Working on your own schedule means setting your own schedule and — if you want to get anything done — actually sticking to it. For bloggers, your own worst enemy is often you. Here are some pointers to being more productive doing what you love.

Resist the Siren Call of Social Media

Social media is an amazing tool to promote your blog and network with others. It’s also an astoundingly powerful distraction, so much so that some medical professionals have chronicled cases of social media addiction.

Take some time before you sit down to write to run through your e-mail, Twitter feed, and Facebook wall, but when it’s time to write, write. Log out of your social media accounts and don’t log back on until you’re done. Don’t worry, you probably won’t miss much.

You Won’t Have Stats if You’re Always Checking Them

Somewhere inside every blogger is a narcissist. You have something to say and you want to know who’s listening. It’s appropriate and professional to check your stats and monitor your progress — sometimes — but when it becomes an obsession, it becomes a boat anchor.

When you’re analyzing stats, remember that the followers and subscribers you have are there because of your content. Stop worrying about the back end and put more time into worrying what they’re seeing on the front end.

Set Goals and See Them Through

Instead of blogging for a set amount of time each day, think of budgeting your time around goals.

You know how much time you have, so be realistic. Plan to publish three (or seven or two or whatever) posts that day — and then do it. If you say, “I’m going to write for an hour,” that can often translate into sitting in front of your computer for an hour. Consider your goals something you have to get done, like paying a bill. If you must, you will.

Multi-Tasking Is Nothing to Brag About

People will often list multi-tasking as an attribute on their resume. It’s not. If you’re juggling tasks, chances are you’re not doing any of them as well as you could be if you were focused on one.

Would you want your dentist to multi-task? How about the guy flying the airplane you’re riding in? Then why is it OK for a blogger? Remember, you provide a valuable service that people enjoy — when you do it right. Make a list of tasks, put the most important ones first, focus, and do them in order.

Blogging isn’t easy, but it can be fulfilling if it isn’t plagued by procrastination and mismanaged time. There are a million blogs out there that could have been awesome if the person behind the keyboard took it as seriously as he or she did their job. It’s more than a job. It’s your baby, and like anything else in life, you get out what you put in.

There are many companies that use social media marketing or other forms of marketing to promote their business. But sometimes these efforts might not have a goal and due to that even if you make constant efforts, it amounts to failure. So if you want to use Social Media marketing to promote your business then you must first strategize and determine your goals. Once you have set a goal then you will be able to move in the right direction and achieve it.

So you can define your gaols and then determine proper ways to achieve it. Always set realistic goals and do not try to be overambitious. The goals should be set based on the current situation in the business.

The first thing is that why do you want to use social media as a marketing mode. What is the purpose of being on the social media? Do you want to create awareness, do you want to sell products and services, and do you want to reach a variety of audience, build on the already existing brand? You need to have answers to such questions before you go ahead and start defining your goals. Answering these questions will open you up to your goals. If you start without setting a goal it would be like a ship let loose in the sea without a helmsman.

The next task is to find out what demography and what type of people you want to target. Some products can be woman oriented or men oriented, for a specific age group. So defining your target audience otherwise it would be like shooting in the dark. You need to have a specific agenda before you move forward. Once you have done that your next task is to choose the right social media platforms.

You need to identify where your target audience and focus more on those platforms. Pretty much everyone is one Facebook so that is a very good option to start with. You need to identify the psychology of your audience and reach out to them in the right way. This will open more ways to reach out to the right people.

You also need to decide on how you will reach people and how often will you post. To know your audience better you can also create polls and surveys. There are also ads that you can post on most social media platforms.

Once you start working on the campaign, it is important to measure the efforts and the output. This will help you in the future to re-strategize and come up with better plans to approach your audience. This will also help you to reassess your goals and come up with new ones. You can also measure your success and failure.

Have regular meetings with your social media experts to check up on the efforts and measure the current state of the campaign. This will help you to move ahead on the right path and make your campaign a success.

The key is getting readers to the blog. Here are some tips to help them find their way.

1. Offer your book for free…

This doesn’t mean you are giving your hard work away for nothing. Of course you want to sell it, but if you offer it out for free for the first 25 visitors (or 50 or any number), it will not only get people to visit your blog – to get the book – but it will also get that word out once more people are reading your book. This is especially effective for an eBook.

2. Ask for something in return…

Another way to offer the book for free is to ask for a review in return. If you have your book listed on Amazon.com, then your readers can write a review to post and mention your book’s blog. Not only does it get the word going about your book, but it also gets a review on Amazon with information about your blog. Win-win!

You can also use Goodreads.com as another venue for reviews and giveaways.

3. Post on well-known blogs

Sometimes this will work better than other times, but it’s worth a try. Of course, the best option would be a guest post on a top blog, but that can be quite hard to get.

If you can’t, try just commenting on some of the top blogs that relate to your book. Along with your post, you can add a link to your book’s blog. If you are lucky, the blogger will refer to it as well and may post a link on the blog itself.

4. Use YouTube

With all the traffic on YouTube, this is a great way to get visitors to your book’s blog. Create an account, make a video relevant to your work (and hopefully interesting), add the address to your blog, and you are all set to upload it and have it ready to share. Be clear and concise in your video; don’t try to sneak anything past your viewers.

5. Tweet!

Through searching similar genres, you’ll find readers who may be interested in your style as well. Follow as many as you can; they may start following you, too, and tweet away. Remember to interact and engage, don’t just tweet your book’s name and your website, or else your followers will quickly hit that “unfollow” button. Tweet about other articles or things related to your book as well.

6.  Link EVERYTHING to your blog

Link to your blog through all your social media – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Goodreads – anything and everything. Post when you write a new blog post, and let your readers and followers know about it.

A good idea is to not just say, “Check out my latest post,” but to give a little teaser to pull readers over to your blog.

7. Do interviews

Find someone in your same boat and interview each other. Or find another author and just interview him or her; you don’t even need to ask for one in return. They will post the interview, more than likely with a link to your blog. Those readers will in turn come to you. Everyone likes publicity, and by offering to help someone else out, you get some publicity, too.

Any author would love a traffic-filled blog about his book, but sometime it takes some creative work to get it there. Don’t be afraid to step outside of your blog to do it.

Shoe in money is a product created by Jeremy Shoemaker, who is an online entrepreneur that makes around one million dollars annually through affiliate marketing. His blog was named as the best affiliate marketing blog and it ranks among Technorati’s top 50 blogs over the past here years. He has combined his knowledge and experience when preparing this product on how to be an expert in affiliate marketing.

Shoe in Money consists of seven module courses. You will get the opportunity to learn the secrets behind affiliate marketing in an easy way because of the friendly navigating system. You do not need to possess any previous knowledge or skills in marketing to follow this guide. Everything is mentioned in a clear way and even a newbie can follow it. All the seven modules are packed with detailed instructions and more important with Jeremy Shoemaker’s personal insights.

In the Module 1, you can read a good introduction on what you are going to learn. The second module tells everything that you need to know about affiliate marketing. Since it is an A-Z guide, this chapter is ideal for beginners. The third module can be defined as the first step in making money online, which is choosing your niche. Once you decide to pick a niche, you can go for the fourth module, which tells how to build relationships with other parties. Following this chapter will assist you to reach closer to the potential customers and enhance your sales.

Even though you have a good product to sell, you will not be able to generate a measurable profit out of it. You need to know the method of persuading others to buy your products. The Module 5 will guide you with that and you do not need to worry about anything. The Module 6 starts with some WordPress basics and it ends up with revealing the secret about getting better deals with WordPress. In the final module, you will get the opportunity to learn the most important step in affiliate marketing, which is, getting traffic. Plenty of effective methods are there to generate traffic and you will get to know about all of them.

The price of Shoe in Money product is perfectly affordable and the benefits you get are totally worth for the amount you pay. This product has the potential to change your life, so it will be a great investment to purchase it, follow the content, and implement them.

Every website is different, every product is different, and every audience is different, so there is no way to predict exactly what will cause your website to succeed. The only way to know what works and what does is to try out a few different versions of your landing pages and testing them against each other by using a tool like Google Website Optimizer.

But if you have just started testing, you will need to abide by a few principles in order to make the most of your time and effort. Here are few things to keep in mind as you start tweaking your site for success.

Think Outside the Box

When most people start testing elements on their web page, they stick with changing only basic things like layout, copy, and color. While changing these things can have a huge impact on your conversion rate, don’t forget about often-overlooked elements.

Think about changing stuff like

Headers
Footers
Font Style
Font Size
Rollover Effects
Social Media Icons

You will be shocked by how seemingly inconsequential alterations to your pages cause big spikes.

Nothing Is Sacred

When testing, don’t be afraid to throw out the rule book occasionally. Make colors on your page totally clash. Choose headlines that don’t even make any sense. Use Comic Sans. As most experienced testers already understand, it is really difficult to predict what will cause a huge uptick in conversion and what won’t. People are strange, and what gets the to actually take the action you want them to take can be unusual of weird.

While applying best practices is generally a good idea, don’t be afraid to swing for the fences occasionally and try a crazy variation. Since you can always go back to the original version if it turns out to be a huge miss, you never have anything to lose and a whole lot to gain.

Sweat the Small Stuff

Don’t overlook tiny elements on your website. Changing just one word or graphic a teeny bit can have a noticeable impact on visitor behavior. Google once famously tested 41 different shades of blue while optimizing for conversion, some of them so similar in hue the difference is barely noticeable to the human eye. While you don’t have to go to that extreme, you shouldn’t be afraid to test things that are only slightly different from each other.

Never Stop Testing

Testing isn’t something you do for a day, a week, or even a month. It’s something you have to continuously do in order to get the best results from your Internet marketing efforts. As the test slowly start to show you exactly what kind of site gives you the results you want, you will keep getting more and more successful.

Askimet

Perhaps the most popular of the anti-spam tools out there is Askimet. In fact, this was one of the first tools for dealing with spam in WordPress, and today it comes as a part of the WordPress package. When you start your site, you will have the option of using the tool right out of the gate without needing to install anything new. You can set it up and let it run. Once you set it up, you will not have to worry about it. This will help to keep the spam away from your site. The only thing that you will have to do occasionally is update the plugin. Though this is a great and simple choice since it comes with WordPress, Askimet is not the only option you have.

ReCAPTCHA

You have probably seen this tool on blogs, as well, and it might be something that you will want to consider for your own site. This is a tool that will help to keep all of the bots away from your site. Users who are going to add a comment to your site need to type in the CAPTCHA words before they will be able to proceed. Because bots are unable to recognize the words they need to input on the screen, it ensures no spam bots are making their way to your site.

This type of tool can be a bit bothersome for some guests though, and it could cause fewer people to comment on your site. This is something that you might want to try for a while to see if the pros outweigh the cons. Many people really enjoy the tool and find it eminently useful.

Spam Stopper

This is a tool quite similar to ReCAPTCHA, and it even uses the same CAPTCHA validation techniques. It can determine the validity of a comment, but it does have the same issues as the other CAPTCHA tools.

Spam Free WordPress

Another option that you might want to try is Spam Free WordPress, which is able to block IP addresses, which can help with those dedicated spammers who still use manual entry techniques to bypass some of the other defenses that you might have up. This plugin claims that it will be able to block all of the incoming spam that you might face. This is a bold claim, and something that other plugins are not willing to say.

Defeating Spam Minus the Plugins

You also have some ways that you can find spam without needing to install plugins. You could allow people to comment on your articles, but require that they add a name and an email address. This helps to cut down on the amount of spam that you might receive significantly. You can have WordPress email you whenever you have a comment or have a comment held for moderation. This gives you control over what comments make it onto the site and those that do not. You could even set up the system to block comments that contain three links or more.

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Better Rankings with Google+

As all marketers that have a decent online presence know, search engine optimization is one of the biggest aspects to think about when trying to get quality traffic to their sites. Having an optimized Google+ account will prove to have multiple different ways to help you increase your rankings within the search engine. The first example would be that they allow lots of different social circles for different audiences, and anyone that is within those social circles will automatically have you rank higher on their search results. Blogs and websites will have the same principal work for them as well, and if you link them directly to your G+ account, they will rank even higher due to the quality link and your optimized Google page.

After some time of placing quality content and proving to Google that you can attract a good volume of traffic, they will then provide you a author ranking. The reason this new program, called Google Authorship, has been created is to help provide searchers receive the best content they possibly can. The higher the authorship ranking is, the higher they will rank in the search engine. Content marketers should keep this in mind because it has the potential to be a very large part in making them successful. Although this does help with SEO, it also will provide proof that you are an authority within your niche, which will then attract even more people.

People with their websites and blogs directly linked to their Google+ account will have access to using an option called direct connect. What this does is allows people that see you on their search results to directly add you to their circles without needing to go to your G+ page. This makes it a much easier process on people to add you, and also give you more of a chance to have more exposure.

Optimizing your G+ page isn’t too hard and can be pretty straight forward. One thing to make sure is completed as soon as possible is adding the recommended links. Google allows pages to have a limited number of links, which will automatically be ranked higher due to the high quality link. Make sure that the links you provide are your highest quality and main links to attract as many visitors as you possible can. You will also be able to have pictures within your page, which can make your page much more entertaining. These pictures are referenced by Google, which will help increase your branding and overall visibility.

Other Content Marketing Bonuses with G+

Although search engine optimization is one of the biggest parts of content marketing, it is certainly not the only option to pursue. Google+ has many other options to help with content marketing and will continue to provide new and innovative ways in the future.

We will cover a few examples, first being, dashboard features. Using the ripple feature will allow you to be able to identify who the biggest users are that will be able to help give your content to the biggest audience. You will also be able to monitor you brand, competition, and the people that promote your content. This will be a massive help by reducing the amount of research needed to be completed and allowing you to do other important things.

Different from the social circle part of G+, you will also have the option to visit hangouts. One of the best features is the video chat option, you will be able to find other people with the same interests and promote any content that you like. You will be able to share your screen, record conversations for later use, or even have a live on-air streaming option. Find a likeminded person that is within your niche and host a pad cast live! The podcast can attract listeners and then you will be able to promote it on other sites to attract even more people.

Although a lot of content marketers are strictly online business only, G+ can really help if you have a local presence. Including your hours of operation and a map with directions is just a start. Customers will be able to write reviews as well as score you on the experience they had, which can really boost your brand and customer base if the reviews are very good. You will also be ranked higher in the search engines when a local search is done for your services or products.

There are so many other benefits that come with using G+ but these are just a few of the main ones. If you haven’t already created a G+ account, then you are missing out. Once you have created the page and notice its powerful effects, you will soon realize what you have been missing this entire time.

Promote your G+ Page

Once you have established and optimized your G+ page, you can then promote the page directly and not just the content within it. Even without promoting the page, you will still receive many benefits, but a page with a higher amount of traffic will give you the opportunity to attract new followers and increase your search engine rankings even more.

If you already have a decent size following within other social media sites, then use them to your advantage! Post something of very high quality, then pass the link on to the other sites and you will see your number sky rocket. Asking people to join you in G+ without any incentive will usually not work since people don’t really care enough, so you have to give them a good reason. Once they decide to click the link to you G+ account, they will soon love the content and follow you.

Promoting your page within your field of work is always a great idea as well. Since the people within your field already know about the niche you’re in, making friends and contacts is easy and fun. With new partnerships, you have different options to help each other promote each of your different contents.

Luckily, we have a tool called Google Analytics that can help us remedy this problem. This nifty gadget doesn’t only show us how many bouncers we have, it also shows us how they came to our site, how the bounce rate changed over time, and other interesting data that can help us find the source of the problem. Here are a few tricks that will help you improve your bounce rate:

Don’t Interrupt the User’s Experience

There is nothing more annoying for a visitor than surveys or commercials popping up out of nowhere. There are cases when something worth looking for appears, but pop-ups usually cause half the people to leave the page.

Improve Load Time

One of the biggest mistakes that webmasters do is putting too much visual and video content on their site. We agree that it looks cool, but it can seriously affect load time, especially for people with slow connections. It is once again up to the analytics tool to tell you what you are doing wrong.

Create an Attractive Design

The term of design has transcended its initial, limited, definition. Now it is not only about images, gradients and appearance. Design encapsulates the entire experience that the user has on your site. This includes readability, coherence and relevance. The top digital search agencies of the world offer amazing designs so you should not concern yourself with this matter.

Choose Your Keywords Wisely

Although keywords are important for your page, if you use too many keywords that have nothing to do with your content it is highly likely for the user to leave the page. When you are doing SEM research, check your keyword report and figure out which of them correspond to bounce rates.

Engage Your Visitors

The key to maintaining a visitor’s interest is to ensure easy navigation and interesting design. When you provide related links, for example, look for sites that have content relevant to your article. However, try not to provide too much content, because the reader can become overwhelmed by the amount of information.

Take People Where They Want to Go

People are looking for fast solutions for their problems. This is why you should always provide them with the right answer. Avoid linking yourself or linking stuff that has nothing to do with the anchor.

These are some of the basic tips that will help reduce your bounce rates. If your bounce rate is over 60, you should be worried, and if it is over 80 then it is definitely time to panic.

Don’t lose yourself

There are three types of affiliate marketing you can choose from: pay-per-click advertisements, related advertisements, and involved advertisements. With so many options and potential affiliates to partner with, it is not hard to get carried away. When you first embark on the affiliate marketing route, it is easy to become enchanted by the prospect of making thousands of dollars on the side. Try to keep every affiliate marketing related post in the context of what is best for your website or blog. If you normally post about do-it-yourself beauty products, but then start throwing in regular post about anti-viral software here and there, your affiliation obligations will eclipse the overall ethic of your blog. If you lose sight of the guiding principle that propelled you to start your website in the first place, your readers will notice, which means in turn your affiliates will notice as well.

Don’t over-do it

Having too many affiliated ads on your site will turn off readers right from the landing page. Just because you could potentially fill every crevice and margin with pay-per-click advertisement, doesn’t mean you should. Overstretching yourself with too many committed affiliations will put you under added pressure to earn back money based on clicks and in turn down the line affect the quality of your work.

Don’t just throw affiliate links on the side

Content is king. It’s much easier to get readers to become genuinely interested in affiliated links if you are there vouching for them. Picking affiliates based on the content is a simple mantra that can create a seamless look for your blog with affiliate links embedded into posts, announcements, and resource pages. You can even branch into your corresponding social media pages like Facebook and Twitter to further integrate affiliate links.

Don’t be dishonest

Disclose your affiliations to your readers. You don’t have to do it in a manner that interrupts your content, but have a page or a disclaimer at the bottom that allows readers to see which products you are contractually affiliated with. This is another reason as to why you should ideally only endorse products that you authentically believe in or have used yourself.

Don’t get complacent

Always stay up to date with metrics and analytics. Feedback based on analytics is the best insight and feedback mechanism you have for determining the success of your affiliate strategy. Furthermore, remember that if content is king, new content must be the archetypal dictator. Search engines know when websites lay un-updated with old content. Keep producing products and posts to keep traffic up.

Don’t be afraid to end it

Depending on the contract you have with your advertiser, if you realize that the banner ads at the top of the page are generating minimal revenue, don’t be afraid to ax it out. Be flexible with your affiliate marketing strategy to strike the perfect balance.

1 – Delete the “/images/” part from the Robots.txt file

There is a file that stops search engines from reading your images. You can alter this file so that the search engines will index the information from your images too. It involves deleting the “/images/” section from your Robots.txt file. If you do this then search engines such as Google will read the text associated with your images.

2 – Use the ALT tags on your images

These are there to inform people what the image is about if it does not show up on your blog or website. You should describe what the image is about in a few words, and also try to add a keyword or two in there too.

3 – Install a website maintenance tool

This will help you to complete and maintain your website and its SEO. Try the JCE Editor, since it is free and because it has a few features that will help you to maintain your website that are easy to use. It allows you to do things such as add images and ALT text to the images.

4 – Add in your Meta tag details

There are supposed to be two for each page. There should be a Meta description and a Meta keywords tab. Many people do not fill them out anymore, but they are the foundation of your websites SEO. You should fill them out with relevant descriptions and keywords.

5 – Try to speed up your website

This can be done with “caching” which is a big topic that you can pass off to a plugin or extension (if you can find one). You should also consider creating pages that are not as heavy (are not made up of as many MB) so that your pages will load a little quicker.

6 – Choose a www. or a non-www. and a Redirect

The blog builder will not automatically redirect your blog to either a “non-www” or a “www.” So, you will need to do it yourself manually, to ensure it is redirected. It is not going to make a massive difference to your SEO, but is going to help it along a little.

7 – Install Xmap onto your Joomla!

This is a sitemap component that is specifically used with Joomla! It will create XML and HTML sitemaps for your website. There are a lot of plugins that will do this sort of thing, but Xmap has all the tools you need for this simple task. However, do feel free to shop around for a more sophisticated version.

8 – Link in a consistent manner

This means that you should link with textual html links or JavaScript links. Do not add a mix of each. You should try not to duplicate too many of your internal links. You should also try to keep to roughly the same amount of internal links per page. Your sitemap should be the only page that has a large number of internal links when compared with the other pages.

9 – Be careful when you pick your host

A good host will help your SEO instead of hinder it. A good host will maintain his or her server, will offer a reliable “Up-time” and will offer a suitable amount of bandwidth. In other words the host will not make your website crash, will not keep taking your blog offline, and will not freeze up if you happen to have a lot of visitors to your blog. If you are looking for more advanced advice, consider setting up your site on an Apache server that has the mod_rewrite installed.

10 – Change the htaccess.txt to .htaccess

Re-writing your URLs is something you can do to make your website more SEO friendly. It is not as easy on Joomla! as it may be with other blog CMS. Find your htaccess.txt file and rename it to .htaccess.

11 – Change the URL settings in your Global configuration

When using Joomla! you should go to the Global Configuration settings and set it to “Search Engine Friendly ULRs” and then go to the “URL Rewriting” option and click “Yes”. This is going to enable you to create search engine friendly URLS that have keywords in and that may be read more easily by human readers.

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