Seven To Ten

Some folks think that calls for action just plain cheesy, but they work. Here are three simple reasons for their effectiveness.

1. Usability

If your page is designed well, with little distractions, a callout will gain the attention of the customers - making it obvious where they can click to navigate, download, register, etc. There’s nothing worse than getting a visitor’s attention, then losing them because they don’t know where to click next.

2.  Options

Just as important, visitors will often come to your site because they landed there from a search, it’s important to provide them a path to continue your relationship. They may have found what they are looking for, but offering them something else can keep them coming back!

3. Curiosity

There’s a certain percentage of users who just like to click on stuff. Providing a nice bold callout can provide them with the target they’re looking for. Additionally, it could bring you a new sale.

If a call to action with a bold callout isn’t on your check list when creating a website or email, be sure to add it today.

I do not usually pay attention to domain names. I know it is a lucrative business given that some names attract substantial amount of traffic which can be monetized. But I never believed that I have the knack or resources to engage in the domain name business.

For my own blogs, I choose any name which sounds good and from traffic indications (meaning zero hits), it seems to be special to me alone. There are of course certain techniques involved in choosing a proper domain name, whether you want to park it and milk the residual advertisement income or start a personal/business blog.

The question on how to choose a domain name for your blog is best answered by Problogger. In that very detailed post, he mentioned about the goals, target audience, keywords, branding, future trends, name length, memorability, legal issues, similar domains, hypens, dot coms, etc.

If you master what all the pointers, you are now ready to hunt for diamonds in the rough. I know that the prices some domain marketers or owners are willing to pay is incredibly high, once you have been to domain name auctions.

So if you secure a domain name which can generate traffic on its own, you are on to something good. Like real estate, it is a prime asset for you.

Most successful blogs had been active for quite a long time. Of course, the definition of success varies according to individuals. But taking the technorati top 100 or the very best blogs in your niche areas, you will notice that there is a minimum of 2 years before they experience an exponential spike in readers.

Of course, some blogs, through luck, excellent content and shrewd marketing, rise through the ranks faster. If you have neither of the three qualities in abundance, take a long term approach and stick to it. You can’t go wrong with patience. Traffic will come, and with it, lots of money.

Advertisers have to lower their expectations when it comes to alexa ranking. John Chow reported on his site a change in ranking system by alexa.

Like everybody else, his blog is affected but he has little complaints. Because his blog has been established to such a popularity level that PR and alexa ranking doesn’t hurt his earnings any more.

Previously, Alexa only consider users who downloaded and installed alexa toolbar. This did not sufficiently capture the traffic data as certain segments, like make money or affiliate marketing tend to show higher alexa ranking than technology websites where the users are more savvy and believe the alexa toolbar to be nothing more than a piece of spyware.

No doubt, the change is a positive move as the ranking is now a more accurate reflection of internet traffic for blogs and websites. But as bloggers, we have to do more promotion and marketing to drive traffic which can help us to push or even maintain the existing alexa ranking.

At this point of time, I think advertisers who strictly look at alexa ranking to determine a blog’s popularity have to appreciate the change, else a lot of websites may suffer as a result.

As a blogger, we need to conduct research frequently for our articles. Among my favorite research tools are google and of course, Wikipedia (the net’s encyclopedia).

Lately, I notice a lot of sites wanting to emulate the success of Wikipedia. The technical competency needed to create such a professional site is daunting but thankfully, Wetpaint allows you to circumvent your lack of knowledge. What you need is only your passion and some hard work in promotion.

Just in case you have never heard of a wiki, it is any website where users can edit/contribute text, polls, photos, and videos. Content can build up very fast if your site is popular. You can also control members’ access and privileges using the permission settings. Every modification on a wiki page is tracked (for accountability) and objectionable material removed easily, otherwise the quality will deteriorate and become a hotbed for spam.

The beauty of wikis is they are always work-in-progress. The more coats you add, the richer the story. To start your little wiki adventure at Wetpaint, just decide upon your topic of interest and then pick the appropriate site style. Then determine if you want to operate your wiki within a closed group or open it to the public, and choose your contributors wisely - is it a free for all to increase quantity or only to selected parties who can make insightful editions?

To summarize, Wetpaint combines the best of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks. That is why they are so attractive and have already powered more than 850,000 sites and counting. I have signed up already and once my wiki is up and running, I will announce it on this blog. Check out the site today and see if you can catapult your wiki into the next big thing.

I do not like clutter and the first impression I get from a site must be its cleanliness and user-friendliness. Loud, colorful banners and oft-centered pages really get on my nerves.

My sidebar is still pretty empty and it will be staying like that for a while. It may make the blog look empty and uninteresting but I always believe less is more. Unless your blog is really popular, you can get away with a lot of things, like John Chow.

The advertisements there have taken up all his available prime space but I doubt he is maxxed out yet. He will certainly be coming up with ever more creative ways to increase advertising revenue from his blog. Take a leaf from him if you want to know how to monetize your site. Earning over $30,000 per month is simply amazing.

Yes, the ads make for slow loading but his content is fresh and useful, so I don’t mind visiting his blog every few days. For smaller blogs, the amount of ads

We cannot do without friends if we want to succeed on the net, whether as a blogger or an affiliate marketer. Investing your time in any social community will pay off in the long run. Social networks are the rave right now, not without good reason.

I believe they can replace forums in the long run as members prefer to hang out there to discuss their favorite topics. There are so many activities going on at the same time, making new friends, renewing old friendship, uploading photos albums, joining or creating groups, blog posting, live chatting and listening to latest mp3 hits.

I already know of Stumble, Digg, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, etc. The new kid on the block is 3GB Community. I found about them through the buzz built by other bloggers.

In order to penetrate an already saturated market, new upstarts have to differentiate themselves. 3GB has several unique features, one of which is a radio station. It allows members to listen to albums of their favorite stars.

Another interesting aspect is their focus on the Arabic community around the world. Since the primary language is English, members from Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, etc will love the 3GB as they understand English well.

I love the live chat feature and also the way you can separate friends into family, co-worker, etc. This is especially useful when you have hundreds or thousands of friends - you will appreciate the effort to organize them into various friend categories.

If you have time to spare, then join 3gb community 3gb.biz today and be among the early pioneers.

There is a fine line between email marketing and spam. You have to be careful when you are using this strategy to promote your products or services, else you get on the wrong side of the law. The main thing is to tie up with a reputable email marketing agency.

I have browsed through this website, iContact, and it looks impressive with a cliente boasting Fortune 500 companies (like Bank of America, Ford, Nissan, Super 8 Motel) and 183,865 users.

iContact has a user-friendly interface, over 300 professionally designed email templates, and also include, at no additional cost, surveying, autoresponder, and blogging tools to allow businesses to interact with prospects, customers, and subscribers.

Sending out email newsletters is effective since they provide a near perfect inbox deliverability. You can also add a sign-up form to your web site, segment your list, and manage your subscribers. The application allows you to track email performances (opens and clickthroughs) in real time with their charts.

Basic monthly prices start at $9.95, increasing proportionally with your list size. For corporations, they offer an Enterprise product that starts at $660/month.

As a blogger, I think this service is useful in pushing my product to a wide audience. Since emarketing is such a sensitive issue, I prefer to leave it to the pros, put it on autopilot and get great deliverability.

The monthly fee may put some people off especially when there is no revenue in the early days but you can try it out for a few months, once the traffic starts coming in, you can decide to continue with the service or not. By the way, there is a 15 day free trial of iContact. Check out the site today!

What is a blog carnival? Think of an event where a lot of people gather for the fun and entertainment. A blog carnival is not too far away from that.

As a blogger, you need links and in a blog carnival, you will find an array links pointing to blog posts about a niche topic. Usually, there are many editions of a blog carnival, and every week, different blogs will host it. It is easy to participate, as an example, go to the Blog Carnival website, browse around for relevant topics and submit your entries.

This is a simple yet effective method to promote your blog when you are starting out. The carnivals will give you exposure in the form of high quality relevant traffic and back links. Additionally it will also give you the possibility to interact with fellow bloggers.

I have wondered why some posts get digged more than others. It seems that there are groups of digg users who help some articles to score and get onto the front page.

I first knew about their presence from forums and you can join these groups and send articles to them for some digging. Bloggers can benefit from the exposure in terms of adsense earnings, traffic, subscribers, alexa ranking, back links, etc.

Certainly, this is manipulation of articles (and even cheating) to gain popularity, but I found that the standard of diggs have not decreased substantially as a result. There is a bury button if you do not like the article for either its junk or excessively-promotional content. Overall, I still enjoy the home page reads. What is your experience of digg?