Marketing is all about being at the right place, at the right time, with the right message. If you try to be there for everyone, your message will become diluted. And if you dilute it too much, it won’t be the right message, at the right time, for anyone.

So what you need is a unique spin, an edge , or what is commonly known (in the marketing field) as a unique selling proposition — USP for short.

A USP is an attempt to express the uniqueness of your business in a single statement. It can be a promise no one else makes. It can also be a unique benefit that only applies to your product or service.

Any advertising you run without a well-thought out USP is like throwing money down the drain . Seriously. You need at least the basis of a strategy. Otherwise, advertising will suck you dry financially.

Creating one yourself is important, but how do you get started? What components are necessary, and which will just waste your time and hard-earned advertising dollars?

You don’t have to worry. Position Tactics to the rescue. This 97 page eBook will take you by the hand through every step to find, define and polish your profit pulling unique selling proposition , specially for your niche or business.

To find out more about this eBook, or to order it right now, click Position Tactics .

Has this happened to you?

You wake up, eager to spend some time on your blog and stumble bleary-eyed over to the computer to see what wonderous activities have happened on your blog during your well deserved but long over due slumber. Blinking the *sleepies* from your eyes you login to your email client and see 382 new messages from your blog announcing comments!

Excited to see the feedback to the amazing post you sweated over for 3 days, you quickly click into the comment moderation area of your blog, only to find all 382 are spam!

If this sounds like you, you are not alone. In fact, one reader sent this question in just yesterday. If one is asking then 10 are wondering, so let me take a couple of minutes and suggest a few things you can do.

Jim Feilen writes:

Anyway to reduce getting spam messages on my blog? I have it so I have to approve before it will post but I am getting more spam each day.

Jim

Welcome to 2008. We fight against spam in our inboxes, our blogs and our postal mail boxes (although less and less in the mailbox these days).

Spammer robots allow people with no conscience or understanding of karmic laws to automatically add comments to hundreds or even thousands of blogs every day. Getting yourself out of the line of fire is a topic worthy of several posts, but today I will just list the top 5 ways I have found to reduce or eliminate spam on your Wordpress blog.

If you know of others, I invite your comments so my readers can benefit from your insight, wisdom and hard earned *blogger-guru* status.

Akismet Wordpress Plugin

Akismet comes with Wordpress and is one of the first things you should try to reduce the amount of spam hitting your blog.

You do have to sign up for a Wordpress.com account in order to activate it (not sure why this is, it just is). I covered this in detail and provided screen shots and step by step instructions for this process over on my other blog. It’s an article titled "Akismet: Stopping The Spam Madness "

Comment Moderation and Comment Blacklist

Updating the Settings | Discussion options on your Wordpress blog to include some keywords in both the moderation and blacklist boxes for comments will also help.

Plan to add to this over time, but here are some that are in my list. Drug, pill, porn, anal, sex, gay, penis, viagra, insurance, lesbian, enlarge, brevibloc, celis, [url, xxx.

Notice I didn’t include all variations of the word for drugs. That’s because this feature will match the "inside words" as well. So, "drug" will match "drugs", "freedrug" and "sexdrug".

I should mention that I have nothing against old men who need or want viagra, gay’s or car insurance salesmen. I just don’t think my blog is the proper forum for that kind of message. I could be wrong.

Adding "nofollow" with a Wordpress tweak

One of the reason your blog will be targeted (aside from the missing karmic consciencious of the spammer of course), is that any "ranking" you receive from Google, can be passed on to people that link from your site to theirs.

You can reduce the "attractiveness" of your blog in this respect, by having all your comments contain a "nofollow" tag. This effectively tells the search engine not to follow any links from your comment area, back to where they point to.

There is a Wordpress plugin which I recommend that does this for you. In fact, it does a LOT for you. A a complete list is shown over on the post I did when reviewing this cool plugin , which you can read here. You can also go get a copy for yourself at the Wordpress Expert blog here.

Addon Plugins like Spam Karma (2.3) or Wordpress Comment Spam Stopper

Both of these Wordpress plugins are specially designed to reduce the crap in your comments. (Can I say crap?) As you will see from my notes above, I have an affinity for the Unknown Genius.

He and I think a lot alike when it comes to the spammers of the world. And although he doesn’t say it straight out, I will. Spammers should be dipped in honey, hung by their toes and ants turned loose beneath them.

Spam Karma 2.3

Spam Karma 2 (SK2) is an anti-spam plugin for the WordPress blogging platform. It is meant to stop all forms of automated Blog spam effortlessly, while remaining as unobtrusive as possible to regular commenters. Spam Karma 2 is the proud successor to Spam Karma, with whom it shares most of the development ideas, but absolutely none of the code

Wordpress Comment Spam Stopper Plugin

Spamming is a common problem, I was getting (at least) 1000 spam messages a week, and I was sick of it. I’m sure also having so many spam messages stored in the database (even if identified by askimet) must have a speed impact on your blog.

Therefore I have created a simple solution to stopping spam at the source: asking a simple question that bots are too stupid to know in the comment form. I know only get about 10 spams per week, rather than 1000!

So Jim, I hope this helps with your blogging spam problem. I appreciate the question.

If any of you know of others, I invite your comments so my readers can benefit from your insight, wisdom and hard earned *blogger-guru* status.

I have talked about the Web 2.0 technologies of sites like MySpace , Facebook , Squidoo and others for some time now. I simply love the ability to allow other to interact with the content, the thoughts and the ideas that are flowing.

Web 2.0 technology is one of the major reasons I blog, spend time on MySpace, Facebook and HubPages. I have long wished every site added the same type of technology. The same interaction. It was a silent dream.

Until now.

I keep my eyes open for the latest technologies and gadgets. I’m a geek, I freely admit it.

So, when a friend sent me a link to a new site that promises to "upgrade the web" globally, he had my immediate attention.

I clicked on the link and explored the first page. I wasn’t half way down it when I skipped ahead and clicked the "click here to join - free " button. I am hoping you will feel the same way.

It’s due to launch July 1st, and I suspect that 3 weeks will seem to take forever. I can’t wait. Want to see what I am talking about? Click the image or link below and come check out what’s coming.

I feel like the woman in the Mervyns commercial with her face pressed against the glass, hands opening and closing muttering "Open, open, open".

Click Here To Join Free

Oh yeah, join now and refer two friends, and you are entered into the million dollar give-away. Money. Always a nice bonus!

Wow, 30 days is really really short sometimes.

It’s been an enlightening experience trying to build up a traffic flow using just comments, but one that was definitely worth the time and trouble. I have made some great new friends, read a lot of excellent information (and some not so great) and learned more about Google and how they rank blogs.

A couple of notes before I publish the final results.

• Commenting is a strategy that can start some movement, but takes dedication and a willingness to read what other people are doing and add something to the conversation.
• Google Page Rank status is more than 3 months behind at any given moment.
• Connecting with other bloggers in your niche is a great way to find people to challenge you, force you to extend yourself (there’s a peer-review kinda thing going on)
• Don’t give up.

This experiment started as a result of moving from one blog to another (http://www.CenayNailor.com to http://www.BehindTheCurtain.byCenay.com), but I was hasty and moving for the wrong reasons. Well, okay, they were the right reasons to me, but I should have looked at other options first!

In my "absence" from the first blog, something amazing happened. That blog achieved a Google Page Rank of 1/10. No, it’s not enough to "retire" on, but it sure does feel good.

As I mentioned before, the sad thing is that the ranking are so far behind, I had gotten there BEFORE I moved, and just didn’t know it. So, 4 months of inactivity will catch up with me shortly, which will probably drop the hard won ranking.

But, now I know it can be done.

I am exploring new ways to improve my site, my ranking and my value to you, my loyal readers. But for now, here’s how the rest of the case study shaped up. I don’t know how you, but these number speak volumes to me.

Days 21 - 30

Actually, since posting nothing but the case study would be boring, I gathered the final week+ activities into one list (below). And please note, that this was so much fun, that even though the experiment is over, I will continue commenting on the excellent blogs I have found.
Day 21 — May 26th, 2008 Alexa: 632,058

• Blog 1: Alexa: 920,054 Google PR: 3/10 - added one comment
• Blog 2: Alexa: 3,428,239 Google PR: 2/10 - added one comment
• Blog 3: Alexa: 876,760 Goole PR: 2/10 - added one comment (deep link)
• Blog 4: Alexa: 2,029,278 Google PR: 3/10 - added three comments (2 blog + 2 deep link to another blog)

Day 22 — May 27th, 2008 Alexa: 631,992

• Blog 5: Alexa: 876,760 Goole PR: 2/10 - added one comment (deep link)
• Blog 6: Alexa: 2,029,278 Google PR: 3/10 - added one comment (deep link)
• Blog 7: Alexa: 241,563 Google PR: 4/10 - added two comments (both deep links)

Day 24 — May 29th, 2008 Alexa: 602,773

• Blog 1: PR 5/10 Alexa 400328 - added one comment
• Blog 2: PR 5/10 Alexa 638219 - added two comments (two different posts)
• Blog 3: PR 3/10 Alexa 1712797 - added one comment

Day 30 — June 4th, 2008 Alexa: 585,933

• Blog 1: Alexa: 128,335 Google: 4/10 - added one comment
• Blog 2: Alexa: 2,449,059 Google PR: 0/10 - added one comment (affiliate link)
• Blog 3: Alexa: 3,004,776 Google PR: 0/10 - added one comment
• Blog 4: Alexa: 20,991,548 Google PR: 0/10 - added one comment

Today’s Alexa score: 545,945
Google Page Rank: 0/10 (up from "unranked")

Just to recap, I started with an Alexa ranking of 987,533 on May 6th, 2008 . After thirty days (more or less) of commenting on blogs in my Niche, my Alexa ranking is 545,945 . That’s a drop of 441,588 . I can live with that.

I just did a "count" of the total number of comments… only 46 (plus or minus a few I might not have recorded). As I mentioned throughout this study, real life often intruded, and since "commenting" isn’t what you would call a "money activity", client work frequently came first. Imagine if I commented on 10 blogs every single day!

Give it a try. I promise it is a really revealing and rewarding process.

I was going through my tools and doing some organizing, when I came across a PDF that changed the course of my online marketing methods.

If you’ve been online any length of time, you know who Mike Filsame is (author of The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript and The Butterfly Marketing System ). Unknown to him, one chapter of his highly acclaimed The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript was leaked and I managed to grab a copy.

Click the link below to grab the PDF, print it out and study all 28 pages. You can thank me later. Or better yet, come back and click The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript to get a $100 discount on the complete book. THEN you can thank me.

The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript - Leaked Chapter

Ian found something for you I know you’re gonna love…

Have you heard of the following report titles?

The Death of Adsense
Life After Adsense
The Numbers Don’t Lie
The Autopsy
The Quick and the Dead

If you haven’t read any of the above reports I suggest you grab a copy today.

Now for the breaking news.

Scott has written another amazing report that is nothing short of SHOCKING!

The Internet Marketing Cure

I received an email from Scott earlier letting me know he had just released his report and that it would be in my best interest to read it and let as many people as I can know about it as well.

I have to say Scott has done it again and this time he has gone totally off the charts…

He talks about all kinds of crazy stuff from ebola viruses, to gold rush miners, to a new breed of “silent assasin” he calls “DuRus”.

He also gives some of the best advice I’ve ever read on gaining true focus and clarity, and talks about a no-nonsense plan for taking any business to the same income levels as the “real” big boys are doing.

This stuff really makes sense.

Gotta give him credit… he tells it like it is, and you certainly won’t hear anybody else saying this kind of stuff….

and the BEST part is he’s giving all this VALUABLE INFORMATION away FREE !!!

You better go and grab your copy now because I’m not sure how long it will be available.

The Internet Marketing Cure

Let me know what you think by leaving your comments below.

Source: Internet Business

Alright, I confess, I stole this!

I read a lot of blogs and came across a great YouTUBE video on Paul Cooley’s MLM Empire Training site which I snagged to share with you here. Sorry Paul. Hey, I could’ve claimed to have found it myself, but I like to give credit where credit it due.

Don’t you just love it when the "main stream news" validates something you have been saying? I sure do.

If you really want to crank up your skills, try a case study!

There is something about being held accountable, publishing results and a sort of peer review that forces you to look deeper, probe the inner workings and find real results. I highly recommend it.

That being said, it’s Day 21 (already) and although I took 5 days off to go camping (you really gotta love a work from home job that means you can take time whenever you want), I have, over the last few days continued with my experiment.

Before I post the numbers though, I want to reiterate one important point. The education I am receiving is priceless. I didn’t have to buy an eBook or home study course to get it either. I only had to be willing to put myself out there and study what I came across.

Day 21

Alexa: 632,058 (that’s a drop of 355,475 in 3 weeks!)
Google: Unranked (in other words, ZERO)

Day’s Activities

Remember, this is real life. I spend a little time each day looking for or commenting on blogs. Sometimes it’s only one. I skipped 5 days while camping over Memorial Day weekend (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday)

• Blog 1: Alexa: 128,335 Google: 4/10 - added one comment
• Blog 2: Alexa: 12,344,831 Google 0/10 - added one comment
• Blog 3: Alexa: 5,832,199 Google: 2/10 - added two comments
• Blog 4: Alexa: 36,439 Google: 3/10 - added one comment
• Blog 5: Alexa: 9 Google PR: 0/10 - added one comment
• Blog 6: Alexa: 907,288 Google: 4/10 - added one comment (no live link)
• Blog 7: Alexa: 9,668,413 Google; 2/10 - added one comment
• Blog 8: Alexa: 199,433 Google: 3/10 - added one comment

One other note about my commenting.

I mentioned in a previous post about Comment Sniper and how well it was working for me. Unfortunately, I expanded my "tool set" to include web design with PHP and MySQL, which required me to load some new DLL’s and libraries. These libraries conflict with Comment Sniper, so I get errors every time it tries to connect to the RSS feeds for the blogs I am watching. =(

There’s a lot of talk online these days about writing great content. And I’m totally 100% in agreement that if you’re not creating good content for your sites, person or business, stop wasting your time and move on to something else. Great content compels people to action and you need it on your site to grow and accomplish your goals.

But if no one sees all of your great content, does it really matter?

continue reading "5 Free and Easy Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website"

Ever wondered what is list building and why would you want to have your own list of subscribers? Well for starters, your list provides you targeted customers. By subscribing to your list, these customers have already shown their interest in what you are offering, and selling your products to these customers is an easy task. Though it is rewarding to have your own list, building such a list takes up a lot of effort and your time.

There are a number of ways to get subscribers to your list. The easiest way to build your own list is to offer a free e-book or software on your website. The freebie that you offer should relate to your site and should be unique. You need to remember that offering an e-book or software that is valuable for your subscriber is the first step towards building trust with your prospective customers.

continue reading "List Building Made Easy"

As someone who is involved in network marketing, you are probably using different marketing techniques to build your business. The following are free mlm marketing tips that cover 6 deadly marketing mistakes that need to be avoided at all costs and why.

• Marketing Mistake #1: Calling it quits too early. You don’t just quit using one particular marketing strategy because you failed. It could mean you need more education or to run a series of tests (e.g. headlines, ad copy, various incentives, etc.) before you make a final decision. The lesson here is not to give up too soon.

• Marketing Mistake #2: Failing to offer a solid guarantee. With everything you do, whether it be online or offline marketing, you have to have a guarantee. Some people are hesitant to do this because they fear people will take advantage of them and drive them out of business. It’s natural to think this way, but it’s false. Instead, always include a money back guarantee as it will increase sales.


continue reading "How to Avoid 6 Deadly Marketing Mistakes"

If you are like me, you are working very hard at building your MLM Business or Network Marketing opportunity into a successful (quit-your-day-job) income. It’s sometimes hard to do with just your “warm-market” (sometimes? Try impossible), so I started looking for other ways.

In fact, I was looking for a way to expand my “warm-market” since most of my family members had quit taking my calls. I am SURE you know how that is. Then I saw an ad that looked kinda like this…

Want to know how you can Magnetically attract endless new prospects and customers to you, with credit card in hand? Sign up for this free 10 Day Boot Camp to learn the tactics and strategies behind Magnetic Sponsoring and become the Hunted instead of the Hunter.

Stop chasing down leads and start having them calling you!

I have to say, that single ad has changed my life! I signed up for the 10 day boot camp, got the first email right away and started reading. Then I was waiting on the next installment hours before it was due out the next day. I read every word three times, then set it aside, only to pick it up again later in the day and read it again. After the 10 day course, I purchased the Magnetic Sponsoring eBook and devoured that in 2 days. This guy was talking to me! And he introduced me to concepts that were just vague outlines in the back of my mind. He clarified so much HOW to be successful in network marketing in today’s world.

Look, the techniques that worked for our parents aren’t viable any more. Things are changing too fast, the “drop-out” rate is at an all time high, with most MLM’ers looking for the next “good-thing” to come along.

This 7 Day Video Boot Camp , and the Book, Magnetic Sponsoring teaches you how to insulate yourself from this attrition rate, freeing you to do what you said you wanted to do when you got into this business. Have more time for yourself. Tell me, when was the last time you went to a social gathering and didn’t prospect?

Wouldn’t you like to remove some of the pressure and be able to enjoy yourself again?

You should invest a little time in yourself and your business by taking the 7 Day Video Boot Camp and getting the very reasonably priced Magnetic Sponsoring Book .

You can come back here later and thank me. I’ll be waiting.

Like this post? Publish It On Your Own Blog

I came across this article as a result of one of the groups I belong to on Facebook (which, if you aren’t on and building a presence there, you are really missing out on something special, more later). The article really resonated with me and I love his "phrasing". It’s rare to find a writer that speaks to you in the language you would hear if you were sitting at the table… grab a pen and make some notes, here is…

Five Simple Reasons Most People Will Never Get Rich… and How To Make Sure You Do! By Mike Litman and Jason Oman

What did I learn about getting rich by interviewing over 43 self-made millionaires? After interviewing one after another, I realized many of the secrets that make them rich while others continue to struggle. When you understand and do what self-made millionaires do, you get to become one of them. If you don’t understand and do what they do, you don’t get to become one. It’s really that simple.

Here are five simple reasons most people will never get rich and how to make sure you do:

Reason 1: Waiting to Start

Most people don’t want to wait for success. But, at the same time, they are willing to wait before getting started on the road to success. Do you see the problem here? The longer you wait to get started, the longer it will be before you get the money, success, and lifestyle you want. Many people are waiting for everything to be perfect before they get going. Therefore, they never get going and never get the rewards. No race has ever been won (or even finished) by someone who never left the starting line. Don’t wait to get going. Start today on the road to success.
continue reading "5 Things Keeping You From Being Rich"

If you have been following along on the Google Page Rank case study, you know that I have been seeking and commenting on popular blogs, especially those that have a higher Google PR than mine.

That isn’t hard to do since I am a ZERO and means there are a LOT of blogs out there to comment on.

Now, I have to tell you that finding, rating and commenting on blogs manually has presented it’s challenges. What time of day do you do it? How much time do you spend? How do you know the rankings and ratings of the blogs/posts you are spending your time on.

These are just a few of the challenges.

And since I also want to "entice" new visitors, I don’t just dash off a quick … "Hey, great post" kinda note.

I actually read the post. I think about the post.

I comment only if I can add something. I have read many more posts than I have commented on. (By Product=Great Education)

Hard work, but worth it. My Alexa rating has fallen (this is a good thing) from 987,533 to 722,250 in the two week(ish) I have been doing this.

I think I would be getting better "traffic" results if I were one of the first to comment on a new post. When someone reads the post and then my comment (which hopefully added something to the readers experience), then they just might take that extra click and stop by.

My regular readers know I am a computer programmer, and therefore, inherently lazy. It’s a personality trait that is preferred for this job. You have to WANT to find an easier way, one that takes less work - in order to really succeed in this business.

So, I have been looking for a way to make the commenting easier and take less time, and allow me to be one of the first to comment on a new post.

I Think I Found A Better Way

You will remember I downloaded and tried out Comment Kahuna . Interesting piece of software, but wasn’t really getting the job done. There is a bug in the "send my comment over" function, and it requires you "prewrite" your comments to be included. This doesn’t work for me since I am reading the post and adding to it.

Then I discovered Comment Sniper. (No, this isn’t a pitch and no, I am not an affiliate)

This little jewel allows me to search for (or add) a blog I want to "monitor", and when a new post is made, it notifies me! I click the handy popup alert down in my task bar and I am taken right to the post in question.

I am just getting started with it, but love it so far.

I will report back how it goes and if it makes a difference in my "commenting strategy ". But the ideal of the my computer telling ME when it’s time to comment is preferable to trying to figure out when on my own. I am juggling 14 balls at once, and the commenting has slipped some.

There’s that real world thingy again.

So, stay tuned, more on Comment Sniper soon.

Wow, what an educational process this has been. I highly recommend you perform your own study just for the fringe benefits.

Did you know that Google’s Page Rank as shown on your page is between 3 and 5 months out of date!?! Yeah, me either. Which means, I might not "see" the results to my Page Rank until sometime after October. So, I need another metric to help me determine my success or not.

Well, traffic is one. This is where FireStat’s comes in handy. I am literally watching new visitors arrive daily, which is a bit of a rush. Still no increase in commenting though, so it still feels like talking to an empty room.

(Come on, don’t be shy… I would love to hear your comments)

Alexa is another tool to help, since they measure traffic. I am not yet sure of exactly how they "rate" the site, but I do know that a high number is low traffic (tell me how that makes sense?)

And, here’s the good news. My Alexa rating has decreased! (That’s a good thing). My previous rating was 987,533 and I am down to 722,250! Whoo hooo.

I have also learned some great info on SEO and optimizing your Wordpress blog. I will be sharing the details in upcoming posts, but here’s a take away for you today. Use your H1, H2 and H3 tags liberally, and bold keywords within your posts.

This helps Google, Yahoo, MSN, and ASK "understand" your intent with the post and sorta preclassifies your relavancy for those words.

Day 8 through Day 11

Alexa: 722,250
Google Page Rank: Still zero and likely to be for months to come

Daily Activty

(Obviously, posting this every single day has been a challenge (can you say "real world"), so I will be recapping multiple days here)

I want some traffic to some of the "deep links" within my site (rather than just the home page), so I focused on SEO and Keyword research "searches" for these days and posted a link to one of the posts I put out there about SEO, Tags and Keywords)

• Googled "seo", "keyword research" and "site optimization" to find blogs to post on.
• Each of these blogs had at least a 2/10 Google Page rank, though the Alexa rating varied a lot!
• Blog 1: added two comments
• Blog 2: added one comment
• Blog 3: added one comment
• Blog 4: added two comments
• Blog 5: added two comments
• Blog 6: added one comment
• Blog 7: added one comment
• Also installed Comment Kahuna and tried it out. Kinda buggy, or I didn’t manage to get it installed correctly. Will give it one more shot before moving on.

So, anyone have any suggestions?