Knee Deep Blog

What's the secret to keep the blogging momentum?

Ted Demopoulous over at Blogging for Business just posted an update to his book "One Year Later - What nobody ever tells you about blogging and podcasting"

I had the fortune of connecting with Ted and being interviewed last June.   I also agree with his comment about motivation and ideas and believe there is a real need to understand your individual motivation to blog as well as to connect with others that have succeeded where you have not yet gone.

And if you haven't read it yet, the 101 stories from people who profit somehow from the blogosphere may just motivate you and give you some new ideas. It did with me.

Over the past few months I seem to keep finding more and more "abandoned blogs" after 6 months, a year or even less of starting it.  The unfortunate part is that people are keeping their link on their main web page to their blog, but when you get there you find yourself disappointed since they haven't kept the momentum and their last post was 6 months or longer ago.

For me that has me wonder....hmm, what's up...is the business still active or are they just too busy to write  IF they are THAT busy why haven't they hired a ghost writer to help?

So what's the secret to keeping the blogging momentum?
(here's a few ideas to get you going)

Mark Hendricks 12 Days of Christmas 2007 is Back

This is the 5th Anniversary of Mark Hendrick's 12 days of Christmas promotional free giveaway to build your online home internet business.  He's a smart man and enlists the help of peers to provide great Internet tools for free. 

It's really a win / win for all - the providers of Internet products such as ebook, business in a box, software, and scripts get connected to possible clients.  Internet marketers and hopeful internet newbies get to try some products that could help their business or simply inspire them to create some thing just like it.

It's definitely worth checking out...I know that last year I enjoyed a few of the gifts myself like a script for audio with a simple format that allows me to put audio directly onto web pages and blog pages, some blogging tools that were fun to check out such as one for how to better utilize wordpress, and some PLR (private label rights) products that I wouldn't have bought but were curious to see how they were laid out and what kind of content was included.

Other ways you can use the gifts:  

• Some of the better ideas come as the OTO (one time offers) when you get your free gift. 
• Sort through the gifts and look for products and ideas you can use with clients and offer as a bonus.

Here's my post from last years Mark Hendricks' 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway which has more potential product details.

I do warn you that with each gift you are joining the list of the product's providers - so pick wisely or be ready to quickly discern who provides value and which list you want to unsubscribe.

If you sign up and find some thing you think the rest of us do need to know about, please be sure to share your thoughts on the comments.

Michele Corey, writing for Knee Deep Blog A dose on insight and a little crap from your not always average home based business and Internet mom and Money Wise Women: A Blog for Women that are ready to get their financial house in order

And of course I can't leave out the business:  Advanced Approach

PS. Now you can find me simply by typing in http://www.kneedeepblog.com

Innovate or Die or the More Politically Correct Innovate and Grow

"Innovate or die" or do I be more politically correct and state, "innovate and grow"? At 5:04 am these were the deep thoughts that were meandering through my mind.  Eli had recently woken up yelling for mommy to come and after patiently waiting I knew he wasn't going back to sleep so I trudged upstairs and jumped into bed with him.  He fell back to sleep but I didn't as my mind began racing and settling in on "innovate or die" repeating again and again. OK, I'm not going back to sleep, got the message, and got out of bed.

I generally laugh at others when they say they wake up early and can't go back to sleep because 98% of the time I can, but not today. I know that the thoughts are stemming from my own coaching call yesterday which helped me pull together some of the research I've been doing to help me look at my own work and business from a different lens as well as asking me some big questions such as "What is the pay off for being great, but pretending not to see my own greatness?" that both felt uncomfortable as well as right on mark. 

I realized it's hard to shift to a new lens because I'm looking at it from an familiar and comfortable paradigm (lens, view what ever word works for you) on how I do my work, who I work with and what the processes are with clients as well as the bigger, this is how I think I should do it....oh shit, it hit me that I am "shoulding" on my self big time. A paradigm shift is lurking.

I realized that my comfort with what I do in my work has actually become a huge weight dragging me and holding me down.  More importantly I realized that I've gotten lost in the work and details forgetting what my real purpose is in my work. And that is what my coaching has been about.

Keywords Analyzer a Must Have Online Marketing Tool

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Note from Michele:  this is one of my favorite online marketing tools.  It has literally saved me hundreds of hours of research time.  I use it for both myself and my clients to quickly help them find the "right" key words for products, blog posts, websites, articles and more. Keywords Analyzer could easily be priced significantly higher (and it would be worth it), instead it's a steal at $97.

An additional bonus is free software updates...so each time they make the software better, you get it at no additional cost!

Read on if you are interested in understanding how to better connect with your clients and find prospective clients.

Or, CLICK HERE to go directly to the Keywords Analyzer Website....

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Instant Niche Email....A Marketer's Dream Product

Attention Online Marketers… If you're not following up with your website visitors, you're losing untold amounts of money! Instant Niche Emails II writes your emails, your blog entries, podcasting scripts and ebooks and articles!

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…365 days from now, hundreds of thousands of people in your niche will be signed up and buying from someone's newsletter. Let's make sure it's YOURS, and not your competitors." Lisa Preston. Creator of Instant Niche Email Marketing Software

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Note from Michele:  This is another one of the products I purchased that I love and continue to use.  It saves me a lot of time and we know that time is money.  Instant Niche Email is very simple to use.  It's one of those products you use again and again and wonder why you didn't think of it first as well as wish you had it before you spent 40 plus hours creating a follow up series for your clients.

• Can you imagine owning a piece of software for less than what most of us charge for an hour of time that actually "wrote" all of your follow up marketing emails for you? 
• Can you imagine that the messages appear to be "handwritten" and have your personality stamped all over them.
• Can you imagine all you have to do is enter information about your website or niche and click a button and voila - a year's worth of emails (52 messages)!

I recommend this product to my clients that are creating stay in touch autoresponder campaigns (using email marketing programs such as Aweber or iContact) with their own clients.  It will help you build relationships, build credibility, build consistency in connection and help you make some additional passive income on the side.

Stop imagining and get it now...you'll be glad you did.

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CLICK HERE to to Instant Niche Emails Website.

Vacation Part 2: A New Hard Drive For My Computer and Then The Computer Crash

Part two of vacation consisted of performing a computer lobotomy on my desktop, wine and keeping Eli occupied. 

For the few years I've been whining about all of the time I've lost with needing to reboot because some thing happened whether that be identifiable or not.  I've also spend a lot of time just waiting for things to open or for my cache memory to clear so I could do my work. 

Another issue was that when firefox has a few tabs open for a while it hogs memory and my computer would hardly move.  Yes I can hear you saying, well just close the tabs.  Well when you work with multiple people throughout the day, and multitask between calls closing every thing is a real pain in the butt - so I'm not sure which slowed me down more, waiting or opening and closing every thing multiple times.

Backing Up Your Computer and Owning Up to all The Crap You've Purchased and Stored On It

I'm into day three of backing up my computer so that I can ship it to the east coast and have my wonderful, and I mean wonderful (that's in case he actually reading this blog post) brother strip it to the bones, reconfigure it and reload a few of the many programs I currently own before he hands it back.

I thought it would be an easy task to do this feat and I'm realizing it's much bigger than I had ever thought.  Of course in the middle of this our printer died.  So it looks like I'm not reinstalling those drivers rather getting a new printer.

I've also re-discovered some things that I bought and forgot about.  Most are best left forgotten and have simply allowed me to be mildly distracted during this process.

How I'm managing the backup and restore to my computer:

1. I made a spread sheet in excel to manage the shift.  I highlighted each program / application once all of the data was in it so I knew I was complete.

2. These are the questions that I've needed to answer during the past few days so that I can comfortably have my brother wipe off my hard drive.

• do you know how many software programs you own?
  • not all programs are neatly stored under "program files" many create their own directory
• which programs and applications are not worth your time to re-install?
  • I have to admit over the past 7 years I have purchased some great stuff and a lot of crap that I will be glad to have a reason to get off my computer.

Free SEO Tools from SEO Chat

I've been busy on the web and have buckets of great tools you may find helpful with your website.  Today's tools are for search engine optimization (SEO) - for the online newbies out there that means helping your website, blog or sales page increase it rankings.

SEO Tools offers great free tools that will help you...

• CPM (Cost Per Month) Calculator - i.e. are you making a profit on what you are spending?
• Keyword Density which analyzes your keyword density values for one, two and three word values
• Keyword Position Check
• Page Rank - see how Google Ranks your webpage
• Spider Simulator - this tools simulates a search engine spider and shows you exactly how your page is viewed
• and much more

You'll also want to check out the SEO CHAT Forums.  There is a lot of helpful information on website optimization, page rank, Alexa, pay per click (PPC), understanding google analytics and more.  Be sure to set a timer for a specified amount of time, because it's sure easy to get sucked right in and find that more than an hour has gone by.  Enjoy.

It's been fun checking out some of the stats on one of my current affiliate projects that is turning a nice little profit just over a week after being up.  I have to admit that the first sale is always the sweetest to me.

I also immediately set up both a google adwords campaign as well as installed MUVAR which is a split testing software that you can use on as many websites as you want which makes the $100 investment a steal.  MUVAR Installs In 10 Minutes. Test Unlimited Variables. Automatically Adjusts To Most Profitable So You Can Set It And Forget It!

I consider myself a willing to learn home based mom with no formal technical training. The install onto my c-panel did take less than 10 minutes after I watched the training videos, which means if you have common sense you can do it too once you understand how to FTP to your host. My recommendation is to give yourself a good hour if not more your first time around to watch the easy to understand training videos, install MUVAR and add the variations you want to test. Of course another option is to pay someone $20 on RentaCoder , Scriptlance or another pay for hire site.

Regards,

Michele Corey, writing for Knee Deep:  A dose on insight and a little crap from your not always average home based business and Internet mom and Money Wise Women: A Blog for Women that are ready to get their financial house in order

PS. What have you written lately that has touch moved or inspired your blog readers?

How Do You Touch, Move and Inspire Your Readers?

The day after I read a fun post by Jim Turner of Genuine Blog called Daddy did you...?  (fart) I wrote (Defining Moments: Farts, Farting and Social Norms) - even more interesting...it's become a pretty popular post according to my stats on Stat Counter.   

That aside, it's important to recognize the power of emotionally connecting with your words.  Your blog's content that is seen as valuable even if it is on farts and the weird social norm or "pull my finger" has the power to connect with your audience and perhaps encourage a few new readers.

Even though at face value it seems like it is really about the actual post which it was when I wrote it, in retrospect on a deeper home based internet mom level it's about...

• recognizing that all business and no play makes for a boring, boring and I mean boring business day
• people (your readers and clients) are interested in knowing more and it is up to you to recognize the boundaries
• humor is a great outlet (but do remember the point of your blog)
• learn what keeps people coming back for more...
  • are they commenting? (interaction)
  • do your blog's stats show increased unique visitors and page views
  • what are your most read blog posts?
• are people telling others (called word of mouth marketing)...links are a great way to find out. 
  
  • To spell this out clearly...Genuine blog wrote, I wrote and linked to them - therefore I'm telling others and spreading the word. 
  • I received a comment from a reader who blog links to mine...therefore I can assume that some of his readers do come to my blog...by the way your blog's stats will tell you if this is true or not

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The home based internet mom's deep thought and deep quote for today:

"Be willing to be all of you and share it with your readers, your clients new and old.  You'll be amazed at the results."

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Regards,

Michele Corey, writing for Knee Deep:  A dose on insight and a little crap from your not always average home based business and Internet mom and WordStreamz: Real Estate Blog Marketing.

PS. What have you written lately that has touch moved or inspired your blog readers?

Virtual Assistant Directory by Category

I've been toying with the idea of hiring a virtual assistant in addition to additional help for my home based office for quite a while.  Today I happened across a VA directory from the Alliance for Virtual Business.  What I love is that it is categorized both by industry and by  services which means if you're an author, coach, or attorney and want to find the perfect person to transcribe a teleclass or client notes. it's available and there is a perfect virtual assistant that wants the work.

The downside to the directory is that the information is pretty basic, the site is a bit slow, and although their membership states it's available, I didn't find links to the virtual assistant's website.  You do get a phone number and an address so you know where they are located if that makes a difference to you. 

I googled a couple of names to see if I could learn more, one person had a site (I like to shop and discover before I engage) and the other didn't.

The upside of hiring someone by category:  you get someone that specializes in an area which means there isn't down time and cost to figuring out details, as well as the costs appear to be more reflective of the task.  It also gives the buyer, that's you, the opportunity to decide, do you want a jack of all trades and partner, or multiple partners working on their designated areas.

I'd love to hear if you've used the directory, and hear your recommendations.

Regards,

Michele Corey, Advanced Approach, Knee Deep:  A dose of insight from your not always average home based business and internet mom aka entrepreneur and the WordStreamz Blog:  simple real estate blog marketing