Tell me that you grew up so poor you could’t pay attention!

True story – for all of us.

Since we’ve become Tinu’s partners in the best site on the web (other than all of your sites, ofcourse), we’ve rearranged our usual work plan, in that we’ve totally abandoned our 5 other websites, and reduced the time we allot for our other two businesses, so we could give as much time to all of you. No need to applaud, we felt that what we were doing was the righteous thing to do. Naturally, this has caused our cash flow to recede a bit. Well, more than a bit. But we knew this going in, eyes wide open.

You’re probably saying, so what?

Well, peoples, here’s the what.

Stop.

Just stop and think if you would do the same? The same to make your site the ‘primo’ blog that everyone’s talking about Yes, no , maybe, are you kidding, not on your life, sure, let me think about it, I have to ask my wife/husband/partner, are you fking nuts?

Are you really committed to having your blog become a huge success? You got the stones, the cajones, the huevos, the sack to go balls to the wall? Or are you just a punk, a big fat wanna-be, a mama’s boy, a sissy-panted cry-baby looser?

Hold on there, pilgrim.

Of course none of you fit the above. I just wanted to get your blood-up a little, get that ‘fighting spirit’ that you all have inside of you, to come alive.

Now that you know I’m not really calling you out, drawing a line in the sand, just calm down.

And you can put that gun away.

In order to succeed, sometimes, a lot of times, most times, you need to lay it all on the line. You need to take that chance, that risk, that leap of faith. You need to go out on the proverbial limb, and not worry whether the branch will break. If you don’t, if you play it safe, if you are too cautious, a ‘fraidy cat, then, daddyo, you will fail.

If you don’t take that chance, then someday down the road, you’ll think back and wonder, ‘what if….. what if….’.

Don’t let the ‘what ifs’ get you. I shoulda, woulda, coulda – just won’t cut it. You can’t go back, brother/sister, but you can certainly go forward. And you know you can have everything you want – as long as you have the passion and desire to do what you gotta do.

Sit up straight, elbows off the table, and get to it. Failure is not an option.

Morgan

Authorati should get Cartman from South Park as a mascot. (click the photo to see a short video of Cartman with “authoratah”).

Okay, all jokes aside – let’s talk about what Authorati really is and why you should care..

What Authorati is.

Authorati
There are millions of blogs on the internet. Authorati assigns a portable ratings and authority system to the blogs and online articles enabling bloggers and authors to gain reputation and increase the visibility of their publishing.

With the growing popularity of folksonomy and tagging, a large number of blogs are tagged with keywords. Authorati assigns authority to these tags and helps readers a

Why You Should Care.

You mean besides the fact that I specifically Told you to care?

If you’re like me and you would like a lazy way to know which expert to listen to, a ranking system of content helps. You can currently rate the quality of a post, how close to the proposed topic it was (gleaned from tags, it looks like), and how much of an authority you think the author is.

I’ve always believed that the blogosphere and the web at large should be sorted not by popularity, but by quality, mostly because I’m a vain elitist dillhole. But also because I want to find all the people smarter than me, and surround myself with them, so I can then also be smarter.

That’s like, maybe 6 billion people, give or take a bill-i. So you can see why I need all the help…

Of course, the problem will come in if people start to turn an Authorati rating into a popularity contest. I think it would be cool if there was some kind of algorithm applied to it, kind of similiar to the idea behind Google page rank. In Google page rank, there’s a balance between the raw number of people who are linking to you, authority links, etc.

I also think it would be killer if someone who earned a certain level of respect within the Authorati system could have more voting power on links in their same area of expertise. Would that lead to vote-hoarding or to an increase in peer respect?

Dunno… but it would be better than just raw voting… because if someone is popular, but not actually an expert at what they’re writing about, I can imagine a world where a publisher gave away something of value to get people to rate them highly.

They do have two ratings though, one is authorship and the other is authority. And the fact that this even exists is totally a start. I’d love to see it integrated in Ezine Articles – wouldn’t it be neat if a vote on an article there could somehow be imported into Authorati?

Ok, before I go on too far of a tangent, maybe you’d like to see it in action?

You can try this out below by using the FeedFlare link that says “Rate me on Authorati”. (If you want this on your blog, you can get it from Feedburner, which Authorati talks about on their blog.

*edit. Much better Cartman clip, twice as long and ends in cartoon violence. What can I say, I’m a sick woman.

It’s Freedom Friday. Please proceed to place your hands in a fashion perpendicular to the ground and wave them in a casual fashion.

Those of you who got that joke are experiencing side-splitting laughter. Those of you who don’t may comment to this post that I may laugh, point, and explain.

Although you still won’t find it funny….

Anyway, all joking aside…. I found yet another post to the Goldblogger site that fully explains why you should Make Sure You Have Permission To Syndicate Other People’s Feeds On Your Site.

Please respect other people’s content. Personally, I think RSS Equalizer is not a bad tool… used properly like over at the IM4Newbies site. But jacking people for their feeds when they post their express wishes for you not to?

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

I’m not involved in their discussion and I have no idea what went down, so I can’t take sides… but I can say… make SURE you have permission before you display other people’s feeds on your site. For most sites that allow it, there’s normally an indication… they see a win-win situation. For people that don’t want their feed displayed, sometimes it’s a bandwidth concern. Other days it’s a content concern – they, rightfully so, feel they should be able to retain control over their content.

But anyway. You didn’t come here for my lectures… you want some free tools, articles and news. And you want it, right now.

Well you’re gonna hafta wait until my next post! Nyah!

(See you in Five.)

So to summarize:

You need to invest in your business. You will have to put in money, time, knowledge, or whatever else of value you can come up with, and eventually, a combination of all these things.

Also:

If you want other people to invest in your business, you’ll need to set up a value exchange. The results you get will hinge upon the level of value you give for the level of value you get.

So who is John Galt?

I can’t answer that for you. You’d have to read Atlas Shrugged for yourself, and decide on your own. That link will give you the ability to find the book at the best price that the market bears.

If you are looking to make a livable income from your endeavors online, or offline, that book can teach you a lot about money, and how to release yourself from the grip of a value-less exchange.

Yes, it’s from Search Engine Journal again.

The News
Domain Names Still Important Despite Search Engine Popularity

My Own Wild Speculations and Gossip
The average webmaster will continue to feel important if those of us struggling to stay content focused and relevant were rewarded with consistent, fair listings that the average search engine hacker can’t crack.

And again, continue to buy my love, in a way where they can not only survive short term, but thrive long term from the prospect of supplying a constant stream of good content.

I’ve got one friend who got his legitimate site knocked off the top listings by spam sites who somehow manage to benefit from the very algorithm change that was rumored to have been intended to punish them and not real sites like his.

Yeah, his site is climbing back in the results with some tweaking, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. Make it easier for folks like him to focus on providing content instead of playing this game where his site is only naturally relevant if he hops on his left foot during full moon Tuesdays.

While you’re at it, give surfers a vote that factors into the equation – an Amazon-style message like “surfers who like this site also like.”

I’m lucky. I was able to learn a consistent, ethical system for getting into the search engines, based on the things about them that don’t change. When I start new sites, I’ve been able to stay out of places like the Google sandbox. (So far!)

With that, I get consistent results that don’t vary from one of the best and most targeted sources of first-click traffic, and I’m grateful for the boost. Getting consistent results from search engines should be more of a time saver, for the average webmaster though.

I just think we saw a lot more purely content-driven sites when the hobbyist webmasters and time-pressed small business owner were focused on content-only, not what it takes to rank well.

The other day I mentioned how much easier it is to get people to trade links with you if you have something to give – your articles, your RSS Feed, the option to host a frequently used tool on your servers – here’s some more information about that from Seo Scoop.

Mommie Dearest was on HBO Signature a little earlier. Thank God for cable or I’d be bored out of my mind working from home some days.

Not that my work isn’t fun-filled and interesting. The bulk of the job I created for myself is writing or traffic-generating, two activities I love.

But one of the key benefits of creating yourself a career you can do on the computer from home is watching TV during your down time. Guilt-free couch potato-ism is where it’s at, baby.

And that ramble takes us to content type number three- Paid Content.

I pay you $20, and for a year, you’ll give me all the information I would need on some subject. Or I give you $200 one time and you give me a crash course on my favorite subject.

Neat trick. So how do you do it?

For this example, we’ll use HBO and one of my favorite sites, SnapFiles.com

To get my money, HBO does one simple thing. I don’t think they do it well enough, but it’s on a fair enough level to get my money again the next month, and that’s really a long ramble that I don’t have the muscle to type about today.

To get my money, SnapFiles.com does one simple thing. They do it better than everywhere else, and I think they’re really the only ones doing it.

For both HBO and SnapFiles.com, it’s the same thing, even though it’s not.

Can you guess what it is? Here’s a hint.

Still stumped?

Alright already, I’ll tell you. You’re no fun to play with, you know that? (Kidding!)

HBO and SnapFiles.com did some research to find out what I was missing from the free version of TV and freeware sites respectively, then charged me a fee below my threshold to access it.

That’s it.

Why would I pay for TV? It’s free. At least that was what ABC, CBS and NBC said to HBO, after they were done rolling on the floor in laughter, and pointing in mockery.

Who’s laughing now? HBO, and they’re doing it at the bank.

Why would I pay for freeware? Free software is, well, free. Because SnapFiles.com saves me time and money, not to mention hard drive space. I get deals on shareware, and if some piece of freeware is suddenly no longer offered, I know they have an archive of it at their site.

The second part of that is most important though – they charge me a price below my threshold.

I’d probably pay $300 a year just to have all the HBO channels if it didn’t come with my cable systems. Why? I’m a film junkie. I love films. Movies are my hobby. I like to watch them, discuss them, be inspired by them for my art (I really AM a poet. Seriously. Won a few minor awards and everything).

If my only choices were signing up with a DVD site for $30 a month, and worry about returning the films I get to see 8 at a time, or knowing I could pay for 8 channels playing movies 24 hours a day, the math is easy. $360 a year for limited volume but predictable, or $300 a year for easy access to more volume of less predictable titles.

Same thing with SnapFilesPro.com (the paid version of SnapFiles.com).

For free, I can hunt down the freeware I want, one at a time, or for $20 a year I have all kinds of neat features. Please – I spend $50 ordering take-out. $20 for service and flexibility is right on the money for me.

You can have a paid content site even with information that’s available freely on the Net. What you’ll have to do is dedicate your time to finding what information is best, testing it for validity, keeping your updates fresh, and providing excellent service.

Maybe not with sunglasses, but who said you could only have one site?

Find out what people want to know more about. Pack your site with 100 page of Original Content that is hard to find, that they can’t get anywhere else, that goes beyond what’s in a free article… you get the idea. Invite 20 peers over with the bribe of free membership and get the discussions going. Make sure the area is sufficiently password protected, then start selling access to the site.

Harder than it sounds, but possible.

Well it’s definitely nap time for me. I’m going to have myself a bidi and hit the hay for a few hours. Happy Friday to you.

The second type of content you have is advertiser-supported content. On the web, this is the type of content I see people screwing up the most often.

To see what I mean, let’s go back to the TV analogy.

Here on the West Coast, the movie Oscar, starring Sylvester Stone just went off. While I was watching the movie, there were commercials. The one I remember most was for Cancer Centers of America.

Now I ask you. What the hell does Cander Centers of America have to do with the film Oscar?

Not a damn thing – at least not on the surface.

So why would CCA run their commercial during that movie? We’ll come back to that in a second. First, let’s talk about your site.

Maybe you sell sunglasses. So you build a site that is a store about sunglasses, and everyone and their mother will beat a path to your store anytime they need a pair of sunglasses, right?

No way. Thanks for playing “how to go broke with a website”. We have some lovely parting gifts for you.

Here’s where the model goes wrong: unless your store is located within the online equivalent of a mall like ebay, and people are there specifically to shop, that really isn’t what you want to do with your site.

People don’t turn to a channel on TV to buy things, unless of course they are looking at QVC or the Home Shopping Network. They turn on the TV to be entertained, to get information (like the news), or because they’re lonely and they want voices in the background.

So how does this relate to you?

Well, think about why people come to the internet. If your site is about sunglasses, you don’t want to just build a store. Why?

Even when someone goes online to find a pair of sunglasses, unless they’re already signed up to get updates at your site, they’re probably going to an online chain site like Target, a site that will put them in touch with places to buy sunglasses, like Ebay.com, or they’re going to a search engine to look up something like “best deals on Raybans”.

Knowing this, you should realize that your site model is a little backwards.

Your products are the advertisements for your site, they aren’t the content. I didn’t come online to surf the web equivalent of an infomercial – though, under certain conditions, that model can work..

But normally, if I’m a potential shopper, I came online to be entertained, to find information, or because I’m lonely and I want someone to reach out to me.

And if I came online just to buy a pair of sunglasses, there’s only two ways you’ll get my attention – if I find you in a search, or, if I already know about your site and you’re smart enough to remind me that you’re there to help me.

Given that information, how should my site be set up to catch that buyer at the right time?

There’s two modes that you’re going to get your potential customer who needs a pair of shades. Either you’ll get them in their surf mode, or you’ll get them in their buy mode. Your site needs to be set up to capture them in either mood.

Or mode.

Come on, you know what I mean…

Anyway, what I’m saying is, don’t hide all the sales pages on your site but don’t scream BUY SOME SUNGLASSES either.

The main pages of your site should be funneled to one purpose – getting some way to follow-up with the surfer. You want them on your list, subscribing to your feed, joining your community, whatever. On TV, they’ll tell you a story in the form of your favorite show, with characters you grow to know and love, despite the fact that they’re fictional. Or they’ll give you a decent movie, with promises of a different film that you’ll enjoy if you come back to the bat place at the same bat time tomorrow, later that day, a week from today.

In a word, content.

And every site has it. Some have content in the form of yucky gate way pages that you run away from as soon as you see them. Others have 12 pages of pretty dry, but useful, information. Then there are sites that seem to have a new page, or a new product, or a new tip posted to their forums, just about every day. You like the content, but you can’t possibly keep up with the volume. So you join the newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed, or join the community because you don’t want to miss anything.

Did you get that?

Set your site up to have more content than can be consumed in a day, with the promise of more. Good content.

Now here’s the thing. You have a site about sunglasses. What are you going to put on your site that someone who needs sunglasses will want to come back for every day?

Maybe you have the lowest price sunglasses that will get to my house the fastest, guaranteed. Perhaps your site has the now famous “Whether” report – telling me whether or not I’ll need sunglasses today in my home town or at over 2000 locations in the world. Or your site has the Shady Destination of the Day, a short spiel on what fabulous sunny place I can’t afford to go to but love to dream about, complete with pictures.

Whoever said the entire content of the site had to be about sunglasses directly?

I sound crazy, don’t I? Well let’s go back to the TV model, shall we?

I was watching the film Oscar. And there was a commercial about Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Do I have cancer? No. But someone I know does. And the people who ran that commercial took a gamble on a little thing called demographics. They figure I’m between the ages of this and that, and I make this amoung of money, based on stats they get from the Network, so the best time to show this information is the time that I saw it, among others.

Now it doesn’t quite work that way online. But the issue of demographics teaches us something. If you look at your web statistics, or poll your audience, you’ll be able to figure out what interests they have in common, and you’ll be able to target advertising towards them. Your product can be the commercial, or you can use someone else’s, through Google AdSense or sites like TextAd.biz – you just don’t want to go sending them off until you have presented a way to get in contact with them again.

And if, ultimately, you can’t find a way to make your topic appeal to the group that would want to buy what you have, it may be time to go back to the drawing board and research another topic to specialize in.

I’m inclined to think that a lot more models work on the web than people think. I have a friend who co-owns the top selling watch site to advertise on eBay. He makes a pretty, shiny penny. From watches for crying out loud. There’s got to be a niche for you too.

So to sumamrize, with the incidental browser at your site, you can entertain them with your content, inform them with articles about what you’ve calculated may be their interests, or build a community where they can talk to other like-minded people.

Now for the person in the second mode – the buyer.

As we’ve discussed, you will get the buyer through a search, or from keeping up with the contacts you already have.

In the first instance, this is just another selling point of the content-rich site. If you’ve got great, fresh content that ranks well in one of the major search engines, you will get that keyboard traffic. But you have to know what I’m likely to type in – it won’t be “sunglasses”. It will probably be “Raybans for less than $20″ or “cheap sunglasses”.

And how do you know this? You go to Nichebot.com or some other keyword research resource and find out what I would type., or you go to Google AdWords and buy spots for a bunch of related keywords that I’ll type in.

In the second instance, you know that odds are, when I fire up my computer and go online, I’ll either check my email, or my news feeds before I open up my browser. It’s just something people do out of habit, log on, read the mail, check the news – probably habits that were transferred from the offline world. The first popular internet service providers kind of forced it on you – if you have AOL, you’ll see the Mail button and a bunch of news before you ever get to thw Web.

Normal people – not web heads like us, but the average Netizen – don’t get a whole lot of email that they read. They may only check it once a week.

Now if I open my email and I have 20 new items in my Inbox, I might see a note from my mom, some spam that made it through the filters, your notice about this week’s sunglasses specials, a chain letter from a pal at work, and my joke list.

I go to click on Mom’s note and something triggers my memory of why I logged on in the first place – that’s right, I’m going to Bora Bora on Saturday, I want some sunglasses!

And there’s your lovely note with the cheapest deals.

Done.

So the next time you prepare yourself to start a new site, or add a page to your existing one, or are thinking about remodeling, think about content. Think about the way content and advertising is approached on TV. Not all the examples will translate. But it may give you some pointers on how and why to arrange your site to make more sales.

On to type three, after these words from our sponsors.

The first type of content you have is completely free content. On TV, you’ll see this on public channels like PBS. Does PBS make money? Sure it does, through donations.

Do people ON PBS make money? Sometimes. During their pledge drives, they often have people on like one of my favorite people in the world, Wayne Dyer. I’m a Wayne Dyer fanatic. True story.

Last time he was on during the pledge drive (that I saw), he gave away books videotapes, etc. And they didn’t make money from him directly. But after sitting there and watching his show, if you enjoyed it, you would find out through your own investiagation that he had more products to offer than the ones on the show.

Now, with your website, can you make money from this type of content? Sure. This is what happens when you write articles – you give away some of your content, the audience gets to come by and see what else you have to offer them. If you give a free ebook away at another site or through a newsletter, it’s the same deal.

And you can make more money if your site is set up in the second way we’ll talk about in just a moment.

It’s Freedom Friday!

Before you cheer, you may want to know what Freedom Friday is. Today is the day of the week you’ll learn about free resources you can use on the Net, some will get you free traffic, some will free up your time so you can focuse on getting yourself some more free traffic, and sometimes, we’ll just talk about freedom in general, as it relates to your site and your business.

On this particular FF, we’re going to discuss content. Great content is far and away the foundation of a free traffic philosophy – when was the last time you spent hours at a site with awful content?

There are three types of content on the Net. (Hey that’s rhymes! Bet you didn’t know I was a poet.)

In discussing them, we’ll use the TV analogy. It’s the best one I can think of to help you coneptualize the proper use of content.

I’ll be back shortly with our first overview.

First, the value exchange. What do I mean by this? I mean, something of value from you, containing information related to why the person came to your site in the first place.

It can be a subscription to your ezine, a free ebook (give as much value as you can, but don’t give away the farm), a software demo, a free mini-course, a feed subscription link – something that your visitor can use long after they’ve come to your site, that requires further interaction with an aspect of your business for them to get more information.

You’re here because you’re looking for that holy grail of traffic sources – free traffic. Or are you? Maybe you’re really here because you want the benefits that come with it – more sales, more money in your pocket, more cost-effective ways to run your online business.

That or you really like it when I ramble. If that’s the case, I have the number to a really good therapist….

I kid with you!

But to continue. I bring that up to say, your customer came there because on some level, they are interested in your gizmo, or something interesting on your pages. What benefits are related to that, that you can give away to a potential client?

Most people come to me wanting their site spidered by Google. I say, I can get you that free, here you go. Have a party. And if you want to do it yourself, sign up for my ezine. I tell you how to do that in the second issue.

But what you really want is to get listed by Google, isn’t it? Well, before I help you figure out how to set Google on your site, why don’t you try a little optimization first – that’s free too.

And that question pops up – why is she giving that away? What’s the catch?

Ha. Try and find one. Big secret? I’m not telling you anything you won’t find on your own after looking on the Net if you know where to look. I just simplified it, and made it easy for you to follow. The thing is, those aren’t my secrets. I’d never re-package someone else’s knowledge just to sell you… and maybe that’s why I’m getting rich slow…

For once, that whole spiel wasn’t just another opportunity for me to drone on about myself. It’s to show you an example of how you can give more than other people do, and not be afraid that it will leave you empty, with nothing left to offer.

Don’t be scared to give someone a good, free tip, or lots of them. I don’t know about you, but I’m busy. And when I’m not busy, I’m lazy. Save people time… they’ll just come back to you over and over again looking for more until one day, something about what you said, or what you offer, with strike them in their sunny spot… and they’ll actually feel good about exchanging currency for your knowledge.

That actually takes care of number two, a follow-up with a value increase. Your information should get progressively better over the follow-up time. Reward the people who stick with you longer. Make them think, man, what’s next?

Which brings us to number three. Make your overall sales presentation better. My favorite two articles, that I refer to again and again, are Willie Crawford’s “20 Simple Things To Do Today To Dramatically Increase Your
Website Sales” and Michael Southon’s (man I always thought it was Southern. Whoops!) “7 Simple Ways To Boost Your E-Book Sales“.

I also like to go to Dr. Joe Vitale’s site. I’m sorry. The man is a copywriting genius. Two free chapters of his hypnotic writing book can teach you more about writing better copy than some people get out of years of study. That link is to his copy writing articles section.

But I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Don’t listen to anyone blindly, especially me. Test and track for yourself, then go with the people whose techniques work for you. Some folks may not ring your bells in getting their message across. If you’re not much of a reader, you might find my articles long and boring.

And that’s cool. I used to try and please everyone, but now I realize, the people who I can best work with are the people who enjoy my flavor. I can’t help the whole world, now can I?

I’m fortunate enough to be able to pick who I want to work with, and filter accordingly. There’s certainly enough people on the Internet for all the honest business people out there, right?

That brings me to my last point… in all of the effort to have a great sales presentation, you’ll want to let some part of you shine through. Nothing on a stalker, ultra-personal level. Unless you’re a poet or a singer, and it somehow works with your business.

Be different. Admit your failings and admit your craziness. Be honest and you’ll end up with a sub-niche of the niche you pursued that you Own. The copycats will never be the original you.

See you in a few with the feed and/or site of the day.