The Best Way to Market Your Website!

What is the best way to market your website? Well I guess the answer depends on who you ask. ;)  For example, if you ask me, I would say that SEO is the best way to market yourself; why, because I am a SEO guy and this is what I do, this is what I am good at. There maybe a multitude of other ways to market yourself, but I don’t do them because I am not good at them.  Now, if you ask the same question to a PPC guy he would answer the obvious!

So, is there really any "best" way to market your website? The answer is NO. There is no singularly "best" marketing method. There are many ways to market yourself; some work great for you and others don’t. So what you should do is to pick up the marketing methods that seem to work "best" for YOU and try to become proficient in them. :D

In this article let me discuss some of the marketing methods I know about. They are mainly based in and around SEO. ;) And one more thing: I want to be honest with you, this article is meant for complete dummies, people who don’t even know the "I" of internet marketing. So if you are an "intermediate" or "advanced" type of marketer you might actually find most of the article boring, dull and commonplace. In any case, even if you don’t learn anything new here, at least you will get bored badly and fall asleep on your desk. :)

Since I have promised to bore you, I will describe in detail how to setup a blog! :D :P

I presume you don’t already have a web hosting, domain name or an autoresponder, so I would tell you about all that too (for extra boredom).

Part 1: Domain and Hosting
Part 2: Building the Website
Part 3: Building the Mailing List
Part 4: Building the Blog
Part 5: Niche Marketing and Keyword Research
Part 6: Traffic
What Ultimately Matters, in the Bigger Scheme of Things!
What can you do with all the money you would earn?

 Aim: To make money as an affiliate :D

Initial investment: Around ($19 for autoresponder+$10 for domain+$10 for hosting+$10 for backlink membership = ) $50. Could be $60 too! :D

Part 1: Domain and Hosting:

Now my friend, I hope I don’t sound rude but the fact remains: it is a ‘give and take’ world. You cannot afford to be stingy if you wish to succeed in business. You must invest some money in order to make some profits. That is the basis of just about any independent business venture, not just an online business. Only shams would claim that you can ‘make money for free’ – that just ain’t true! All valuable things in this world come at a price. You value freedom? You must be willing to pay a price for that! You don’t want to pay the price? Go and get a regular day-job instead – work for someone else and boost their treasury instead of your own! :P

So the bottom line is: you must pay the COST to be the BOSS! :P Sometimes you would be investing your money, and other times your precious time.

Now if you were to setup a business in the offline world, the investment you would have to make there would be much much more compared to an online business. That said, some things remain the same. For example, just like you need an office in the offline world, you need a domain and hosting for an online business. Just like you need to pay the postal department/courier company to send mails to your clients in the offline world, you need to invest in an autoresponder for mailing your online business clients.

Just like you need to invest in advertising for promoting your offline business, you need to invest in backlinks (at the minimum) to promote your online business. Well actually you can get backlinks for free, and I even have some articles here explaining all that, but if you are a complete newbie and feel that I am talking down to you, then there is a special cheap backlinks membership you can join to enhance your knowledgebase. I will talk about that later. Let us get down to the basics first!

1. Domain: So why the hell do you need to ‘waste’ money in a domain name anyway? Why cannot you just sign up for a free yola subdomain? Why, o why! :P

Well, would you prefer to have your office in a rented house or an owned house? Rents are not that cheap anyway, not at least in my country. You maybe better off just getting a home loan and building your own small office instead. Not only will this be cheaper for you over time (even after paying the interest rates and all that), you would actually get more recognition and credibility for your business (if you already have a spare room in your own house, then it might be cheaper for you to set up your "office" in that room). I don’t know about your country, but in our country tenants get evicted and replaced all the time, which means you would need to keep changing your office address quite frequently, which in turn means loss of customer base and business credibility.

Let me give you an example. When I purchased my UPS I was really dumb, I mean you can just call me a retard because I purchased the product from one of the worst companies available, without even knowing it! :( It must be my good luck that I have managed to keep it running for 6 years, because products from their company are reputed to not last beyond 1-3 years anyway. :P In any case, it was only when the time for the battery replacement came that I realized my folly. The company had setup an office in a rented house, and needless to say, they would keep changing their office every year. Merely saying it was troublesome would be an understatement, because not only nobody in their locality could tell us about their new whereabouts, the company’s employees also did not bother to give us their phone number at any time! :D

It was only our good luck that me and my father managed to track them down each time, with great difficulty though. I am 100% sure I am not going to buy another product from this ‘shaky’ company. Even their employees don’t stay with them for any considerable period of time. Every time we need a battery replacement we get to see a new guy for the job. :D

So, do you want your online business to be like that? I don’t think so. You might have heard of the proverb that a rolling stone gathers no moss. If you are not able to settle down in a particular area for a long time, you have zero credibility in my eyes.

So, can you rely on a free subdomain given to you by wordpress.com or blogger.com? No, not really. They are good for hobbies but not for real business, especially if you want to be in it for a really long time and not be a fly-by-night scammer.

Although I have not got my blogger/wordpress.com blog deleted YET, I do see other people’s blogspot and wordpress.com blogs getting deleted all the time. You have really nothing to do, no recourse to take if they delete your site someday. That is why it is important to invest in a domain name and PAID web hosting.

I must however mention that many of these ‘free subdomain’ sites are good ‘backlink spots’; that is what I primarily use them for anyway! Yes occasionally I do get deleted, but it does not harm me in any big way because my real business is never with them but on my own server! :D

So, ‘buy’  your own address: that is, a domain name. I personally use Namecheap for my domain name needs; they are fairly reliable and offer decent customer service (not to mention they hardly ever send those cheesy promotional emails like some of the other registrars do). :D

2. Web Hosting: In the offline world, if you were to build your office from scratch, you would build the office first and then get the address, right? It works a bit differently in the online world: you get the address (domain name) first and then build the office for that address (hosting, website).

Although Namecheap offers web hosting packages too, I would not recommend them if you want to use them to host domains also registered with Namecheap. I am not saying this to suggest that their hosting packages are bad; I am just asking you to keep your hosting and domain providers separate, no matter who you buy them from. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. This ensures that you don’t get screwed up later on. I have received impeccable support from Namecheap till date, but nobody can predict the ‘tomorrow’.

What if a Namecheap support guy/gal has a bad day and locks both your domain and hosting after a couple of rude exchanges between you and them? You have nowhere to go and you would succumb to any form of blackmail because your entire business is with them. And if you thought a good company can never turn bad, read this thread. They were an excellent hosting company until they sold their business to the present owners, who were just as bad; which is why I had to leave them! Again, I am not here to bash Namecheap; they are great in every way, but I would still not buy hosting from them unless I plan to host some non-Namecheap domains on them. It is just a  precautionary measure, nothing else! At the end of the day I don’t trust anyone else as much as I trust myself, my own family and my close friends. ;)

Now with that said, I have heard pretty good things about Namecheap hosting so if you have purchased your domains from someone other than Namecheap then you may want to give their hosting a try. And ‘trying’ means buying the smallest available package first before going big, not the other way round! :D

If you have purchased domains from Namecheap then here are some hosting suggestions for you:

MddHosting (for shared, VPS or even dedicated hosting)
Knownhost (for VPS and dedicated hosting)

I am NOT recommending Hostgator, because I and one of my friends have had pretty bad experience with them. Good for those who swear by their service; I am not one of them! Only try them if you want to get screwed in future. :P

Remember that in hosting, as with anything else in life, you get what you pay for! You buy cheap hosting, and you would get just that: cheap and unreliable service! MDDHosting is NOT cheap at all if you compare their shared hosting packages with those of Hostgator (I do think Hostgator’s dedicated hosting packages are decent however, and quite competitively priced too) but if you value a reliable and fair web host over money then… :D

Another thing to remember is: don’t get sucked into the "unlimited bandwidth" or "unlimited disk space" shams; they just don’t exist. Everything in life is ‘limited’ in some or other way. Just like you cannot have unlimited fuel, gas, coal, gold, etc., you also cannot have an unlimited amount of dedicated IPs, disk space or bandwidth, no matter how much money you have! You can of course have an unlimited number of MYSQL databases, add-on domain names, email forwarders, email accounts, etc., because in reality these are all limited by your disk space.

Even my ISP promotes their internet access packages with taglines like "unlimited speed and bandwidth" and all that, but in reality I am getting "unlimited speed and bandwidth" only at midnight when most other people are sleeping; during peak hours the connection is almost always slow as hell! In essence all my ISP is probably doing is "legally stealing" bandwidth allotted to some of their customers and then offering it to their other customers – of course, for just a few hours  only, but since I work at midnight this does help. :D

A lot of those "unlimited" type of hosts work in a similar way, with the argument being that "most customers don’t use up all the resources allotted to them at any given time. Hostgator is well known to oversell their hosting spaces (although Hostgator vehemently denies that); so, if you have a couple of low traffic, static HTML sites you would not have that much of a problem but if you have a high traffic WordPress blog then…it is not so much a "disk space" or a "bandwidth" problem you would face as the "CPU usage" problem, because WordPress sucks a lot of RAM! :P 

Difference between add-on domain, subdomain and a domain: The essential difference between the three is that: you pay for domain and add-on domain, but NOT for a subdomain. There are other differences too: add-on domains look just as independent as your main domain. So let us say, that if your main domain is:

domain1.com

Your add-on domains could be:

domain2.com
domain3.com
domain4.com

Each add-on domain comes with its own cgi-bin folder and FTP account. You can also create custom email accounts and forwarders for each of the add-on domain names.

The only common thread that binds the main domain and the add-on domains are that they are hosted on the same account; in essence the only thing they share is the hosting space and the server IP! You can build widely varied websites in each of the add-on domains without looking a bit unprofessional. Nobody would be able to know that all those domains belong to the same IP, server and owner, unless of course they really start to spy on you! :D

On the other hand, sub-domains are totally dependent on your main domain. True that Google treats a subdomain as a ‘different’ site as far as SEO is concerned, but the normal visitor would be able to see the connection between the main domain and the sub domain. :D

So, if your main domain is domain1.com your subdomain could be:

acne.domain1.com
weightloss.domain1.com

etc. :D

Got it? ;)

Also don’t forget to read these "Hosting Headache" articles:

Hosting Headache-Part 1
Hosting Headache-Part 2
4 More Web Hosting Tips to Save Your Business!

I am sure that after reading the first part alone you are bored to tears and also got a headache. :P We still have a long way to go before we call it a day, but if you want to take a break you can listen to some music or drink some coffee and come back again to get bored. ;)

So, you are still around! Okay, get ready to get bored more! :P (kidding)

Part 2: Building the Website:

Building the Website: Now that you have purchased your own domain name and web hosting, you can add the two, build a site and make money fast, right? :D I only wish it were that easy! In reality you have got only the first part of your journey covered, and there are still miles to go before you finally reach your destination. :D

While we are discussing this topic, it would be a good idea to read the Cpanel™, Plesk™ or Directadmin™ tutorials, depending on the type of webhost you choose. Note that I can talk only from the point of view of a Cpanel™ user; I don’t have any experience with the other two!

When you start building your website, one of the crucial dilemmas you would face is:

Static vs. Dynamic site: which is better: Actually neither of them is ‘better’; it is just that each of them come with its own pros and cons. At different points of your business career you may need to choose one over the other depending on your needs and requirements.

For example, when I was new and dumb I chose to build static sites, not only because WordPress was not as popular back then (I am talking about the 2004-05 era), terms like "dynamic sites", "database" or "blog" were foreign to me. Later on when I learned a bit more I switched some of my static sites to WordPress.  The switch has not been one easy ride though, but that is another story.

So, to cut the cr*p, if you want to build sites fast, make money fast, and cannot pay a lot for hosting/resources, then building static web sites is the way to go. You can build your sites with either .html or .php extensions: it really does not matter, as far as SEO rankings and traffic is concerned! Many people claim that you can fool Google™ into believing that your static site is actually a dynamic site by adding the .php extension, but I don’t believe in that b.s.

Then there are also those who would say that with static sites you would get a static ranking in Google that hardly ever changes, but with a dynamic site your rankings would fluctuate constantly with every new "update" you make to the site. Well, I have found that usually the only thing that could fluctuate your site’s ranking in Google™ is backlink building! :D

Wait, have you signed up for any affiliate program yet? Here are some you can try out:

Clickbank™

Amazon™ (they probably need a website, though I am not 100% sure about that)

Google Adsense™ (I think they require your site to be at least 6 month old before you apply for the program)

Click2Sell™: Kinda like Clickbank, but less competition and refund rate! Payment is by Paypal. :D

Linkshare™ (they probably need a website, though I am not 100% sure about that)

Onenetworkdirect™ (they probably need a website, though I am not 100% sure about that)

Shareasale™ (they probably need a website, though I am not 100% sure about that)

The RAP users and Tradebit.com, for which you need a Paypal™ account! :P

BTW if you are focusing on "affiliate marketing" don’t forget that:

a) Building product review sites is one of the best and easiest ways to make money as an affiliate!

b) We have "LAWS"! :P (kidding)

Warning for Indian users: If you are in India then all you will get is a ‘crippled Paypal account‘ (and be sure to keep your PAN number and bank account details ready)! BTW there is a new fella called Payexchange but I dunno if they are legit or not and most importantly, if they are doing anything against Paypal/RBI TOS or not!
 
Affiliate programs I DO NOT recommend at this stage are Overstock.com, CJ.com, Google Affiliate program (it is different from Adsense), or Ebay™. In fact any program which/whose merchants require a high-traffic website is a strict no-no. If you like to get rejected time and again then sure go ahead and sign up with any of them! You can actually read a bit about Overstock.com here. :D
 
There is also Paydotcom.com but I do not recommend it; maybe I do not trust the employees of Mike F. enough, maybe because their site is slow as hell, or maybe because I have never made an affiliate sale through them! :D

Optional suggestions:

Now, to build static content websites fast, you can try out the Article Site Power Pro software if you like; you can build both .php and .html sites with it. All you need to have is a bunch of articles in text format (PLR content comes to mind :P ). The software also helps you monetize your sites by adding Adsense ads to your webpages; with a little bit of tweaking, you can also add Amazon and Clickbank hop ads. Also you can "inject affiliate links" in your article content – by linking certain keywords in the article to your preferred affiliate link (s); not something I recommend doing but it could be worth trying out! :)

Article Site Power Pro will however, build only 1 site at a time for you, and if you build a bunch of different sites and want to link them all together then you would have to do that manually. On the other hand Niche Harvester not only builds the individual sites but also interlinks them for you; however it has got fewer monetization options compared to Article Site Power Pro.  Also Niche Harvester is not available for purchase on its own; only members of WP Gold Club can get access to it, that too, only as long as they remain a member! :P

On the other hand, if you want complete freedom and hate ready-set-go templates then I would recommend Macromedia Dreamweaver! If you go this route a huge learning curve is awaiting you, btw. :D

Free website builders are also there. For the novice users there are Trellian and Kompozer; for the more experienced users there are PSPad, HTMLKit, AlleyCode, etc. :D There are also free online HTML editors for those who hate installing softwares on their PCs; however, be sure to save your stuff frequently to your Desktop or you might lose it! ;)

Online HTML Editor 1
Online HTML Editor 2

What next? Learn some HTML okay, and also join an HTML forum if needed – unless of course you are someone like me who learns better with years or trials and errors! :D

Also learn some FTP, copywriting, as well as the basics of maintaining your computer! :D

Learn also how to manage your passwords with Roboform!™ But hey, if you cannot afford Roboform right now (it has a free version as well which is limited to just 10 passcards), you can use the free Keepass instead (I use the portable version)! The difference is that Keepass won’t autofill forms like Roboform, but would at least help you store passwords in a secure database! If you want the form filling function too then you can try out the free Keeform add-ons for Internet Explorer and Firefox. I have not used the add-ons myself so would not be able to offer you any kind of help regarding them! I don’t even know if they work at all! :P

You would also need a word processor program. Microsoft Word™ is of course what I personally use most of the time, but if you don’t want to pay then you can try out the free Openoffice. I would say that Microsoft Word is more comfortable and intuitive than Openoffice, but that is probably a very subjective opinion! :P

More Free Tools for Your Business

Another optional recommendation: If you want to build sub-domains fast then you can try out Instant Empire Builder. NOT free of course, and works only on Cpanel™-based hosts, but does a good job! :D

I am sure that after reading the second part you got equally bored and also got a headache. :P We still have a long way to go before calling it a day, but if you want to take a break you can listen to some music or drink some coffee and come back again to get bored. ;)

So, you are still around! Okay, get ready to get bored more! :P (kidding)

Part 3: Building the Mailing List:

Building the Mailing List: Now what is a mailing list and why should you bother building one anyway? In the offline world you would mail your clientbase by sending snail mails to them! It can be done a lot faster and cheaper in the online world; best of all, the process can be automated! So basically you need an autoresponder to email your prospects who have shown an interest in your business, as well as clients who have already done business with you! An autoresponder is a great tool you can use to make sure your subscribers don’t forget about you or your business!

Prospects should be emailed so as to convince them to do business with you, while clients should be emailed in order to sell them more products related to their original purchase! It is recommended that you keep separate lists for these two groups, and when a prospect becomes a client you should ideally move them from the prospect list to the client list! :)

Aweber is what I personally use and recommend as the autoresponder solution! There is also Freeautobot that I used to use before switching to Aweber, but as far as I know Aweber makes it a really tough game to import leads from another autoresponder. You must be able to convince them that the leads you are going to import into your Aweber account are all legit; otherwise all of your leads would have to re-confirm their respective subscriptions! Of course sometimes it is can be good as well as it tests the real strength of your list; i.e., people who really care to read your emails would not mind a 2-minute double-optin verification! :D

Whether or not you decide to take advantage of Aweber, I do recommend you check out their blog for tons of email marketing and follow-up tips! ;)

Yes the first month at Aweber is only $1 now (it was not so when I signed up), but you would probably spend that much time learning how to use the autoresponder itself! :P

The basics of using an autoresponder is simple: you first fill in your mailing list details; be sure to keep a valid email address handy for this (I do NOT recommend using a no-reply address unless you do not want to read and reply to your subscribers’ queries). Next, you would be setting up your follow-up message sequence. Now how would you setup a follow-up sequence anyway?

Well, for one, you can take the shortcut route and buy cheap plr e-courses, modify the content to make it your own and then use it as your follow-up sequence! For another, you can LEARN how to create a follow-up sequence from a list building guru! :D (kidding)

Follow-up tips for you:

If you are a graphics designer: Let us say you are a professional graphics designer. So how would you structure your follow-up sequence to be like? Would you constantly pitch your graphics design services to your prospects for the first few days and then later berate them for not taking advantage of the same? :P No not really. There is a better way of doing things. You can giveaway free graphics package every day, week, or month, and this can be automated via an autoresponder! 

You can send them the freebies as frequently or as rarely as you want, but be sure to keep the promise you make. :P And the graphics should be good quality stuff too, as least decent enough so as not to put your prospects to shame for using them. :D As for the .PSD source files, you decide what you want to do with them. You can either:

1. Give them away along with your free graphics package so as to enable your prospects to edit the graphics file themselves
2. OR charge extra for the .PSD files
3. OR giveaway the .PSD files and then recommend them the Adobe Photoshop™ Program or the Photoshop Elements™ program
4. OR offer them your graphics editing services! Offer to edit the graphics files for them at a special ‘subscribers-only’ discount!

Another approach you can take is to teach some web design/graphics design skills to your prospects, either through the follow-up sequence or your blog. I would suggest giving away the free graphics through your autoresponder sequence (because that is where you can make some real money) and leave the ‘teaching’ part to your blog only to serve as search engine fodder; this would get you additional prospects to your mailing list! Remember that it is always more profitable to sell the fish to people rather than teaching them how to fish; people would happily pay you for saving them time! :D

How many follow-ups should you set? I would say it really depends on your niche. There is no magic number like you have to setup 7 messages; you can setup as few as only 4 messages in the follow-up or even as many as 30 messages!

If you are a freelancer: You can spam the contact forms of all the well-known internet marketing gurus about your services and become famous as a spammer. :D

Or you can take the more honorable ‘good guy approach’.  You can contact all these gurus and offer to write a free article or report for them. You can also offer to guest write for them for free, in exchange for the ability to link to your blog from your guest article. A lot of blog owners these days offer guest bloggers more perks due to competition :D I recently saw a blogger advertising that he would allow you to include as many as 3 self-serving links in the body of your article; some bloggers may allow even more, who knows!

[You maybe wondering why I told you of both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ways of marketing your stuff; well it scores in both your and my favor: not only it helps me bore you even more, it also offers you the choice between the good and bad approaches! You can CHOOSE to be the good guy or the bad guy. :D]

One thing about guest blogging is that the content has to be original: you cannot submit an article to Ezinearticles.com (not to mention that they are hardly as good as they used to be) and then copy and paste it to serve as your guest blog post! That would certainly get you fired faster than a bad writer gets the pink slip. :P

OR you can sell your content with private label rights, whereby you write original content and then allow other people to edit the content as much as they see fit, while at the same time restricting their ability to sell the content; meaning that they cannot in turn sell the content with private label rights like you are doing! This is the ideal moment for you to pitch your freelance writing services: you can say that if they hire you to write custom content for them then they would have complete control over it and they can sell that content in any way they see fit-even with private label rights! Talk about manipulating your client! :D

If you are a programmer: Well you can giveaway free scripts and tools instead of free graphics (just make sure YOU have created those scripts/tools) as well as teach folks how to do simple PHP/HTML coding on your blog! Pretty neat, huh!

If you are a WordPress developer: Well you can giveaway free WordPress themes and/or plugins to your readers, and then charge for your professional themes and/or plugins! "Crippling’ your free plugin or theme in any way in order to persuade people to upgrade to a ‘pro’ version is not recommended; not only it is frowned upon by the WordPress community, it would also prevent you from listing your plugin in the high-traffic official WordPress repositories as they require the plugins/themes to be completely free, no strings attached! You cannot even force people to optin to your mailing list before they are able to use your plugin, although you can always make the "optin" optional.  Side by side you can  also post long boring WordPress tips on your blog, like this. :D

And if you belong to any of the above groups feel free to let me know about you as I constantly need to outsource stuff. :D

If you are an affiliate marketer: Well it goes without saying that you can send out free internet marketing tips to your list, as well as post some on your blog! You can pitch them your affiliate products if you like!

If you are a product creator: You can create a product-creation-tips e-course and give it away to your subscribers. Side-by-side you can also post some more product creation tips on your blog. You can sell any product you create to your list, as long as you feel it would be useful for them!

If you are a PLR (private label rights) content provider: You can giveaway free plr content to your list, post some tips on your blog on how to monetize your PLR content, as well as sell them higher quality PLR content. :D

How the follow-up sequence should be structured: Just like a product sales letter, you need to keep in mind the simple AIDA principle when creating the follow-up sequence!

-A -Attention
-I -Interest
-D -Desire
-A -Action

The first message should welcome the prospect with warm greetings, the next couple of messages should attract the attention of the prospects, the next couple of messages should keep the momentum and arouse the interest and desire of the prospect, and then the next messages should encourage the prospect to take action by buying from you.

Maybe this article would help you understand the process better, or maybe Alec Baldwin would! :P

[youtube]y-AXTx4PcKI[/youtube]

OR try:

[youtube]zCf46yHIzSo[/youtube]
[youtube]UjGO6UHywqc[/youtube]
 

The whole dialogue is a practical reference point for any marketer; I just hope the video does not get deleted! See how Alec’s character starts from attracting the attention of the other characters to propelling them towards taking the desired action! The one and only aim of any follow-up sequence should be to "close the sale", no more and no less! The sale may occur during the e-course of the follow-up sequence or at a later date, but it should happen in order to make the whole thing profitable for you! You need LEADS, and you need to CLOSE the LEADS. If you thought that is true only for real estate business, you are damn wrong pal! It is as much true for an internet marketing business as any brick-and-mortar store! :D

Now while this is the ideal follow-up sequence, I prefer to start the ‘pitching’ process right from the thankyou page where they download my bonus freebies! This is because people have short attention spans and they would most probably lose interest in your follow-up ecousre after the first couple of messages, unless it is something special and ‘provocative’. :P  Therefore I would continue to ‘pitch’ to my prospects in every follow-up message I send out, instead of waiting for that ‘special magic moment’. Moreover as you know I write very boring stuff so that is also one of the reasons … ;)

If you watched great movies like Glengarry Glen Ross or Wall Street you would know how unprofitable cold-calling can be, and yet numerous offline businesses continue to cold call people in the dead of night or during a hot afternoon! You know what I do when I receive a cold call? Just say "No thanks" and hang up. If you thought that is rude I would say that cold calling and ‘spamming by phone’ itself is rude – it wastes people’s time and more often than not achieves nothing either for the caller or the receiver!

The follow-up sequence is designed to warm-up your cold prospects into buying from you. The autoresponder is one tool that is not available to offline business owners, and that is why many offline business owners are also learning from the facts and setting up an "online" version of their brick-and-mortar store (if you have a hawk’s eye you have just got a business opportunity in between these two lines :P ). 

There is also another feature offered by most autoresponder services and that is the "broadcast" messaging service. Traditionally it is meant to be used to send monthly newsletters containing product brochures, catalogs, special offers etc. I use it to send promo emails whenever I get a new PLR product launched. :D

Format of the email messages: Plain text format is what I use and recommend. They are not only easy-to-create but also easy-to-get-through most spam filters! If you really want your message to be formatted in HTML the best course of action for you would be to post the HTML-formatted message on your blog and provide a link to that in your email, just the way I do. :)

You also need an ad tracker to track number of clicks the links in your messages are getting, and then compare it with your sales figures resulting as result of a newsletter broadcast. Aweber has an in-built click-tracking facility but I don’t use it not only because it makes the links look long and ugly but also it sometimes helps drop my message in the "junk mail box"  instead of the inbox. Others may have a different experience though. Oh well, looks like I have got some company here. :P

I use a third party tracking software called Ultramaxed for both my email tracking and affiliate tracking needs. If you cannot buy it then there is also a free way to track links. :D For WordPress users of course there is Pretty Link-  both free and pro versions! :D

Don’t also forget to read these old list building articles, even if only to get a bit more bored! :P

Is Your List Filled With Invalid Emails?
Is an Email List Better Than Blog?
Too Many People Replying to My Emails! What Do I Do?
4 Holiday Marketing Mistakes
Aweber or Feedburner? Which One to Use?
My Story About JV Giveaways (P.S. I don’t own JVGiveaways.com anymore, and please don’t buy anything from the links in that article! :D )

I am sure that after reading the third part you got equally bored and also got a headache. :P We still have a long way to go before calling it a day, but if you want to take a break you can listen to some music or drink some coffee and come back again to get bored. ;)

So, you are still around! Okay, get ready to get bored more! :P (kidding)

Part 4: Building the Blog:

Building the Blog: In the last part you saw what a crucial role a blog plays in your online business. Here is an opportunity for me to bore you even further – by discussing how to setup a blog! Most of the information discussed here is something you probably already know, but that is okay because you would still get bored! :P

DON’ts:

– DO NOT ever install WordPress from inside Fantastico; not only the Fantastico version could be outdated, your install could be seriously screwed up!
– DO NOT ever add any theme or plugin from inside your WordPress admin area! Only the activation of the theme or plugin should be done from within your admin area!

DO’s:

– Make it a habit to use FTP for uploading everything to your server: from your core WordPress blog files to your theme and plugin files.

–  Make it a habit to avoid giving world-writable permissions (777) to any of your folders or files. Ideally all folders should have permissions of 755 and files should have a permission of 644. Occasionally if you need to give writable permissions to any file (666) or folder (777) it should be done only as a temporary measure and the permissions should be reset as soon as the job gets done!

Why? Of course for security reasons! Would you like hackers to hack your blog someday? No, right? :D

Understanding UNIX permissions and chmod

If you absolutely need to give 777 permissions to any folder here are three options you have:

a) See if you can create the folder one level above your public_html or "www" directory; if you can, then CHMOD it to 777 and see if your chosen plugin or theme works with that setting. If not, move on to the next option

b) Create the folder within your public_html directory, give it 777 permissions, and upload the following htaccess file to the folder!

c) If the above does not work for you, there is yet another option you can take advantage of. This is a bit more technical, but in my opinion the best solution: not only it protects your blog from possible hacks, it also lets the plugin work the way it would like to!

Ask your host to do the following:

"Hello,

Can you please make this folder owned by apache (nobody)

./public_html/wp-content/folderxxxx

Please also:

a) Set the folder permission to 755

b) Make sure that the owner/group of the folder is nobody/nobody

Thanks! "

– All WordPress theme files should be uploaded into this folder:

./public_html/wp-content/themes

– All WordPress plugin files should be uploaded into this folder:

./public_html/wp-content/plugins

–  Always download WordPress only from the official site.

– Always try to download plugins from the official WordPress repository, UNLESS you know what you are doing. Same goes for themes: they should also be ideally downloaded from the official WordPress repository. You can however ignore these rules if a plugin or theme is recommended to you by someone you trust, irrespective of whether or not it is available from the official WordPress repository!

– Look before you leap: Read some of the top forum threads related to the plugin or theme you are going to download, BEFORE actually downloading it. It would give you an idea of how useful/useless the product is!
 
– If you don’t know how to create a MYSQL database, LEARN! Learn and get bored! :P OR you can take a shortcut and use this software to do the dirty job for you! :D

Basically all you need to do is to:

a) Log into your Cpanel™
b) Click on "Databases=>MySQL Databases"
c) Under "Create New Database", type your database name and click on "Create database" button
d) Copy and paste the database name in a text file
e) Under "Add New User", add a username and password and click on "Create user" button. Note that if your password is too weak you would keep getting an error message saying that "Password strength must be at least 5". Ideally a password should be of a minimum of 20 characters, containing uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters, etc. Personally I use Roboform to generate new passwords; an alternative tool is the FREE Password Strength Checker.

f) Copy and paste the username and password credentials in the same text file

g) Under "Add User to Database", select the username and database you just created from the drop menu, and then click on "Add" button. On the next page, select "ALL PRIVILEGES" and then click on "Make Changes" button.

Installing WordPress is quite easy:

a) Download the software

b) Extract it on your hard drive using 7-zip or whatever you may prefer!

c) Rename "wp-config-sample.php" to "wp-config.php"

d) Open the file using PSPAD

e) Enter your database values as you copied into your text file earlier:

 

// ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘database_name_here‘);

/** MySQL database username */
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘username_here‘);

/** MySQL database password */
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password_here‘);

Also scroll down a little and change the WordPress table prefix:

$table_prefix  = ‘wp_’;

To something else, like say:

$table_prefix  = ‘wpxyuirr_’;

This is a precautionary measure against hackers!

Security keys are not needed so you can leave them blank UNLESS WordPress insists that you must enter them to finish the installation, in which case you need to get your unique keys from https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/

There are two things to note about these security keys: if you ever change them then all existing cookies would be automatically deleted and any user who is logged into your blog will have to login again. Also, if a hacker is already logged into your blog then simply changing your blog password won’t log him out; you must also change the security keys to kick him out of your blog! The additional headache is the reason why I don’t recommend using the security keys unless there is no other way out!

f) Now it is time to upload the files on to your server. If you are using Cpanel™ and want to install your blog in the root directory (a.k.a. the main domain) then you can simply drag all the files from your local directory into the public_html directory using FTP. If you want to install it on a subdomain then first click on public_html directory, then click on the respective subdomain folder and upload the files over there. If you wish to install the blog on a subfolder then first create the subfolder under public_html directory and then upload the files there. Remember to upload only the files INSIDE the "wordpress" folder!

Also, before starting the upload process, it is a good idea to delete the "readme" and "license" files; this is true for plugins and themes too; the fewer footprints you leave behind the harder it would be for the hacker to trace and hack you, and these two files are some of the most commonly used hacker tactics to find WordPress blogs!

g) WordPress does not come with a .htaccess file by default, but you will need one for a lot of reasons, one of them being ‘pretty permalinks‘; it can also be used to keep spam attacks/hacking attempts away. Simply open PSPAD, click on "File=>New File" , select "<not assigned>" from the list of file types, then save it as ".htaccess" and under "Save as type" select "All files". Upload it in the same directory where your wp-config.php file resides.

h) When all the files have been uploaded, run the installer by putting the URL http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php (for subdomain and subfolder installs it would be http://subdomain.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php and  http://yourdomain.com/subdomain/wp-admin/install.php respectively; needless to say; you must replace yourdomain.com with YOUR domain name) in your browser and follow the easy on-screen instructions to finish the installation!

i) Although no harm is likely to come upon you in case you leave the install.php file on your server, it is a good idea to delete it!

This is just a gist. More information on WordPress installation can be found here.

Optional Suggestion: There are many newbie tutorials available online, some free and others paid, to help you master WordPress fast. You can try out this one (a PAID package btw) if you want to!

– Okay, once you are logged in, you need to make some preliminary changes to your blog settings. First, click on "Settings=>General". Once there, customize your blog title and tagline. When you use a good seo plugin the title of your blog would serve as the title of your blog homepage and the tagline would serve as the meta description tag; so it is important to make sure they are both catchy and attractive.

Next, if you wish to disable registration on your blog (it is recommended unless you know what you are doing; allowing registrations on your blog would attract tons of spammers, so you need to learn more about some antispam techniques before enabling this option), UNCHECK the "Anyone can register" option!

– Next, click on "Settings=>Writing" option. Once there, you will find these two options:

a) Convert emoticons like :-) and :-P to graphics on display

b) WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically

If your blog is a "business blog" like say FatlossPLR.com you should definitely UNCHECK the first option to make your blog look more professional. The second option is of course best kept CHECKED! :D

In the "Update Services" box make sure only this service is listed:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com

You DO NOT need anything more than this!

– Click on "Pages=>Add New" tab to add two new pages:

Home
Blog

Once you create and save these two pages, you can change their titles if you like; remember that the title of these two pages really don’t matter; all that matters is their slugs! ;) So, one page’s slug should be /home and the other’s slug should be /blog.

Once you are done, click on "Settings=>Reading". Under "Front page displays", select "A Static page". The "Front page" should be the "Home" page and the "Posts page" should be the "Blog" page" you just created!

Next, enter "10" for both these options:

a) Blog pages show at most  posts
b) Syndication feeds show the most recent

Next, select "Summary" for the "For each article in a feed, show" option!

Then click on "Settings=>Discussions" tab. If you wish to disable comments and trackbacks/pingbacks on your blog, then just UNCHECK these two options:

a) Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)

b) Allow people to post comments on new articles

To allow no pingbacks/trackbacks but only comments from humans, just UNCHECK this option:

Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)
 
To allow only pingbacks/trackbacks but no human comments, just UNCHECK this option:

Allow people to post comments on new articles

To allow both comments and pingbacks/trackbacks, just do nothing! :D

– The next few options are relevant only IF you allow human comments on your blog:

a) Comment author must fill out name and e-mail: CHECK THIS OPTION

b) Users must be registered and logged in to comment: UNCHECK THIS OPTION

c) Automatically close comments on articles older than days: Enter a number, usually something between 35-50 days is recommended.

d) Enable threaded (nested) comments levels deep: SELECT "3"

e) Break comments into pages with top level comments per page and the page displayed by default: ENTER "50" and SELECT "first" respectively!

f) Comments should be displayed with the comments at the top of each page: SELECT "older"

g) E-mail me whenever:
         
-Anyone posts a comment: UNCHECK this to avoid too many emails. Recommended setting for those with high-traffic blogs. If your blog hardly receives too many comments then you can leave it CHECKED!

-A comment is held for moderation: CHECK this option

h) Before a comment appears   

– An administrator must always approve the comment: CHECK this option. Recommended to keep spam under full control. If you don’t have time to approve all comments then keep this UNCHECKED and CHECK the next option!

– Comment author must have a previously approved comment: If this option is CHECKED then the previous option can be UNCHECKED! If you want to approve ALL comments of your blog then leave this option UNCHECKED!

i) Comment Moderation: Hold a comment in the queue if it contains or more links: ENTER "1".

j) Comment Blacklist: Self-explanatory. More information can be found here and here. I cannot share my blacklist with you because of two reasons:

1) Different people have different preferences and every person should make their own custom blacklist; using another person’s blacklist can do more harm than good

2) Spammers read this blog as much as the ‘good guys’ do; once the "blacklist" is out spammers would try every possible way to spam my blog by circumventing the blacklist rules! :|

k) Activate the Akismet plugin, and get your API key by signing up for a free account here:

https://akismet.com/signup/

How to get a FREE API KEY:

Scroll down below until you see the text:

"Personal site Need access for your personal site"

Click on the Sign up link to get free access!

Under ‘WHAT IS AKISMET WORTH TO YOU?‘, move the slider to the extreme left until the yearly contribution is "$0". Now you can signup as usual and get your API key. Remember though that if your blog gets around 10k comments per month then you would HAVE TO pay for Akismet (so I have heard; you can read a  bit more about the "paid" Akismet here and here)  Another commenter here says that:

"You can use akismet for free, as long as your site doesn’t produce more than 10,000 pageviews a month and you use no ad- or affiliate-program on your page."

I don’t know who is right, to be honest! :)

I really get amused with the idea of "sad smiley face" when you move the slider to $0: this is done to make the freeloaders feel ‘guilty’! Oh well, maybe some kindergarten kid could be "emotionally manipulated" with a smiley face, LOL! I do not feel guilty at all, do you? :D

This is just the beginning. You should also read all the other boring posts on WordPress I have written so far :P

10 Steps to Turning WordPress Into a Static HTML Site
Troubleshooting WordPress Plugin and Theme Issues in 4 Easy Steps
WordPress 404 ERROR When Trying to Access Cpanel
WordPress ERROR-MYSQL Server Gone Away!!!
Optimizing Your WordPress Blog
Is Your WordPress Blog Secure From Hackers?
Huge List of Cool WordPress Plugins-Part 1
Huge List of Cool WordPress Plugins-Part 2
Huge List of Cool WordPress Plugins-Part 3
Huge List of Cool WordPress Plugins-Part 4
3 Steps to Managing Multiple Domains With WordPress!
3 Steps to Managing Multiple Domains With WordPress-Using Subfolder Setup!

"Darn, there does not seem to be an end to this long boring article! :( "

Haha, well it would definitely end but only after boring you some more! :P

I am sure that after reading the fourth part you got equally bored and also got a headache. :P We still have a long way to go before calling it a day, but if you want to take a break you can listen to some music or drink some coffee and come back again to get bored. ;)

So, you are still around! Okay, get ready to get bored more! :P (kidding)

Part 5: Niche Marketing and Keyword Research:

Niche Marketing and Keyword Research: Most of it is already covered in my older boring articles:

Finding a Profitable Niche Seems to Be the Most Difficult Part!
Nuttie Guru Goes Niche Researching!
3 MUST Steps to Niche Marketing
Niche Domination on STEROIDS
EASY Niche Research Recipe: STEAL My Secret

You would find a reference to the Google keyword tool in many of the above articles. The fact is, the Google keyword tool is just a shadow of its former self (unless you are an Adwords user), so I am not sure how helpful the articles would be now. In spite of this, you can read them if you want to. Like I always said, even if you learn nothing from an article, you have got nothing to lose, because at least you will get bored and sleep well! :P

I have not found a free alternative to the Google™ keyword tool yet. Sure there is wordtracker (free for 7 days only) but I have not found that a lot helpful. Honestly I have not tried hard enough to find another free keyword tool because I no longer do "keyword research". I do what I call "reverse keyword research". First I build a site on a niche I already know to be "profitable"; I add, say, a dozen articles to the site, add Statcounter code to it, then add it to Google webmaster tools, build some backlinks for it and then watch the traffic. If all goes well then results would start popping up after a couple of weeks, or a month at most.

So what kind of "results" am I talking about? Well, after say, a month, I would log into my Statcounter account and check the logs to see what keywords people are using to find my site. Similar data is also made available by Google webmaster tools, which also gives you a list of keywords and topics for which your site is "relevant".

The list of keywords people are using to find my site hardly tallies with the list of keywords for which (Google thinks that) my site is relevant; this shows you the difference between how a human and a bot looks at the same stuff; I prefer to focus on the "human-generated" data rather than a bot’s opinions! Who cares about a robot’s opinions anyway! :D After all, bots don’t help make me money; humans do, so I need to make sure that my site offers what people want, not necessarily what Googlebot wants! :P

So I collect those keywords, then add more pages to the site based around that data. Then what? Rinse and repeat! This is something you can easily outsource! ;) I believe that Statcounter offers a way to download the keyword data as well. First click to check a project’s stats, and then click on "Download Logs" to download the data in .CSV or .XLS format. Note that the free Statcounter account allows only up to 500 log entries for each project; when you go paid you can have a bigger log per project. I am a paying member there, and I believe it is money well spent! :D

In any case, I understand that the above method may not be for everybody, because for the "reverse keyword research" to work for you, you need to know about "profitable niches". So in the beginning, you may need to do some keyword research anyway. I am afraid I have to leave you on your own for this part, but if you are already aware of a good free keyword tool feel free to share it in the "comments" section. It would be very much appreciated by me as well as all other readers! :)

List of paid keyword research tools I used years ago before switching to Google keyword tool (because ultimately I found the Google to be better: both because I got a more comprehensive list, and also because I did not have to install another ‘memory-consuming’ software on my computer):

Micro Niche Finder
Keyword Elite

I believe that Micro Niche Finder is the better of the two. Then there is also Market Samurai which a lot of people swear by but I have not used it.

There are of course other ways to find "HOT niches":

Amazon BestSellers
Ebay Pulse
Google Trends
Google™ Sets

I believe Amazon™ also comes out with an annual list of "HOT niches" (you would get it if you are subscribed to their newsletter). In this article I tell you why they are overrated! ;)

Don’t you just hate all these radical opinions of mine anyway! :P (kidding)

UPDATE: Recently I came across this free keyword tool. I am yet to use it, but you can give it a run and see if it fits your needs. You will need to signup (for free, as of now) in order to gain access to the tool (hmm, smart way to build a targeted list, eh? :D )

For those who wish to perform keyword research the traditional way:

One of the things you can do to determine the profitability of a niche is to just search for the niche (for example, weight loss) in Google™ and see if any Google Adwords™ ad shows up for the search term. Granted that not everybody uses Adwords, but most do, so, if no ads appear for the search term then it probably means that there are no or few buyers in it, which in turn suggests that marketing in this niche may not be profitable for you!

I am sure that after reading the fifth part you got equally bored and also got a headache. :P We still have a long way to go before calling it a day, but if you want to take a break you can listen to some music or drink some coffee and come back again to get bored. ;)

So, you are still around! Okay, get ready to get bored more! :P (kidding)

Part 6: Traffic:

Blogging: Kinda predictable, eh? See I already told you. Almost all traffic articles these days start with "blogging" as a traffic generation method, so why should I be an exception. :P But let me tell you one thing though: blogging is NOT a "source of traffic" in itself. How do I know? Because I am a blogger myself. I have got this boring blog setup since late 2005. Since then I have written many a boring article, but there was no one to get bored! You know why? My blog had no backlinks! No one visited my blog! I was the lone writer and reader here. Then I started build my own list and got some readers here, but I was still not satisfied. Back then hardly anyone posted a comment on my blog, let alone a nice comment, and spam was also not that much! :D

I will make a long story short for ya: things did not really start rolling for me until I started building backlinks for my blog. Yeah, so the myths like "Good content would automatically attract visitors like a moth to flame" or "if you  build it they will come" ain’t true at all! You can actually load a blog with nothing but crappy plr content and still generate traffic and money given that you have quality backlinks pointed to your site. But even if you write top quality content you won’t get anywhere unless you do some marketing: by way of building backlinks that is! :D

So again, "Blogging" in itself is NOT a source of traffic. Even though a blog offers significant advantages over a static HTML site, traffic is not one of them. I actually have sites whose traffic count lowered when I converted them from static HTML to blogs; I have no idea know why-could be because of bad behavior (I LOVE that plugin by the way, and it is one of the first things I install on a blog, along with Akismet™)? It did not matter to me much however because blogs gave me much more flexibility than I could get from a static HTML site.

So, if you have a static HTML site with only 2-3 visitors a day and you think that by converting it to WordPress you will start getting 10-15 visitors per day, you better think again! You may just get lucky (pinging, one of the "advantages" that a blog offers over a static website, is hardly enough on its own) or you may not!

Forum Marketing: So let us cut the crap and get on to the real stuff. Yeah well this is my most favorite method of getting Google traffic-forum marketing. Forum marketing or "forum spamming", call it what you will, but it does work great. In the following articles I even describe how to get tons of free backlinks from forums:

Ultimate Secret to Getting Tons of Backlinks at NO Cost-Part 1
Ultimate Secret to Getting Tons of Backlinks at NO Cost-Part 2
Ultimate Secret to Getting Tons of Backlinks at NO Cost-Part 3
Ultimate Secret to Getting Tons of Backlinks at NO Cost-Part 4
Ultimate Secret to Getting Tons of Backlinks at NO Cost-Part 5
Ultimate Secret to Getting Tons of Backlinks at NO Cost-Part 6

Remember that merely building backlinks "blindly" is not enough; you also need to monitor them, not to mention that building backlinks itself should be done with a lot of ingenuity to avoid the loss of your forum accounts! Yeah, okay, even after all the precautions you would be taking, you would still get banned or deleted from some forums; that is just life, you win some and you lose some. Here are some precautions and backlinks monitoring tips anyway; (note that even though the focus of some of the articles is "Angela’s backlinks" they are relevant to anyone irrespective of whether they are Angela’s customers or not) I suggest you read them even if just for the sake of getting bored okay? (kidding):

MUST HAVE Tool for Backlinks of Angela and Paul
Google Treats Sub-Domains Differently-Here Is How
Is Mayday Update Another Blow From Google?
7 Simple Steps to Keep Angela’s Backlinks Alive
4 Tips to Using Backlinks of Angela in a Better Way
6 Inane SEO Questions Answered
Google Counts a Nofollow Link!
4 Newbie Questions Answered
4 Search Engine Optimization Questions Answered
Search Engine Optimization Demystified-Part 1
Search Engine Optimization Demystified-Part 2
Search Engine Optimization Demystified-Part 3
Search Engine Optimization Demystified-Part 4
Decoding SEO Meta Tags
Getting REAL About Backlinks
In Link Building, Sometimes It PAYS to Be Different
2 Backlink Myths Busted
The ONE Backlink Formula That TRULY Helped Me!
Does Pagerank Truly Help?
3 Way Linking-to Do or Not to Do!
Duplicate Content Code Cracked!
Top 5 Link Directory Submission Mistakes
How I Got Indexed in Google Within HOURS!

Web 2.0 and Social Networking: Also known as "social media spamming" (kidding)! Already covered here, here and here. It is best done using a software, or outsourced. I prefer outsourcing it! :P

Article marketing: Or bum marketing, or article directory spamming! (kidding) :P Already covered here

Here are some more "helpful" (read uber boring :P ) articles on writing and marketing articles:

4 Newbie Questions Answered
6 Article Title Writing Do’s and Don’ts!
7 Freaky Article Title Tips!
3 Freakier Article Title Writing Tips!
7 Tips to Save Yourself From Article Writing Burnout
8 Crazy Ideas to Write Great Article Intros!
6 Steps to Writing a Winning Article Every Time!
5 Fatal Article Marketing Mistakes
6 EzineArticles Myths Dispelled!
5 Article Resource Box Tips
Duplicate Content Code Cracked!

Freeware submission: Or software directory spamming! (kidding) :P Already covered here. Now I have got a software that might make the "software building" process a bit easier for you – it is called Really Easy Software Builder. Seriously though, perhaps joining the Software Gold Club is all the better; you cannot giveaway most of their "premium" softwares, but sometimes they do offer a "free trial" version of their "premium" software which you can giveaway for free!

Link directory submission: Also known as "link directory spamming" (kidding)! Already covered here.

Then there is also the Linkwheel method whereby you link from one Web 2.0 property to another, and complete the "wheel" that way; within each Web 2.0 property you create one or more pages which not only links back to your own websites but also other web 2.0 properties! The "wheel" however gets "broken" when any one of your Web 2.0 properties delete your account, right? :P So I don’t use this method that much! Now if you link to all the Web 2.0 properties from a page on YOUR website then that would be profitable for you to some extent, but for Google to notice your page, it must be worth at least something, either in terms of backlinks, (domain) age or pagerank! :D
 
Blog commenting: One of my friends once told me that "blog commenting is a waste of time." But is it, really? No, it is just harder, possibly the hardest traffic generation method. Take my blog for example: first off you need to read a very long boring article, then post a nice comment. :D If that is not "hard enough" for you, then let me tell you that you must post a "certain number" of comments to get a DOFOLLOW link (I am not revealing the number because in the past I have been spammed to death because of this).

Yeah personally I have commented even on NOFOLLOW blogs too but I know that most SEO folks prefer to comment only on DOFOLLOW blogs! Now the number of such blogs is dwindling as time goes by, mainly because of spammers. And if you compare my blog with some of the other blogs, you may actually find my rules quite "lenient" in comparison; there are blogs that won’t allow "keywords" in the "name" field, or won’t approve your comment unless it is really something "extraordinary"; I usually approve comments that are decent enough; I do delete the obvious spam of course!

But that is really not the ‘hardest part’ of blog commenting; the hardest part is actually getting your comment noticed by the blogger. If your site is already blacklisted by Akismet (which is the default anti-spam plugin most WordPress bloggers use) then your comment would get into the spam queue and it would be up to the blogger to retrieve it from there and approve it. In this article I explain it all in a lot more detail!

In spite of these obstacles, blog commenting should not be entirely ignored; even if you get your comment approved only on NOFOLLOW blogs, it is still worth posting a few comments for each of your sites, both because Google does NOT completely ignore NOFOLLOW links and also because link diversity helps! Clearly this is a job worth outsourcing, whereby you only pay per "approved" blog comment! ;)

Now, even if you decide not to do blog something as a result of all these hurdles, then please at least post a nice comment on my blog okay? It makes me happy! :D Plus I also check into the spam queue of my blog regularly. ;)

I am sure that after reading the sixth and final part you got equally bored and also got a headache. :P We still have a long way to go before calling it a day, but if you want to take a break you can listen to some music or drink some coffee and come back again to get bored. ;)

What Ultimately Matters, in the Bigger Scheme of Things:

Quality content, along with backlinks!

I know that adjectives like ‘quality’ or ‘good’ are subjective with regards with content. Bots cannot evaluate the quality of content in the same way as human eyes can; if they could then we would get only the top quality sites with every Google search; still search engines try to do a good job at filtering out a part of the crap. Bots get attracted by keywords, and human visitors by quality content. So which one would you prefer? It is not a question or "either"; it is a question of "both"; ideally you would want to attract BOTH bots and human visitors, which means that your site’s content should not only be keyword-rich but also quality content.

What can you do with all the money you would earn?

Maybe a better question would be to ask what you can not do!

:P Buy 3-4 houses in Manhattan!
:P Buy 3-4 luxury, fully air-conditioned, cars!
:P Buy luxury hotels, condos, swimming pools, clubs, and then rent them out!
:P Visit a brothel and get f**ked by a lot of vixens!
:P Fund a Hollywood movie!
:P Run for the US presidency!
:P Burn the money into ashes!
:P Cook the dollars and eat them!
:P Give them all to UNICEF™ OR Red Cross™!
:P Give them all to me!
:P Create "garlands made of dollars" and wear them around your neck whenever you go out!
:P Do nothing and just throw away the dollars out of your window!
:P Snort flake or smoke pot!
:P Put them into various offshore banks!

Okay the last part was meant to be a joke! Good to have fun sometimes, don’t you think so! :D

"Arindam, in spite of all the ‘musical breaks’ I still got bored by your humongous and hodgepodge article! :("

Heh, told you so! :P

BTW, as it is a very long article mistakes may galore; so I would appreciate if you point them out. Thanks! :D

I believe I deserve some kind of award and recognition for writing the longest and most boring article ever (36 pages)! :D Even if you found this article completely worthless, at least you got bored and slept better! Now I hope you won’t mind writing a nice comment! ;) You can also write a long and boring comment if you want to get your revenge on me for boring you! :) Please also feel free to retweet it, Like it on Facebook and link to this article from your website!

 

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lso, starting from today, I would be removing the dates from my posts; the "dates" really don’t justify their presence any more, not only because my content is "evergreen" in the sense that you will always get bored by reading them irrespective of the passage of time, but also because I may not be able to post on my blog regularly. Sorry about that! :(