Mike Paul's Blog » Blogging

What is “The Challenge?”

Mike — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:23:57 +0000

OK, for those of you that do not hang out in the cluttered halls of my computer and/or office, you may not have heard of “The Challenge.”

And some of you may have heard of it, but under another name. Up until this year, “The Challenge” was known as the 30 Day Challenge, or 30DC. The 30DC was a free training program that showed anyone (and I mean anyone) how they could get started online and earn their first dollar by the end of the challenge.

Trouble was, it was only 30 days long. And was chock full of information. All really good, very valuable info, but just a metric ton of it. Crammed down your throat in 30 days.

You ever had one of those winter semester courses in college? You know, the ones that you take while everyone else has gone home for Christmas over like 2-3 weeks?

Imagine taking Calculus IV in one of those courses and you’ll have some sense of what the 30DC was like.

So, for this year, things have changed, and they have changed for the better.

Gone is the 3o days and we’re just left with “The Challenge.” The format is now 90 days long, with a 7 days on/7 days off format. This makes it much easier for people to participate that are still working “real” jobs and gives you plenty of time to go back over lessons if you need to. And, each lesson is only 30 minutes long, so you’re not completely going to lose your life during that 90 days.

So, now that you know what The Challenge is, why don’t you join us? It is, and always has been, completely 100% free of charge to participate in the challenge. You can find out more about it by going to http://www.challenge.co

Why am I doing The Challenge?

Simple. Yes, I do know a thing or two about running a business online, but there’s always more to learn. And what better way to learn than from some of the best in the business? I can’t think of one!

Also, this year I plan on doing a lot more “giving back” to others and help them as much as I can during this process. So, you’ll see me blogging here quite a bit on what we’re talking about during The Challenge and how you can learn as well.

I’m also heading up a small, semi-local group based in Kentucky that will be helping each other out as we move along through The Challenge. If you’re interested in joining the group, hit me up on Twitter or Facebook and I’ll get you the info.

We’re in Pre-Challenge stage right now, Lesson 1 doesn’t officially hit until July 13th, so there’s still time to join in before we officially kick off!

Join us at The Challenge!

To Your Unending Success,

Mike Paul

3 Amazing Things You Need to Know about Podcasting

Mike — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:00:41 +0000

There’s just about a million different ways to get your content out online. Blogs, comments, forums, articles, the list goes on.

But I’m thoroughly convinced that there’s no more powerful media to use than audio and video to get your message out.

And that means podcasting.

Yes, you can create video and/or audio and call it a “podcast” because at this point in time, the name doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that you’re getting your content out there for people to consume on their terms, not yours.

Here’s 3 things you need to know about podcasting and why you should be doing it in your online business.

Thing #1 – When you podcast, you’re creating a library of content that you can repurpose. Let’s talk about audio for a second. For most of us, it’s a lot easier to speak what we want to say rather than write or type it.

Record everything you want. Then break it down into audio “episodes” to use later. You can use that audio to create CDs, articles, heck, even books if you want to.

Podcasting gives you a chance to create some really killer content in just about the easiest way possible, talking.

Thing #2 – If you’re podcasting, you’re going to be seen as an expert. Of course, that point relies on the fact that you really do know what you’re talking about. If you don’t, people are going to find out very quickly.

Then again, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re probably not going to create a podcast anyway, are you?

When you’ve got content not just on your blog, but in places like iTunes, people are going to stand up and take notice.

Thing #3 – Podcasting will draw in more people to your content than you thought possible. You’re going to find at some point that one of your biggest fans started burning episodes of your podcast to CD and giving them to people.

And if you’re podcasting the right way, they’re going to know exactly where to go to find more of your stuff.

This Sunday night, June 13, 2010 at 8PM Eastern, we’ll be talking a lot about podcasting and what it means for your online business.

Join me and bring all your questions about podcasting. We’ll be talking for at least an hour and I’ll answer any questions that you have.

Fill out the form below to find out more details about this Sunday’s live event…

To Your Unending Success,

Mike Paul

How Social Is Your Blog? Plug-Ins That Put the “Social” in Your Blog

Mike — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:44:58 +0000

Another very compelling reason to use WordPress is its ability to integrate with social media and social bookmarking. Obviously this also equals more traffic and exposure. If you are even the least bit involved in social media and social bookmarking, you understand the value of utilizing a plug-in that will automatically broadcast your content or make it easy for your visitors to share your most recent posts on social networking sites.

From “share this” buttons that display at the top or bottom of your post to plug-ins that automatically tweet when you publish a new blog post, there are plug-ins suitable for all social media and social bookmarking sites. Whether you prefer Facebook and Twitter or you concentrate your efforts on social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg, there is a plug-in for you. These plug-ins make it incredibly easy and simple for your readers to share your content and increase your overall exposure.

Here are just a few of the plug-ins that can boost your social media and bookmarking efforts:

Tweetme – This simple plug-in will automatically tweet the title of your blog post with the web link. Once downloaded and installed, you virtually never have to touch it again.

TweetMeMe – You have probably seen this little button at the top or bottom of blog posts. When clicked on, the button will automatically create a re-tweet of your blog post. So for instance, let’s say your Twitter name is @invisiblebob. When a visitor clicks on the TweetMeMe button, a tweet will be sent out saying RT @invisiblebob “his newest blog post title.” This makes it very easy for visitors to share valuable content with their followers and increase your visibility.

Sociable – This highly popular plug-in gives the user more than 100 social media and social bookmarking sites to choose and the ability to order them according to individual preference. A very simple and easy to use plug-in which will allow your readers to share your content with virtually any site they are active on.

Digg This – Similar to the Tweetme button, this button automatically detects incoming links from Digg and updates the Digg button to display how many Diggs your post has received as well as make it easy for your readers to digg your blog post as well. If you are active in Digg this is a wonderful way to increase your “Diggs” and provide a way for them to easily share your post.

Sexy Bookmarks – This plug-in adds a bar at the bottom of your posts that allows you to choose what social bookmarking and social media sites you want to include. The image below shows you how this displays on your site.

As your visitor’s mouse rolls over each icon it pops-up and readers can click on it and post your content to that site. With more than 30 sites to choose from, this fun and slick plug-in often shows up in favorite plug-in lists across the Internet.

The easier it is for someone to share your content with the world, the more they will. These social plug-ins are easy to install and easy to use. They are a must for all WordPress blogs.

What’s your favorite social plug-in? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. And how about some retweet or “like” love for this post?

To Your Unending Success,

Mike Paul

Plug-Ins to Help You Prevent a Blog Disaster on Your Business Blog

Mike — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:00:03 +0000

Here’s another post in a series on WordPress Plugins…

As I’ve talked about before, plug-ins are available for every function you can imagine for your blog including updating, backing up and protecting your site.

Automatically Update Your WordPress Version

WordPress is constantly evolving. The WordPress developers work feverishly to make WordPress as user-friendly as possible as well as keeping it up-to-date with trends and changes in the Internet and search engines. As a result, a new version of WordPress is released every few months or more. This could be a big hassle, except – as you might have guessed, there is a plug-in to help you stay current.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade is exactly as it sounds. It will prompt you through 5 easy steps to updating your version of WordPress. Previously you had to download the software, upload it to your server and install the upgrade. This plug-in saves users lots of time and frustration!

WordPress upgrades often involve closing up security holes that hackers have unveiled to wreak their havoc. Keeping your WordPress version current is important to the security of your site.

Back Up Your Blog Automatically

Imagine the devastation of having months or years of posts on your blog and losing it all to a hacker or a server crash. No worries, there’s a WordPress plug-in to the rescue! The combination of these two plug-ins will protect you in the event of a blog disaster.

WordPress BackUp is an essential plug-in for all bloggers and blog administrators. This plug-in automatically backs up your theme, plug-ins and uploads file. You can schedule the frequency of the backups and have the files zipped and emailed to an address you designate. This plug-in should be considered a “required” plug-in for all bloggers.

WP-DBManager allows you to automatically schedule the back up your WordPress database. This plug-in can backup, repair, restore and fix your database. It too should be considered a “required” plug-in.

Don’t let this worry you too much. WordPress is a very stable platform so in general, these plug-ins serve to protect you in the event of a rare problem. However, having regular backups of your blog can save you many headaches and a lot of stress if the rare problem occurred.

So, are you enjoying this series on plugins? Have you discovered anything valuable that you’re now using? Any plugins I haven’t mentioned yet? Leave your comments below.

And, if we haven’t connected on Twitter and Facebook yet, let’s do it!

To Your Unending Success,

Mike Paul

Who, When, Where? Plug-Ins to Track and Analyze Your Blog Statistics

Mike — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 01:08:40 +0000

This is the third post in a series on WordPress Plugins.

The word “statistics” is one of those words and topics that tends to make people’s eyes glaze over or causes a quick change in conversations. However, whether you are blogging for your business or whether blogging is your business, tracking and knowing your visitor statistics is important to helping you optimize your website for greatest profits.

Fortunately, there are ingenious plug-in developers who have made gathering our blog statistics and statistical analysis of our traffic easier for everyone. It’s painless now.

Google Analyticator is a plug-in that integrates WordPress and Google Analytics seamlessly and easily. On a standard HTML page you have to add Google Analytics javascript to your site. Google Analyticator automatically adds this javascript code to your WordPress template. In addition, it provides several widgets that allow you to display your statistics in your WordPress dashboard.

WP-Stats-Dashboard - Graphs are displayed so you can easily detect trends and see how your site is doing. This plug-in will add a graph to your dashboard so you can see your statistical trends immediately upon logging on.

WordPress.com Stats – This plug-in collects daily statistics on visits, page views, most popular posts and more and displays it all on a single page for you in your administration panel. One of the big advantages of this plug-in is that it runs on WordPress.com and therefore does not add any load to your server. It is simple to use and the statistics are easy to understand at a glance.

WordPress Download Monitor – Do you give away a lot of eBooks or have downloadable transcripts on your site? In either case, this plug-in will help you keep track of what has been downloaded. While this plug-in may not be considered “essential” for all bloggers, if you have a giveaway on your site, it is helpful to track clicks and downloads.

FeedStats – Do you know how many subscribers you have? Or which pages they are reading? Or which feedreaders they are using? This little plug-in will give you vital information about your subscribers and again is conveniently viewed on a window on your WordPress dashboard.

Few people are crazy about statistics but they give us important insight about who our visitors are, what they are reading, and what they like and don’t like. With this information we can tailor our content to our market best. That means more profit.

So, what are you using to track your blogging? You know you can’t improve what you don’t track, right? You’ve got to track your results to see what’s working and where you can apply more effort to improve your results from blogging…and drop the junk that’s not.

What’s your favorite tracking plugin? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. And if you haven’t already, go ahead and push that little retweet button at the top, that is if you enjoyed this post.

Have we connected on Twitter and Facebook yet? I’d love to if we haven’t already!

To Your Unending Success,

Mike Paul

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Finding Content for Your Blog With Google Reader

Mike — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:51:08 +0000

We’re all looking for ideas for content for our blogs. At least we all should be…

Don’t feel bad if you seem to run out of ideas, it happens to everybody, even those of us that have been blogging for awhile now. And, when you can’t come up with new content ideas, you can get really frustrated. Frustration eventually leads to failure, if you let it take over.

Don’t get frustrated, get inspired. Take a look at this video to see how you can use Google Reader to get new ideas for blog content, plus find places to link to and leave your comments to get some more traffic coming to your blog.

Did you enjoy this video or learn something from it? Let’s hear about it in the comments below. And, if you wouldn’t mind, how about a little Retweet love?

And, have we connected on Facebook and Twitter yet? No? I’d love to!

What the Heck is a Plug-in and Why Do I Need One for My Blog?

Mike — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:01:32 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk going on lately about blogs here in the network marketing portion of the Interwebs, with questions about free blogs, self-hosted blogs and getting traffic to blogs, just to name a few.

Now, I’ve been installing and running blogs for nearly 4 years now (my first one was running WordPress v.1.0 I believe…) and I’ve seen everything that has come down the pipeline that has to do with blogging.

And from experience, I can tell you the one thing that you MUST be using with your blog to get the most out of your blogging efforts…

And that’s plug-ins.

For the newer folks out there (forgive me, all you old farts) – a plug-in is a small program, or combination of programs, that sits on top of your WordPress installation and increases the functionality of your website in some way. (Translation: Plug-ins allow your blog to have more features and to do more than it could when you first installed it.) Most plug-ins are written in the PHP scripting language and add an additional feature or function to your website.

Plug-ins integrate seamlessly with WordPress so there’s no messing with your WordPress code. That’s another great thing about plug-ins. They don’t actually affect your original WordPress install. They reside separately and just interact with WordPress.

How did plug-ins get “invented”? The development of plug-ins came about by programmers who wanted to increase the function of WordPress without having to alter the code within WordPress itself. Basically, programmers said “I wish WordPress could do this extra thing” – and then created plug-ins to make it happen. Of course other developers got excited by this and it spread. More and more developers jumped on board and created these small add-ons to the WordPress code and now WordPress can do more than the original creators ever dreamed it could simply due to these little plug-ins.

The vast majority of plug-ins are free and therefore it is important to understand that they do not come with technical support services. When choosing a plug-in, it is a good idea to review this list:

How long it has been since that plug-in was updated.
Whether the plug-in homepage still exists.
If people seeking support on the plug-in have received answers to their questions.
The overall tone of the discussions on the plug-in download page.

There is a plug-in for virtually anything you want to accomplish in WordPress. If you want to monitor your visitor statistics, increase interaction with your visitors, add a photo gallery, automatically back up your database or anything else you have a desire to do with your site, you can most likely find a plug-in to use, and like I said, most of them are free.

Got it? Good. Now that you understand the basics of plug-ins, come back over the next few days and we’ll talk about some of the most essential plug-ins that you’ll need to have the most impact with your blog. I’ll leave no stone unturned as we find the plug-in treasures you’ll need to achieve blog domination.

To Your Unending Blogging Success,
Mike Paul

P.S. Did you like this post? How ’bout a little ReTweet luv? And have we connected on Facebook and Twitter yet? Why not?

P.P.S. Wanna know all about WordPress plugins and how they can help you out? Sign up for my newsletter using the form below and you’ll get a ton on inside info on which WordPress plugins to use AND how to use them to their fullest extent.

5 Ways to Squeeze More Profits Out Of Your Blog

Mike — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:37:02 +0000

For those of you that may be reading this that are new to the network marketing internet business arena, you may not really be aware of how powerful a blog can be to your online marketing strategy. It’s more than just a place for you to talk about what’s going on in your business or to hand out great advice, it’s probably the biggest single point of entry into your business that you can possibly build.

And knowing how to leverage the power of that blog to increase your bottom line is a skill that every network marketer needs to learn if you want to build a successful online campaign. If you neglect your blog, you’re neglecting one of the primary components of your online business.

Whether you’re just getting your blog set up or if you’ve been blogging for a while, you can still implement a few tactics
that will squeeze more profits out of your network marketing internet business blog, all while growing your reputation and your sphere of influence online.

Here’s 5 ways that anyone can implement starting today to fully leverage the power of your blog to grow your network
marketing business, and squeeze more profits out of your online efforts.

Tip #1 – Add an email opt-in form to your blog. If you haven’t figured it out yet, building a great relationship with a list of email subscribers is a fantastic way to build your business. Whether people on you email list join your primary opportunity or not, you can still market to them over and over again if you’ve got them on a list. Don’t be spammy with them, provide a lot of value for your subscribers. Be cool with them, prove to them that you can help them build their business, and they’ll reward you by buying lots of your stuff when you do email them an offer. Of course, if you do get spammy, they reward with something else. Lots of unsubscribes. Stay away from that path and you’ll be in great shape.

Tip #2 – Start promoting affiliate offers. Again, just because someone does not join your primary opportunity doesn’t mean that they won’t buy something from you. But you have to offer it. If you’re doing your job of providing valuable, unique content on your blog, people won’t hesitate to at least take a look at something you’re offering in a blog post. Just be sure that you’re promoting something that will be of value to your blog readers, preferably something that they can implement in their businesses right away that will help them out. Don’t just recommend something to make a quick buck. Your readers will reward you in pretty much the same way that they did on your email list.

Tip #3 – Use more multimedia in your blog posts. Unless you’re completely blind to current trends, you know that audio and video are some of the most powerful marketing tools online right now. If you start using them in your blog posts, you’re going to see an immediate increase in traffic and new visitors to your site. Plus, if you make that content easy for people to share, it has the chance of spreading virally to their friends. Word of mouth marketing is still the best form of marketing, and friend recommendations still go a long way, even online. Take advantage of this in your blog marketing.

Tip #4 – Install the Facebook Share plugin. I’m sure you’ve seen this little blue button in many blog posts by now. What this plugin does is allow people to “share” your post on their Facebook profile if they think the content is worthy. How cool is that? People like your stuff and they want to tell their friends about it. One of those friends sees your blog post, possibly joins your list and buys an affiliate product, maybe they even join your business. Pretty cool what a little blue button can do for ya, ain’t it?

Tip #5 – Install the “Retweet” plugin. Much like the Facebook share plugin, here’s another way to help your blog posts get spread virally to people that haven’t even been to your blog yet. More exposure for you means more profits.

Take these tips and start using them – TODAY! You have the opportunity to explode your online business if you’re willing to do the work necessary.

While you’re here, have we connected on Facebook and Twitter yet? No? Why not? I’d love to connect with you!

What strategies are you using with your blog?

Share your best tips with us in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!

To Your Success,

Mike Paul

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Instant Blogs are Here, Have You Downloaded Yours?

Mike — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:04:55 +0000

Do you have 4 minutes to install a fully customized and Web 2.0
enabled WordPress blog? And it even comes with a professional,
search engine optimized Niche theme. Just watch the video to see
what I mean…

http://budurl.com/BestWordpressInstall

Blogs are the most direct way to communicate to your customer. And
they are also most favored by search engines. In fact it is not
uncommon for a properly optimized blog post to appear in search
engine results on front page within MINUTES after publishing!

The key is… “properly optimized”!

Blogs are one of the best ways to earn from sharing what you know
and love and do it in the most natural way – by communicating to
your target audience. But first you need to know your target
audience and how to monetize your blog without annoying them.

A task 90% of bloggers fails at miserably! Are you one of the 10%?
Did you say no or not sure? Than you simply got to see this site:

http://budurl.com/BestWordpressInstall

Here’s what is even better – you don’t have to
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partner Dmitriy have just released a package that
completely changes how blogging is done from now on. And since
they are nearly giving it away, response was dramatic.

Just do a search on Google for “expert wordpress” to see what I
mean. Better yet, see the site for yourself before they decide to
increase the price. With almost no refunds they are thinking that
the price is too low and perhaps will raise it…

http://budurl.com/BestWordpressInstall

To your success,

Mike

4 Reasons You Must Use Social Marketing to Promote Your Business

Mike — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:00:51 +0000

Social media marketing is a way to promote your business on the internet via social networking. This has grown to encompass a very large number of websites and methods.

The savvy internet marketer is learning how to use this powerful marketing method to grow their business and make valuable contacts for the future.

Of course this also means making more money if you do it right. Let’s take a look at 4 ways to use social media marketing to make money online.

1. Blogging is a very strong way to combine various forms of social media marketing all in one place. If you do not have a blog you are losing ground to your competitors who do.

2. Social bookmark your blog posts to create traffic from social directories and as search engine bait for search engine traffic.

Be sure and use a quality blogging platform such as WordPress. They offer a terrific plug-in that makes social bookmarking a blog post very simple.

Social bookmarking gives you a way to get backlinks to your blog very quickly. You should be bookmarking to social directories such as Technorati, Digg, Stumbleupon, and Propeller.

Also go get a Twitter account and learn how to make friends and use it to drive traffic to your blog. This is fast becoming one of the top social sites online.

3. Video such as You Tube is becoming a favorite way for bloggers to add some excitement to their blogs, but it is also much more than that.

For example many affiliate marketing programs now offer videos embedded with your affiliate i.d. that you can use to pre-sell a visitor before sending them to your affiliate website.

Many bloggers are also easily creating videos and putting them online on their blog. This is a very powerful form of social media that is giving your visitor what they want. Many people are a product of the TV generation and like to learn by watching as opposed to reading.

4. Discussion forums are a great place to make friends and sell products if you do it right. They can also be an excellent place to create joint ventures and millions of dollars are sold online now because of these.

There is much more we could say about social media including social networking in places such as FaceBook, My Space, and many others. The bottom line is making money online via social media all comes down to finding a way you enjoy and then mastering how to use it to your business and personal advantage.

Until next time,

Mike

P.S. Disappointed with your blog’s traffic? Get my FREE “Massive Blog Traffic” guide and start getting more traffic to your site overnight! Take the process and put it into place and enjoy the results!

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