A Good Time is Blog Time

Working from Home, Create a Business Blog

Before getting into the nitty gritty of how you can work from home through the creation of a business blog, I thought it was important to consider why I am even qualified to discuss that subject.

To be honest I pondered on that notion and wondered whether I was actually qualified.Then I thought about it a little longer and I came up with the following rational. I do work from home and I do make money doing that, nothing special about that, lots of people do it but some are much more successful than others. I had also learned how to create a website, register a domain name and arrange hosting for the website. Then I discovered the world of blogging and how simple it was to create a WordPress blog.

So what else qualifies me to write about this subject, well I left my native country, moved to France and beside the holiday rental we let out realised that I needed another source of income, that is when I started to look at Internet Marketing a little more seriously. Because when you create a business blog you are actually stepping into the world of Internet marketing. That requires research and not just once and you are done, but on an ongoing basis. This is because techniques and methods are constantly changing in response to the ever evolving world of the Internet. The other factor to consider here was that I could no longer afford to fail, I needed that income rather than just wanting additional income.

So how did I get started with business blogging, I had dabbled a little bit before leaving the UK and manged to register myself with several affiliate sites such as Amazon, eBay, Affiliate Window and one or two others. I also learned how to use their software to create ads and place them on my various websites and blogs, these are all activities you can undertake for creating and sustaining an effective home business that can and often will generate money. Providing you commit time to getting it right of course.

As I became more familiar with the whole process of Internet Marketing I enrolled with Google to participate in their Adsense program, actually one of the best and easiest ways to earn money on line. So all in all, at that point, I was pretty much set up with the basic suite of tools you need to generate an online income.

What is Squidoo

Cutting your teeth on Squidoo is a great way to start to get traffic. Now I am sure that you will have heard this many times before but I will say it again because it is the absolute key to earning money on line, all of these tools are useless without traffic to your websites, blogs, articles or other online entities and more than that it needs to be targeted traffic consisting of visitors who are interested in what you are offering them.

To get traffic you can start from absolute scratch with your own blog, out there with the other millions of blogs all vying for a niche, or you can adopt an established presence one that can give you a helping hand towards gaining the coveted Google page rank which in turn will lead to the even more coveted traffic.

There are a few of these presences on the Internet, domains that are already valued by Google for the quality of the content they bring to the Internet, but of course the one I am recommending today for anyone starting out is  Squidoo.

Here are the reasons: -

• an established and valued web presence (valued by Google et al)
• a helpful and supportive community
• free single page webhosting
• page formats that lend themselves to optimising ad placement
• module format that makes it easy to edit and deliver new content on your chosen topic
• affiliate relationships with some of the top online Internet companies

I could go on but I think you are getting my gist, if you are just starting up and want to build an online business from scratch that gives you a great chance of actually getting an income for your efforts, then you could do a lot worse than Squidoo. Some successful writers and publishers on Squidoo have revealed that they earn in excess of $1500 a month, just on Squidoo. Now don’t think you are going to do that overnight, these guys have typically written in excess of a 100 lenses of decent quality, they have taken care of the SEO requirements and have also taken the time to promote the lenses once published, this is a lot of work. But what you have to remember is that once the bulk of it is done it’s done, they carry the page rank, they have the bookmarks and they get the traffic. All you need to do then is pop back periodically, give them a tweak, perhaps a little bit of new content, fine tune titles and so on.

These are all the things that I am going to talk about in this post, there are no cheats or shortcuts, but you will get a significant head start and while you go about the process of producing lenses that can in turn earn you an income, you will already be going through a learning process that will probably take you to a point where you start to stand on your own two feet with your own domains, blogs and websites. But now when you get there you should already be in pretty good shape and be a lot more tuned into how things work on the Internet. Doesn’t mean that you can’t be working on your own blog at the same time of course, you can, as long as you know what you want to blog about and can put out around one or two posts a week on your chosen subject. And of course you can use Squidoo to promote your own blog and send traffic in that direction.

Some Generalisations On Creating a Business Blog and Working from Home

Only 6 Hours to Go

So exactly how do you go about finding a topic, creating an  article and promoting that article to your targeted audience.

I would imagine that you have already guessed that a large part of the approach, from your initial thoughts through to the release and promotion of your article is going to be firstly identifying something you are passionate about and want to write about, then secondly ensuring people find your articles through SEO (search engine optimisation) and thirdly how you promote your articles using social interaction via social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ to name but a few.

This may all be starting to sound a little over awing and perhaps too much to take on. So the very first thing you do actually need to decide, is  if you are cut out for this type of work and whether you really want to do it. So lets get down to it and hopefully have a bit of fun on the way.

Yes it is going to be hard work, but hard work can be fun if you have the right attitude and you are writing about something you are already passionate about. Being the ‘ go to guy’ for answers on your chosen subject can also be very gratifying. Plus if you can become the ‘go to guy’ for answers you will be well on the way to becoming a successful blogger. Successful bloggers for the most part are the ones that answer peoples questions and help people solve problems. But before you set out on this path, you need to Ask your self these questions:

• Are you self motivated and disciplined
• Can you work for the most part on your own with little social interaction on a face to face basis during your working day
• Have you got the necessary facilities for working from home (you don’t actually need that much)
• What skills have you got or you think you can learn for your business
• Do you know what your business financial model is and will it sustain your desired lifestyle (that’s a tough one, but you have to set  targets so you know what you are working towards)

I think you will get my drift here, working from home will not suit everyone, as nice a thought as it is. The bare fact of the matter is that some people need a normal work environment in order to function. So before committing 100% if you have doubts, try some part time activities. Squidoo is a great option for that, you can dip into and out of it while you build up a decent quantity of articles and you can write on a number of different topics to find out what interests you the most and whether that passion you thought you had for a subject really exists .

If you are still here and still reading, I guess you have decided that this really is something you want to do, so lets get into the basic start up rules. Good luck and remember to enjoy the process.

Rule number 1, getting started and what to write about

What’s my business
First of all if you are going to work from home and you are serious about earning money at home, you have to be passionate about what you are doing, this applies if you are running a gite, designing a website or putting a Squidoo lens  together.

As an aside, this doesn’t rule out subjects you know nothing about or haven’t been involved with in the past because actually a passion can be developed. Perhaps there was always something you wanted to do, but never got started for example; well now might be the time. When you start to research a new subject however, look for warning signs, are you having trouble staying awake, are your eyes glazing over, if so then forget it, move onto something else. On the other hand if you can’t wait to write your next article or share something you have learned, then you may just have found your passion.

So forget about the most valuable adsense ads or the most expensive affiliate products with the biggest commissions, if you are not passionate about what you are doing it will show through in the quality of your work and you will very quickly run out of ideas ultimately resulting in your business suffering the consequences.

If you look at the content of my lenses on Squidoo and my websites you will see there are a few core trends

• travel
• photography
• skiing
• website design
• eBook publishing
• internet marketing
• finance

So if you  feel that you don’t have enough interests that you are passionate about, then start researching, you have the Internet at your finger tips after all. Believe me, you don’t need too many because if you are truly passionate or you become truly passionate about a subject, you will ferret out new ideas and you will enjoy researching the subject more and in researching the subject more you will come up with spin off ideas for new topics. Ideally, try and make the ideas and spin offs ‘problem solvers’, ‘answers to questions’ or just plain ‘new revelations’ on the subject. Its also a good idea to look for the synergy between chosen topics, ideally what you write about should be categories or sub-categories of your primary topic.

I like the analogy of peeling an onion to describe this, you start with the outer layer and you start to pick away at it until the first layer is gone, but underneath there is another layer and then another and when the onion is gone there is a different onion which is similar but not quite the same and the process begins again.
So rule number 1

• If you are truly passionate about what you are doing, the ideas will keep coming and the quality can be maintained. This makes it easier to focus and stay focused on your chosen subject.

New Website Design Guide

Rule number 2 – what’s my title (an SEO perspective)

The very first thing you have to do, is to come up with a name for your blog (or individual post or article for that matter), but that’s easy isn’t it. You just say what the subject matter is  and hey presto you have a title. Well that is true, but have you considered exactly what it is the search engines see first, then have you considered why it is they are looking at your title.

This is your primary and probably most important keyword or keyword phrase, the first* one that the search engine looks at when trying to match the enquiry that has been made. *Actually that’s not quite true, it’s the URL for your website, blog, article or page  that is the first thing that is found, it may not form part of the article itself i.e. your visitors don’t see it as part of the content, but it is the link that the search engines see and registers first.

I’ll give you an example, when I selected the title for this page I used the words I did because I had examined what people type into a search engine when they are searching for the subject of this blog.

The data came from the Google Adwords: Keyword Tool . So by using the words I did, I effectively made my title match the search enquiry likely to be entered into a search engine.

I looked at what phrases were being used on the subject and identified a list of around 6 or 7 keywords. I then prioritized them in the order I wanted to use them. So guess what my next keyword phrase was, and where I put it, yes right there in the introductory paragraph as the heading ‘Working From Home’. The other thing you may notice is the words ‘Home Business Opportunity’ are in both the title to this page and the URL that directs the search engines to this article. The search engines spider your site, look at your keywords/tags and verifies your content matches those tags.If you use keywords/tags that don’t match the content, then from an SEO perspective it’s ‘quack quack oops’ to you.

Also remember if at all possible you should be aiming for at least 2 primary keywords and up to 5 secondary keywords that are all contained in the content of the article and are aimed directly at your target audience.The most important ones need to be contained in the titles and headings for your modules and these should be your primary keyword phrases. It is best to limit your primary keyword phrases to just 1 or 2, in other words these will be the phrases that get used throughout as the main focus of the content and ideally will be repeated in the sub headings of the article as well as periodically throughout the normal content.

For example if you add a paragraph containing additional resources and it needs a title, then you might use the title ‘Working from Home – Additional Resources’. You can create a header quite easily by using html and enclosing the words in <h1>Working from Home</h1>, <h2>, <h3> etc. can be used to create sub headings.

My top 3  keyword phrases for this article are:

1. Home Business Opportunity
2. Working from Home
3. Business Blog

Now we all know life is not that simple and there will be plenty of people out there using the same phrases and fighting for the same traffic as you, but if you don’t pay attention to these details then you will be left at the starting blocks, keywords are just one piece (very important piece) of the puzzle that will help you on your way to search engine glory.

Also bear in mind that with a medium such as Squidoo, you have a bit of a head start with ranking, this is one of the benefits with using an established Internet presence as a platform, lenses already have a strong web presence and a support network via the Squidoo community. So that helps when competing for traffic for the most popular key words. If you are going it alone with your own blog or website you may want to consider toning things down a bit, initially at least, and going after slightly less competitive keywords after all 0% of 90,000 is still zero. It is a bit of a judgment call I am afraid, and its all about where you appear in the search engine results for your keywords.

For more of an insight into keywords/tags have a look at Keywords in a URL. A more detailed look at where to place keywords. You can also look under the SEO menu for ‘Keyword Optimization‘.

So here is rule No.2

• Use text that is based on actual search engine enquiries, make them your tags and ensure that you have exact matches of your tags in the titles and text of your article posts or web pages.

Rule number 3 – contents

Hopefully we have established that the text of your article needs to be littered with keywords and phrases that are entered into search engines in high volumes. Not too many of the same however, you don’t want to be labelled a ‘keyword stuffer’.

But it’s more than that, the subject matter will ideally be unique, new and refreshing. Not easy to achieve in that great big trillion words, world wide web.

So don’t cut and paste, just write in your own words, there will be a fair chance you will be covering a subject that has been covered before but at least it can be in your own style with your own edge to it and it will appeal to your own audience.

You need to become an entertainer and I don’t mean that you film yourself doing a juggling act and stick it on YouTube (actually that’s not a bad idea, shame I can’t juggle), but you do need to strike a chord with the audience you are targeting.

There are ways and means of doing that, interesting content, photographs, video, RSS feeds, reference links, podcasts and really useful information. Also don’t forget relevancy, relevancy and more relavancy. It is absolutely pointless having a YouTube video about photography techniques in an aticle about poetry.

Search engines like original and fresh content that’s for sure, everywhere you go you read that. I am pretty sure they like videos and photographs as well especially if they are driven by their tool sets (I know I am an old skeptic).

Now I read this somewhere I think, so if anyone knows the source give it credit in the comments, but as a rule of thumb if you can get at least one YouTube video in your article and an RSS feed providing fresh updates to your page with little to no effort from yourself, then you will be well on the way to satisfying the search engine cravings for multi media and fresh regularly updated content.

So if these techniques are employed you will need to spend less time revisiting and updating to add new content and freshening your articles, someone else will be doing it for you.

Lets face it if you are at home and working on your own, you have to be super efficient and super effective, because if you are not you are the only one that is going to miss out. Very often you are your only resource, unless you have the cash to employ help, so you need to find ways of utilising other resources legitimately to keep your personal workload to manageable levels.
So that is rule number 3

• use interesting, useful and original/unique content that is updated regularly with text that is mixed with graphical and other mediums to please your audience and the search engines.

Rule number 4 – Promotion and links

So you are sitting at home, you have lovingly researched a subject you are passionate about, you have picked all your very best keyword terms turned them into tags and written them into your content which consist of unique and refreshing information that perfectly matches your target audience in terms of complexity and detail.

Then you click on ‘Publish’ and you wait for the traffic to come rolling in and what happens, well at this point it’s probably zippo, zilch, nada and what went wrong!!!!

Time to spend some of your precious time promoting and advertising. We all know about the social book marking tools and we post our articles in Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, we email then use Stumbleupon, Delicious and Digg to get it out there.

There is also the network of friends we build up within the various community’s we engage with, using forums, blogs, squeeze lists, favorites and becoming a fan, and yes you should use all or as many of these resources as possible, remembering this is a 2 way street and if you want people to help you then it is a good idea to help them and you never know you could learn a thing or two in the process. Be careful not to fall in the trap of spending all your time on social bookmarking sites however, there is only so much value they can bring and you will come across a lot of people where it is all one way traffic, they ask a lot and give nothing, to be honest you are better off without those people even if they do help make your numbers look good. Always remember as well, that social sites are all about engaging with the community, it shouldn’t be all about you, it should be about the community and making friends, and you can only do that by engaging and helping people out, just like real friends .

There is one proviso to the last paragraph which relates to the squeeze list, your list of email addresses of everyone who has ever been in touch with you for one reason or another, e.g. by subscribing to your blog.

I think squeeze lists are dangerously close to being a spam tool and what I would say is that it’s fine to use them as long as you consider that the addressee has a genuine interest in what you have written and/or they contact you on a similar basis. If it’s email and hope then I would say don’t do it, you will just become an annoying little irk.

So what else is there you can do, surely that is enough. Well not really, we are back to those dreaded search engines and their aspirations of what you need to do in order to fulfill their needs.

Reciprocal linking, one way linking and triangular linking. What on earth does that mean?????

OK you probably know the reciprocal linking, someone with a site that has the same subject matter as you swaps links with you so that you both benefit, grouping your own related articles and linking to other articles from a post or page does a similar thing. Actually Google are not particularly keen on these types of links, they see it as ‘you pat my back and I will pat yours’ rather than the natural occurrence of one website pointing to another as a source of genuinely useful information. You can see their point really. That said as long as this is not done excessively you can probably get away with it, but something like a link farm is really a waste of time and likely to be seriously detrimental.

Then there are one way links, posting comments on blogs and leaving your URL, answering questions in Yahoo and using your URL as the reference for the information these are ways of getting one way links into your site. Article writing and posting your websites in directories is another.

Then there is who you point to for good quality reference information, Wikipedia is a fantastic resource for this sort of link, but any site that has high quality content especially if it has been rewarded with a good search engine ranking for it’s contribution is worth pointing to i.e. you link to their site but they may not necessarily point to yours..

Never forget the relevancy, relevancy, relevancy rule for this however, break this rule and there is a good chance that you will do more harm than good.

Oh! I nearly forgot the triangle, this where you point to a website which points to another website that points back to you. Fantastic you tie 3 websites together without a direct reciprocal link, call it reciprocal linking with a twist, those search engines are sneaky, they like this because it is not seen as the back patting exercise. Albeit this is a very simplistic approach and if abused, again it is likely to have the opposite affect to the desired one.

One final point and another judgement call I am afraid, sometimes there are times when you do not want to give too much information freely, for example if you are going after adsense revenue it is a good idea for the ads to be your outgoing links. In other words to get to the information they are after they need to click on an ad that offers that information. This is perfectly legitimate, you should have ads that are relevant to your content so visitors to your site may want to explore what they have to offer, the whole point of the exercise I would say, so sometimes less is more as they say.

Rule number 4

• Use every resource available to you for promoting and making people aware of the existence of your website including social networking tools, linking to high quality relevant websites for reference, use reciprocal & three way linking responsibly, posting comments and participating in forums/self help groups.

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

In summary, there is a lot of information here, so representing that information in graphical format was probably always going to be a good way to provide a ready reference. So here it is, a picture of the information on this page, hope it helps, there is a lot to take in.

SEO Search Engine Optimization and Linking Strategy

That is it for now, if you think what I have written is sensible and helpful then don’t forget to subscribe to the blog and ensure you get notified whenever a new post or page is published exploring to ever greater depth the wonderful world of business blogging - You Can Subscribe Here and get your free eBook on how to create your first WordPress blog.

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