Looking for a Carnival?

Yaro suggests: "Try this blog carnival submission tool to find a carnival suited to your blog." but that tool no longer exists.

The people who run "blog carnival" say...
We like carnivals that have a track record, and that involve lots of people. We also notice that these carnivals tend to be more interesting and longer lived.

That makes sense to me. Also it is likely in carnivals that meet those criteria I will get more exposure.

So I shall select from among the featured carnivals. I selected the Carnival of Making RealMoney because it was the only one that related to what I am doing on this blog. It is published every other Sunday and here I link to the the most recent, the 30th, carnival.******************************
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How to Create a Profitable Blog

For those of us who are interested in earning a living from our online activities, why not take advantage of the free courses available to improve the profitability of our blogs!

Darren Rowse (aka Problogger) offers "31 Days to Building a Better Blog" and Yaro Starak, another Aussie, has a wonderful "Blog Profits Blueprint"

Darren (Problogger)--actually his auto-responder, Aweber--sends a daily email for 31 consequetive days which contains links to the related instructional post, the support forums and the task for the day.

So everyday you are learning something (or refinng or reinforcing something) and actually putting it into practice. The series of "lessons" are supported by a forum of other participants past and present. I really like the series because it is not overwhelming and it involves my taking action, daily, in ways that may ormay not be comfortable.

Yaro's blueprint is awesome. And the series of emails that accompanies it are truly geared toward how to have a profitable blog. He starts from square one, How to Pick a Topic. I already "know" that I want to go super niche because going head to head with a long established "generalist" is not as profitable.

I am just wrapped up my "April Challenge" which involved a 28-day plan of my own creation to help someone get thier social networking foundation established and to get them into the blogging habit. (The someone how really got helped was ME!)

I have a few holes to fill in with that and some polishing up to do. (Adding text links to the posts, figuring out how to direct my URL to point to this blogspot site, correcting typos, writing and editing, etcetera!)

I'd love to have an alliance to go through both Darren's and Yaro's free programs this month and to reach my income target of $2,000 (USD) so if you're intersted please let me know.

Now I am at the one third mark in both series. Which reminds me, er um single-tasking as described by Tim Ferriss is a must habit to develop!

Wishing you massive action annd magical abundance.

oh, oh look what I found a couple of days ago in my DMs at twitter...
standoutbloggerThanks for following me :D I'd love 2 offer u a copy of my free blogging success ebook: http://tinyurl.com/dy8kfa - looking fwd 2 ur tweets!

No I'm not recommedning this ebook I just want to demonstrate that producing an ebook and giving it away is a tecnique used by many to entice you onto their "list" in order to sellyou other things at a future time. :) Another post...another time.

May 2009 Targets?
Earnings of $2,000 from online activities

How about you? Where do you see yourself on May 31st?

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Taking Action on Yaro's 10 Tips

Today I'll run through the 10 tips presented by Yaro and apply them to this blog.

10. Every month write at least one major tutorial style articles which offers value and insight. I can work on this every Sunday morning, and publish only when everything is just right. Gather sources, write outline, flesh out with text and links, proof read/edit and then publish. Here are some topics I have in mind. Twitter, Be a Slave to Good Habits, Drip Marketing. I'll also submit same to aa blog carnival and to ezine or other article directory AND make a Squidoo lens...all with the same "pillar post"

Have you ever written this type of foundaional post? Please let me know and link to your post in the comments below.

9. I will commit to write one new blog post daily before going to bed for publication in the early morning. I will commit to this regemin for the next 90 days. There after I will re-consider.

8. Maybe I'll go ahead and register my name and use a subdomain for this blog. Maybe I'll resurrect a URL that I already have registered. I don't know. Use a proper domain name. Right now I am not willing to commit to anything that will cost me money. Yeah, I "own" http://mlmnewschool.com so now I need to get iit pointing to my blog, this blog, instead of Tim G's MLMSystemPro capture page. lol

7. I have already stated commenting, now I just have to comment where I can leave my URL to create backlinks perhaps and definitely a way that other readers of my comment can find me and my blog. I will start this once I have finished editing theApril Challenge posts.

6. In editing the April Challenge posts I will make sure to link to affiliate products, posts of other bloggers (including myself) as applicable. I will look for applicability.

5. I encourage comments on this blog by inviting them with a question and by responding to comments that are indeed left by interested readers.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. Wow are these things still around? http://blogcarnival.com Don't know what a blog carnival is? You're not alone:

A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many kinds of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine. It has a title, a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to all the contributions that have been submitted, often with the editors opinions or remarks. You may browse carnivals here.

I need to spend some time actually reading several carnivals related to making money online, blogging for profit, and affiliate marketing in order to choose one to join. Of ocurse you can join more than one. For me it makes sense to join the one with the best quality writing and information and one that has been around for a while. For other blogs that I have related to health and self sufficiency I will also look to carnivals as a way to not only increase readership and community but a way to further support my intention of writing foundational articles for this blog.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com and while you're at it blogcatalog.com and mybloglog.com.

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. Let's do one per month.

1. Write more tutorial posts. Use them as the foundation for ezine articles...why

Tomorrow I will let you know what carnival I decided to particpate in.

www.BlogMastermind.com

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10 Blogging Tips from Yaro

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else's blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that's about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called "traction", which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major "pillar" articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good "how-to" lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn't news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don't have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that's the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you've done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people's blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger's article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it's sort of like your blog telling someone else's blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it's so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it's worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn't bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it's worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your "Resource Box". You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I've listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won't stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I've put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it's certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com
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#28 Congratulations! What Next?

This month has been a challenge indeed. As far as the April Challenge goes, there are still things that I want to go back and do better. I'll spend today and the last few days of April going back to clean up and complete previous posts, making sure to include useful links.

Going forward...
Problogger's 31 Days to a Better Blog (3 parts)
John Chow's Make Money Online Free eBook (3 parts)
Reviews of what I read and comment/post on (20-25 parts)

• Copyblogger
• Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak
• I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• John Chow dot Com
• Matt Mullenweg
• My Ning Groups (7 grougp)
• My Yahoo Groups (10 groups
• NetProfitsToday Forum
• ProBlogger Blog Tips
• The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
• WarriorForum - Internet Marketing Forums

Added Features to my Blogs (3 parts) lead capture, audio visual
Product Reviews (12 parts)

• Black Belt Recruiting
• Blog Profit Blueprint
• Building on a Budget
• Definitive Guide to Google Adwords
• Donate to Niamaat
• Free Auto Responder
• Go Daddy (For Domains)
• Magnetic Sponsoring
• Membership Site Masterplan
• SEO Handbook
• Super Affiliate Handbook
• Tube Blaster Pro

Profit Centers (3 parts)
How to Increase Traffic for Page Rank (3 parts)
How to Get Subscribers/The List (3 parts quality back links, )
Yaro Starak's Blog Profits Bluprint eBook (3 parts)
Yaro Starak's Membership Site Masterplan eBook (3 parts)

And other stuff ...naturally.

I continue to be interested in being part of an alliance of people working on similar business targets. Any takers?

What are your objectives? Do we have anything in common? What are your goals for next month?

My target for May is to generate an income of $2,000 through my online activities.

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#27 Network Marketing

So, what is network marketing? It is the distribution of goods and services through a network of people called "distributors" or "reps".

From Wikipedia:
Multi-level marketing (MLM), also known as Network Marketing, is a marketing strategy that compensates promoters of direct selling companies not only for product sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of others they introduced to the company. The products and company are usually marketed directly to consumers and potential business partners by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing.^[1].

Have you ever been a distributor of a network markeitng company? I have probablyjoined as many a half a dozen but only becuase a friend persuaded me to do so. I was on his "friends & family" list. Anyway, at the moment I am not a rep of any MLM company. Never the less I am not at al adverse to joining a compaany whose products are staples in my household. Becuase I certainly believe in buying wholesale vs retail. (Over and above all of that of course, I prefer production at house, or in community, of everything that I need! )

These are the top MLM/Network marketing companies based on Alexa rankings. (This is a copy and paste from here.) This is probably more accurate for 2008 than 2009.

1. Avon 7,153
2. Usana 11,647
3. Ytb Travel 13,755
4. Quixtar 13,884
5. Mary Kay 16,902 (+1)
6. Melaleuca 16,921 (-1)
7. Success University 25,170
8. Herbalife 29,603
9. Pre-paid Legal 36,049 (+1)
10. VM Direct 36,179 (-1)
11. Isagenix 38,463
12. Nu Skin Enterprises 38,806
13. helloWorld 42,987 (+1)
14. Tupperware 43,288 (-1)
15. Shaklee 46,461
16. Forever Living 47,662
17. 4Life Research, LLC 50,805
18. Market America 51,614
19. Xango 60,536 (+1)
20. Tahitian Noni 64,212 (-1)
21. FreeLife International 70,156
22. Take Shape for Life/Medifast 70,904
23. Arbonne International 71,335
24. A C N 78,164 (+1)
25. ITV Ventures 79,395 (-1)
26. Amway 85,717
27. Watkins 85,729 (+3)
28. Scent-Sations (Mia Bella Candles) 88,629 (-1)
29. Sunrider 90,898 (-1)
30. United First Financial 95,132 (-1)
31. AmeriPlan 107,187 (+1)
32. Juvio 112,466 (-1)
33. Pharmanex 116,001 (+1)
34. Healthy Pet Net 117,797 (-1)
35. Nature's Sunshine 117,850
36. Pampered Chef 119,865 (+2)
37. Passion Parties 120,756 (-1)
38. Primerica 122,433 (-1)
39. Unicity 139,559
40. Liberty League 143,616
41. Ecoquest International 149,526 (+1)
42. Nikken 150,699 (-1)
43. M2C Global 157,111
44. NHT Global 161,816 (+1)
45. Creative Memories 164,597 (+1)
    
46. Immunotec 164,991 (-2)
47. Tastefully Simple 172,328
48. Vitamark International 179,125 (-48)
49. Longaberger 187,101
50. CyberWize 187,135 (-2)

If you are looking for an mlm "opportunity" as they are too often called, Jaime Morales suggests a few Top MLM Companies to Take a Look At



Listen to what Tsu Veoh advises. (I made up the name Tsu Veoh...please send me a correction so I can update this post!) Makes sense,doesn't it?

Are you involved in a multi-level marketing company? How is it going? What have you found that works and that doesn't work? I want to hear from YOU. :)

More Straight Talk from Jaime Morales
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#26 Mastermind Alliance

Once you are clear on your goals, your purpose and have mapped out a plan of action, be open to mastermind with other clear thinking people.

You will find mastermind groups on NING and on Facebook. You can start your own group.

I set up a page on Facebook and explored a few pre-existing groups. I want to keep it simple and true to the orignal...

Here is an outline of a mastermind meeting as presented by Jack Canfield.

My goals are clearly defined and frankly,,,


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