Check out SeoDigger
SeoDigger is a nice tool that you can put a url into and it will show you not only what keywords that url ranks for organically but also the wordtracker positions and overture volume as well.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
The 5 dos and don'ts for measuring web 2.0
Akin Arkian
How do I measure?
- optimize web 2.0 applications (usability, conversion rates & engagement): maximize value of application/site
- Market insight (capture social intelligence): maximize value of products
- Relationship marketing (build actionable profile): maximize life-time customer value)
- Do think of measurement, don't think of page views
Goals?
- Drive traffic : attract more visitors, create viral buzz, encourage repeat visits (engagement: session length, comments, uploads, invitations)
- Drive revenue : convert visitors to buyers upsell and cross-sell (revenue, conversions, average order value, upgrades, market basket)
- Build brand : create customer relationships, get direct feedback from customers (repeat purchases, lifetime customer value)
When page views won't cut it
- tag relevant events with event tagging functionality
- choose the right event tagging lanuage for the job
* flash/flex app/movies
* AJAX, DHTML, your blog
* your blog postings on others' blogs
Measuring community, commerce, & engagement
- readers, creators, couch potatoes, critics (who has the best conversion rate?)
Do measure to learn about the market
- have people rate features, benefits, etc.
Do you measure individual customers
- funnel reports are huge
Don't ignore offline effects of online activity
- what is the flow-over
- what online messages/ideas increase flow?
- which search keywords/ads are the best at triggering offline conversions?
****display and retrieve customer codes, display unique 800 numbers
How do I measure?
- optimize web 2.0 applications (usability, conversion rates & engagement): maximize value of application/site
- Market insight (capture social intelligence): maximize value of products
- Relationship marketing (build actionable profile): maximize life-time customer value)
- Do think of measurement, don't think of page views
Goals?
- Drive traffic : attract more visitors, create viral buzz, encourage repeat visits (engagement: session length, comments, uploads, invitations)
- Drive revenue : convert visitors to buyers upsell and cross-sell (revenue, conversions, average order value, upgrades, market basket)
- Build brand : create customer relationships, get direct feedback from customers (repeat purchases, lifetime customer value)
When page views won't cut it
- tag relevant events with event tagging functionality
- choose the right event tagging lanuage for the job
* flash/flex app/movies
* AJAX, DHTML, your blog
* your blog postings on others' blogs
Measuring community, commerce, & engagement
- readers, creators, couch potatoes, critics (who has the best conversion rate?)
Do measure to learn about the market
- have people rate features, benefits, etc.
Do you measure individual customers
- funnel reports are huge
Don't ignore offline effects of online activity
- what is the flow-over
- what online messages/ideas increase flow?
- which search keywords/ads are the best at triggering offline conversions?
****display and retrieve customer codes, display unique 800 numbers
Social Media Marketing Do's and Don'ts
Social Media Marketing Do's and Don'ts
By Eric Enge
May 9, 2007
On Thursday of SES NY, I had the chance to sit in on the Social Media Optimization panel. I love these kinds of panels, because there is so much creativity in the speakers. And this panel was no exception. The speakers were:
* Rohit Bhargava, moderator, Ogilvy PR
* Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz
* Neil Patel, Advantage Consulting Services
* Andy Hagans, Andy Hagans Link Building
While search engine optimization (SEO) is often perceived as the equivalent of spam by many users on social media sites, those same sites can benefit from them. Besides that, SEOs are often among the early adopters of most social media sites, and they can help them reach critical mass and grow, according to Fishkin.
To get along well with those groups, it's important for an SEO to not act like an SEO, he said. Patel elaborated on this with a list of things not to do on social media sites:
1. Don't Self promote. Get a fried to submit a story for you, if it's on your own site.
2. Don't add biased information
3. Don't buy Votes. It may work once or twice, but it will come back to haunt you eventually. Remember, your reputation is all you have in these communities.
4. Don't break community rules.
5. Don't spam the sites with irrelevant content
Instead, Patel suggested several things that an SEO should do to participate in social media:
1. Actively use the "friend" mechanism, and friend everyone in sight. If they don't friend you back, dump them, and then try someone else. Be careful how you do this though, so you don't get a bad reputation in the community.
2. Participate in the community. Build a reputation as a contributor
3. Write great titles and descriptions. Life and death, this one. Most Diggs occur based on the title and description alone, and many people don't actually look at the article at all. Patel provided an anecdote about a post that he has that made the front page of Digg, at a time when his server was down for reasons other than the "Digg Effect," and the article was not even available to read.
4. Link out generously (some of these people will link back, and get yet other people to link to you too.
5. Become a top user. It takes a bit of effort, but there is a big payoff.
6. Submit you articles at the right time. Patel usually shoots for mid-day on weekdays.
The benefits of marketing with social media are numerous. First off, there's the traffic, but that's not even a primary benefit. In a linkbaiting case study for Network Security Journal, a tech-heavy publication, Hagans noted that his efforts to get links on social networking sites like Digg drove more than 40,000 visitors to the publication's site. However, most of that traffic was useless, as the users were not in the right demographic group that would click on the site's ads, or subscribe to the publication.
The real benefit of the effort was the 3244 back links the client's site added, including several trusted links from authority sites like OReilly.com, LifeHacker.com, and LinixSecurity.com.
Hagans starts a linkbait campaign by focusing on the title and description. As Patel said, those elements can make or break a campaign, since that may be all that many users ever look at. Hagans suggests looking at the "original linkbaiters" for headline inspiration: women's magazines like Cosmo that try to draw readers in with short, interesting titles on the cover. In this case, Hagans used "The fight against phishing: 44 ways to protect yourself."
After the headline and description are done, the next step is to write the article, making sure to fulfill any promises made in the title or description. It also needs to be focused, he said, and it needs to look "pretty," meaning well formatted, easy to read, and professional-looking. It's also helpful to link out generously within the article, so that the referenced bloggers will have a vested interest in driving more traffic to your article, he said.
The top five sites Hagans uses are Digg, Netscape, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Del.icio.us. If he wants to add more sites, he'll consider Yahoo MyWeb and Furl. Besides the social media sites, Hagans suggests sending an e-mail to top blogs in the industry you're in, letting them know you've posted some content they may be interested in.
The additional exposure on those sites can bring in more readers who frequent social media sites, who may then vote for the article on those sites. In addition, many of the visitors will be journalists or bloggers, who may also write about the article and link to it from their own sites.
The return on these efforts can be hard to measure, but there are some tangible benefits that can be pointed to. For instance, the increased traffic from these efforts could be compared to a comparable level of traffic from paid search, SEO, or even e-mail marketing, and compared to the costs of those efforts. For a more formal test, Bhargava suggests setting up separate landing pages for a paid search and social media/linkbait effort and comparing the results.
Fishkin also pointed out that there are less tangible benefits around establishing yourself or your site as an authority on a topic. He once wrote a post about "21 Tactics for Blogging," which was highly ranked on Digg. The exposure from that article led to a speaking engagement on blogging at Stanford University, which in turn led to a magazine article. For the effort it took to create and market that article, the ROI was through the roof, he said.
By Eric Enge
May 9, 2007
On Thursday of SES NY, I had the chance to sit in on the Social Media Optimization panel. I love these kinds of panels, because there is so much creativity in the speakers. And this panel was no exception. The speakers were:
* Rohit Bhargava, moderator, Ogilvy PR
* Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz
* Neil Patel, Advantage Consulting Services
* Andy Hagans, Andy Hagans Link Building
While search engine optimization (SEO) is often perceived as the equivalent of spam by many users on social media sites, those same sites can benefit from them. Besides that, SEOs are often among the early adopters of most social media sites, and they can help them reach critical mass and grow, according to Fishkin.
To get along well with those groups, it's important for an SEO to not act like an SEO, he said. Patel elaborated on this with a list of things not to do on social media sites:
1. Don't Self promote. Get a fried to submit a story for you, if it's on your own site.
2. Don't add biased information
3. Don't buy Votes. It may work once or twice, but it will come back to haunt you eventually. Remember, your reputation is all you have in these communities.
4. Don't break community rules.
5. Don't spam the sites with irrelevant content
Instead, Patel suggested several things that an SEO should do to participate in social media:
1. Actively use the "friend" mechanism, and friend everyone in sight. If they don't friend you back, dump them, and then try someone else. Be careful how you do this though, so you don't get a bad reputation in the community.
2. Participate in the community. Build a reputation as a contributor
3. Write great titles and descriptions. Life and death, this one. Most Diggs occur based on the title and description alone, and many people don't actually look at the article at all. Patel provided an anecdote about a post that he has that made the front page of Digg, at a time when his server was down for reasons other than the "Digg Effect," and the article was not even available to read.
4. Link out generously (some of these people will link back, and get yet other people to link to you too.
5. Become a top user. It takes a bit of effort, but there is a big payoff.
6. Submit you articles at the right time. Patel usually shoots for mid-day on weekdays.
The benefits of marketing with social media are numerous. First off, there's the traffic, but that's not even a primary benefit. In a linkbaiting case study for Network Security Journal, a tech-heavy publication, Hagans noted that his efforts to get links on social networking sites like Digg drove more than 40,000 visitors to the publication's site. However, most of that traffic was useless, as the users were not in the right demographic group that would click on the site's ads, or subscribe to the publication.
The real benefit of the effort was the 3244 back links the client's site added, including several trusted links from authority sites like OReilly.com, LifeHacker.com, and LinixSecurity.com.
Hagans starts a linkbait campaign by focusing on the title and description. As Patel said, those elements can make or break a campaign, since that may be all that many users ever look at. Hagans suggests looking at the "original linkbaiters" for headline inspiration: women's magazines like Cosmo that try to draw readers in with short, interesting titles on the cover. In this case, Hagans used "The fight against phishing: 44 ways to protect yourself."
After the headline and description are done, the next step is to write the article, making sure to fulfill any promises made in the title or description. It also needs to be focused, he said, and it needs to look "pretty," meaning well formatted, easy to read, and professional-looking. It's also helpful to link out generously within the article, so that the referenced bloggers will have a vested interest in driving more traffic to your article, he said.
The top five sites Hagans uses are Digg, Netscape, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Del.icio.us. If he wants to add more sites, he'll consider Yahoo MyWeb and Furl. Besides the social media sites, Hagans suggests sending an e-mail to top blogs in the industry you're in, letting them know you've posted some content they may be interested in.
The additional exposure on those sites can bring in more readers who frequent social media sites, who may then vote for the article on those sites. In addition, many of the visitors will be journalists or bloggers, who may also write about the article and link to it from their own sites.
The return on these efforts can be hard to measure, but there are some tangible benefits that can be pointed to. For instance, the increased traffic from these efforts could be compared to a comparable level of traffic from paid search, SEO, or even e-mail marketing, and compared to the costs of those efforts. For a more formal test, Bhargava suggests setting up separate landing pages for a paid search and social media/linkbait effort and comparing the results.
Fishkin also pointed out that there are less tangible benefits around establishing yourself or your site as an authority on a topic. He once wrote a post about "21 Tactics for Blogging," which was highly ranked on Digg. The exposure from that article led to a speaking engagement on blogging at Stanford University, which in turn led to a magazine article. For the effort it took to create and market that article, the ROI was through the roof, he said.
Social Networking Ad Spending
Recent report from eMarketer notes the importance of social networks online, estimating their marketing to reach $2.5 billion between 2007 and 2011 in the U.S., a 180% increase from this year.
Key hubs for online social networks as pointed out by eMarketer are MySpace and Facebook, as they have a broad reach to their demographics and have had an impact on advertising, for both online and offline. eMarketer highlights the concept of “one-to-many” marketing tactics and their ability to provide real results. They note MySpace’s sponsored marketing study as a start for addressing mass marketing on this level. With eMarketer naming MySpace and Facebook dominating the market share for online ad spending for social networks, accounting for 72% of ad spending in 2007, are these giants becoming too much like the traditional media companies that focus attention to the head of the long tail?
In culmination, eMarketer has increased its estimate of US ad spending on social networks to $900 million in 2007, based on increased revenue projections for Facebook, as well as additional spending on niche and marketer-sponsored social networks. These niche markets are important to look at, as they represent many of the new entrants into the social networking industry. Sponsored social networks will no doubt become some sort of marketing standard for awhile, as long as they’re executed correctly.
Also included in this report: exploring what’s happening with social networks on an international scale, what does and doesn’t work with social network marketing, and how video and mobile fit into the space.
Key hubs for online social networks as pointed out by eMarketer are MySpace and Facebook, as they have a broad reach to their demographics and have had an impact on advertising, for both online and offline. eMarketer highlights the concept of “one-to-many” marketing tactics and their ability to provide real results. They note MySpace’s sponsored marketing study as a start for addressing mass marketing on this level. With eMarketer naming MySpace and Facebook dominating the market share for online ad spending for social networks, accounting for 72% of ad spending in 2007, are these giants becoming too much like the traditional media companies that focus attention to the head of the long tail?
In culmination, eMarketer has increased its estimate of US ad spending on social networks to $900 million in 2007, based on increased revenue projections for Facebook, as well as additional spending on niche and marketer-sponsored social networks. These niche markets are important to look at, as they represent many of the new entrants into the social networking industry. Sponsored social networks will no doubt become some sort of marketing standard for awhile, as long as they’re executed correctly.
Also included in this report: exploring what’s happening with social networks on an international scale, what does and doesn’t work with social network marketing, and how video and mobile fit into the space.
How do readers find blogs?
I receive about 4,000 page views and about 1,000 unique visitors per month on my blog. Where are these people finding me?
There are a number of ways for promoting your blog:
1) I have done some search engine optimization to my blog by adding appropriate page titles, meta tags and descriptions and I have submitted the blog to the major search engines and directories.
2) My blog URL is in the signature line of all of my emails
3) I have done link building by contacting other bloggers and encouraging them to link to my blog and I link back to them.
4) I have submitted my blog to a number of blog aggregators
5) I think Viral Marketing has probably been the biggest contributor to building the audience to my blog. If someone reads it and they like the content, then they will forward the URL to somebody else and this goes on and on.
There are a number of ways for promoting your blog:
1) I have done some search engine optimization to my blog by adding appropriate page titles, meta tags and descriptions and I have submitted the blog to the major search engines and directories.
2) My blog URL is in the signature line of all of my emails
3) I have done link building by contacting other bloggers and encouraging them to link to my blog and I link back to them.
4) I have submitted my blog to a number of blog aggregators
5) I think Viral Marketing has probably been the biggest contributor to building the audience to my blog. If someone reads it and they like the content, then they will forward the URL to somebody else and this goes on and on.
Are You Investing In Long Term Marketing?
from Duct Tape Marketing
I know that you need the quick fix, you want result now, you need the hot new thing.
Ask yourself this question - how long do you plan to be in business? If it's more than a year, then I suggest that while you get out there and make the phone ring today, you also need to start planting seeds for your long-term growth by investing in foundational marketing practices that may take time to bare fruit, but ultimately produce the greatest returns.
These seeds are content, connection, and community.
Content is a blog, articles, information products, white papers, how to guides, workshops and podcasts.
Connection is a way for prospects and clients to have a deeper level of experience with your firm. This may come from audio, video, your personal story, or an investment in sales training.
Community can play out by bringing clients together for lunch, making your boardroom available to local non-profit groups, offering active online forums, holding training events, and creating formal referral networks.
Some of the activities above overlap the 3Cs and may require an investment long before any actual payoff is returned. They all require a long-term commitment to produce results.
The trick is to balance what needs to be done today with the investment it take to build up your retirement account of marketing momentum.
I know that you need the quick fix, you want result now, you need the hot new thing.
Ask yourself this question - how long do you plan to be in business? If it's more than a year, then I suggest that while you get out there and make the phone ring today, you also need to start planting seeds for your long-term growth by investing in foundational marketing practices that may take time to bare fruit, but ultimately produce the greatest returns.
These seeds are content, connection, and community.
Content is a blog, articles, information products, white papers, how to guides, workshops and podcasts.
Connection is a way for prospects and clients to have a deeper level of experience with your firm. This may come from audio, video, your personal story, or an investment in sales training.
Community can play out by bringing clients together for lunch, making your boardroom available to local non-profit groups, offering active online forums, holding training events, and creating formal referral networks.
Some of the activities above overlap the 3Cs and may require an investment long before any actual payoff is returned. They all require a long-term commitment to produce results.
The trick is to balance what needs to be done today with the investment it take to build up your retirement account of marketing momentum.
101 Essential Blogging Resources
From Blogtrepreneur.com
With the amount of tools and programs cropping up all over the web for every type of person imagineable, its about time that someone wrote a massive list of resources for bloggers. Fortunately, I’ve taken up that responsibility to share with you some of the tools I use in my daily blogging life. Please note that by no means is this a definitive list, so please let me know if you think I’ve missed any out!
Domain Registrars
If you’re starting up on the web, then you’re gonna need an address where people can reach you:
1. Namecheap - $8.88 per year with free WhoisGuard
2. GoDaddy - $8.95 per year (and lower)
3. 1&1 - $5.99 per year with free private domain registration
4. MyDomain - $8.25 per year
Hosting
Once you’ve got yourself an address, you’re gonna need a house to store all of your juicy blog posts - so grab yourself some server space:
1. Dreamhost - Great plans, great prices with loads of bandwidth and diskspace.
2. Frozen Webhost - Small company but only $5/month and very reliable.
3. Media Temple - Awesome recommendations, grid and dedicated hosting.
4. Rackspace - Managed, dedicated and scalable web hosting for businesses
5. Hostgator - Shared hosting at $6.95 per month
Content Management Systems
These babies are the core of your blog, so choose carefully. Take pricing, customisation and aesthetics into account for this one:
1. Wordpress - The industry standard and most widely used - and its FREE!
2. Blogger - quick blog creation, but FTP can be slow and you don’t have full control
3. Typepad - another blogging platform, but pricing from $4.95/month
4. Joomla - CMS and Web Application Framework and free
Communication
If you want to be a proper blogger, you’ve gotta communicate with your fans. Instant Messaging and Email are the quickest and easiest ways to do so:
1. Gmail - Free web-based email service that includes over 2 GB of storage (and growing)
2. Hotmail - Free web-based e-mail with 2GB e-mail storage
3. Yahoo Mail - Free web-based email with unlimited mail storage
4. Outlook - Email manager which can be used with MS Exchange Server for shared mailboxes
5. Windows Live Messenger - Instant messaging program, talk to Yahoo contacts as well!
6. AIM - AOL Instant Messenger, free online chat service
7. Gtalk - Instant communication in conjunction with Gmail
8. Yahoo Messenger - Free instant messaging with file sharing
9. Basecamp - Project collaboration, management and task software
10. Campfire - Real-time group chat for businesses
11. GoToMeeting - Web conferencing and online meetings service
12. Thunderbird - Open source cross platform email from Mozilla
Research
To be the best, you’ve got to overcome the rest, so find out what your competitors are doing, and beat their blogs at their own game:
1. Whois - Domain and registration name lookup
2. Overture - Keyword selector and traffic analysis tool
3. Google Bid Analysis - Keyword Bid Tool in conjunction with Adwords
4. Wordze - Keyword research tool from $35/month
5. Firefox Search Status Extension - see how any and every website is performing
6. SEO for Firefox - Useful research and data, with loads of other tools
Customization
Standing out from the crowd is very important in this growing blogosphere. Take a look at these tools to help you and your blog look fine:
1. Wordpress Themes - Collection of free Wordpress themes with graphical and textual preview
2. Template Monster - Premium Wordpress themes from $50
3. Dreamweaver - Web development and streamlined coding environment
4. Adobe Photoshop CS3 - Image editing software from $649
5. iStockPhoto - Royalty free images
6. FlashDen - Buy stock flash, video, audio and fonts for as little as 50 cents
7. FamFamFam - Sets of icons available for use free of charge
8. Adobe Illustrator - Leading vector-graphics software
9. Filezilla - Fast and reliable FTP client
10. Cyberduck - Secure FTP for MAC OS X
12. psd2html - Online conversion service - does what it says on the tin!
Statistics
Track your blog’s every move with these statistics packages so you know what you’re doing right and what you should be spending some more time on:
1. AWStats - Free log analyser, normally already in your Hosting Cpanel
2. Statcounter - Free yet reliable web tracker and hit counter
3. Sitemeter - Free basic counter and site statistics tracker
4. Google Analytics - Trendy interface with detailed site statistics, integratable with Adwords campaigns
5. Feedburner - Manage and track RSS Feed Readership
6. Mint - Extensible website analytics program, all on 1 page!
7. 103Bees - Search engine traffic analysis and statistics tool
8. pMetrics - The new Performancing Metrics with detailed visitor information and clean interface
Creating Posts
Your articles are the things that will matter the most above all else. So take the time to spell-check and to make sure that they look presentable:
1. ScribeFire - full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser
2. Spellbound Spell Checker - Firefox extension that enables spell-checking
3. Microsoft Word - Industry standard word processor
4. Adobe Reader - PDF file reader
5. SlimTimer - Time tracking
6. Ta-Da Lists - Simple list making and tracking
Ranking
When it comes down to the crunch, you’ve gotta be the best. So find out if you are with the following ranking tools:
1. Technorati - The Internet Search Engine for blogs, provides popularity and authority ranks
2. BlogTopSites - Directory of the Best Blog sites
3. Alexa - Traffic rankings and graphs (sometimes can be inaccurate)
4. Live PageRank - Displays current Pagerank Value in Google index
Feedreaders
In order to build a solid readership, you’re gonna have to do some reading yourself. Using a feedreader can cut down on the time you spend going from site to site, and you can have one place where all the latest articles will appear:
1. Google Reader/Homepage - Web-based RSS and News Aggregator
2. Bloglines - A web-based personal news aggregator that can be used in place of a desktop client
3. Newsgator - Free online RSS reader
4. NetNewsWire - Award winning RSS Reader for MAC
5. Socialist - Social bookmark manager that works with del.icio.us and RSS feeds
6. FeedDemon - RSS Reader for Windows Desktop
7. NetVibes - Personal news aggregator with RSS and Atom support
Social Media
Using social networking can help market your site to a big audience which is essential for your blog’s growth. Spend some time networking yourself and submit your best articles to find more readers:
1. Digg - Stories and submitted and voted to the front page by the community
2. Del.icio.us - A social bookmarks manager. Using bookmarklets, you can add bookmarks to your list and categorize them
3. StumbleUpon - Channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar, can be a huge source of traffic
4. Reddit - User-generated news links. Votes promote stories to the front page
5. MyBlogLog - Free site stats, and a cool widget to find out who’s been visiting your site
6. LinkedIn - Online network of 11 million experienced professionals (including bloggers)
7. Facebook - One of the fastest growing social networking sites on the net
8. Myspace - Free social networking which has blogging capabilities and ability to attract a lot of friends!
9. Squidoo - Set up your own lense (sub-site) and spread the word about your blog
Monetization and Advertising
Whether you want to or don’t, blogs can be a fantastic way to make a bit of dosh, so check out the following ways you can earn yourself some cash online:
1. Google Adsense and Adwords - Contextual advertising solution and make money through Pay-Per-Clicking
2. Adbrite - Webmasters can buy and sell text ads based on their site’s topic area
3. Yahoo Publishers Network - Contextual advertising with PPC online revenue stream
4. Text Link Ads - Sell static HTML links on your blog sidebar and post for $$/month
5. Kontera - In-Text Advertising on Cost-Per-Click basis
6. Chitika - CPC Revenue due to displaying of related products
7. BlogAds - Image and Text Ads for set prices per month
8. Amazon Associates - Link to Amazon products and earn a commission from 10% per product
9. Commission Junction - An online advertising and internet marketing company that specializes in performance-based affiliate programs
10. ReviewMe - Review products/websites and receive a flat-fee. Reviews must be nonbiased and stated as sponsored
11. Feedvertising - Sell links in your RSS Feed for set price per month
Blogs and Forums
These blogs are forums are must-reads for every aspiring blogger, so take some time to browse through the archives and read some threads to make sure that you’ve got all the knowledge about your field and your blog:
1. Problogger - the No.1 site about blogging
2. Daily Blog Tips - Focusing on blog promotion, monetization and optimization
3. Blog Herald - Premium source of blog and blogging related news for bloggers
4. John Chow - This guy makes a lot of money through his blog online. Articles especially on monetization
5. Digital Point - Sub-forum related to blogging with other areas on SEO and Optimization
6. Namepros - Buy, sell and discuss domain names
7. Sitepoint - Web design tutorials and a buzzing community and marketplace
8. Earners Forum - Full of online earners and blogging money makers
9. DoshDosh - A blog about making money online through affiliate marketing and advertising and social media
Miscellaneous
And finally, here’s all the other tools that wouldn’t in any of the above categories:
1. Paypal - The best way to send and receive money online
2. Nochex - UK Based online payment company
3. Escrow - Third party which protects buyer and seller in larger transactions (blog sales?!)
4. WorldPay - Offers a range of e-payment and e-commerce solutions
5. CreativeCommons - You need to protect your articles!
6. Ezine Articles - Article submission website for PR and authority
7. ArticlePR - Article submission tools
8. PRWeb - Press Release Distribution for small business
9. Six Figure Blogging - Blogging course made by Problogger Darren Rowse himself and Andy Wibbels
10. SEO Book - Aaron Wall’s famous Search Engine Optimization book
11. Blog Mastermind - Yaro Starak’s blog mentoring program
With the amount of tools and programs cropping up all over the web for every type of person imagineable, its about time that someone wrote a massive list of resources for bloggers. Fortunately, I’ve taken up that responsibility to share with you some of the tools I use in my daily blogging life. Please note that by no means is this a definitive list, so please let me know if you think I’ve missed any out!
Domain Registrars
If you’re starting up on the web, then you’re gonna need an address where people can reach you:
1. Namecheap - $8.88 per year with free WhoisGuard
2. GoDaddy - $8.95 per year (and lower)
3. 1&1 - $5.99 per year with free private domain registration
4. MyDomain - $8.25 per year
Hosting
Once you’ve got yourself an address, you’re gonna need a house to store all of your juicy blog posts - so grab yourself some server space:
1. Dreamhost - Great plans, great prices with loads of bandwidth and diskspace.
2. Frozen Webhost - Small company but only $5/month and very reliable.
3. Media Temple - Awesome recommendations, grid and dedicated hosting.
4. Rackspace - Managed, dedicated and scalable web hosting for businesses
5. Hostgator - Shared hosting at $6.95 per month
Content Management Systems
These babies are the core of your blog, so choose carefully. Take pricing, customisation and aesthetics into account for this one:
1. Wordpress - The industry standard and most widely used - and its FREE!
2. Blogger - quick blog creation, but FTP can be slow and you don’t have full control
3. Typepad - another blogging platform, but pricing from $4.95/month
4. Joomla - CMS and Web Application Framework and free
Communication
If you want to be a proper blogger, you’ve gotta communicate with your fans. Instant Messaging and Email are the quickest and easiest ways to do so:
1. Gmail - Free web-based email service that includes over 2 GB of storage (and growing)
2. Hotmail - Free web-based e-mail with 2GB e-mail storage
3. Yahoo Mail - Free web-based email with unlimited mail storage
4. Outlook - Email manager which can be used with MS Exchange Server for shared mailboxes
5. Windows Live Messenger - Instant messaging program, talk to Yahoo contacts as well!
6. AIM - AOL Instant Messenger, free online chat service
7. Gtalk - Instant communication in conjunction with Gmail
8. Yahoo Messenger - Free instant messaging with file sharing
9. Basecamp - Project collaboration, management and task software
10. Campfire - Real-time group chat for businesses
11. GoToMeeting - Web conferencing and online meetings service
12. Thunderbird - Open source cross platform email from Mozilla
Research
To be the best, you’ve got to overcome the rest, so find out what your competitors are doing, and beat their blogs at their own game:
1. Whois - Domain and registration name lookup
2. Overture - Keyword selector and traffic analysis tool
3. Google Bid Analysis - Keyword Bid Tool in conjunction with Adwords
4. Wordze - Keyword research tool from $35/month
5. Firefox Search Status Extension - see how any and every website is performing
6. SEO for Firefox - Useful research and data, with loads of other tools
Customization
Standing out from the crowd is very important in this growing blogosphere. Take a look at these tools to help you and your blog look fine:
1. Wordpress Themes - Collection of free Wordpress themes with graphical and textual preview
2. Template Monster - Premium Wordpress themes from $50
3. Dreamweaver - Web development and streamlined coding environment
4. Adobe Photoshop CS3 - Image editing software from $649
5. iStockPhoto - Royalty free images
6. FlashDen - Buy stock flash, video, audio and fonts for as little as 50 cents
7. FamFamFam - Sets of icons available for use free of charge
8. Adobe Illustrator - Leading vector-graphics software
9. Filezilla - Fast and reliable FTP client
10. Cyberduck - Secure FTP for MAC OS X
12. psd2html - Online conversion service - does what it says on the tin!
Statistics
Track your blog’s every move with these statistics packages so you know what you’re doing right and what you should be spending some more time on:
1. AWStats - Free log analyser, normally already in your Hosting Cpanel
2. Statcounter - Free yet reliable web tracker and hit counter
3. Sitemeter - Free basic counter and site statistics tracker
4. Google Analytics - Trendy interface with detailed site statistics, integratable with Adwords campaigns
5. Feedburner - Manage and track RSS Feed Readership
6. Mint - Extensible website analytics program, all on 1 page!
7. 103Bees - Search engine traffic analysis and statistics tool
8. pMetrics - The new Performancing Metrics with detailed visitor information and clean interface
Creating Posts
Your articles are the things that will matter the most above all else. So take the time to spell-check and to make sure that they look presentable:
1. ScribeFire - full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser
2. Spellbound Spell Checker - Firefox extension that enables spell-checking
3. Microsoft Word - Industry standard word processor
4. Adobe Reader - PDF file reader
5. SlimTimer - Time tracking
6. Ta-Da Lists - Simple list making and tracking
Ranking
When it comes down to the crunch, you’ve gotta be the best. So find out if you are with the following ranking tools:
1. Technorati - The Internet Search Engine for blogs, provides popularity and authority ranks
2. BlogTopSites - Directory of the Best Blog sites
3. Alexa - Traffic rankings and graphs (sometimes can be inaccurate)
4. Live PageRank - Displays current Pagerank Value in Google index
Feedreaders
In order to build a solid readership, you’re gonna have to do some reading yourself. Using a feedreader can cut down on the time you spend going from site to site, and you can have one place where all the latest articles will appear:
1. Google Reader/Homepage - Web-based RSS and News Aggregator
2. Bloglines - A web-based personal news aggregator that can be used in place of a desktop client
3. Newsgator - Free online RSS reader
4. NetNewsWire - Award winning RSS Reader for MAC
5. Socialist - Social bookmark manager that works with del.icio.us and RSS feeds
6. FeedDemon - RSS Reader for Windows Desktop
7. NetVibes - Personal news aggregator with RSS and Atom support
Social Media
Using social networking can help market your site to a big audience which is essential for your blog’s growth. Spend some time networking yourself and submit your best articles to find more readers:
1. Digg - Stories and submitted and voted to the front page by the community
2. Del.icio.us - A social bookmarks manager. Using bookmarklets, you can add bookmarks to your list and categorize them
3. StumbleUpon - Channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar, can be a huge source of traffic
4. Reddit - User-generated news links. Votes promote stories to the front page
5. MyBlogLog - Free site stats, and a cool widget to find out who’s been visiting your site
6. LinkedIn - Online network of 11 million experienced professionals (including bloggers)
7. Facebook - One of the fastest growing social networking sites on the net
8. Myspace - Free social networking which has blogging capabilities and ability to attract a lot of friends!
9. Squidoo - Set up your own lense (sub-site) and spread the word about your blog
Monetization and Advertising
Whether you want to or don’t, blogs can be a fantastic way to make a bit of dosh, so check out the following ways you can earn yourself some cash online:
1. Google Adsense and Adwords - Contextual advertising solution and make money through Pay-Per-Clicking
2. Adbrite - Webmasters can buy and sell text ads based on their site’s topic area
3. Yahoo Publishers Network - Contextual advertising with PPC online revenue stream
4. Text Link Ads - Sell static HTML links on your blog sidebar and post for $$/month
5. Kontera - In-Text Advertising on Cost-Per-Click basis
6. Chitika - CPC Revenue due to displaying of related products
7. BlogAds - Image and Text Ads for set prices per month
8. Amazon Associates - Link to Amazon products and earn a commission from 10% per product
9. Commission Junction - An online advertising and internet marketing company that specializes in performance-based affiliate programs
10. ReviewMe - Review products/websites and receive a flat-fee. Reviews must be nonbiased and stated as sponsored
11. Feedvertising - Sell links in your RSS Feed for set price per month
Blogs and Forums
These blogs are forums are must-reads for every aspiring blogger, so take some time to browse through the archives and read some threads to make sure that you’ve got all the knowledge about your field and your blog:
1. Problogger - the No.1 site about blogging
2. Daily Blog Tips - Focusing on blog promotion, monetization and optimization
3. Blog Herald - Premium source of blog and blogging related news for bloggers
4. John Chow - This guy makes a lot of money through his blog online. Articles especially on monetization
5. Digital Point - Sub-forum related to blogging with other areas on SEO and Optimization
6. Namepros - Buy, sell and discuss domain names
7. Sitepoint - Web design tutorials and a buzzing community and marketplace
8. Earners Forum - Full of online earners and blogging money makers
9. DoshDosh - A blog about making money online through affiliate marketing and advertising and social media
Miscellaneous
And finally, here’s all the other tools that wouldn’t in any of the above categories:
1. Paypal - The best way to send and receive money online
2. Nochex - UK Based online payment company
3. Escrow - Third party which protects buyer and seller in larger transactions (blog sales?!)
4. WorldPay - Offers a range of e-payment and e-commerce solutions
5. CreativeCommons - You need to protect your articles!
6. Ezine Articles - Article submission website for PR and authority
7. ArticlePR - Article submission tools
8. PRWeb - Press Release Distribution for small business
9. Six Figure Blogging - Blogging course made by Problogger Darren Rowse himself and Andy Wibbels
10. SEO Book - Aaron Wall’s famous Search Engine Optimization book
11. Blog Mastermind - Yaro Starak’s blog mentoring program
Defining Social Media
I pulled this from Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 BlogI saw him speak at the Web 2.0 conference and he really get's it.
1. Communication in the form of conversation, not monologue. This implies that social media must facilitate two-way discussion, discourse, and debate with little or no moderation or censorship. In other words, the increasingly ubiquitious comments section of your local blog or media sharing site is NOT optional and must be open to everyone.
2. Participants in social media are people, not organizations. Third-person voice is discouraged and the source of ideas and participation is clearly identified and associated with the individuals that contributed them. Anonymity is also discouraged but permissible in some very limited situations.
3. Honesty and transparency are core values. Spin and attempting to control, manipulate, or even spam the conversation are thoroughly discouraged. Social media is an often painfully candid forum and traditional organizations -- which aren't part of the conversation other than through their people -- will often have a hard time adjusting to this.
4. It's all about pull, not push. Like John Hagel and John Seely Brown observed in the McKinsey Quarterly a year ago or so, push-based systems, of which one-way marketing and advertising and command-and-control management are typical examples are nowhere near as efficient as pull systems. Pull systems let people bring to them the content and relationships that they want, instead of having it forced upon them by an external entity. Far from being a management theory, much of what we see in Web 2.0 shows the power of pull-based systems with extremely large audiences. As you shape a social media community, understanding how to make embrace pull instead of push is one of the core techniques. In social media, people are in control of their conversations, not the pushers.
5. Distribution instead of centralization. One often overlooked aspect of social media is the fact that the interlocutors are so many and varied. Gone are the biases that inevitably creep into information when only a few organizations control the creation and distribution of information. Social media is highly distributed and made up of tens of millions of voices making it far more textured, rich, and heterogeneous than old media could ever be (or want to be). Encouraging conversations on the vast edges of our networks, rather than in the middle, is what this point is all about.
1. Communication in the form of conversation, not monologue. This implies that social media must facilitate two-way discussion, discourse, and debate with little or no moderation or censorship. In other words, the increasingly ubiquitious comments section of your local blog or media sharing site is NOT optional and must be open to everyone.
2. Participants in social media are people, not organizations. Third-person voice is discouraged and the source of ideas and participation is clearly identified and associated with the individuals that contributed them. Anonymity is also discouraged but permissible in some very limited situations.
3. Honesty and transparency are core values. Spin and attempting to control, manipulate, or even spam the conversation are thoroughly discouraged. Social media is an often painfully candid forum and traditional organizations -- which aren't part of the conversation other than through their people -- will often have a hard time adjusting to this.
4. It's all about pull, not push. Like John Hagel and John Seely Brown observed in the McKinsey Quarterly a year ago or so, push-based systems, of which one-way marketing and advertising and command-and-control management are typical examples are nowhere near as efficient as pull systems. Pull systems let people bring to them the content and relationships that they want, instead of having it forced upon them by an external entity. Far from being a management theory, much of what we see in Web 2.0 shows the power of pull-based systems with extremely large audiences. As you shape a social media community, understanding how to make embrace pull instead of push is one of the core techniques. In social media, people are in control of their conversations, not the pushers.
5. Distribution instead of centralization. One often overlooked aspect of social media is the fact that the interlocutors are so many and varied. Gone are the biases that inevitably creep into information when only a few organizations control the creation and distribution of information. Social media is highly distributed and made up of tens of millions of voices making it far more textured, rich, and heterogeneous than old media could ever be (or want to be). Encouraging conversations on the vast edges of our networks, rather than in the middle, is what this point is all about.
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