Are you working hard on your online business without knowing what your goal is? It’s been advised by numerous well-known entrepreneurs that you need to set goals for your business so that you can achieve what you want.

So have you written down your [tag-tec]business goals[/tag-tec] and a plan for how to achieve them?

Here is an example to get you started so you can write your own.

If you want to earn $100,000 a year with your online business, then you would need to make slightly more than $8,000 a month.

The areas of your online business that can achieve this are:

1. Sell ads on your web site or blog (10 ads at $50 each) = $500 a month
2. Sell 3 affiliate products each day with $30 commission = $2,700 a month
3. Sell 3 of your own products each day with $50 profit = $4,500 a month
4. Article Marketing selling affiliate products ($30 a day) = $900 a month

Total income = $8,600 a month.

Now you know which aspects of your business you need to concentrate on to meet your business goals.

Make money online now requires the use of blogs more than ever. This technique is favored in many internet marketing forum discussions and newsletters. If you haven’t setup a blog yet to make money online, then you need to…NOW.

Posting to your own blog is not optional anymore. Blogs are proven to rank high in search engines and have sticky visitors (people who re-visit your website looking for content).

Creating a blog is easy. However, making money online with it, is another story. Here’s what you need to know and do.

1. Your blog requires continuous attention.

You need to post daily. Stick with this rule. Once you miss a few days of posts, you’ll lose the rhythm to post daily. I’ve done this myself. After 3 or more days of not posting, you’ll say to yourself “what the hell” and then neglect it.

Look at it this way, if you visit a blog with good information you’ll return later on to see what new content there are. But if you visited a blog and the last updated date was like 4 months ago what would you do? Yes, you won’t return there again because consciously you’ll know there’s not much chance it’ll be updated the next you visit either.

Posting regularly to your blog has 3 effects:

- new visitors seeing your website for the first time are more likely to bookmark your blog if they see that new content has been posted daily for the past few months.

- you have more and more content everyday on the internet. This means you’ll have more and more of a chance of getting found when people search on the internet

- you’ll attract regular readers to your blog who’ll read your posts several times a week. If you monetize your blog with ads and [tag-tec]recommend affiliate programs[/tag-tec], you’ll have more chance of earning money from them.

Remember that a stale blog means a forgotten blog that no one will visit. The points above are the reasons why I advise people to blog daily. Once you get into the habit, it’s an easy task.

2. Avoid the lonely feel

There are many times when writing for your blog, you’ll feel lonely. You start to wonder that no one’s reading your blog posting apart from you. You wonder why the hell you’re doing this and then you’ll finally decide that [tag-tec]blogging[/tag-tec] does not work and it’s totally sucks big time.

Search on the internet and try to find proof that blogging does not work. You’ll occasionally find the negative posts from people who have given up, but you’ll find a lot more information from people who’ll argue why it hasn’t worked for certain people.

Blogging is not something that will give you results instantly. Read that sentence again. Knowing this will motivate you to blog and stick with it. Say to yourself, I’ll reap the rewards in a few months time.

3. Install plugins

You must install plugins on your blog. I advise using the WordPress platform from http://wordpress.org/ for your blog. There are many plugins available which you can use to install on your blog. You need to find out and do some research on which ones will be useful for your particular case.

Plugins have all sorts of functions such as help you to rank better on the search engines, attract returning visitors and distribute your content to social bookmarking sites etc…

Here’s a short list of plugins which are mandatory to install on your blog:

- StatPress (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/statpress/)

Enables you to see statistics on visitors to your blog and also pages on your blog. It’s essential to install StatPress so that you know where your web traffic is coming from and which part of your blog is attracting the visitors.

- All In One SEO Pack (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/)

Optimizes your blog for search engines which means helping you to rank higher and get more targeted visitors. All bloggers hope to have their blog postings found on the search engines and this plugin will help you do that.

- Google XML Sitemaps (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/)

Creates a Google XML sitemap of your blog which is supported by several search engines including msn.com and yahoo.com. Another essential tool so that your posts are easily found in the search engines.

- Askimet (http://akismet.com/)

Captures spam comments on your blogs. This will save you a considerable amount of time dealing with spam so that you can concentrate more on working on your blog.

- Subscribe To Comments 2.1 (http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/)

When your readers post comments to your blog, they can check a box so that they are notified by email if someone has added more comments to the particular blog posting.

This plugin will attract returning visitors and can generate many comments from people to your posts.

- Simple Tags (http://www.broobles.com/scripts/simpletags/)

Enable you to create Technorati tags at the bottom of your posts. This will help you generate more traffic from Technorati and rank higher with them.

- Related Posts (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-23-related-posts-plugin/)

Shows related posts under the post which your reader is currently reading. This will attract them to stay longer on your blog and easier for them to find what they want. Very effective and should be used when your blog has many posts.

- Onlywire Autosubmit (http://www.lionstarr.de/onlywire-autosubmit-a-wordpress-plugin.html)

Uses the service of Onlywire to submit your new posts to over 20 social bookmark websites. Excellent plugin for generating traffic to your blog.

- Google Analyticator (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analyticator/)

Enable Google Analytics to start logging your blog. Use this plugin with StatPress to monitor the activities of your blog. A great tracking and statistics tool.

- Sociable (http://push.cx/sociable)

Adds social bookmarking site links to the end of your posts so that readers can use them when they see a great post on your blog. This is an opportunity for more traffic to your blog

- Lucia’s Linky Love (Download plugin )

When people post comments on your blog there is a “no follow” tag placed next to it. This means that they get no benefits with regards to their search engine rankings when they post to your website.

The purpose is to eliminate spam comments. Lucia’s Linky Love plugin removes the tag so that people are benefited when they make comments. People will look for blogs to post comments that have the ‘no follow’ tag removed.

Spam is also handled because the commenter needs to make a minimum number of comments. This plugin will get you many visitors and commenters.

- What Would Seth Godin Do (http://www.richardkmiller.com/blog/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do)

Asks your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed. A good plugin as you can set the message to disappear after the visitor returns 3 times. Increase your RSS feed subscribers using this plugin.

4. Write good content

Apart from posting daily to your blog you also need to make sure that your posts are valuable. Something that will benefit the reader.

This is straight forward. If your content contains nothing but waffle, even if you post twice a day for the next year, you won’t get many returning visitors.

Think about what reasons you personally have for re-visiting a blog. It’s because of the content right? So how do you make sure that you can write good content every day?

You write good content everyday by doing research on websites such as Technorati and Digg. You search for topics using these websites and find whatever relevant information there is. There should be enough information for you to blog about for many years.

Look at blog posts and re-write them in your own words adding your own comments. You can also search for related articles using EzineArticles and republish them on your blog and add your own comments. Remember to attach the author’s resource box to the bottom of their article though.

Content is what drives people to your blog. The better your content is, the more visitors you’ll eventually receive.

5. Use article marketing to market your blog

Aside from posting to your blog you also need to market your blog. Article marketing is one of the most effective and cost free ways to market your blog or website.

Re-write some of the posts on your blog and turn it into an article. Submit these articles to ezine directories and ezine publishers so that they are distributed to a wide audience.

Writing articles build backlinks to your blog and also markets you as an expert in your niche. If you blog regularly then you can write articles. With these two chores done effectively, you’re almost guaranteed to get hundreds of targeted traffic to your blog daily.

Nevertheless, you must know how to write and market your articles. Don’t jump into this task without knowing how to do it properly. You’ll be wasting your time. Many people have given up on article marketing because it didn’t generate targeted visitors for them.

You can download the book Article Marketing Strategies by subscribing to the Traffic Beast newsletter at http://www.trafficbeast.com/newsletter

The ebook details step by step on how to write every part of your article and 10 strategies on how to market your articles to generate targeted traffic.

6. Other ways to market your blog

Whenever you have time, do something to market your blog. Here are some ideas:

- Have a signature mentioning your blog with every email you send

- Socialize in websites such as Digg, Twitter and Facebook. Tell people about what you’re doing.

- Post to forums and mention your blog in your signature

- Ask other blog owners if you can write a post for them as a guest. You’ll leverage their audience and they get free content from you. A win-win sitatuation.

I’ve done this with Sheryl Polkma from Black Spider Blog. See the quality of the guest post I’ve made at her blog with the post Typical Day of An Internet Marketer.

- Write a free report. This can be 10-15 pages from posts from your blog. Make it into a free report and let people pass it around. In the report mention your blog.

- Create a video and submit it to video sites. Tell people what your blog is about and the free report you’ve written. Put a watermark on the video with the URL of your blog so that people know where to find more information.

- Write a press release and submit it to places like:

http://www.webwire.com

http://www.prleap.com

http://www.newswire.com

This will bring targeted traffic to your blog and build valuable back links which will help you in the search engine rankings.

These techniques are discussed in more detail in the book Article Marketing Strategies which you can download from http://www.trafficbeast.com/newsletter

Monetizing Your Blog

Once your blog has traffic, you can begin to make money from it. Here are 3 of the best ways to make money online with your blog:

1. Sell advertisement. Tell people how much traffic you are receiving daily and sell them advertisement such as a banner or a text link.

2. In your blog posts, recommend affiliate products or your own products. Once you have regular readers reading your stuff, they’ll trust your recommendation more.

3. Offer to do reviews of websites on your blog. People will pay you do look at their website and write about it. It gives them free exposure on your blog and if your review is good, they’ve gained social proof.

Always make it clear that because they have paid you for the review, you won’t be biased. If it’s full of crap, then say it. It’s not worth pissing off your visitors for a few hundred bucks.

Summary

Before you shout “I cannot make money online with my blog”, do all of the above. You’re almost guaranteed success. However, blogging is not a quick, instant way to make money online. Hard work and consistency are essential ingredients to make money online with your blog..

Unfortunate things happen with your online business and you have to make the most out of it. Yesterday was a very busy day for me. My computer crashed. Arrrrghhhhh….

First thing which is I found fortunate was, I had backups. None of my data was missing. I mean NONE AT ALL. I think I’ll be crying if the stuff I had were gone.

Second thing which I find fortunate was I have a laptop. As soon as I know my computer crashed and I did some basic troubleshooting, I immediately rebuilt my PC.

For those of you that have gone through this process, it takes an average (for me anyway) 5 hours to get everything back to normal. This includes updating all the patches and Windows updates, all software programs and settings.

During this time of rebuild, you don’t need to spend the time attending your PC. Therefore, I multi-tasked. I got my laptop and started to write.

I wrote three articles which I’ve spell checked and ready to submit and also 4 blog posts which also spell checked, tagged, and ready to post ahead for the week.

Basically the downtime of my unfortunate incident was kept to a minimum.

I was damn pleased with myself and managed not to get too pissed about the PC crashing.

If you have time today, please make sure you have backed up all your data and have a plan for reinstalling your PC if needed.

I have a checklist which I go through in such disasters. It includes things like: run Windows update, install FireFox, install Roboform, restore Roboform data from D:\Backups, install openoffice.org etc… I’m so glad I had this disaster recovery plan. Remember, spending the time now will save you tons more in future.

At the start of this year, I’ve been pestered by people many times on whether I’ve used social marketing. My answer was no, because I couldn’t see the benefit and it was something fashionable that wasn’t for internet marketers.

It was only until Willie Crawford started to pester me on whether I was working on social news sites, bookmarking, squidoo etc… that I started to suspect I was being unfashionable. I did not keep up with the internet marketing fashion.

Then John Reese started to invite people on his Facebook and Twitter. That did it for me.

I found one of the best membership sites to join for social marketing. Jack Humphrey’s Authority Site Center. After going through the training in the members’ area for a month, including setting up my new blog, understanding what social marketing is, etc… (there’s bloody tons to learn) and then actually applying the techniques… I was starting to increase web traffic in just 2 days after using the techniques.

It was an eye-opener for me. Good job I have an open mind. My problem in this case was, I didn’t have time to learn about social marketing. But now after going full-time this year, I finally got my chance.

I’ll be updating my progress on using the Authority Site Center and hope you’ll see the benefit of joining the membership site as well. It’s the best membership site I have joined. Yes, please quote me with that last sentence.

Jump on social marketing now. It’s the internet marketing fashion that you should embrace. I remember Bjorn Borg used to be the king of tennis. That guy dominated all his components. Then he went downhill.

One of the major reasons mentioned by his critics was that he did not use the new bigger, better tennis rackets which gave every other player an advantage. He did not keep up with fashion.

Internet Marketing is a fashion as well. Keep up with it. Otherwise your business will be out of service and not out of date.

Fresh Email Lead services are companies that will provide you with emails that they have generated from their own websites or other websites

The list includes emails, first name and ip address of the person who signed up, and the date they signed up from.

You can purchase these [tag-tec]fresh email leads[/tag-tec] from companies that have signed up to receive more information on a certain niche. Of course, your web site or business will also have in the same niche.
Otherwise the people on the co-reg lists will unsubscribe from you straight away.

So how do you know what fresh email lead service to use?

Fresh Email Lead Service checklist:

1. The people who signed up for the co-reg list service should be double opted in.

2. The co-reg list should list reasonable rates for their lists.
eg. under 50 cents for double opted in subscribers

3. The email leads should be fresh. eg. under 24 hours or immediately if possible.

4. You need to test the quality of the email leads using tools such as Google Analytics or MyBlogLog tools.
See which co-reg list service provides you with the most responsive leads.

5. See which [tag-tec]co-reg list[/tag-tec] service has the least unsubscribes and use them again.

You need to test which fresh email lead service is more responsive for your niche. Don’t take anyone’s word for it. Test it for yourself.

Getting natural one-way links to your website is the single best way to improve your search engine rankings.  It can also get you a lot of traffic that comes through those links if they are posted on relevant webpages. 

The difficult part about acquiring these links, however, is the fact that many people are not simply willing to give them away.  That is, of course, unless you understand the secret to acquiring these one-way links naturally and without even asking.

Once you understand the principles behind this, you would be surprised at how quickly these links start to multiply.

The first thing that you’re going to have to do is to put something on your website that is worth linking to.  This is typically referred to as link fodder and is simply a method that requires you to post something on your website that would attract enough attention that people would be willing to share it with their own website’s visitors.

This link fodder can take several different forms and if you choose one that is appropriate for the theme of your website, it can be the magic bullet that will get you a ton of incoming links.

One of the most popular forms of link fodder is a controversial article.  This works well in many cases and if your website is themed properly, you should be able to write something of controversy fairly easily.  You can pick a news item or perhaps something that people are very passionate about that relates to your particular niche.

It won’t take long for people to pick up on the fact that you wrote something of interest and they will naturally want to invite other people to go see it, either because they agree or because they disagree.

Of course, controversy is not the only type of link fodder that works well.  It may be that your website lends itself more to a humorous type of fodder or perhaps one that is more of a serious nature.  The main thing that you need to do, however, is put something on your website that people will be interested in, interested enough to give you a link.

Once you figure out exactly how to do this, it almost becomes addicting and you’ll find yourself placing this fodder on your website again and again in order to acquire more links.

Ever wondered why copywriters get paid a lot? Every successful internet marketer pays a lot for a copywriter to write their salespages for their products. And they get paid in thousands of dollars.

It’s because words are powerful. If you know how to use them, you can affect them deeply. In many cases words affect us a lifetime, mentally.

I came across an excellent video that was recommended by Michel Fortin, a famous we copywriter. The post I am talking about is here http://www.michelfortin.com/the-lines-that-divide-us/

Watch the powerful video and pass it on to others. Save other people from being hurt.

Quite a few readers have commented that they treat the book Article Marketing Strategies like an encyclopedia when writing articles. This has made so proud. Article marketing has been my expertise for the past few years.

As most of you know, Willie Crawford, one of my mentors who taught me article marketing has even given me the mother of all testimonials for the book.  Read his feedback here…  http://www.williecrawford.com/blog/archives/001983.html

Well here are some more killer article marketing information to whet your appetite.

1. Here is one of my recent articles on how get ideas on what to write about.  This is one of the areas where people get stuck on and give up on article marketing.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Article-Marketing—Getting-A-Surge-Of-Ideas-On-To-Write-About&id=1093378

2.  One of my most respected blogger Yaro Starak, wrote an excellent piece on whether article marketing is worth your time.  This was written more than 2 years ago, but still killer stuff.

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/377/ariticle-marketing-ezinearticles-review/

3. Here is a famous post on how to create a resource box by Christopher Knight. Chris is from EzineArticles, the king of of all article directories. I think he’s pretty qualified to talk about article marketing.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Article-Marketing-101:-The-Perfect-Author-Resource-Box&id=17172

I have much, much more great resources however the the above 3 links should keep you busy for a while with article marketing.

To increase web traffic, is on the top priority list of most online marketers. After all traffic = money. The more traffic your web site is receiving means the more successful your online business is wrong. This is a myth.

The statement will turn quite a few heads with [tag-tec]internet marketers[/tag-tec]. After all, who the hell would disagree that traffic does not equal success?

Well read the following 5 reasons and then think about the statement again. You may run your online business differently.

Increase Web Traffic Is Useless

1. You have created your website and blog and are now concentrating on generating targeted traffic to it. Have you made sure that you have enough information on your site to make the visitor stick around and return looking for more information?

If not then your [tag-tec]increased web traffic[/tag-tec] is wasted.

2. You have created enough information for the visitors to stay around and find your site interesting. Have you got any social proof that you can be trusted? Do you have testimonials? Do you sound like an authority on your niche?

If not then your targeted traffic is wasted. No one will buy from you. They are just browsing. Maybe click on a few ads.

3. Do you have a leading product that you are giving away to build a list? An email list is crucial to make money online with your web site. With emails, you can ask the visitor to visit your site again and to recommend products.

If you don’t have an email capturing process implemented, why begin to increase web traffic?

4. Are you giving your visitors a chance to buy from your web site with the content they are reading? Are you recommending a particular product that they should be interested in?

You should concentrate on selling one product only on your site which will build a customer list for you. Always keep in mind the purpose of sending targeted visitors to your web site.

5. And finally, do you have a business model of how you will profit from the prospects visiting your web site. For example, are you selling a value for money product for a great discount, while you are making money from your backend sales?

Backend sales are products that your buyers will purchase that will give you the most profit. The lead selling product is to get them on your buyers’ list and to gain their trust.

There should be many opportunities for your buyers to buy more from you. This process should be implemented before you can concentrate on increasing targeted web traffic.

So When Does Increased Web Traffic Start?

You should start concentrating on generating as much web traffic as you possibly can, after the above 5 are implemented. At the beginning you can start using Adwords or other pay per clicks to generate traffic to test your sales process.

Once your sales process is refined and implemented, increase web traffic is no longer useless. It becomes the oxygen of the heart of your business.

How to improve Google ranking is sought by almost all online entrepreneurs. Any online business owner will know that ranking high in the mother of all search engines Google, will bring them an avalanche of traffic.

And if their products are good and sales messages are enticing, it translates to an insane number of sales for the online entrepreneur.

So how do you make sure you are ranked high in Google?

How You Can Improve Google Ranking

1. Create a blog. This is a necessity. Google loves blogs. Get your self a WordPress blog installed on your domain now. If you’re using cpanel for your webhost, use the Fantastico feature to easily install WordPress.

2. Search for keywords relevant to your niche. Use the free tools http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ and also https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Find the keywords using the tools and decide which ones you want to concentrate on. You must do [tag-tec]keyword research[/tag-tec] before you create content. The whole point of creating valuable content is to rank high on the search engines so that people can easily find you.

3. With your keywords, put them into your content. But make sure the content is readable and interesting when read by a human being.

4. Place your keywords in the beginning of your title, header and content, if possible. Again, do this if you can but make sure your content doesn’t sound strange. If you have lots of words in a page of content, put sub headings in them. Make sure that the subheadings contain your keyword phrases and are bolded. Google also takes note of these placements and it will help you in the search engine rankings.

5. Create lots of content. This includes posting to your blog every day. The [tag-tec]Google search engine[/tag-tec] will spider your blog daily if it finds that you have regular new content posted. The more content you have, the more chances of your website or blog being found.

You may be ranked for keywords that you have never thought of. So the more content you create the more you know about what keywords people are using to find your website.

6. Link to posts internally on your blog. For example, link to a post you did previously. This will help your website in getting spidered by Google not just to the main page but to other relevant pages of content as well.

7. Place anchor text when possible. For example Improve Google Ranking is an anchor text. It points to this post. This will tell Google that the keywords are related to that particular web page. Therefore Google will consider that page important for that keyword.

8. Get anchor text whenever you can and who ever you can. This will apply now and in the future. It is one of the most reliable ways to improve [tag-tec]Google ranking[/tag-tec].

9. The more people that link to your website with anchor text or any other normal link, Google will see that your web page is relevant. So get out and make friends with other online webmasters/entrepreneurs. Ask if they can link to your website with anchor text.

You should also give anchor text links to good websites that are related to your niche. Don’t worry about losing link juice or Google Pagerank by doing this. It doesn’t work like that. If your website has great content, surely it will have links to other great content websites as well. After all, the whole aim of search engines is to help the surfer find whatever relevant information he is looking for.

Additionally create articles and submit them to directories. When your articles are published, you’ll get a one-way anchor text to your website. For more information on writing and [tag-tec]marketing articles[/tag-tec], download a free copy of Article Marketing Strategies at http://www.trafficbeast.com/ebook

10. Keep on doing this throughout your online business life span.

Having links going to your website is important. Especially if it is from authority sites which Google favors. You also need to link to relevant websites in your niche. This is what a normal website should be like. There is no need to get links from websites which are unrelated to your niche.

Everyone knows that [tag-tec]Google’s search engine algorithms[/tag-tec] change regularly. So what works now will not work in future. However, this only applies to black hat techniques. If you search engine optimize your website properly, it will rarely get penalized by the Google search engine or with any search engines.

Search Engine Optimization Secret

To end this post, here is the secret of how to rank well in Google. This search engine god wants to bring up relevant search results for its users. This is why we won’t get results when searching in Google, that is totally unrelated.

So if you own Google, how would you know what website to place with certain keyword phrases and how can you judge which websites should be ranked first? Whenever you do something to your website which you think will help in search engine rankings, think about this. Don’t try and lie to Google or find a way round its system. It’s impossible. Play by the rules and you’ll kick butt.

Remember, all Google cares about is helping the people who use their search engine find all the great content they are looking for. So go out and help Google to achieve this.