product/niche/business, you need to keep in mind that this is an open forum which is read by all. Be careful with politics and religion as they are the two most controversial subjects, and therefore anything about those must be carefully blogged about
• Stay “safe” with anything that is particularly reader friendly as your aim is indeed to increase the ranking of your site, you will have to make sure you attract many people to read it. You need content user friendly
• Also keep an eye on what other people write or say on their blogs.  You learn a lot about what kind of responses articles receive, and you can get valuable tips from them.

Blogging nowadays is considered a highly effective marketing tool. You can easily get clients and customers to interact with each other. And not only customers, also those who are relatively new to your product get a platform to ask questions and get knowledge about your product and create more awareness of your business in general, you can brand yourself easily through blogs.

Moreover, it also increases your website rankings because the blog is constantly being updates, commented on, but you have to keep discussions going on. The bottom line is your get your ranking improved.

Those are  recommendations about how to blog about your product/niche/business:

• Never make the blog post too long uselessly, and must be well written. Long posts are not ‘catchy’ frequently. Ideally, blog 3-5 times a week
• Use light hearten humor, when is appropriate
• Don’t stick only to text, use videos and photos in your blogging effort, and as much functionality you can muster through plug-ins
• Be yourself, be conversational, blog like you have a coffee with a good friend and you chat over it. People definitely like the human aspect of blogging

In summary: if you are able to drive enough traffic to your Blog and website your blog will become profitable, your business will blossom, it is as simple as this!

On Internet marketing,  traffic = profit.

For the convoluted way, follow my new challenge, which I have started, you don’t miss to much at this point.

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I like to start the New Year with my reflection on 2009, enjoying the good moments, learning from mistakes, enforce the plan for 2010 and organize to the bone, and whatever takes to make it better, and a humble thank you for the blessing friends and working JV partners of 2009.

It is fair to say that 2009 wasn’t one of my favorite year even though was better then 2008. It was a mix of too many events, projects which as a whole made me tired and not always happy.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the accomplishments:

Learning:

•  It was a turning point on the way I looked at Web 2.0. A learned a lot and spend a value time analyzing some new trends. As a consequence I am going more towards: tagging, grouping, and blogging using only WordPress and the new born WP MU, abandoning some classic concept of putting my nose all over the net. I can see clearly now that this was a mistake of the past. Thanks you: Yaro, Eric, VanDyke, Joel for a friendly hand when I need it the most
• I definitely want to spend more time in small niches, but keeping in mind the main purpose of my business vision and its goals
• I eliminate a foggy area and I make now a clear difference between my main purpose and the  satellite “tools”
• It was an important step forward on my understanding of Google strategies, myths, and future trends. Thanks  Jonathan for “Search Engine Myths Exposed”, you are a marvelous researcher, deep analyst, and honest Internet Marketer. I learn a lot from you and I am using your scripts with a different prospective now
• I learned a lot about membership sites, scripts, and macros. Thanks: Eric, Jan Del Carmen, Stu  
• Learned WordPress MU, wrote the first eBook in JV with Alex: “WordPress Multi User”, read aboutit on this lens
• I know from sometime that the key of  long term success is to create automated systems, not to chase a couple of sales, but for the first time I made the creation of automated systems my priority, it is going to stay like this for 2010 as well 
• I’ll use an entire arsenal available for Automated systems: scripts, macro, autoresponders, recurring tools (membership sites, e-courses)

My 2009 Blessings and 2010 Hopes:

• In 2009 I was blessed with a couple of good new friends. Some were coming from working relations, others just happen to be the right person at the right place and time for me. I am really grateful for having all of them on my side, yes, the friends make our world. A special thanks for Jeanie, Alex, my dear musketeers, and a handful of very dear Squidoo friends
• In 2010 I’ll work at just a project at a time, no exceptions, the decision is coming as a hard to swallow learning experience from 2009
• I’ll eliminate all un productive activities, all volunteer work for hopeless experiences
• I’ll extend working relationships with people who happen to share what I  believe in, and I’ll continue to learn and grow within this friendly environment. I am glad  these type of people exist around me, I value their expertise, collaboration, and above all friendship
• I am convinced that if I want to work hard on my goals, my goals will work on me; I’ll continue to dream big, and plan to the last detail. I don’t want to face the future with apprehension; I want to do it with anticipation and joy. Yes, I always consider the joy of honest hard work a prerequisite of success 
• At personal level I have to put more time aside for family. My mother is 95 old now, she needs me, I’ll be available day and night for her, she is the best mother in the world for me
• My audience will find out about the progress from my blogs, published products, lenses, tweets, and so on
• To serve better my loyal subscribers, I’ll transform this blog in a monthly Newsletter-Blog, starting Jan 15th, and as usual I invite you to participate, I really love to hear from you

Quote Mark Twain

My Predictions:

• I am convinced that Blogging, Affiliate Marketing, and Internet Marketing in general will play a bigger role in 2010
• But a lot of changes will happen, new tactics, and trends will emerge, as of new FTC rules ( read lens ). To all the pessimists out there who are telling you that Internet Marketing is saturated, I say that they don’t understand essence. The Internet is big enough for you and me, and gazillion of other honest people, there are no fences, and the difference between the impossible and possible lies only in a person’s determination, not on outside influences 
• Among my good friends I clearly see 2-3 new stars in 2010, I wish them well, keep on open eye, and help as much as I can

To your success, Happy New Year Michaela

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Part II  -  Graphics

Picresize  and Picasa.

You can use for Graphics: Photoshop or Corel Photo-Paint, both are expensive and there is a learning curve to use them properly.

But in majority of cases if you creat a Squidoo lens, or a Blog Post, re-sizing is all you need.  For just this operation I use Picresize which is incredible simple, follow this example.

The flowers you see in next pictute I need to resize at 50%

• Equalize
• Gaussian Blur
• Grayscale
• Raise
• Raise Frame
• Rotate or
• Go forward with the default

 

 For this demonstration I Chose Raise Frame, pres a button and this is what I get:

This is it, I have my picture reduced 50%.

As an alternative you can use Picasa  a great software from Google, the difference is that you have to download the software, and the process is similar.

GIMP.

If your needs are more then just resize, Gimp is a fantastic free alternative, is easy to use, intuitive and above all is free.

It is true you don’t need of spend hundreds of dollars, it is a great editor to use.

For Blogs.

Blogging is closer to my soul, I highly recommend:

Blog Pulse 

Blog pulse is a great free research tool that allows you to discover what’s hot and what’s not in the blogsphere.  All you have to do is typing:  a topic, keyword, or URL.

In the above chart is a comparison between:

• Google Chrome
• Google Wave
• Google SideWiki

Do yourself a favor, and start using Blog Pulse, it really is an excellent tool.

Until the next time all the best

Michey

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What is a Blog we already know, but why are Blogs so popular nowadays? A Blog is a Journal. A place where you put your personal thoughts, ideas, knowledge, in a conversational mode, as you sit across the table with an old friend and just tell him what you have in mind.

Blogs are:

• Perfect tools for blooming your creativity
• They act as communication tools connecting, educating, and influencing people
• All of them but especial WordPress has a multitude of functionality
• Professional Bloggers build a business, an on-line asset which produces a full-time income from their Blog(s), and they manage their Blog(s) like a business.

What makes Blogs different from any websites of Web 1.0 generation? It is important to know as it helps you to develop the right mindset about Blogging:

• Posts on Blogs are listed chronologically, last in the top, in a journalistic style. They are also store by categories which make them very easy to retrieve
• In Blogs is easy to add new content, if you can write a letter using Word, you can Blog, cannot get simpler than that
• Being easy to add content is easy to update frequently, Blogs are more up-to-date vs. Web 1.0 websites which are static
• On Blogs interaction is a breath as they allow people to leave comments
• The conversational nature of Blogs make people trust Blogs more than old type websites
• Blogs in your domains allow affiliate links, which are not welcome in a lot of sites and environments as forum, ezine, even some websites

WordPress is a Blogging platform and a Content Management System (CMS).
It is not the single Blogging Platform or CMS, but the huge popularity of WordPress is coming from the following features:

• It is FREE
• It is Open Source, people as you and me can add functionality to WordPress adding our themes, plug-ins, widgets
• It contains over 4,400 plug-ins, they add a huge functionality, flexibility, and creativity
• Now Multiple Users extension (MU); is relatively new but is adding even more Web 2.0 functionality. We go now from individual users to:
  o   niche groups
  o   tribes which are communities with same interests
  o   companies as well
• It is a platform easy to use with the low level of restrictions
• WP is the single Blog Platform which let you create Blogs on your own domain. This is huge advantage for Affiliate Marketing.

The success fires up the imaginations of entrepreneurs. There are other platform easy to use but the difference is the number of restrictions on those platforms. Some of them are good for a non-technical person or a limited purposes, but a solid technical individual always closes WordPress and/or WP-MU.

What I notice in the last 2 years is the multitude of ways people start to use WordPress.

1. We use WP as a Blogging Platform
2. Some uses WP to create Websites, if you block the comment feature, and use your own domain, you really have a Website. Why people will use WP to create Websites? The answer:
   o   WP is a great system of organizing data for a Website
   o   The plug-ins which provide a huge functionality. The work behind the scene which is already done, tested, and implemented for you is a big plus of WordPress
3. Create Membership sites – this is again a great advantage of WP functionality, it is a little more work up front but is possible to do it and the easy maintenance will compensate you for the hard work at the set up point
4. Now we have an extension of WP which let us create communities, it is called WordPress Multiple Users (WP-MU). This is an example of MU: http://crabbysbeach.com/blogs/

The conclusion is people started to use WordPress Platform for almost everything. Blogs now can be almost anything you want them to be.

Welcome to the wonderful world of WordPress. In future posts I’ll take one of this functionality at a time and give you details.

I think the new functionality is more likely to interest my readers, but I always look to the comments to make my mind about what is important for you.

I’ll come back soon with new products, surprises, and more posts to keep you up-to-date.

To your success
Michaela
http://michey.crabbysbeach.com/blogs/

http://www.mc-ecovers.com

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I’ll continue to give some sugestions about finding other streams of income and training yout need. If you enjoy Part I, keep reading Part II.

You will find info about selling digital products on eBay using Classified Ads, Blogging, drive traffic to Blogs, making money with blogs, learn to use a group training provide by an effective Forum, search engine loophole for MSN

3. Classified Ads for Selling Digital Products on eBay.

You probably know that eBay banned Digital Products with instant delivery and the Classified Ads was the single solution offered by eBay.
We want change, don’t we? Well, eBay gave us changes we barely can keep up with. The ban itself made eBay sellers angry some got out of eBay without to look back. eBay never pay attention to Classified Ads and all of a sudden they did a lot of changes to the rules of Classified ads. So many changes occurred in 4-5 month, all of us were confused with both: Digital Products and Classified Ads on eBay.
I waited to see when the eBay’s frenzy of changing rules settles down.

It is not a 100% grantee that the rules will stay as there are today, but at list they look stable and reasonable and I decided to start commenting them again.

Using Classified ads to indirectly sell Digital Product is a good solution as Classified Ads are:

• One of the quickest ways to build a list
• They are working for affiliate marketers and bum marketers for promoting other people’s products and earn great commission
• The new rules for Classified Ads are very easy to implement, if you are able to create a regular eBay listing then you can create a Classified Ad listing as well.

If you are looking for a step-by-step guide to start selling Digital Products on eBay using Classified Ads, look no further than Tracey’s “Auction Classified Cash 3”.
http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/ClassAd
 
I give Tracey’s my highest level of endorsement and if you really want a step-by-step guide, easy to follow, you MUST grab your hands on Auction Classified Ads .

Talking about eBay, I also suggest David Guidon’s Hot Item Finder v 2:

http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/HotItemFinder

This software will help you find items you can sell on eBay, what eBay customers are searching for.

4. Blogging and making money with Blogs.
There are a lot of digital products about Blogs, I’ll give you two examples I like and work with:

Alvin Phang’s Atomic Blogging v 2, that is referring to a new generation of blogs, it is highly recommended for beginners: 
http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/ABVideo 

Atomic Blogging is a great guide for people who just started blogging and want:

• To get lot of traffic to it using Web 2.0
• Get your Blog indexed and bookmarked by the major sites and
• Drive massive targeted traffic, the unique type of traffic which will transform potential customers in buyers.

It really is a great step-by-step guide for people who seek to learn and profit from their own blogs, making good money from there Blogs.  I am not talking about 1-2 hundreds from Google AdSense, I am talking about at least 5-figure income per month from Affiliate Marketing.

Rob Benwell’s Blogging to the Bank 3:
http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/BlogBank

I got Rob’s first version of Blogging to the Bank and I effectively used it. When V 2 came along, I considered that the amount of improvements wasn’t big and substantial enough to justify a new edition. But I discovered after I bought v 2, it is so much hype on landing pages, it is really hard to decide what is real.

Blogging to the Bank 3.0 is the best, it is my new step-by-step roadmap I start to use now and I am happy about the fact that is using Web 2.0, and I know it will bring money for me for years to come.

5. Lee McIntyre’s Standing Start Profit
http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/LeeSSP

This is a membership site, if you really want the friendliest and knowledgeable people on earth, to help you all along, you must be part of Lee’s Forum on Standing Start Profit.

Lee offers a divers array of information for both experienced and novice alike:

• You learn how to make massive profits from scratch, starting with no list, no JV partners, and no product
• You get high quality content
• Monthly Videos Training
• Group coaching via access to the best Forum on Internet Marketing
• Underground Networking from Lee.

People are learning on different ways, if you are comfortable on group learning I highly recommend Standing Start Profit

6. The Ultimate Search Engine Loophole by Dave Kelly and Chris Rempel.
This is an advanced topic; you can learn how to get Rank #1 on MSN.

I don’t want to repeat content, I create a review on my review Blog, and you can read it there:
http://affiliatemarketingreviews-mc.blogspot.com/2008/11/ultimate-search-engine-loophole-review.html

As always, you are welcome to leave your comments here on the blog.

Until next time all the best for you
Michaela

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