Your Business Name Could Spell Success Or Failure

I often take a look at Michael Fortin's website as he knows what he is talking about - or at least appears to!

An interesting article he has recently published is Brain-Burning Brand Names Boost Business. He talks about how important it is to choose the correct name for your business, product or domain name. He reckons that this is 'often the single, most important business decision you will ever make', and it's difficult to argue with this.

In his article he writes of his five basic guidelines for choosing a name. These are:

Suggestiveness
Spelling
Size
Singsong
Scalability

If we look at suggestiveness this means that it tells you what the product/website/blog is all about from it's name. With singsong he talks about how the name sounds, using perhaps alliteration, which is often known as 'head rhymes'. Examples of this are Coca-Cola, SiteSell, Krispy Kreme, No Brainer Blinds and so on. They stick in the mind.

Often we set up a blog, website or prodcut without giving it's name a lot of thought, when in essence it could be the tipping point of becoming successful.

Read the full article on Michael Forlin's website - link as above. Another article he has written on a similar theme is How To Make Your Name Memorable. It's food for thought.

Good luck,
Mike.

And now, have a smile: Funny Humorous Letters / Awful Jokes / Sidney Sock Goes Missing / Tracy Tremble Virginity Shock

Lawrence of Arabia Will Hopefully Make Me A Few Dollars

One of the good things about going away for a few days is that it gives you something to write about on Squidoo!

As I was in Dorset for three days I have written about this on a new Squidoo lens called Dorset, Thomas Hardy and T.E. Lawrence.

I don't expect this to make me a heap of money but with Squidoo the more lenses you write the more, at least in theory, you should be able to make.

I say in theory because, as with normal blogging, the lens still has to be reasonably well written and will need promoting.

It takes longer to make a Squidoo lens (that's a page, if you haven't heard much about them before) than a straight forward blog post but, as I see it, even if each one only makes a few dollars a month this can add up if you have lots of lenses. So Squidoo isn't instant big money, it's something that develops over time.

With Squidoo you can write about virtually anything (legal) that you wish and each lens can be about something completely different. This can be, in some ways, easier than blogging about a particular niche as the world is your oyster.

I'm quite happy with the way things are going so far with Squidoo.

Good luck,
Mike.

Get Your Free Plugs And Free Adverts

I've been looking at Plug Boards and Plugs. I'm not sure if you have seen them but they are websites where you can place free adverts in the form of buttons or banners.

As an example I have started a Plug Board myself: Add Your Ad For Free where you can enter a free advert and this will go live straight away.

Now I can't tell you if these Plug Boards will bring you much in the way of referrals but I'm testing them out and have been leaving my ads all over the place.

It's really going back to my blogging philosophy from when I first started blogging. I reckoned that one of the ways to get traffic was to leave my URL absolutely anywhere possible. So I hit the Blog Directories, Forums, Free Ad Places, Profiles and so on and so on. If I could leave a link I did.

I didn't, back then, realise that links were also useful for things like PageRank but remarkably Mikes Money Making Mission soon got a PageRank5 because of me doing this. My PR has been thumped since them because Google doesn't like the selling of links which I was once, innocently, doing. But that's a whole different story.

Anyway, back to Plug Boards. The only problem with these might be the fact that you need banners and/or buttons. However this is easily overcome by going to a website such as Banner Fans where you can create free buttons and banners within minutes. They will even store your banners for you and provide links, again for free. (The buttons illustrated on this post were ones I knocked up in about 30 minutes.)

I'm sure that big established bloggers will sneer at the thought of Plug Boards. They will talk of writing articles and other ways to get traffic and links.

I'm sure these 'other ways' are probably more effective but a link in is a link in.

Don't forget to place your free plug on Add Your Ad For Free.

I'm away now for about five or six days on business so, until then, happy plugging!

Good luck,
Mike.

Lists Make Money And Attract Blog Traffic

I have been grumbling recently that I haven't been doing too good with Amazon, it hasn't brough me in much income. I thought, however, that I wouldn't just give in and have tried creating some Top 10 Amazon Lists as a trial on a couple of my blogs - and they seem to have been effective, well at least I have had some orders.

This is the sort of thing I mean. Prepare a Top 10 list of books, DVDs or absolutely any other Amazon product relative to the niche of the blog. For example with Mikes Money Making Mission I could start off with a list made up of the best selling books on blogging.

1. WordPress For Dummies
Bloggers love WordPress! If you're ready to start using this free blogging software, WordPress For Dummies, 2nd Edition is just what you and your blog need to make a splash.

2. ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
The Problogger website is where bloggers worldwide go for advice and information on enhancing their blog's presence. Whether you're just starting out or have been blogging for years, these two professional bloggers show you how to turn your passion for blogging into extra revenue.

3. Blogging For Dummies
Everybody’s doing it! And while that logic never got far with your mother, it’s a fine reason to start blogging, especially if you have a business to build or a cause to promote. Well-run blogs do more than offer an outlet for your thoughts. They’ve actually influenced everything from a company’s image to the outcome of a local election.

4. The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging
The editors of The Huffington Post -the most linked-to blog on the web - offer an A-Z guide to all things blog, with information for everyone from the tech-challenged newbie, looking to get a handle on this new way of communicating, to the experienced blogger looking to break through the clutter of the Internet. With an introduction by Arianna Huffington, the site's cofounder and editor in chief, this book is everything you want to know about blogging, but didn't know who to ask.

5. Start Your Own Blogging Business
Blogs are one of the Internet's fastest-growing phenomena - and one of the best and easiest ways to make money online. Learn how to choose a topic, start a blog and attract thousands of avid readers. Then use your blog to generate income from advertisers, promotions, affiliate links and other techniques-all from your own home.

.... and so on.

I've always found that lists do okay: 50 secrets, 40 ways, top 10's and so on - about almost anything. They often get reasonable positions on search engines as well. Plus people seem to like them. One of my most visited posts this week is, again, 40 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic.

Lists work generally so why not with Amazon as well.

Good luck,
Mike.

50 Article Directories For More Traffic

Article Directories Can Help Bring Extra Blog Traffic

Most 'experts' reckon that writing articles and publishing them in the various Article Directories is a way to get more traffic to your blog.

With that idea in my I have created a list of 50 Article Directories where bloggers can submit their articles on just about any subject. Your will find this list on Squidoo in my lens 50 Article Directories For More Traffic. The Directories are listed in PageRank order.

The value of using these Directories is threefold.

(1) They can help produce traffic to a blog.
(2) They can give you good links - from the Directory itself and also from other blogs and websites who reproduce your articles - in doing so they have to include links to your blog.
(3) These extra links can help with improving PageRank.

Article Directories are also a source of material should you ever be stuck for something to post on your blog, though you must follow the rules specified. There is a vast array of subjects.

Have a look at the Squidoo lens mentioned for more information.

Good luck,
Mike.

Further reading:
40 Free Ways To get More Blog Traffic
40 Blog Directories
Over 50 Social Networking Websites

Money Making With Amazon

I have written before, here, about how I have never really been all that successful with Amazon from a money making perspective. I've done okay with their UK website and received some payments but nothing really, what I would consider to be, worthwhile amounts.

I was reading teatreebergamot's post Why Affiliates Should Avoid Amazon Associates and I agree with what she writes.

It's all about cookies and how Amazon sets these for just 24 hours. The problem with this is that many people take longer than 24 hours to make up a purchase. So if you send a prospective customer today to Amazon, and the next day they order something, after the 24 hours is up, you get nought - zero commission.

In the post I have mention the writer shows, through stats from another affiliate program, how the majority of people purchase after 24 hours. I've thought about this and, if I'm making a decent sized purchase, I often don't buy for a couple of days - after I've done price checks and thought things over etc. I did this recently with a television I bought online, it took me two days to decide.

So, is it partly the 24 hour cookies that is preventing a lot of us from earning any decent commission with Amazon?

I say 'partly' because there are also other things to consider as well, but it's something to think about.

Good luck,
Mike.

Sidney Sock Goes Missing. Suspense, sadness, sex (well sort of, but safe for all to read) and mystery. What has happened to Sidney Sock? Photos of sightings. Have you ever lost a sock?

A Suzi Perry Suggestion

Following on from my Hippo posts I just wanted to touch briefly on keywords again.

I mentioned previously where to put chosen keywords within a post and here is an example of how to choose the right keywords.

You need the right words, which people are going to search for, and there are several free Keyword Suggestion Tools about to help with this. Some are also described as Keyword Popularity Tools - the one at Free Web Submission is such an example.

I entered the words 'make money' into their tool and they came up with the following keywords in order of popularity of what people are searching for:

make money online
make a craft money tree
how to make money
how much money do you have to make to file taxes
bail bonds make money
make money at home
ways for kids to make money
how much money does a zoologist make
how to make money online
how much money does an archaeologist make
make money from home
make money fast free
ways to make money

This, therefore, is a ready made list of keywords / phrases I can choose from plus some of them can also be used as ideas for subject matter for future posts.

This works for must niches. I use it with my celebrity blogs to find out what people are searching about a particular celeb.

For instance, I considerably boosted the traffic on one of my Squidoo lenses called Everything Perry which wasn't performing particularly well. The lens, as the title suggests, is about absolutely anything to do with Perry, i.e. my surname.

I have one section on the lens for celebs called Perry. I fed in one of the names - Suzi Perry (a UK television presenter) - and two of the top five keyword phrases were 'Suzi Perry ill' and 'Suzy Perry Illness'.

I had no idea she was, or had been, ill but I did some quick research, found out the details and added these to the lens. I wish her well soon.

The result has been hundreds of referrals a day from Google. So a lens that wasn't doing too well improved greatly.

Okay I know some will immediately say something negative about this, but that's okay because I'm happy with the result and that's what matters.

I stick by the mantra that all traffic is good traffic.

Good luck,
Mike.

Have a laugh: Awful Jokes and Funny Humorous Letters