I have a client now I’m working with (and plan to work with forever, thank you), and she is just the cat’s banana. She is smart, funny, quirky, artistic. She has written 17 books and has a graduate degree from an Ivy League school. She is a SERIOUS foodie, horticulturist, photographer, writer. She has this amazing sense of Collections. and Connections. She is a china addict. If you don’t know what that is, you wouldn’t understand, but I chose my china pattern at age 16 and so I appreciate it deeply. Her word choices in ordinary sentences are fascinating to me…just in conversation.

I dig her.

Anyhow, so last week I drive up to her log cabin (been in her family 100 years, she moved and restored it herself) to do some training. The fields are golden, her lawn is dripping with flowers. Butterflies everywhere. There are these fanciful structures made of tree branches that remind me of fairy huts. Enameled blue sundials. A cheerful rusty metal dog. The barns cast these shadows on her cabin like they’re protecting it. It’s late afternoon. Her dog hates me for 10 minutes before he decides to trust me, like usual. (Forgetful thankless gorgeous beast.) And she offers me hibiscus tea, as if it’s normal, before we settle into her cozy chaotic nest to work. Everywhere I look the fading sunshine streams down onto an insane art piece or wistfully climbing plant. Some piece of beauty. She has these beautiful water bottles that look like champagne bottles, neatly arranged in a half circle at the edge of her kitchen hallway, on the floor. They’re really stunning in the group, obviously not their permanent home, but even the pieces of chaos are arresting.

She’s learning to edit pages in her website. And the process is really joyful to watch. She cusses mildly when she hits a wrong button. Everyone does, but hers are unapologetic and weirdly hopeful. Each one gets her closer to mastery. She’s so excited about doing this, about her website.

There are four computers that I know of running in this sprawling home. She plans on getting more. “I need something for my photo processing.” But because they all connect via satellite and things take a while to load? She has 4,367 window tabs open on each one. She reads while she waits.

Now on one of the pages of her website, I’ve made a style of photo for her blog area, a long strip of horizontal over-sized goodness that makes her Stylish if she uses it as a template …size and orientation. She just looks at me over her glasses and declares matter-of-factly, “Life is not always horizontal.”

That’s a tweet. And she’s learning to use social media and needs notification of Tweet-worthiness, still…So I point it out to her. Too bad you can’t translate tone and facial expression on Twitter. That was priceless.

There’s a sign next to her nest on a shelf. It reads “Invite someone dangerous to tea.” I wonder if I’m dangerous. I tell her my Descartes joke and she gets it. (Descartes walks into a bar and sits down. The bartender says, “Hey buddy, want a beer? Descartes says, ” I think not…” and disappears.) Two hours pass too quickly. At one point she sets me up on a computer in another room so she can write without my presence. I make her nervous. I sit in there and check my email, pretending not to hear her gentle invectives and threats against her laptop, just grinning. Before I leave she’s doing much better with it all. And I’ve gotten an education on politics, three funny stories, and learned about fruit nerds. Real fruit, like apples and cherries. I didn’t know such a thing existed. They have conventions.

This woman came to me with aspirations to blog about vinegar. Yes. Vinegar. I cannot wait to unveil what we actually ended up doing. Let’s just say it’s not exactly what she had in mind at first.

My clients are gifts to me. This one in particular is a special gift to me.

I can’t wait to “unwrap” her site to help give her to the world.

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The first issue I hear about a lot deals with extra space between paragraphs. We can set a style to completely take this out, and we can also program this completely away, but that is not always best for you. The offending tag is the paragraph tag or “p” tag. If you hit “return” at the end of a paragraph it is automatically added. This is good for you actually, because it is valid mark-up. It is bad because the space added sometimes is more than you want. We prefer to teach you, rather than program this feature out.

The solution is “Shift-return.” This key combo will make a simple line break rather than a paragraph and the space between lines will be diminished. While not strictly valid, it isn’t a huge faux pas either, and is okay to use. Hitting shift-return produces a “br” tag and not a “p.”

Say you hit “Return” instead of “Shift-return.” Accidentally. After you finish cursing, leave your cursor at the beginning of the new paragraph you just inserted, hit “delete” or “backspace” and then hit “shift-return.” Voila. Space gone.

The other huge HUGE key to handling your Rich Text Editor is the “Path” menu.

“What’s that?” you say.

Most people have no idea this particular item exists.

It’s at the bottom of your textarea box. Usually gray, if you put your cursor in the textarea in the middle of a sentence, you will see something like this in it:
“Path: table » tbody » tr » td » p » a”

The magic key is, if you select one of those elements? Say the “p”? then you actually select the paragraph inside it.

I’ll show you. Showing is easier. This first screen shot shows the Rich Text editor, TinyMCE. At the bottom, I’ve circled the “Path” menu in red. If you do not have a “Path” menu, call me and I’ll change your settings so you do have one. Or you can bug your current webmaster to do it if you don’t use me. It takes just a few minutes to change in MODx.

Practice clicking a few of the items in the list there. Yours might look different. As you do, you should notice content up in the textarea box turning blue. That’s because you are actually selecting that content with the Path menu.

Screenshot below:

So, when you hit the wrong button and suddenly weird boxes appear where they shouldn’t, you can now click into them with your cursor, click each tag in the Path menu until the intruder turns blue. And hit delete. And it will go away. Amazing.

Say there is a style applied to an element but you don’t know which one and can’t get rid of it? Simple, you look at the path menu till you see something with a dot in the name. It will look like this: “p.style1″ or this: “span.small”

If it has a dot in it? then the part before the dot is the element type (a paragraph or span or table) and then the part after the dot is the name of the style. There is a style dropdown menu and you can undo the style by selecting the element in the path menu and then clicking the eraser tool (remove formatting). You can apply another style by choosing one from the “styles” dropdown menu.

Screenshot:

It’s really helpful to know about that Path Menu.

If you have different buttons or want different buttons in your TinyMCE configuration, let us know and we’ll change it up for you, again, it is easy to customize in a few minutes.

Okay, so if you have questions, feel free to ask and happy blogging!

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After:

Who do you trust more?
Which is the larger, more established company?
Why?

You tell me, does design matter?

(Both files were created with a normal desktop publishing suite.)

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My thoughts after his presentation?

First of all, it seems to me that you’re already part of a community, what you do with it is up to you. It doesn’t matter if you’re a big business or a new start up, you have relationships. You have relationships with your vendors, relationships with your customers, relationships with potential buyers. The relationships are your currency, the connections are the important thing. The importance of community was highlighted by the presentation, but I think one thing he didn’t say, which should be obvious (but so many times is not) was simply that …this is already happening. So whether you choose to participate online, proactively, with an implemented plan and strategy? Well that is up to you.

We’re doing this. We do it with our blog, with our Twitter followers, with our Facebook page, with emails. With phone calls, with meetings, with forums. Platform is not important, the connection is important and maintaining contact is important. Listening. I think the lines being open and maintained with regularity are the main factors in success. Are you listening? how are you listening? Are you customer-focused, or do you have your own agenda? We’re going to encourage you to be like the companies you like and value. How do they treat you?

If you can’t walk into a networking group offline and successfully connect, it might not be a good idea to try it on Twitter.

One thing I loved was Chris’s example of going to someone’s house for dinner, eating till you’re stuffed, having great conversation and then being handed a bill. That would change the entire dynamic of the relationship.  But what if it was a Pampered Chef party? I think that imagery is a great analogy, highlighting the mistakes that I see folks making on social media with their communities and community-building attempts. If you want to sell to them, be up-front about it. There is a way to do that without making people feel used. You invite them to a sales environment. They understand that it is a sales environment and accept the invitation. Otherwise, don’t make it a sales environment. But also remember that ROI doesn’t have to be about dollars, it can be about Influence, about ideas, about information that has a serious value. Also remember that no one like to be used. Celebrate your community members, value them, and use the golden rule.

Okay, so that said… a quick guide to building online communities:

1. Evaluate where you are and where you want to go and what kind of return you want.

Why are you building a community? Do you want more sales? You don’t have to sell directly to community members, you can use the information you learn about your brand/services to improve on your product or service and develop new products. That increases sales. Example? We have asked for critiques from people… just average joes, other designers, some business owners on our site designs and it’s helped us to make changes in how we do things and improve. So we sell more. It doesn’t necessarily mean we sell to the people who we directly interacted with, but their feedback had real value. But this kind of planning …knowing what you want and what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it, that has to happen before you start out.

2. Pick a platform.

You might have multiple platforms, depending on the engagement level of your community. The community has to be seen as a whole. Our community includes the forum members we interact with as well as the Twitter followers, blog subscribers, newsletter subscribers, Facebook “likers.” But they all have different engagement levels and they are all, individually, different relationships and that can’t be dismissed. If you’re just getting started then one or two platforms should be your focus and you need to track what kind of relationships you’re building.

3. Pick your measurement tools

There are a lot of different measurement tools out there and which one you choose will depend on what you want to measure. We use StepRep and Hootsuite and Google Analytics mostly. We have other arcane tools that our Internet Strategist pulls out and makes reports with, but the important thing is to have your goals and then have your measurement tools track your progress to those goals.

4. Listen and adjust

What will happen as you make connections is that you  will have goals change, ideas change, mindsets change. Take time to evaluate regularly and adjust your course. It’s important.

___________

Just some final thoughts. If I were a small business, new to the whole world of social media and learning how to use it, I’d go to some live, in person networking groups a few times and take notes on how interactions flow and get ideas for online networking. I’d practice offline a lot. I’d also listen to (and read) some Zig.

It bears repeating. You’re already part of a community around your company. What you do with it is up to you.

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This is of course, assuming you have a product to sell. If you’re a blogger who just wants traffic in order to sell advertising, your blog becomes the product itself. If you sell a service, you’ll have to think about and adjust your keywords accordingly. Think of your service as a the product. If you’re a blogger? Your topic or area of expertise is going to dictate your keyword choice.

Use Keywords to your Advantage on your Website

Finding keywords should start with brainstorming but not end there. Interview or survey customers or people you know who represent your customers. Don’t ask them for keywords, just talk to them about your product/service/area of expertise but pay attention to the words and phrases they use when they answer you. Review your current web analytics to discover what phrases and topics are garnering the most traffic -with and without conversion- for you now. Conversion might be when someone contacts you, subscribes to your blog, or tweets about you. But it is important to watch for both the content pulling traffic that does not convert and the content that pulls traffic that does convert. Likely there will be both. Here’s the thing, some people…a lot of people… are merely looking for information and have  no intention of making a purchase now or ever. But those people might link back to you or talk about you, which will increase your online visibility and ranking. Also talk to sales and service staff if you have them. Listen to the phrases they use. Review their customer inquiries in their emails.  Lastly, review your competitors content, check out the words and phrases they are using.

What you might find is that your content focus has been in one place …and it needs to shift.

You need to only focus on one or two keywords or key phrases per page. Use them in title tags and title meta tags, headings, paragraph titles, emphasized or bold text, inside anchor tags (links), in your image alt text, and in your meta description tags.  Make yourself a little checklist and go through the pages of your site and make sure those bases are covered. Title tags on each page of your site should be unique. Don’t use more than one H1 tag on a page. Use sentences in your titles, 6-10 words or around 65 characters. If you have thousands of site pages, then you may need to generate the titles dynamically.

When you’re done with that, you want to also work in your social media channels and do the same types of things, especially in anchor tags that link back to your site.

Search Engine Friendly Website Architecture

A search engine reads text. It doesn’t read Flash (doesn’t read it well, Google has started to index Flash and can read xml that is fed into Flash, but text is better) , it doesn’t read images. So if your site navigation is built without text links between pages, this is not optimal.  With CSS you can use images with your text and control how the links are presented (pretty) while still using search-friendly text. Breadcrumb navigation with specific keywords/keyphrases is the most search engine friendly type of navigation. Don’t use AJAX, Flash or Javascript alone, provide alternative text navigation as well. You also need to have text linked within your content to other pages in your site.  Another important web site feature to have is an html or xml site map, this will greatly help you with search engines. This doesn’t have to be a separate page, you can put it in your footer. You can see a great example of a site map style footer here. This can be a great means of providing alternative text navigation if you do use AJAX, javascript, or flash.

Other things to make your site search engine friendly: add new content regularly, make sure  your content is themed logically, make sure your robots.txt file (the file that talks to search engines)  is built correctly.

When you link to any page on your site, make sure you use the exact same structure to link to it. For instance, we own http://www.redtoadmedia.com and http://www.redtoadmedia.net, but when we link to the site, we need to link to http://www.redtoadmedia.com. Not to http://redtoadmedia.com without the www. Or http://redtoadmedia.net without the www. Otherwise, you’re using multiple links (to a search engine) to direct to the same content and you dilute your search engine visibility.

When you do make changes to your web site, make 301 redirects to re-map links to the old pages to your new content.

Link Building

Inbound links from other, relevant and authoritative web sites are a huge part of making your website visible and making it rank higher on search engines. Think of it like this… if an expert talks quotes you or refers to you positively, it makes you credible. It works sort of the same way for a search engine spider, who will regard a highly ranked site as an “expert” and treat that link back to you as an endorsement.

There are people who try to game the system by building what we call “link farms.” In general I think this is a bad idea. I think gaming the system will always cause problems. You want to garner genuine linkbacks. If you get a lot of linkbacks and they all use the same text to link back to you, then it will not have as much impact (it might look like you are gaming the system, or be disregarded as a signature file on a forum for example), so you need to have links that vary in what they say. It is also best to use keywords when you link with your own text (not “click here” ).

How do you get inbound links?

You want to create quality content and then promote it on social networks, link to your own content internally, partner up with others in your industry to link to each other, embed links in emails and news releases and articles, and syndicate your site content via RSS. You can use your profiles on other sites, paid and unpaid directories, conference and association sponsorships, award badges, contests, surveys, wikis, forums, the list is endless. Your link building strategy will really be dictated by your goals and your product.

Want to see what your inbound links look like right now?

Try this tool:

http://ericmiraglia.com/inlink/

You need to manage your link building with software like you would with Customer Relationship Management.  There are many software packages you can use to do this, some are free.

Things to watch for as you measure your website SEO efforts

How many pages are actually indexed by Google and other search engines? Are there any crawling errors? Compare your ranking reports to yourself (and not others) over time. Track your inbound link quantity and quality. Track how long those inbound links stay published. Track keyword traffic. Track social media traffic. Track your goals and conversions (whatever they are).

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1. Big Ideas

Use your blog to talk about ideas and topics that appeal to a wide range of people. If you’re a plumbing parts vendor, blog about home decor. If you’re a spa/salon, blog about beauty or stress management or health tips. If you’re a real estate agent, blog about neighborhoods, city life. If you’re a florist, blog about event planning. The idea is to blog about topics that you are familiar with and are more general, and then you establish your expertise while garnering traffic and drawing people in.

2.  Include Polls for Feedback In Your Sidebar

A lot of people will not post comments on your blog. They might not feel comfortable doing so, but the anonymity of a poll will be something they can interact with, giving you valuable feedback.

3. Use first names when you reply in your comments.

It’s all about connection. These are people, treat them with respect.

4.  Be consistent

Have a blogging schedule. Blogging takes time and has to be scheduled like anything else. An abandoned blog or blog that hasn’t been written in is worse than no blog. If you approach it as something you will do consistently, on your schedule whether it is monthly, biweekly, weekly or daily, then you will be more successful. Things might happen to throw you off of your schedule, so when that happens, start again and blog consistently even when you don’t see traffic or comments. Building a blog takes time. The only way to fail is to quit.

5.  Use the media you are comfortable with.

Blogs don’t have to be written, though they should have at least a paragraph of written text for search engines. However if you feel more comfortable speaking, consider video or audio blogs.

6. Have a formal comment policy on your blog

If you’re worried about negative comments, then be proactive and state your comment policy up front.  It’s okay to moderate comments. But great companies take the time to address problems head-on. A negative comment can be a great opportunity to shine. If you reach out, be respectful and respond to any negative feedback then it can reflect positively.

7. Avoid Banner Blindness

There is such a thing as too much content on a page. Ask your readers what they think after a design change and listen to their responses. Carefully consider the site structure and the way the information is arranged. More important information needs to go closer to the top and simplify, simplify simplify. Consider consulting with a designer even if you’re doing it yourself for ideas on how to make improvements. Remember a blog is never finished, so feel free to make changes and track results, then adjust accordingly.

8. Measure.

You can measure site traffic, comments, number of subscriptions, poll results, link-backs, tweets and retweets. The important thing is that you measure and track the results. Are you measuring? If not, why not? Identify key metrics and start tracking the blog traffic data now, then use the data to refine your processes.

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Click on the photo you wish to add a border or space to and click the Tree icon in the rich text editor, screen shot below (click it to enlarge it):

This will open an insert/edit image pop-up which should show a preview of the image you highlighted. If it does not, then go back and re-select the image you wish to add a border or margin to and then click the tree again. You are on the “General” tab for this pop-up when it opens, you need to click “Appearance” which is the tab next to General. Screenshot below:

Here you can align the image left or right, this will cause text to wrap around the image. Tip: Always place your images at the very beginning of a paragraph to ensure text wraps correctly. Then in the following screen shot you will see Vertical space and Horizontal space. Enter a number here, this sets the margin around your photo. Usually 5 or 10 is sufficient.  To add a border, enter a number value into the “Border” field. These numbers are the value in pixels of the space or border that you wish to have presented. Screen shot below:

Click update and preview the image. and that is it!

Tip: Make sure you do not have text centered in the paragraph you are working in, centered text will cause your layout to be thrown off.

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I got into Twitter because I wanted to help my clients use it to market their businesses. I saw it as a way for them to get exposure without a big AdWords budget.  Most of the people I serve are smallish family businesses, some more successful than others but all have seen the crunch of the current economy.

So though I was signed on as a user, I didn’t use it or have a handle on it until last fall, when I decided to use it regularly, but more than that to study it. Experiment. Research not just by reading but by doing.

Networking for me is like swimming for a fish. I’m not bragging, I’m stating a fact. I started my own business in 2001 and have sustained it through networking. I don’t advertise, or advertise very very little and I’ve never had a slowdown in workload. It’s been my experience that who you know is important. It’s also been my experience that you make the most of every opportunity granted you, no matter how small.

Story: I went to a conference once and the speaker was someone I liked innately. After the event, I found her email address, emailed her and told her how much I enjoyed what she did, told her some of what I did, and asked for a meeting. That meeting spiraled into a close friendship and working relationship that has spanned years and brought me a large amount of business. True story. I also got my internship with Axiom Marketing and Advertising because a producer hit on me at a local dive (this was college days, pre-marriage) and I asked for a contact. He was trying to impress me, so I got a contact and referral with the Creative Director. Not advocating this method, just relating what happened. (No I did not go out with him, ever, but he became a friend.)

Twitter is the biggest networking group in the world. Big chat room.

So yes, I’ve only done Twitter for a few months but let’s just say I quickly got my bearings.

Here is what I noticed. There were a lot of people in the same room shouting. Then there were a lot of people in corners having quiet conversations. I ran an experiment when I had around 100 followers, to see who was actually engaging with me, reading what I said. I stated my intent and asked for a response.

Three people replied. Three.

This made me go back and rethink my strategy.

It seemed to me that the power of Twitter, when you can’t be heard much… besides the SEO implications of your tweets…is to listen. I started to analyze why I was personally following certain people and why I was not.

I follow heroes. I follow people I know have a measure of understanding or success in their fields because this is a way to listen to them and possibly engage them. Not impress. But learn. Share ideas. I’m all about soaking up as much as I can from whatever source is out there and this was a gold mine. So I followed Andy Clarke and Michelle Miller and Richard Laermer and Duncan Bannatyne and Guy Kawasaki and Laura Roeder. The Wizard doesn’t tweet as far as I know or I’d follow him. I follow MODx developers and illustrators, creatives, David Finch…a Louisville, KY social media thought leader. Names that might not mean anything to a non-geek. Someone outside the field.  To me, important. (Duncan is a businessman and impressed me on his television show)  I followed several community members from Louisville. Then I followed people I might like. I ran a search on something that has always been for me, a cultural litmus test. If you passed that test in a social situation, we’d probably click well. And I added people who were tweeting on that subject. (Princess Bride movie – movies are quick ways to gauge someone’s personality) There were all types of people who came from that search and it’s been interesting to see the results. I’ve been followed and followed back people who share my political and religious beliefs. And some who did not.

Somebody said, I forget who, that in a room full of talkers, the power goes to the listener. And I’d felt that before I heard it. But they beat me to the punch in saying it.

Okay. So to this point I’ve started listening and divided people into two types…. broadcasters and engagers. These aren’t fluid types. They can change. A broadcaster might engage, and engager might broadcast. The question is, what is their normal mode? And then I saw the different motives people had with Twitter. You had some people blasting sales pitches (randomly with no context) and some people direct messaging with an auto-response. Ugh. You had teens staying connected to their posse. Housewives (funny beautiful ones) staying sane and connected to the adult world when they were surrounded by wee ones to care for. You had experts flaunting their knowledge, tweet after tweet after tweet…. constant broadcast stream. You had artists sharing ideas. You had developers sharing ideas. You had people asking for prayer, sharing stories. Writers, reporting on progress or working through plots. People voicing political agendas, people looking for a fight. Large groups of people trolling for hook-ups. Large groups of people slamming others. Then there is the usual crowd of “Names” …celebrities and the like, and Twitter is their stage.

“Names” and Average Joes seem to me to be really similar. After watching a few of  them, I’m beginning to think less and less that they use Twitter differently than others, they just have to be more aware of what they are saying because obviously more people hear it.

Anyhow, I have kinda been doing all of this on my own, reading a bit but nothing intense as far as research, not wanting to be colored by other’s ideas.

So to get back to my initial statement. Yesterday I ran across something in a search for a graphic, it was a breakdown of Twitter users. Based on work by @guykawasaki. You can see it here: http://www.infographicsshowcase.com/twitter-users-profile-infographic/ I’d followed him but not really gotten a lot… maybe he was the guy who talked about listening? Or was that @garyvee? Anyhow. I was honked. He beat me to the punch. I was all excited by what I was gathering and here it is. Part of it. Just part of it.

Oh well. There are gaps here. He hasn’t gotten into some of the things I’m seeing. This is broad.  I’m going to keep exploring. But now I also have to go read his freakin’ books to make sure I’m not parroting things someone else has discovered. Grouchy.

Anyhow.

The point of all of this is, for me, still to help my small business owner client grow. And after this research, I think what I’m going to be saying to my clients is simple. It’s okay to broadcast. But how you broadcast matters. Listening is much more powerful. It’s okay to have the motive of growing your business. But to stand out above a crowd of people who are self-seeking, you have to give. In a room full of posers, authenticity is shiny. There is no gimmick that leads to success. You have to be extraordinary, even if it is in only one way. One small thing even. And you can. Being consistent is extraordinary. That alone.  In the Louisville market, if your market is local, Twitter has limited range. We’re not in step with other parts of the country as far as usage.  There are people using it but Facebook is still much more popular here. It’s growing though. Don’t ignore it. Learn how to swim in it now so when it does hit critical mass here, you’re ready.

Check out the infographic, see who you are in relationship to it and admit that. Then define who you want to be, what your goals are. And don’t approach it like everyone else is. I think  we can’t control other people but we can control ourselves. So we work on ourselves..our business, constantly seeking improvement and innovation and are honest about it. And advertising whether on social media or AdWords is about telling the truth. Should be about telling the truth. And surprising people. But my strategy for anyone wanting to use Twitter to grow a business will start first with listening and tend more toward the Maven/Mensch model. (Say that three times fast- Maven/Mensch model.)

All right. Those are my thoughts for now.

Thanks @guykawasaki.

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If you are up to date then you know that a website is like a car and that your business needs one. When I was doing my research for my ill fated PowerPoint presentation, I found an article on www.edmonds.com called “10 Steps to Finding the Right Car for You”. After reading the article it was clear how easy it would be to apply these same steps to purchasing a website. Let me warn you now that some of these steps require a small to medium dose of imagination, but I doubt you would have made it this far if you didn’t already have that at your disposal. Now that I have dutifully warned you, I will move on.

The first step in the process is determining what it is you need. Your business needs a website. We’ve got that but what does that mean within this car analogy? In order to get there we have to take a really basic look at the car. What makes a car a car? We can all identify a car on sight. We can tell the difference between a car and a motorcycle, or skate board or bicycle and if we needed a car, we would never accept one of these as an alternative. Why? Because they are not a car and we know they will never meet our needs. Without getting into the minutia, there are specific physical requirements for a vehicle to be a car. Wheels, engine, blah blah. There are also understood functional requires that we all expect from a car. It must be able to carry a certain number of passengers. It must go a certain speed. The same holds true for a website and many people accept the motorcycle or skateboard equivalent of a site as their website because they can’t identify the “car” website.
The obvious next question is “how do I do I know it’s a car?” It is a simple question to ask but not as simple to answer. We are talking about business websites so your business will determine what you need. I know that’s lame but let me explain. You know those brown vehicles that deliver the packages for UPS. For many it’s a truck, to some it’s a van, but to UPS it’s a “Package Car”. It’s the vehicle that meets UPS business needs. (To be honest I never understood why they called them cars, but it really works for this analogy.) The UPS package car has all the parts we expect from what we normally consider a car plus the added parts required for UPS to get the functionality it needs from the vehicle. It’s exactly what UPS needs.

For most businesses a UPS Package car is way too big, way too uncomfortable and way too expensive to maintain. It just wouldn’t work. UPS’s website is the same way. Unless you can afford the expense of administrators and servers that UPS employs then it is probably more than you need. Much like the package car the UPS website meets the basic structural and functional things that every business needs which makes it a car. It meets the needs of both UPS and its customers. It answers question for customer service like “where’s my stuff”. It asks question to qualify potential sales. These are two of things your website may need to do.

The point being is that websites can look as different as a UPS Package car and Corvette but if they meet all the required structural and functional needs then they are both cars. Your business is what makes that determination. There is no cookie cutter answer here. Every business has specific needs that must be addressed to have a website that can deliver on the potential that having the right online presence can provide for your business, your customers and your bottom line.

The answer to “How do I know a website is a car?” can only be answered by more questions. Whether you are preparing to enter the world of the internet for the first time or evaluating the site you currently have, the most important question to ask is “ Does it meet all my business needs?”

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To make money from your blog you can

1. Sell ads clicks/ad impressions
2. Sell information products
3. Write reviews
4. Participate in affiliate programs
5. Become a speaker

I’m going to just give you a quick overview here with links for more reading, I want this to be a resource for you, a starting point. Blogging is a job and like anything else, you must put work into it to reap the rewards.

Ads

The best way to sell advertising is Google AdSense. There are other networks such as BlogAds that you can apply for, but AdSense will immediately get you rolling. Chitika is similar to AdSense and is worth checking out.

Google AdSense
Chitika

Information products

Information products can be whitepapers, landscape  plans, e-books, sets of usable illustrations, forms, videos, audios, the sky is the limit. The key here is that the information must be available via download so there is no shipping.

The problem is that there are unethical people in this arena. Be aware of that. Keep your ethics and common sense when you’re reading about this. If someone tells you that you can get rich in a week? They’re not telling the truth. Don’t pay for info on how to do this unless it is a reputable, very well-known and successful person offering the training (look for proof), there is too much information out there for free. Be wary of people with gooey buzzwords like “infopreneur” Ick.

There is a ton of information out there on how to develop, market and sell these. I would start research with these articles:

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/04/06/how-to-sell-information-products/

http://www.copyblogger.com/7-steps-to-creating-and-selling-a-niche-information-product/

Reviews

People will pay you to write. Let me say that again. People will pay you to write.

Now I’ll tell you to be honest. And ethical. Or else your reviews mean nothing. But you’re really doing a huge service for companies by providing an opinion and linkback, so I think this is a good thing.  Again, do some background work to check out the company you work with. Make sure they are reputable.

I like these:

https://payperpost.com/

http://www.blogadvertisingstore.com/

Affiliate Programs

If you have products you like and want to recommend to others, you can get a portion of the sales when others buy because of your referral. This is called an affiliate program.  It works like a pay per click program except you only get paid if people buy from a clickthrough from your blog. There are directories of these out there. The best-known affiliate program is Amazon’s.

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/main.html/189-4237678-9474743

I’ll tell you to start your affiliate search with ClickBank. They are very established and reputable.

http://www.clickbank.com/index.html

Become a Speaker

Last but not least, take your expertise on the road and become a speaker. As you become established in your field, paid opportunities to speak and give seminars will happen. If you want to learn more though about this, I really like this resource:

http://paidspeaker101.com/

And finally for a really in-depth walk through of the entire process of starting a blog, marketing, and monetizing, I think this is a wonderful resource.

http://www.christianpf.com/how-to-make-money-with-a-blog/#money

Okay, hopefully I have given you a starting point to work from. Happy Blogging!

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