Digital Profit Success

Build A Blog And Make Money Part 1

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blog1When you pick a niche and have a domain, you want to move to the next step and start creating your site. Many newbies want to know whether they need a website or a blog.

Static sites are great for narrow topics like a little minisite where you’re reviewing one particular coffeemaker and you want a page on brewing tips, a page on the specs of the machine, a page on comparisons with another coffeemaker, etc.

They’re also great for service providers like freelancer ghostwriters who want a page of samples, a page of testimonials, a page of rates, etc. But for most marketers, who are leading a niche, you want a blog.

Blogs provide freshness that Google (and humans) crave. As long as you stay committed to the topic and post on it continually, it will be an evolving online entity that grows in authority over time.  Don’t worry about the thought of continual content – we’ll address that later.

For now, let’s just talk about the important elements you need to remember when you have a blog platform and want to profit from it.  Before you get started, set your domain up with hosting and then log into your hosting account’s cpanel.

Click on QuickInstall and then WordPress and follow the prompts to install your blog. Ideally, your blog will be located at yourdomain.com – but some of you may have future plans to put a squeeze page on yourdomain.com, so you might want your blog installed at yourdomain.com/blog – either will work.

Once you have it installed, log into your WordPress dashboard. It will always be located at yourdomain.com/wp-admin. It’s time to set it up for maximum authority and monetization!

Install An Appropriate Theme

If you’re a newbie with deep pockets and want to start out with a premium paid theme, more power to you! But it’s completely not necessary. Free themes that are built into WordPress are great starts and you can always upgrade your theme and keep everything intact at any time in the future.

What you want to watch out for is downloading free themes off the Internet randomly. These often have things you don’t want in there, like hard to find links to seedy websites. Just keep in mind that nothing is totally free – they have a reason they put that out for the masses to use.

A better way to do it is to choose a free theme from those already installed. So in your dashboard click on Appearances and then Themes. You’ll see a variety of themes if you click on Add New.

You can sort by Featured, newest, Recently Updated – or check off theme specifics you want, like colors, columns, layout, features and subject. But there are some things you want to make sure you get.

Unless your blog is a photography-based blog, you want one where text is showcased more than images on the home page. It’s good to have some images, but not just images.

You also want a theme where the header doesn’t take up the entire “above the fold” area. The above the fold area is everything you see before have you to start scrolling down the page.

You want your above the fold area to show your header, navigation bar and the first snippet of the latest blog post as well as the sidebar that has your opt in form and freebie item in sight.

So you might notice the Twenty-Eleven theme has a huge header – takes up almost he whole screen. But the Twenty-Ten is much smaller. You can also upload your own theme if you want to.

There are some newbies who plan to launch an affiliate site for Amazon so they consider going with a specific review theme. That’s okay – as long as it’s not some automated system that simply pulls content in to your site.

In order to truly succeed, you want unique content with a personal style, not scraper sites that simply grab text from elsewhere. People don’t trust that. You might get the traffic, but when a consumer is looking for a review, they can tell the difference between a personalized post and scraped content.

In part 2 we will look at optimizing your settings…

Five Things You Can Do Today To Achieve Your Goals

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economic07

There is a lot more to achieving any goal than just having the goal. But it is a first step. You may wonder how some people seem so great at achieving their goals while other people aren’t so good at it. Part of the reason why some people fail is that they do not have a specific goal, one that is clear and focused. In addition, they do not have a schedule of action to actually work toward achieving the goal. In order to meet any goal, start doing these five things today.

1. Craft Clear, Specific and Doable Goals

For any goal to be achievable it must first be clear and very specific. But, it also must be possible. You do want to challenge yourself a bit, and set the goal high, but you want to ensure that any goal you set is possible. Therefore, you will need to do a little research in order to set a goal. For instance, let’s say your ultimate goal is to lose 50 pounds.

Obviously, anyone who needs to lose 50 pounds and sets their mind to it can do so, but they can’t and shouldn’t do it in one month. So an unreasonable goal is “I want to lose 50 pounds in a month.” Instead, a more reasonable and doable goal is to state “I want to lose 50 pounds in 30 weeks.” This is in line with health recommendations not to lose more than 2 pounds per week, and gives you a little cushion for plateaus and other issues.

2. Each Goal Needs Set Actionable Tasks To Monitor Progress

Additionally, any goal that you really want to meet needs to have the “why” and the “how” included with the “what” of the goal. In the example above you want to lose 50 pounds in 30 weeks, which will be a little less than 2 pounds per week. You’ll need to look at your diet, compute the number of calories you should consume and the amount of exercise you need to see those results.

Thankfully, today there are online calculators to help you determine this easily, but let’s say that you determine that if you consumed 1800 calories a day, and walked for 20 minutes each day, you would achieve your goal that you set within the time limit. So, now you need to include planning your meals and fitting in the exercise necessary to reach your goal. But because of the research you did, you know exactly what is needed to be successful with the goal you set. You can see a clear path to success just by going further and adding these actionable tasks:

* Eat 1800 calories a day
* Walk fast for 20 Minutes per day

Seeing that in black and white you can see that it’s very doable and achievable. But, there are a few more steps necessary to achieve your goals.

3. Schedule Everything

Do not leave anything to chance. Instead, schedule in the work necessary to reach your goals into a real calendar. Writing a list isn’t good enough – you need to schedule in everything so that you don’t miss a single day due to losing track of your schedule. You’ll need time to eat healthier, which requires more chopping and cooking, and you’ll need time to fit in the exercise, which is going to really take more than 20 minutes due to prep time and recovery time. You need to be realistic about how long each thing will take and schedule them into your day properly.

4. Take Action

No goal will ever be achieved if regular action isn’t taken each day. Each morning, look at your calendar and follow through on the plans that you’ve made and the criteria you’ve set for yourself to get things done. All you have to do is the minimum necessary each day to reach your goal. When you get through each day having done the minimum, you’re a success – each and every single day. There is nothing else that can be the result of daily action other than success when you think of it this way.

5. Repeat

Finally, you’ll need to repeat these steps every single day. When you make very specific and clear goals with very specific steps to achieving the goal, based on reality, you will soon discover the secret to success that seems to escape so many people. The real secret is in the doing. It’s like going on a long hike – if you take one step at a time, moving in the direction of the map that you’ve planned out for yourself, you will get to the end and you will be a success.

Reaching your goals is just a matter of setting reasonable and realistic goals, and then setting up a schedule of actionable tasks and steps that bring about the end result you want. You can start today to achieve your goals.

If you would like to learn more about goal setting and improving your mindset, and using both to increase your success in your business then please take a look at Building The Business Within now

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goals

There is a lot more to goal setting than just picking a goal and moving forward. While that is important, it’s also important to ensure that you are setting the right goals at the right time so that you can truly be successful. In order to ensure that you are setting the right goals for yourself, answer the following questions:

Arє чσu sєttíng spєcífíc αnd rєαlístíc gσαls?

It takes a little research to ensure that a goal is realistic. If you’re not sure if something is actually achievable then you’ve not done enough research. Once you’ve set a goal that is indeed realistic, then you need to be specific enough in your description of it so that it’s also easy to take the goal, and work backwards to create a schedule of actions needed to succeed.

Arє чσur gσαls multífαcєtєd?

Focusing on only one part of your life is a bad idea. People live multifaceted lives and need to make goals for all areas of their lives in order to feel successful. If you have a wonderful business and career but your personal life suffers, then no matter how successful you are, you will not feel successful. Something will always feel as if it’s missing from your life if your goals aren’t inclusive. Therefore, make sure your goals include something from each aspect of your life.

Is чσur schєdulíng rєαlístíc tσ íncrєαsє chαncєs σf succєss?

Once you create the schedule for yourself to reach each goal that you’ve set, you need to truly consider how representative it is of reality. Say your goal is to be healthy and reduce your cholesterol by 10 percent in six months. But, you haven’t set aside the time needed to exercise and eat right. If you don’t schedule in the time needed, you won’t succeed because something will always be in your way taking time away from you. It will be very frustrating to practice your schedule because it doesn’t represent reality.

For instance, if you are going to exercise 30 minutes per day, setting aside only 30 minutes isn’t going to be realistic. You’ll probably need to set aside an hour to account for getting ready as well as cooling down or getting cleaned up to go back to work.

Arє чσu lєαrníng frσm fαílurє?

Many times when setting goals and schedules, instead of learning from failure, people give up. Using the example above, once you implement your schedule to reach the goals that you have set, when you notice there are things you’ve forgotten to take into account, don’t give up. Learn from the failure and change the schedule to be more realistic.

You might find that in practice you have to rewrite all your goals and your schedule, but this is perfectly acceptable. Many people believe failure is something negative, but the truth is, if you don’t fail sometimes you’re not going to learn much and it’s likely your goals are too easy.

Ayє чσur gσαls trulч чσur wαnts αnd nєєds σr sσmєσnє єlsє’s?

A lot of people set goals that represent what someone else wants instead of what they want. This can really cause a lot of bad feelings and resentment which can derail the best laid plans. As you set your goals for your life, ask yourself if they’re really what you want for yourself or what someone else wants for you. Ask yourself if you’re okay with any goal you make being for someone else before you embark on your journey.

It’s okay to do things because of someone else, but it’s important that you are honest about that and make some goals for yourself too that don’t involve anyone else’s needs or wants.

Arє чσu mєαsuríng чσur prσgrєss?

Schedules are very important to the success of reaching any goal in life. To do lists pale in comparison to a well laid out calendar of tasks and activities that get you from point “A” to point “B”. Ensure that you look at your schedule every morning and every night and note when you succeed on sticking to your schedule and where you don’t. Noticing a pattern of activity can be helpful in fixing a poorly written schedule as well as staying realistic about whether or not you’re sticking to the plan.

Arє чσur gσαls fσcusєd pσsítívєlч?

When writing a goal it’s important to write them in a positive way, or at least a way that feels positive to you. In the quest to improve your life, try writing down a goal and then changing the words to sound more positive to see if it isn’t more motivating. For instance, “losing weight” seems like a good goal, but for some people it might signify deprivation. So instead, the person might frame the goal as “improving my BMI by 10 points” or “improving my cholesterol by 10 percent.”

Arє чσu wσrkíng σn tσσ mαnч gσαls αt σncє?

Just as setting too few goals can be a problem, so can setting too many. Everyone has a personal life and a career life and points in between. If you have set goals in too many areas of life at once, you might tire yourself out and get overwhelmed. Instead pick one personal goal, and one other type of goal to focus on until you reach them, and then you can add more goals as time goes on. You don’t need to do everything today. Slow and steady wins the race is a good motto to hang on to.

Setting the right goals for yourself takes some thought and consideration. Don’t try to set all your goals in one day – instead, set some goals in different stages and in different areas of your life and give a lot of thought to why you’re making the goal in the first place.

5 Reasons Your Online Business Needs Social Media

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socialmedia-pm

Marketing online continues to evolve and grow and these days social media takes a front seat in most online marketing strategies as supports the growth of business. The reasons to use social platforms to engage and reach customers are plentiful; here are 5 of the main ones.

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Why do social media managers spend countless hours planning, posting, testing, and perfecting their social media presence online?

  • There are 3 billion active Internet users and 2.1 billion of them have social media accounts.
  • YouTube has more than 1 billion users, more than a 1/3 of all web users. Each and every day web visitors view hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube that generate billions of views.
  • Facebook has nearly 1.4 billion users, that’s 47% of all Internet users. 4.5 billion Likes are generated daily and nearly 75% of Facebook’s revenue comes from mobile advertising. 936 million Facebook users login in at least once daily and 52% of marketers found a customer on Facebook in 2013.
  • Twitter has 316 million monthly active users that 500 million tweets each day
  • Google+ has 363 million users that hit the +1 button on 5 billion times per day
  • Pinterest has 100 million users, 85% of which are women. 47% of Pinterest users purchase a product based on pins, with the average sale being $58.95. 67% of pinned content is from a business site and 82% of Pinterest users would rather follow a brand than a celebrity.

Impressed yet?

These stats are just one reason to use social media to market your business that really illustrate the reach that social media can have on your business, be it online and brick and mortar. Here are 4 more reasons to make social media a part of your marketing plan.

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Social media allows you to reach people at a more personal level. Many social media marketing experts explain that social media is about relationships building, that as a side effect brings about conversions for calls to action. When you connect with people and they connect with you, they are more likely to follow your brand and all it has to offer.

3: Shσwcαsíng чσur вєst cσntєnt

Social media allows you to show off your best content, and highlight all your brand has to offer. Whether you use text, images, video, or all of the above, you can tailor your campaign to present and impress your target audience with the very best content, products, and services that your brand has to offer. Tailoring your campaign through social media allows you to meet many objectives, including, building brand reputation, customer engagement, a better customer experience through valuable information and any other goals that meet your marketing needs.

4: Stєαdч αnd rєlíαвlє trαffíc

Who isn’t sick of fighting for organic traffic when Google keeps wiping sites off their SERPS with one after another of their ongoing updates? Social media can bring a steady, long term, reliable and ongoing stream of traffic to your sites and blogs, without having to worry that some entity will come along and wipe you out.

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One of the greatest benefits of social media is that you have full control of what is presented about your company, brand, and website to your target audience. You can tailor your marketing plan to meet specific goals and not leave anything to chance. The multitude of tracking, and testing tools available, such as, Klout, SumAll, BuzzSumo, and TweetReach, just to name a few allow you to enhance and tweak your campaigns as needed to constantly improve your efforts to boost conversions.

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There is no better time than now to take advantage of all social media has to offer. If you have an online business and do not have a social media presence then you are behind the times, it’s really as simple as that.

There are many expert guides online to get you started, and educating yourself on the intricate process that is social media marketing is critical to your overall success.

There is also the option of hiring a social media marketing expert. Take care to choose a competent professional, it will not be cheap, but may well be worth it when they bring the results your business needs to succeed.

Characteristics Of An Entrepreneur

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dps

The typical characteristics of an entrepreneur include:

*An enthusiastic person with a vision
*The ability to identify new opportunities
*Calculated risk-taking
*Responsible in decision-making
*Overwhelming urge to succeed
*Discipline and persistence
*Confident and persuasive communicators
*Driven by the sense of accomplishment
*The ability to coordinate and manage scarce resources (time, money and people)

ᗯᕼᗩT IS ᗩᖴᖴIᒪIᗩTE ᗰᗩᖇKETIᑎG ᗩᑎᗪ ᕼOᗯ ᗪOES IT ᗯOᖇK?

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dps

Every business desires to make profits by getting as many customers as possible and in the process increasing sales. There are many ways to drive sales, and one of them that is very convenient and preferable to many entrepreneurs is affiliate marketing. Some people are familiar with the term because they’ve probably heard it thrown around from different quarters. So what really is this type of marketing and what does it entail?

In simple terms, it is a form of internet marketing where the affiliate (person referring customers), signs up for a merchant’s affiliate marketing program. The affiliate then recommends the merchant’s products to customers and earns a commission on every sale made. It’s similar to what used to exist before internet marketing became mainstream; where sales representatives would go out and get customers and then be paid a commission for every sale made. To some extent, this type of marketing also intertwines with some internet marketing methods because affiliates use conventional advertising methods to create product awareness. Some of these methods include making use of search engine optimization tools, email marketing and pay per click.

Affiliate marketing should never be confused with referral marketing as is often the case because the two are very different. The main motivation behind affiliate programs is financial gain as a way of driving sales while referral marketing uses personal relationships and trust to increase the amount of sales. By relying on loyal existing customers and business connections, a business can use referrals to increase revenue generation. In affiliate marketing, you only get paid commissions when you bring in customers and they actually make purchases.

This marketing program requires the affiliate or publisher to use an affiliate link anytime that they mention the advertiser or merchant on their website. When a potential customer visits the affiliate’s website and clicks on the link, he or she is taken to the merchant’s website. At the same time, a cookie gets dropped on the customer’s computer. The customer then makes a purchase from the merchant’s website. As he logs out, the merchant finds a cookie that belongs to a specific affiliate and thereafter makes a credit for the sale in accordance with the initial agreement. For transparency purposes, the merchant avails reports showing breakdowns of the amount of traffic from the affiliate’s link and the
sales made. This ensures that the publisher is paid his rightful dues without being taken advantage of by the merchant. The commission payments are usually made after certain durations, on most occasions on a monthly basis. At least that allows the merchant to receive a reasonable amount as opposed to the payments coming in small bits.

The most common compensation method is the one described above where the affiliate is only paid commissions for actual sales made. The cost per click method of compensation is not favored by many merchants because there is always the danger of the marketing program not resulting into reasonable sales numbers. An affiliate can also just sit around and earn money for actually doing nothing. Affiliate marketing is sometimes referred to as performance marketing because of the compensation method.

ᗯᕼY ᐯᗩᒪᑌE IS SO IᗰᑭOᖇTᗩᑎT ᖴOᖇ YOᑌᖇ SOᑕIᗩᒪ ᗰEᗪIᗩ ᑕᗩᗰᑭᗩIGᑎ

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dps

What is the secret to being successful on social media?
The answer is simple: delivering value.

This might sound obvious to you, or perhaps it’s just obtuse and confusing. Either way, it’s undeniable and perhaps the best way to explain what I mean by this is to show you the opposite.

Which happens to be how most brands use social media…

TᕼE ᗰIᔕTᗩKE

The way that a lot of businesses use social media is to set up their accounts and then occasionally post to them. They’re not posting regularly enough to be considered consistent but what’s worse is the nature of what they’re posting: posts talking about their products and services.

You’ve probably seen these kinds of social media pages in the past. They say things like:
“Our new POS is the best in the industry!”
“Check out our new range of clothing!”
“For service you can trust, give us a whirl”

The thing you have to ask yourself then is: why would anyone want to read that? What incentive are you giving for following your page?

This is something that a lot of businesses simply forget about: in order to get people to listen to them, they need to be offering something in return. The best litmus test you can always use is this: would you follow your own page?

OᖴᖴEᖇIᑎG ᗩ ᔕEᖇᐯIᑕE

The solution is to turn your thinking on its head and to change the way you approach social media. Instead of thinking of this as a chance to promote yourself, think of it as a chance to provide an additional free service to your audience. This should be the same audience you’re trying to monetize but in this case you’re offering something completely free whether that is information, entertainment, news or inspiration. Either way, people need to look forward to your posts and they need to know what to expect.
Maybe you sell fitness products? In that case, you could provide a good service to your audience by posting new workout ideas or inspirational quotes every day. Maybe you sell clothes? In that case how about posting images of outfits to give people ideas?
Then, when you want to make a sale, you offer a genuinely exclusive discount. You have the ears and the trust of your audience and now you’re providing a limited time and exclusive opportunity. That’s how you influence through social media!

How to Create a Brand That People Will Love

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dps

If you want to make a big impact on the web, then it’s simply not enough to have a social account and a blog. You also need to make sure that there is a brand behind that social media account and blog – something that ties all of your posts and comments together under a instantly recognisable single banner and something that people will feel is more than the sum of its parts.

And you need to realise that a brand doesn’t just mean a logo. In order to have a real brand that has a base of raving fans, you need to know what it is that makes something like this work and the best way to approach building yourself an image and then gaining exposure for that image.

So What is a Brand?

So if a brand isn’t just a logo, then what is it?
Well, one obvious thing that a brand also needs is a catchy name. Your business/company needs a name and in all likelihood, this name will also be the name of your website. Having a brand like this for your website is one of the best things you can do right away to start getting attention for your business as it is easy for someone to search for your brand name and land on your website.

Google has actually stated that brands are far more successful at search engine optimization these days (although this is always subject to the ever changing algorithm!), while from a user’s perspective brands are also a lot more memorable and professional sounding. In other words, calling your website ‘FitLand’ will work much better than ‘FitnessAndHealthArticles’ as this is far too generic and not recognisable.

You also need a visual language. Once you’ve created your logo, you’ll have a basic color palette and maybe some images that will relate to your business and that will form the basis of these logos. Now you need to take those colors and shapes and work them into everything else you do. If your logo is red, your website and your social media pages need red accents. This consistency increases your brand recognition so don’t miss this step out!

Your Mission Statement

Another crucial component is creating a mission statement for your brand. Ideally this should be done first as it should underpin all your branding so it is probably the most important step.

So what is a mission statement? Basically it is a short paragraph or line that states what your business is about, what you do and why you do it. This is your goal, your vision and your commitment.

From here, you then have a more inspiring vision that you can use in order to inform your other choices – such as your choice of logo and name.

Now your logo and brand actually stands for something and when that’s the case, people can buy into it and really get behind you.

Creating Your Facebook Page

by

dps

When you begin the enormous task of promoting yourself on social media, you need to ensure that you choose the appropriate social media channel for the specific message you’re sharing and for the audience you’re targeting. In other words, if your business is all about gardening then you might have a slightly older audience, in which case a channel like Instagram may not be the best place for you. Of course, you should always do your research.

The only real “must have” channel is Facebook; almost every business should have a Facebook page. This is simply due to the fact that it is the biggest social network in the world in terms of users and also comes with a number of powerful tools that you can use to promote yourself further.

So how do you go about creating your Facebook page and what can you do to help it thrive?

Facebook Pages – Some Advanced Features

Creating a Facebook page isn’t really that different to creating a profile page. Once you’ve set up a new page, all you then have to do is to start populating it with the usual information and some good eye catching images. That means a profile picture and a cover image – and these should should be something crisp, large and grabs your attention.

But, as always, the devil is in the details and there are a lot of cool additional things you can do to get more exposure and success for your new page…

Insights

You should definitely check out the ‘Insights’ tab along the top of your page. Here you can see which of your posts is performing well (and which aren’t) and how many new followers you’re getting on a regular basis. This information lets you see what’s working so you can do more of it!

Publishing Tools

Likewise, the publishing tools option is a great way to do things like drafting or scheduling post. The latter allows you to spend a day writing some posts and then schedule them to be posted automatically at pre-determined date and time.

Call to Action

There’s a link just over your cover image in the bottom right. This is your call to action button and you can use it to send visitors to your website, shop or even a squeeze page. It’s definitely worth adding and using!

Store

Did you know you can actually add a store to your Facebook page if you’re using WooCommerce or Shopify! This is a great way to increase your Facebook ROI!

Become a Local Business

If you have a physical business such as a high street store then be sure to let your visitors check in! Click the ‘About’ button, choose ‘Page Info’ and then insert your address; it’ as simple as that. Make sure to tick the option to let people sign in!

So there you have it; a few simple tips to ensure you get your new Facebook page off to a flying start…