Today as I logged into Twitter I noticed an announcement at the very top of the screen introducing Twitters new LIST function. So I promptly clicked on the ‘Create New List’ option and proceeded to create my very first List. It wasn’t difficult and within about a minute or so I had a list of some of my favorite tweeters.

As I was doing this it suddenly occured to me that this could possibly change the face of Twitter forever…at least in terms of making money from it.

Let’s face it, the good majority of those on Twitter follow someone only to get them to follow them back. This is what Twitter has become. It is really just a big marketing network with each person trying to sell something. Even the big celebrities are there to sell themselves, their image, their next movie or whatever. There really are only a small handful on Twitter who use it to chat simply for the sake of chatting…and the reason there are only a few is that as a means of communicating it really is a clumsy system.

So if we want to make money on Twitter and we need followers to do that, then I can see the potential for the new LIST system to make it just that much more difficult.

This is how I see it…users are going to log in and head straight to their favorites list and hang out there. What this means is that they don’t get to see the full list of tweets coming from the regular list they are following…they only see the tweets from their favorites list.

Now I see this as a good thing because when you think about it, it can only increase the quality of the tweets on Twitter. I mean who is going to add a spammer or someone who is constantly promoting products to a favorites list? You are really going to have to start getting good with your tweets in order to be added to someones list AND ‘getting good’ means providing quality and not promoting products every second tweet.

If it happens to go this way, then a lot of people are going to leave Twitter as it will get harder and harder to make money with it. If enough people start to leave then Twitter’s popularity may just start to wane. After all, the only reason Twitter became as popular as it has is because of its money making potential. Or to put it another way, if Twitter suddenly made it mandatory that you could no longer promote products on the site, how many people do you think would actually be left on it? 

I believe that people really need to be able to continue to easily make money from Twitter if it is to maintain it’s popularity. If the money is no longer there then people will only leave looking for the next big thing to make them rich.

This could just be the beginning of the end for Twitter if this is how it all pans out. Hopefully my thinking is totally wrong and instead the new List system opens up a whole new world of opportunities. I guess we can only wait and see…

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Just recently, Wanda and I have been discussing our blogs and which ones we want to work on. We have over 20 blogs/websites and even with the two of us, it is way too many to work on at the one time. So we decided to concentrate on just a couple over the next few months one of which is the blog you are now reading.

In the past, we haven’t really promoted this blog all that much – in fact, hardly at all. I just enjoy writing posts for it so wasn’t all that concerned that we weren’t getting much traffic. So now that we have had a change of mindset we have started looking at ways to increase traffic and comments to this blog.

We already know of quite a few different methods to do this but we are always on the look out for new ideas. To really succeed in this business you have to be prepared to be a continual student and learn as much as possible in order to stay ahead of the pack. So with this in mind, I went scouring the net for any new tips on how to increase blog comments.

I didn’t have to look far as one of the blogs I like to regularly drop in on is Zebida.com and on this blog I found a post about a WordPress plugin called Comment Luv.  Comment Luv is a WordPress plugin that extracts the url of the last blog post of the person leaving the comment. This assumes that they have a blog of course. It then posts the title of that blog post with a link below the comment they have left on your blog. This encourages people to leave comments as in return for the comment they get a link back to their website.

Now I’ve heard about this plugin before and in fact I was recommended it sometime back as a result of a post I wrote on the Top 20 Plugins to Increase Traffic to Your Blog.

The only problem I had with this plugin was the fact that I felt it would just encourage spammers. I had used a dofollow plugin in the past and had a similar problem so removed it. But from what Hesham was saying, it looked like it made a big increase in the number of comments he started receiving on his blog and they didn’t look like spammers to me.

So I have decided to give Comment Luv a go. I installed it yesterday so will give it a couple of months to see how it develops. It will be interesting to see if it does in fact make a difference.

 1. Leave the introduction until last. For some reason it is a lot harder to write the introduction than it is to write the article. So start with the main content and you will have a lot more success. By the time you get to the end of the article the introduction should be a lot easier to write.

2. Keep your articles to a reasonable length. Why?…because most people prefer to read short snippets of information on the internet. 

3. Don’t over-promote. What I mean by that is don’t just write an article that is an ad for a product. If you are writing about a product then make it a review, or write about your experiences with the product. In other words, avoid being overly spammy. Being objective about a product will encourage people to trust you.
 
4. The best articles are ones that provide assistance to the reader. If you can solve their problem in some way then they are more likely to read your article.

5. Use short simple sentences and lots of white space. One to three sentences at the most per paragraph. This makes it easier for the reader and provides a lot more white space which gives the article a clean, neat look.

6. Use dot points and numbering wherever you can. Reading content on the internet is not like reading a book. People like short pieces of content that are easy to read.

7. Provide something of value to the reader. Don’t be afraid to give away a particularly good tip or piece of advice. If the reader finds your blog post particularly useful they are more likely to return to your site.
 
8. If possible have someone read through your article before you upload it. Preferably someone who can correct any grammatical errors if required.

9. Run a spell checker through your work. This simple process is often neglected but it is extremely important.  People will tolerate a few errors but when your blog posts are  full of spelling and grammatical errors they may leave and probably won’t come back.

 10. Regularly add content. The more content you add the better – Google will love you and your readers will keep coming back for more.

Last week as I was leaving a comment on a blog I noticed a discussion between the owner and one of his readers about a WordPress plugin he was using that automatically turns predefined keywords on his blog into affiliate links.

My first thought was that this was one of those programs you have to join where you get paid for each click from links on your site…you might have seen those blogs where ever second keyword is underlined twice in blue and you hover over the keyword and an annoying pop-up appears. But from looking at his blog posts I soon realized this wasn’t the case – the links were regular blue text links – nothing fancy or spammy looking.

So since I was a bit intrigued I clicked on the link in his comment and made my way over to the sales page for the Ninja Affiliate plugin. Once there, it really didn’t take me long to realize that I definitely needed to buy it. I even made a call to Wanda to see what she thought and she definitely agreed that this would save us a lot of time.

So How Does it Work?

The best way to describe how the plugin works is to use an example. So let’s  say for instance you are an affiliate for Amazon and your blog is all about fishing. And one of the products you promote regularly on your blog is a fishing rod called “The Prestige Fishing Rod”.

Now at the moment, in order to link to Amazon using that keyword phrase (ie. The Prestige Fishing Rod) you would have to grab the affiliate code from Amazon and manually pop it in to anywhere in your blog posts where you use that keyword phrase. We all know it’s not difficult to do but it is time consuming….this is where the Ninja Affiliate plugin comes into play.

With this plugin you will only ever have to grab your Amazon affiliate code once, place it in the back end admin area and from then on it will automatically add that affiliate link whenever it sees that keyword or keyword phrase (ie. The Prestige Fishing Rod)  in blog posts on your blog. This includes posts that you have created in the past as well as new posts.

You can also specify multiple keyword variations that link will apply to. For example,  ‘The Prestige Fishing Rod’, ‘Prestige Fishing Rod’, ‘Fishing Rod’ and so on.  If the plugin sees any of those keywords it will automatically convert them to links.

What I really like about this plugin is that you can specify how many links per post. You can have 1 or more, or just choose unlimited if you like.  Just be aware that too many links can make you look like a spammer. (I like to keep it at two or three.) And you don’t have to worry about all those links leaching your pagerank as there is an option to add a nofollow tag to each link.

You also don’t need to use this to link to affiliate links. You can link to other pages on your site if you like. This is a great way of getting more traffic to a particular post or page on your site.

There are a host of other features that come with this great little plugin including:

• the ability to cloak the links so instead of the reader seeing an affiliate link when they hover over the link they will instead see a keyword or whatever you choose to use.
• the ability to overide global settings for each individual post. So say you have set up your global settings to add a nofollow tag to each link but for one particular post you want the nofollow tag to be removed then this feature allows you to do this.
• the  facility to create groups so you can easily track the links you have created
• stats so you can see the number of clicks on each of the links you have created
• the ability to have each link open in a new window
• the ability to change the formatting of each link ie. link color, underline, bold, italics, font size and family
• the ability to exclude Pages from automatic linking
• the ability to exclude specific Categories from automatic linking

Final Conclusion…

This is a brilliant tool and we wonder how we ever did without it. Today we spent less than an hour creating links in the back-end which  resulted in literally hundreds of links on one of our niche blogs.  If we were to do this ourselves if would have taken us hours, if not days to accomplish.

Plus if we ever get the problem of a merchant closing down their affiliate program or going out of business then we don’t have to spend hours changing hundreds of links – all we need to do is change it once in the admin area and all the links will  change automatically.

We give the Ninja Affiliate plugin a big thumbs up. Highly recommended.

Further Reading

• Read more about the Ninja Affiliate plugin.
  

An eBook is a great way of making money on the internet and you don’t need to have a website to do it. Nor do you need to actually sell the eBook to make money from it.  So how do you do it…well in a nutshell, it involves you writing a short ebook preferably about a topic you know about and distributing it for free around the internet.  It doesn’t have to be long – 10-15 pages is enough. In order to make money from it, you add multiple affiliate links to different products within the ebook.

Here’s how it works…

Step 1: Choose a topic that you have an interest in

The best eBooks are written by those who know what they are talking about. It will also make it easier to write if you have an interest in the topic. Having said that however, there is no rule that says that you need to know the subject to write about it but it will take longer because you will need to do the research for it first.

Step 2: Find products to promote in your ebook

There is no point spending hours writing an eBook only to find that there are no products to add to it. So before you start writing, you need to find products that you can ‘sell’ in your eBook that relate to your topic. You can choose products from Clickbank, CJ.com, Linkshare.com, ShareaSale.com, Amazon.com or any of the other affiliate networks. These companies are all free to join and offer thousands of different products and services that you can promote. Clickbank is a good one to start with as they don’t care whether you have a website or not.

Once you know that there are plenty of products you can start writing.

Step 3: Start Writing

This is not as scary as it sounds. If you have a flair for writing then you will probably have no problem getting started but if the last thing you wrote was a report in high school then you might find it hard to get going.

The easiest way to write an ebook is to break it up into sections first. For instance, say we decide to write an eBook on dog training. We might break it up into the following sections:

1. Introduction
2. How to train your dog to sit
3. How to train your dog to come when called
4. How to train your dog to shake hands
5. etc, etc

Once you have the main sections you can then provide the content. Always leave the introduction till last as it will be a lot easier to write.

Here is a really good tip. Start out with dot points. Don’t worry about making it read right at this point. Just jot down as many things as you can think of for each of the sections of your ebook.

Once you have the dot points then just expand on each dot point with sub-dot points. Before you know it you will have lots of content.

Now you just need to structure those dot points into coherent sentences.

If you really don’t want to write it yourself then pay a professional. Elance is a great place for this – it is full of writers willing to work on your projects and you would be surprised at how little it costs.

Step 4: Add Affiliate Links

Once you have completed your ebook you will need to add affiliate links. You can add them within the content itself where appropriate or add them at the end as a list of recommended products – or both if you like.

Step 5: Convert to PDF

Before you distribute your eBook you will need to convert it to PDF. There are a number of free versions available on the internet that are simple and easy to use. Ensure that once the document has been converted that you check to ensure that it has formatted the content correctly and that any links within the document work correctly. Some converters work better than others but we recommend one of the following:

• http://www.freepdfconvert.com/default.asp
• http://www.doc2pdf.net/

Step 6: Proofread Your eBook

There is nothing worse than reading a document with multiple spelling errors or bad grammar. Make sure you run a spell checker over it and read it through thoroughly yourself. Better yet, get someone else to do it for you. The more people that look at it the better so get your family or friends to help out.

Step 7: Distribute Your eBook

The next step is to distribute your ebook. Here are some ideas:

- email websites that relate to your ebook topic and tell them they can send out your ebook to their email list if they have one or they can use it as a free giveaway to encourage people to sign up to their newsletter.
– submit your ebook to ebook directories – there are plenty of them…just do a search in Google
– create a Squidoo lens, Hubpage (hubpage.com) and attach your ebook to the page so people can download it.
– submit to forums

And if you found that your ebook turns out better than you expected and you  might just be able to sell it rather than distribute it free them sign up with Clickbank.

Is your blog looking a little tired and worn out? Just like people, blogs can start to get a bit dull and lifeless…sounds a bit like a shampoo commercial doesn’t it? When we get to this point we generally do something about it…we might have a make over, eat better foods, go on a holiday, meditate, buy a new wardrobe or maybe even change that brand of shampoo. But what do you do when your blog has reached this point?

The look of your blog can make a huge difference to its overall success. First impressions really do count. When a first time reader finds your blog they want to see something pleasing to the eye and if they don’t find it they will quickly click that ever present back button.

So if you think your blog is ready for a makeover then try some of the following to spruce it up:

#1 Change Your Theme

There are so many free themes available today for most blogging platforms that there really is no excuse for having an old outdated theme on your blog. There are literally thousands to choose from and almost as many premium themes if you have some dollars to spare.

Don’t get stuck in a rut of using the same theme because it is easy to work with. Some of the latest themes are fantastic and so user friendly you will be surprised.

#2 Rethink Those Ads

We all want to make money with our blogs but there is a limit to how many ads you should display. Once you’ve hit that limit you will start to see evidence of people not hanging around on your site.

Even some of the big name internet marketers, not mentioning any names here, are guilty of this. There is one site in particular that I can no longer go to because my computer just freezes up as it tries to load the page. There are so many scripts and pop-ups and flashing ads that it has become almost ridiculous…but hey, he can get away with it because he is a celebrity in the internet marketing game. For the rest of us, we need to be a little more conservative and keep the ads to a minimum AND most importantly make them blend in with your site so it looks professional and not spammy.

#3 Rework Your Sidebar

Take a look at your sidebar and think about whether any of it is actually relevant. Some sidebars are full of widgets that may look cool but are they really helpful to your readers? Remember too that each widget or plugin that you add to your blog is only going to slow it down which will annoy readers on a slow connection. They won’t bother waiting for your page to load and will just click away.

#4 Hold a Blog Contest

Consider holding a contest on your blog to get some excitement back into it. You can generate a lot of new readers with a contest and get regular readers enthusiastic about revisiting. Simply write up a blog post announcing the contest and get readers to leave a comment to enter.

Your giveaway doesn’t have to be expensive – an Amazon Gift Card is always well received but you can even have a look around your house for an unwanted gift or something you’ve never used that you can giveaway.

#5 Use Images

Use images wherever possible. This tends to attract people to the blog post and gets them to start reading. It also just makes your blog look good. You can get images for as low as a $1 at iStockphoto.com.

#6 Interact With Your Readers

Start interacting with your readers a little more. People love to be acknowledged so try and answer every comment that is left on your site. This is not always possible but do your best. People will tend to come back if they know that their comments are going to be answered.

#7 Tell Us About Yourself

 Your visitors will be more likely to leave a comment if they know who they are talking to you. So add a photo of yourself and a few lines about what you and your blog are all about. And don’t hide it away on an About Us page – put it in your sidebar so it shows up on every page.

#8 Add Regular Content

Adding regular content can vastly improve your blog particularly if you add a new article every day. Google loves content and particularly likes content from blogs. It is not uncommon for a blog post to be ranked in Google within 10 minutes of publishing it. And Google will revisit your blog more regularly once it knows you are adding content on a daily basis.

So there you have it – 8 ways to improve your blog. Can you think of any others I may have missed?