My guest post at Famous Bloggers is live.

I  focused this one on how to start a conversation using blog comments. Stop by and leave a relevant comment, join in the conversation, and give your site some exposure.

As I am looking around, I am starting to see just how much effect I am getting by using guest posts on blogs. I just started, but I am already getting more traffic, meeting some great people, and my readership has just exploded.  And this without wasting hours of time link building, and struggling to get a ranking in Google.

I guess this goes into the marketing blunders list. Putting off starting to guest post was a really bad idea. I should have done it earlier. Now though, I am jumping into allowing guest posts as well. So if you want to give your site some more exposure, and work together to build a community online, let me know and we will get started right away.

As we look into the future, it is apperent that using social skills, and building real relationships with our readers is where business online is going. As the search engines get smarter, sites with a social presence, with an internal community, as well as showing up in social atmosphere elsewhere is going to be important.

It doesn’t matter if you have a static website already. Create a subdomain, or subdirectory, and start blogging. Or, go buy a relevant doamin and blog on that. If you have the  .com domain, get the .net and start a blog on it. This way you get more exposure, you can build up links to your main site, and funnel traffic to your offer.

Personally,I am pulling away from the static sites, and going more and more into blogging. You can make a full time income doing it, and it is more fun.

With my static sites, I can spend weeks or months building links, and trying to throw traffic at the site. However, I can start up a new blog, post 10-15 good posts on it, make 2-3 guest posts, spending about 6 -8 hours of time researching and writing them, and get instant traffic going to the blog, sometimes without Google even having the pages indexed yet.

So, what are you doing to build a conversation with your blog? Let me know how you are doing it, and join our blog comment giveaway.

Paying article writing services to create your content is usually one of the first things you should outsource for your business. After all, one of the most crucial aspects of building your own website is getting great content. You need high quality, compelling articles, which will leave your readers drooling for more. However, it is also the #1 time-killer for a business owner.

You could spend hours slaving away at your desk trying to create just a few pages for your website. You can waste away your days doing research, and slamming your head against the wall trying get a few words down on paper.  After all, there is nothing else you could be spending your time doing.

There is a better way. You can hire someone to write for you. That is right; many people find a better use for their time than writing. You can find many article writing services online who will work with you to give your customers what they need, and save you the hours of hassle with doing it yourself.

Unfortunately, not all article writing services are the same. There are many things for you to consider when hiring a writer. This is your business, after all. You need to make sure that you get everything that you need. Follow these tips when hiring an article writing service, and you will get great content that you can use to build your site faster and better.

Writing Samples Are Critical

Make sure you see some samples of their writing first.  You want to make sure that they will provide you with quality. Any good writer usually has samples, even if they have never written professionally before.

You need to make sure that the way they write will represent your business well. You want them to magically draw your readers to your offer. Also, make sure that they can write articulately, and expressively.

Scheduling Matters

You should always discuss your delivery schedule early on. You don’t want to be hung out to dry by late delivery. It could destroy you before you even begin. If you need your first few articles within a few days, you need to state this right up front. You want to make sure that your writer can get you what you need, when you need it.

Competitive Prices for Your Budget

Although it is true that great article writing services will be expensive, a good writer can still be affordable. You want to make sure that the writer that you hire will fit within your budget.

Now it is true, you get what you pay for. Do not expect a masterpiece for $5. However, if you are looking to receive well-written articles that drive hungry crowds to your products, then you need to be willing to pay a competent rate. After all, a good writer will spend at least 1-2 hours on your article. Is it worth the time you are saving by not doing it yourself?

Rewrites are a REQUIREMENT!

If they do not deliver what you want, should you still have to pay for the articles? I do not believe you should. You need to hire a writer who is willing to work with you, at least on a limited basis.

Now, this does not mean that you can take advantage of them, and get unlimited rewrites for your articles. However, if they cannot do the job within 2-3 tries, you should probably look for someone else anyway.

If you are looking for a freelance writer, check out our article writing services today. We strive to help you get the content that you need for your website.  Check it out today, and see how we can help you build your business faster.

I have recently found that I bit off more than I could handle. When I started I built up multiple sites and I still think it was a good idea. However, it is also difficult to manage all those sites when you are doing most of the work yourself. How am I working around this? If you have found yourself in this position, or if you are considering starting multiple projects, follow these simple tips to keep yourself on track. It has worked for me, and for others as well.

Focus on One site

Even if you have multiple sites started, I recommend you focus on one site until it is successful. Once you get some money coming in from one site, you can go back and work on the others. THis will help you to have more to put into those other sites. Instead of pocketing the money you make, reinvest that money into outsourcing.

I know this can be difficult to do. However, you will achieve more success faster if you focus. This is part of why it is highly recommended to find your passions at least when you start out.It has been proven that you can be successful in a niche you know very little about. But, you will need to do a lot of outsourcing in order to get there.

Scheduling

If you just cannot force yourself to focus on one site, then this is the most important thing you need to do. Set yourself daily schedule. Figure out what you need to do for each site. Depending on how you work, you can do this one of two ways. You can schedule yourself tasks to work on one site every day.

Schedule yourself what you will do for which site. Make sure you include one day each week for analyzing all of your sites and setting up your plan for the next week. I recommend doing this on Sunday or Monday to start your week off with a good plan.

If you can change gears easily, you may choose to schedule yourself a couple of hours every day for each site. I often work 10-15 hour days anyway, so if I spend  hours on each of my 5 sites, I can make some progress on each one every day.

Success will come much more slowly following this path. You can do it, it just takes longer to get there.

Look for free help

Now, this will not always be an option. but, if you can get someone to help you with no payment or the promise of future payment this will help you tremendously. Make it fun and exciting. Where can you find people to do this? Ask your wife or friends for help. They may not understand the whole concept, but you can show them how to do simple tasks.

For example,  I have a friend who is a school teacher. She helps me to proofread my articles, and she also helps with posting those articles to different directories. I showed my roommate how to do blog commenting, and he does about 5-10 per day for me. This helps save me a lot of time, but does not ask too much of them. I have found that offering to buy pizza and beer will get a lot of help without paying a lot of money. we get together with our laptops and work for an hour or so, then have some fun.

Over the last few days, I have been observing some huge online marketing blunders by a lot of  people. Sometimes, I can’t believe some of the things that I see when I am looking around the web. Just so that I can save you from looking like some of these other fools that I see online, I am going to share with you the biggest marketing blunders that I see online. Now, if you make just one marketing blunder listed here, then please, stop and think about what you are doing.

Now, The Top 5 Marketing Blunders to Avoid Online:

5. Over Analyzing Competition

I spend a lot of time helping new marketers on forums, through emails, and pretty much everywhere that I go online. One of the biggest marketing blunders that I see is people spending so much time analyzing the competition, and worrying about whether or not they will succeed that they never do anything.

Now, knowing what your competition is doing  is important. It is a great way for you to know what you are doing wrong. However, too much analyzing leads to analysis paralysis.  Take a deep breath and plunge in. You will never really know if something will work until you try it for yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. Try it for yourself, and see if you can do it.

4. Over Promotion

I see this on everywhere online, especially on the social networks. This doesn’t mean don’t promote. It means provide valuable advice first. I am more willing to consider buying a product or service from someone who took the time to give me some free advice first.

Your “free report” that is nothing more than an advertisement for a product that I don’t want does nothing to help me. If you are going to run an email list,send out informative emails instead of just promoting products. Otherwise, I will unsubscribe faster than you can blink.

If you are on Facebook  or Twitter then post useful tips and advice. Socialize and ask questions. Don’t just post advertisements, and links all day.

3. Excessive adds

Now, this could have been lumped in with the other one, but it gets its own category.  This is a common marketing blunder, which I atribute to the many fake marketing experts selling crap ebooks.There are actually products for sell teaching people to build sites this way.

I had someone ask me to review his site, and was offended when I told him that it was total trash and he needed to go build a website. I told him to write some articles on a specific topic, and post them on his site. His answer was that he couldn’t write them. So, I offered my writing services. He refused, and broke contact. Oh well its his loss. In a few months he will be complaining that this make money online stuff is nothing but a scam because he built a crappy site.

You see, his site had no niche, and literally no content. He built a horrible affiliate marketing website that was literally nothing but about 20 banner ads. There wasn’t even any connection to the ads he had. There were banners for make money products, dating books, and even World of Warcraft Strategy guides, all on a one page site.

This wasn’t so much a marketing blunder as a train wreck. And it is a common hurdle for marketing newbies to get over.

I was stuck between being pissed at seeing that crap, and laughing my butt off that he thought this site was actually valuable to anyone foolish enough to land on it. Since he couldn’t even be bothered to write an article for the page, I have no idea how he planned to promote it and get traffic. Building an affiliate marketing business is possible, but not with that crap on your site.

IF you can’t research and write at least 20-30 articles, or pay someone to do it for you, go get a job, and quit wasting your time here. Content is what makes or breaks a website. If you can’t create the content, or hire an article writing service, then you need to quit now.

2. Lack of promotion

This one always makes me laugh, but you would be surprised at how many people do it.  I was answering emails the other day, and I had one from a frustrated newbie that I met in a forum that we both frequent. He was struggling because nobody was coming to his site. He had a few visitors, but that was it.

So, I asked him how many links he had built, and where he was posting them. His response almost made me cry. He hadn’t done any, in over 3 months, and wondered why nobody was coming to his site. Now, this is just one example, but I see it every day.

WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!!

If you don’t do anything to let people know your website exists, they can’t find it. The best websites online are not the ones with the best content.  They are the ones that get promoted the most.

Look at Ezine Articles. 80% of the articles in that directory are TRASH. They are the most worthless drivel you will ever read. However, they are the biggest directory online. This is not because of the quality of their information, but because people know they are there.

That is called marketing, and that is what we do here. You are going to try to market a product with your site, but the first thing that you have to sell is your own site. Not for cash, but for a click on a link.  If you don’t have links, or they are not where your potential customers can find you, then your site is dead before you even get started.

Ok, so now the wait is over, the biggest, most terrifying  marketing blunder that you can make online is…..

#1 Marketing Blunder: Relying on one site for all your traffic

How many times do you have to lose all of your traffic because Google makes a change before you get this one? This is probably the most common of all the marketing blunders that I see.

There are so  many great places to get traffic. you can link up with bloggers, and get guest posts. You can post to social sites, build some relationships, and gain the trust of people before sending them on to your site, you can join a bookmarking community, or a forum within your niche. These are just a few places that you can get a lot of great traffic.

I have said this a lot, especially since the latest Google update, but the saying is still valid

“DONT PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET!”

Did I shout it loud enough yet?

Google is great, and you should work to get the Google rankings. However, if you give them complete control over your traffic then you deserve to lose everything in an instant.  And, it isn’t just Google. I talked with a guy the other day that lost everything because he got banned from Facebook for spamming, and all of his marketing was done there. Well, first of all, he shouldn’t be spamming. Facebook is a great place to share information, articles, and network with people. But, Don’t get caught posting affiliate links or you are going to be banned. Also, you are not allowed to have more than 1 account there. I know one guy that had 6 accounts, all with his first name. He just got banned too.

Ok, so my rant for the day is over. I hope you learned something from my short post here.  Now for the question of the day.. of course it will be related to the post ….duh…

What are the worst marketing blunders that you see online?  Share the silliest mistakes that make you go  “DUH!” Don’t forget, you will be entered into the blog comments giveaway that we are having.

I am always saying never to rely on one source of  website traffic. I guess some people just don’t want to listen.  I guess that is ok. That just leaves more for me go out and grab.  I am always looking for new ways to get traffic, and a few months ago, I hit upon the best way to get traffic to my sites.

Personally, I have found that I like my blogs. They give me a chance to talk directy to people and get in touch with the people interested in what I have to say. One great thing about blogging is that it opens the doorway to a wide community of people coming together to help everyone succeed.

So, a few months ago, I jumped at the chance to  get in a guest post on another blog. The boost that I got to my business was awesome. I got a lot of traffic, and was able to even get a few new clients under my belt.

One place I was introduced to is now one of my favorite places to hang out. It is a place for bloggers to gather and guest post on each others site. Since joining My Guest Blog, I have gotten several guest posts on some high traffic sites bringing me more visitors to my own site.

They put me in touch with Famous Bloggers, which I have a new guest post going up as soon as the moderator approves it. I also have been introduced to another great blog that I just found yesterday. I am working on a guest post for Stay On Search here in the next day or so.

Now, when you write a guest post, it is not the same as article marketing. You want  to use completely original content. In fact, most of the time my best work goes into the guest posts. I will spend 2-3 hours writing, editing, and crafting my guest post into a powerful article that is designed to help people, and drive some people through to my site.

you can also join a blog community like Blog Engage, where you can guest post on their blog, meet other bloggers who work in related niches, and build up relationships with possible JV partners for your future.

Who wouldn’t want that?

So, Guest posting on blogs has become my newest favorite way to get traffic. Granted, i only get a few links, and it wont drive your site up the search engines. That is unless you do a lot of guest posts. However, you can drive great traffic, and build some relationships with some smart marketers, and bloggers.

So, this brings me to the question for todays conversation. Other than Google, where do you look for traffic?  Don’t forget, every comment is entered into the drawing, so let me know where you go to find traffic for your websites.