Amanda Tradwick serves up a few ways to bump that email list of yours.

Growing a large opt-in e-mail list is key to the success of your business and your blog. You can use it to cultivate relationships with your readers, build brand loyalty, promote your products or services, and grow your affiliate and ad revenue. Just like with any other aspect of growing your blog, targeted marketing efforts are required for effectively growing your opt-in e-mail list. Here are 5 easy ways to help you grow your list quickly:

Provide Multiple Options for Sign-Up

Not every visitor will come to your blog on the home page or another designated landing page. Perhaps they will find you through a link to a specific post, or by searching for terms that lead to another page on your blog. Make it easy for these new readers to sign up for your e-mail list by including a pop-up option that appears on each page at first visit. If you don’t like the pop-up option, you can include a permalink on your sidebar, header, or footer. The key is to make sure the option is accessible to readers no matter how they arrive at your blog.

Include Link in E-mails

Promote your e-mail list among your own contacts by including a link to it in your e-mail signature line. It provides an easy, low-pressure way for your contacts to sign up for the list or to share it with their own contacts. Be sure to also include the link in your e-mail newsletter so that your subscribers can forward it to others for easy sign up. The more options you make available to people to sign up for the list, the more likely you are to get new subscribers.

Promote It on Social Networks

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks offer effective ways to connect with new customers and subscribers. Be sure to include a link to both your blog and your e-mail list in your profiles on every social-networking site to which you belong. Then promote the link in your tweets, posts, and other shares. Be sure to share the link regularly, but not to share it so much that your connections start to view it as spam.

Offer Special Incentives

Providing added value for your readers will give them a reason to sign up for your e-mail list. There are many ways to offer this, depending on the types of goods or services your blog offers, including free shipping, discounts on products or services, or other special promotions. The key is to make sure these offers are exclusive to your e-mail subscribers and are not offered to just any reader of your blog. Otherwise, there is no incentive to sign up for the e-mail list to get them.

Offer Exclusive Content

Another great way to offer your customers added value for joining your e-mail list is to provide exclusive content. A free e-book or e-learning course is a great way to encourage your readers to sign up for your e-mail list. Be sure to offer new content or to rotate content so that your readers will be encouraged to remain subscribers. Once they have finished the e-book or the course, they may no longer find a reason to remain subscribers. Keep providing exclusive content to maintain that relationship.
Growing your opt-in e-mail list should be a key part of your overall marketing strategy for your blog. It allows you to build relationships with your readers and to grow a list of customer contacts to promote your services and products. Following these steps will help you grow your list more quickly.

About the author:
Amanda Tradwick is a grant researcher and writer for CollegeGrants.org. She has a Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Delaware, and has recently finished research on minority grants and scholarships and west virginia education grants.

Our guest today, Mariana Ashley ,gives us some advice on offline promos.

Almost every blogging tips site, this one included, will give you plenty of great advice about promoting your blog to reach a wider and more diverse array of readers. While this advice is certainly useful, most tips focus on promoting your blog using various online methods, like social networking sites, linkbacks, guest posts, and more. Once you feel as though you’ve exhausted these methods, it is important to realize that you can promote your blog in the “real world” as well. Here are a few tips that have worked for me.

1. Create business cards and carry them with you everywhere you go.

This is a very simple and handy way to promote your blog on the go. You can easily create business cards using free, online software and quality stock paper, or you can always order them from a print shop, too. Carry them in your purse or wallet, and if you happen to strike up a conversation with a stranger at a restaurant, bar, at the gym or wherever, don’t forget to hand them out. Having a physical piece of paper that potential readers can refer to once they get home is a great way to generate curiosity among new readers.

2. Attend blogging conferences and Meetups.

While there are many blog readers who are not bloggers themselves, the majority of your audience who will play a key role in further promoting your blog will have a blog of their own. As such, getting to know bloggers in person by attending local conferences and Meetups (see Meetup.com) will help you widen your blogging network in a more personable way.

3. Write freelance articles for local print publications.

Although many people who consume media are skeptical of the future of print publications, there’s no denying that they still exist and they still have plenty of readers. A fun way to promote your blog is to write freelance articles for local dailies, and include in your byline your blog. For casual readers who don’t necessarily read many blogs themselves, seeing your name in print attached to an interesting and well-written article will pique their interest in looking you up on the Web.

4. Don’t underestimate the power of word-of-mouth!

Many bloggers only spread the word about their blog online. But they often forget their closer circle of friends and family, who, consider your close ties, will have a greater desire to tell other people about your blog. So don’t be shy—talk to everyone and anyone you know about your blog and encourage them to visit it!

While blogging itself can be very time consuming, promoting your blog can take up just as much time. Although promoting your blog offline should never be your only method, when combine it with online promotion, you’ll have a marketing strategy that’s tough to beat. Good luck!

About the Author:

Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031@gmail.com.

Today’s well-written article about Google Panda is provided by Mitch O’Conner.

Back in February of 2011, Google unleashed a sweeping change to their search results ranking algorithm known as Panda, all in hopes of downranking “junk” and “copy-pasted” websites while boosting the visibility of better, more useable and unique sites.

Big surprise: it didn’t work perfectly. Although the algorithm changes indeed altered search results (in some cases for the better), the search giant was met with a backlash from many site owners accusing it of everything from poor quality control to putting its own corporate interests over those of the websites they help internet users find.

If you run a website or blog, there’s no getting around Google Panda. Instead, you’ll need to adapt and adjust, which in many cases will mean improving the overall quality of your site. Here are seven ways to do exactly that:

1. Create More Content, and Don’t Worry About Length

If you read too heavily into SEO guides (many of which are outdated by Panda, by the way), you may think that every single page on your site should contain no more than 300 to 500 words of content. Although there’s certainly a case to be made for short, punchy, to-the-point posts, the reality is that Panda calls for the best possible user experience, which in turn calls for content that’s only as long as it needs to be. You might have one page that makes its point in 200 words, while another may exceed 1,000.

Of course, there are some common sense limits to this. If a single page of your site exceeds, say, 2,000 words of content, you may want to think about how it could be restructured or broken into two or three separate pages that obviously deserve dedicated areas of their own. The old advice about breaking up lengthier posts with plenty of pictures, lists (when applicable and needed) and subheadings still applies, too.

2. Make Your Content Valuable and Non-Redundant

If you’ve had some sub-par content sitting and rotting away on the outskirts of your site, now might be a great time to clean it up. Although this type of content may have been seen as a neutral factor in the eyes of Google pre-Panda, especially if the rest of your site was high quality, it’s now viewed as a serious detriment that could drag down the rest of your site along with it. Anything that even remotely resembles spam will fall into this category.

Here are a few tips that go beyond the basic advice of writing for value:

• Update pages whose only purpose is to link to other pages. Roll them into other pages that have content, or write some new valuable content for them.
• Place plenty of original content above the fold, in the area immediately visible upon landing on the page.
• Don’t plaster every page with ads. Having some ads is still fine, of course, but they shouldn’t take up more real estate than your actual content.
• Never use auto-generated content. This simply won’t fly anymore with Google’s new algorithms.

3. Aim for a Natural Link Profile

Let’s say the purpose of your site is to discuss wireless internet services. You might link to a bunch of broadband providers, and possibly some mainstream media articles regarding the same topic. What you probably wouldn’t do, however, is link directly to competing sites trying to fill the same niche. In a post-Panda online environment, this is a mistake.

Panda is all about delivering the best possible experience to the user. Your site can do that by linking to other sites solely based on the value and relevancy of their content, regardless of whether they’re competing for your traffic. Your readers will appreciate it, and hence, Google will too.

4. Build Your Empire by Creating More Assets

When Google looks at your “brand,” they want to see more than just a single website that looks like a buoy in an ocean. Modern internet users want more than just pages with pictures. By creating more assets for your site, such as email lists, interactive forums and Facebook pages, you build a community around your brand. In a post-Panda environment, these are the types of sites that Google will prioritize in search results.

Get creative: is there some aspect of your site, or facet of your content, that could be better conveyed with an ongoing, regularly updated video series instead of just text? Seize the opportunity to use increasingly affordable multimedia to beef up your site/brand.

5. Select More Natural Keywords

Outdated SEO advice went something like this: pick one or two keyword phrases most closely related to the topic you’re covering in a post, hammer them into the content as heavily as possible, and make them even more obvious by bolding them and putting them in every subheading as well. Google’s new algorithms see right through this, and treat it as nothing short of a devious tactic.

Of course, you still need to include the keywords you’re trying to promote, but the key is to let that happen naturally. Write about the topic in a thorough and insightful way, and you’ll probably notice upon proofreading that you automatically included several variations of the keyword phrase without even really trying. It’s less work for you, and Google actually appreciates the efforts by ranking you higher.

6. Pay Attention to Navigation

No amount of excellent content will be worth anything if your users can’t find their away around your site. This one’s rather basic: keep menus consistent and logically arranged, use internal linking whenever appropriate, and don’t bury anything on your site.

7. Skip the Short-Cuts

Lots of site developers and SEOs are claiming that they circumvented the downranking effects of Panda through what basically amounts to a tricky short-cut: moving pages and sub-domains from a “pandalized” domain to a new one, and suddenly recovering the search rank and traffic they experienced before Panda even happened. Sounds like they just beat the system, right?

In reality, these types of short-cuts may work for a few days, at which point Google’s search-bots will finish analyzing your “new” pages only to penalize them yet again. The only real way to get your ranking back post-Panda is to shape up your content, cut the duplicate copy and give your users a thoroughly better and more valuable experience.

About the Author: Mitch O’Conner is an online marketer and writer. When he’s not busy testing sites, generating traffic or writing content, he enjoys spending time with his wife and kids, watching TV, playing games or going camping.

ZK from Internet Marketing Blog shares with us how earn from writing for others!

There has been much talk about making money from your own blog. However, there are many opportunities out there for writing for other people’s blogs. There are many people who make a living from this. You just need to know where to find these opportunities.

There are many blogs which allow people to write for them. When you find such a blog, you can apply to write for them in return for a specific payment. However, you will need to give evidence of your experience. If you don’t have one, it is advisable to set up your own blog before applying for these opportunities.

Many people would be willing to allow you to write for their blog as a ghostwriter. This means that all posts will appear under their name. Normally, you will get paid per post or for a specific number of posts per month or per week.

As you gain experience in blogging, you can eventually start writing for a number of blogs and do it on a full time basis. Blogging is a great way of making a living since there are always people looking for writers for their blogs. There are many jobs available, which will ensure a steady income for you. Opportunities for writing for other people’s blogs can be found advertised on various job boards online. Such jobs can also be found on sites such as Craigslist. When starting off, it might take some time before finding your first job. However, with patience and persistence, you might soon find yourself blogging for a living.

ZK is the co-founder of Internet Marketing Blog where accomplished writers and bloggers share their tips, strategies and stories. Follow him on Twitter at @webtrafficroi.

We have a special guest today, Jack Lundee!

One of the most important aspects of branding your company, product, or even persona is authorship. It’s important to always remember to provide contact details and proof that you’re in fact a real person writing real stories.

Providing relevant and trustworthy contact information is one key to identifying spam from really substantial content. Hence why it has become so important after the search Giant’s introduction of Panda. Nevertheless, there are a couple really good reasons why you should always have some form of contact information.

Engagement

Now that people have recognized you as a leader in whatever industry it is that you’re in, they’re more willing to connect with you, whether it be directly through e-mail or Facebook. Twitter has made a tremendous impact in the blogging industry with APIs that allow fans, followers and subscribers to communicate with their favorite authors. Even LinkedIn has taken the opportunity to bring communities of professionals even closer with their groups feature – Groups allows industry experts to start open discussions about specific topics.

If you’re a larger organization that doesn’t wish to divulge pertinent contact details in hopes of filtering the noise, you should still give your followers, naysayers and support groups a chance to engage. Take the brainchild of Doug Band and President Clinton for example; The Clinton Global Initiative does a fabulous job of delivering information directly to their fans and subscribers at https://www.facebook.com/clintonglobalinitiative. They not only give their audience important news, but they also present opportunities to donate, attend important events, and even provide insight on important political, economic, and charitable information.

Conversion

And it doesn’t matter of you’re the leader of a 501(3)(c), you’re still going to find optimal conversion for your product, service or voice if you open yourself up to your supporters. It’s amazing the impact that some regular people have on the world today through their writings and media. However, without a proper venue for displaying it, along with a means of communication, it wouldn’t have the same significant impact. Let’s face it; you can’t sell a product if people don’t trust you. The first rule in any sale, whether it is something tangible or intangible, is establish a level of comfort. And establishing a comfort level with your followers can only happen if they know you’re real. You can create a foundation for this not only by providing contact details (i.e. email, twitter account, FB, etc…), but you can be proactive as well. This means exercising things like cold calling/emailing, permitting guest posts, guest posting, permitting comments and open comment exchange and supplying your subscribers with free samples of whatever it is that you have to offer.

Facebook isn’t just a social community; it’s an alternative to authorship. In other words, you can prevent spam and provide verification inherently by having followers sign up via Facebook.

Ultimately, your engagement will eventually drive conversion. In order to successfully engage and convert, there must be a strict level of attention paid to authorship and interaction. In a more simplified sense, a person who reads the newspaper may not always be intrigued or tempted to respond to the author(s). But if the content is substantial enough to warrant a response, chances are you’re more likely to receive just that if you have a detailed author bio. Show people you’re real and that you or your organization has a face behind them. Abiding by this simple rule will help you become a stronger advocate for your writing, services and products.

Jack Lundee, Supporter of all things green and progressive.

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Michael Evans from Site2You gives us some tough love…

If we take sheen out of blogging, the bare facts will start hurting us so badly that we need to find a way to make it appear glamour job. But reality is hard to overlook and the reality is that blogging is not a career option at least. You can take it as a hobby but with caution because it can leave out sooner than you can expect. It requires a passion for writing and a keen desire to post something unique and exciting. I have personally seen people taking up blogging as a profession and then given up within the next two months. Now, if you do not wish to join this bandwagon, you need to aware of the flipsides of blogging if you want to kick start your career in this domain:

Blogging isn’t that Easy – Contrary to popular perception, blogging is anything but easy job. It requires a certain degree of devotion, dedication and a keen desire to present things that people in general will find truly interesting and engaging. It takes some doing to choose the topic, brainstorm to get the concept into tangible words, find the proper images and finally get it posted in the blog. And then it is not the end of the job. You need to work hard to promote in different social media websites. Now, initial enthusiasm is likely to die down as soon as you see that all your going down the drains as the Analytics is not showing any positive signs.  So, you need to be mentally prepare that blogging is going to make you earn thousands of dollars each month. It will take months, sometimes more than six moths to see your blog showing some signs of improvements.

It is not business all the time: Lets face is that on one can survive solely on blogging. You can take it a side business, earn some good bucks by selling some adds in the blog or adding Google Adsense but none of them dilute the importance of having a day job. You can see things this – blog is the best tool to promote your business but do not take it as the business itself. Blogging is a means to boost your business and not the other way round.

Blogging isn’t all about you: blogging may sound personal but if you wish to build up a good rapport with some people who regularly visit your website and read your posts, you should not turn your blog into a personal journal. Instead of using ‘I’ and ‘me’ all the time, you need to use ‘you’ and sometimes ‘them’ to reflect the concerns of visitors and to make them feel that you care for them. People like to read interesting articles, tips, great images and other facts that make them feel good or at least shock them but if your blog is filled with droll of  personal information, it will soon kiss the dust.

Blog is about interaction: Staying aloof from your readers and treating them as inferiors is certainly not the way forward by any standard. You have seen people commenting on your blog but have ever thought of replying their queries probably not. This is probably the biggest mistake a blogger can commit in his career. However, not all comments are important. There are some who comments only to get a linkback their website whereas some people comments only to vent their feeling. Special attention should be given to latter.

Practice doesn’t help always: Practice makes a man perfect. Sounds true but the fact is that it cannot be applied everywhere. There are some exceptions and you have to accept. We cannot become Shakespeare no matter how hard we may try. Every man has his limitation and potentials. We need to find out our potentials as a blogger before we go on blogging like anything else. Rather than writing regularly, you need to take a break and try to perfect your writing style, add some unique elements in them to make it look polish if you are to survive in this cut throat competitive environment.

Michael Evans is a passionate writer and he has been writing for Site2You which is the business website builder. He has written different article on web design, online marketing and SEO. He is equally enthusiastic about latest gadgets.

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So how many of you have a site and absolutely love it? For some of us, it’s second nature. We can sit down crank out a site based on how we envisioned it on our heads.

However, for some other folks, it’s not quite that simple. One of the challenges with building a website is that we usually don’t have all the skill sets needed to create a good one. On one hand, you’ll need your creative juices flowing for the design and on the other hand, you’ll need to leverage your technical know-how to make it come to life. Most people don’t exercise both sides of their brains to the full extent; that’s why it’s a big hurdle that leaves some at ground zero.

When we find that we’re not perfect for certain jobs, what should we do? We hire help to fill the gaps!

Wildfire Marketing Group can provide you with a web design that is based on your input and tastes. Just tell them what you want and they’ll work with you to get you to that goal. We’re talking about pros who can not only customize a site for you but also help drive success, however you may define it. If you want more visitors, they can help. If you want more conversions, they can help.

For those of you who think you’re all set on your website, take a look at Wildfire’s website checklist. This thing is packed things like:

• Marketing planning and strategy
• Creating a search engine friendly website
• Proper HTML and CSS coding
• Design principles
• Proper use of multimedia
• Branding
• Usability
• Website performance
• Conversions
• Improving credibility

All that for a measly $17 with a money back guarantee!

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