Alexis Dawes Provides Fabulous Free Resources for Ebook Writers

There's big money to be made in publishing your own Ebooks. I ought to know. I published my first eBook last spring around this time and was amazed to watch thousands of dollars pop into my PayPal account in the blink of an eye.

I'm getting ready to release another ebook, so eBooks are on my mind.

I was pleased to find that fabulous web goddess Alexis Dawes (of Desperate Buyers Only fame) has been making new posts to her great blog about Internet marketing. And she made a great post the other day providing lots of free resources for eBook writers.

Check out more info about it here:

Alexis Dawes Does It Again - Free Resources for EBook Writers

AOL is Cursed

AOL is seriously ailing - this company has made so many missteps that it's pretty bizarre. How could a company with so much cool stuff going on experience failure after failure?

Fast Company has an article about this in their April 2008 issue, and I just blogged about AOL and its many trials and tribulations at my main badger blog:

AOL is Cursed

Seriously, AOL needs an exorcism or something. Some major bad mojo is going on there.

Marketing Lesson 201: Don't Be Boring

In my newest post at my main badger blog I talk about a funny business card that Matt Cutts of Google found in an old book.

The business card listed some, um, unusual skills - and looking at it, I realized how wonderful and brilliant this card was.

We all need to find some way to stand out in our businesses, to be unique.

And sometimes a healthy dose of humor can go a long way!

So if you'd like to check out the Matt Cutts entry and also read my humorous rant on the importance of branding, check out the entry here:

You Don't Have to Organize Orgies But It Helps

Internet Marketing Quick Start Free Report

Look, forget everything you learned from that $99 eBook or $3000 web guru course.

Making money online does NOT require an advanced degree in polymer science.

You can be up and running with a free blog or an ebay sale, for instance, and be making money online TODAY.

And those are just two of hundreds of way to start generating multiple streams of online income - fast!

I know it can be overwhelming sorting through the vast array of information (much of it misinformation) out there about how to become successful in Internet marketing.

But it all comes down to picking up a few skills here and there, just enough to get going with one project, launching your sales campaign or blog or website, tracking sales, and making money TODAY.

Don't try to learn everything now. Just learn enough to get going.

You'll pick up more skills over time. And then you can write about what you learned and sell that as an Ebook or report, and then you'll learn more from that process, and before you know it you'll be more of an expert than half the people out there.

One of my favorite publishers about info on how to make money online is Sara Brown of Laycock Publishing. She teaches you a nuts and bolts approach to doing everything from starting your list to using viral reports to make money to launching your first eBook. And it's all presented in a clear, often funny, tone that is really motivating and inspiring.

Sara has recently made a new free report available and I've reserved a free copy for you at my website.

Check it out now if you want to be inspired instead of intimidated about making money online:

Internet Marketing Quick Start Free Report

Easy Ways to Get Links

Building back links to your site or blog is the bane of my existence, some days. It takes a lot of work and research. Just when you're exhausted from updating your sites with good content, you have to start building backlinks to your articles and to your main website or else nobody will find you in cyberspace!

Fortunately the geniuses over at SEO Noob have published a list of 104 easy ways to build back links to your site.

I've posted a blog entry at my main blog about building back links and there you'll find more info about how to get this free link building tip sheet:

Some Easy Ways to Build Backlinks

Godaddy Problems - The Saga Continues

Controversy is raging around the Net this week as Wired magazine announced an upcoming article about Godaddy apparently pulling the plug on yet another site without notice or recourse to the domain owner.

I've blogged about this trend before and it is one of many serious Godaddy problems - they tend to be very JUMPY and pull some sites even if a merely frivolous complaint has been lodged against a domain. This isn't fair to domain owners who could simply be the victims of spammer or competitors trying to shut them down.

I've blogged about GoDaddy problems before, which include dropping emails (emails are nowhere to be found, either at the sender or receiver end) clunky control panel, lack of Wordpress support, and numerous other issues.

You can read more about this latest Godaddy problem here:

Godaddy Problems - the Saga Continues

Free Templates

I highly recommend using free templates when you're putting together a new website or blog. It's easier to adapt an existing template then creating your own, especially if you don't feel very confident about html or css.

I recently wrote about one free template resource site - I think it's the web's best kept secret. You'll find out all about it in my new article:

Free Templates

Some of these free templates do need some tweaking. For instance, you might want to change the headers to reflect the headline for your blog or website. Or you might want to change the color scheme. But that's easily done by changing a few things in your css stylesheet.

So don't be afraid to use free templates if you're stumped putting together your next website or blog!

Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate Review

Have you heard of an Ebook by Chris Rempel called Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate?

It came out a while ago but it remains one of my absolute favorites in the "how to make serious money online category."

The best thing is that all of the information in Chris' book is going to remain timely for years to come, and none of it is dodgy black hat stuff that will put your website at risk. Too many ebooks teach flashy, questionable "systems" that end up being outdated just a few weeks after the eBook comes out.

You'll find none of that in Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate.

At my main badger blog I just posted a lengthy review so you'll want to take a look at it:

Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate Review

This is one of the very rare outstanding affiliate marketing eBooks that delivers on its promise. Read about how I am making serious money using his methods in my review.

Amazon's Affiliate Program - Amazon Associates

Did you know that Amazon Associates are raking it in selling everything from soy milk to DVD's to rhinos?

Okay, so maybe not rhinos, but I think Jeff Bezos is probably working on that - once he can solve the shipping cost problems.

It took me a long time to start making serious money as an Amazon Associate because I just wasn't promoting products the way I needed to. These days they make it easy for you because they sell so many things - electronics, food, home furnishings - you name it.

So it's not just about making a few pennies from a book sale anymore.

You can read more about some of my experiences making money as an Amazon affiliate here:

Amazon Affiliate Program Weirdness

A Must Have Free Guide to SEO

Some years ago a keyword expert named Dan Thies wrote a fabulous free guide to learning SEO (search engine optimization.) He has since updated it and if you feel hazy about SEO you really should download his free guide. There's no opt in or anything, you can just grab the PDF here at his site:

SEO Fast Start

Also I have an article up about SEO and how you should use certain plugins for your WordPress blog if you want to get it spidered well by the search engines:

SEO Fast Start-The Best Guide to Seo Anywhere.

Don't be intimidate by SEO. It's just a matter of learning how to do a few things consistently to improve rankings on your site. Anybody can learn, especially if they do a little reading on it and check out a free guide like Dan's.

Keep Your Online Business to Yourself

Why is it that when you tell people you work with websites they think you're engaging in something slightly illegal or, worse yet, that your time and talent have no value?

I talk about a funny experience I had at the chiropractor in a new post at my blog:

Sure I'll Design Your Website for You - Not!

People tend to think that if you work with websites you're an arms dealer or a diddler of small children.

Why is that, do you think? Why don't website designs and people who work with websites get more respect?

Wordpress Spinner Allows You to Update with Fresh Content

I'm not a big fan of article spinners, because usually they produce content that looks robot written instead of created by a human hand.

But my friend Gerry has been having some good results with a program called Wordpress Spinner which allows you to present fresh versions of content you've prewritten each time someone views your WordPress blog. So you write the content once, and the software spins it and dynamically presents a different version each time your blog loads. This keeps your blog looking fresh.

Gerry has something like 100 Wordpress niche blogs at last count and while he does update them with original content as fast as he can, the Wordpress Spinner allows him to keep the content fresh in the meantime because it presents a fresh version of the site to humans and search engine spiders.

You can also do some other cool things with Wordpress Spinner that are very tempting to me - like you can dynamically rotate any elements of the page like the header, footer, sidebar, ads, and even css stylesheets. This allows you to do true A/B split testing to test conversions of these elements on your blog. What if one header annoys people and prevents sales but another one entices people to buy? With Wordpress Spinner you can test these elements.

Gerry says he improved conversions by about three percent across the blogs where he is using Wordpress Spinner. Not too bad!

There is a similar piece of software called Php Spinner which lets you do the same things on your static html site, php site, or Joomla blog.

Testing is so important because just tweaking a sidebar or header can make a huge difference in your sales. And this software seems a really handy tool to do that for you, in addition to keeping your content looking fresh if you want to use the article spinning function.

I wrote a little more about WP Spinner at my main blog today:

WP Spinner and Php SPinner - Keep Your Content Looking Fresh

Overcome Writer's Block

Speaking as a woman with a gazillion websites and blogs, I often struggle with writer's block. It's so challenging coming up with original content that will really enrich reader's lives. I do my best to create unique material that covers my topics well, but even I have days when I need a kick or two to get my creative juices flowing.

Well I recently found a fabulous list of writing hooks that will help you if you are doing article marketing, bum marketing, or even just struggling to come up with some new content for a static website or blog.

I write about it here:

Overcome Writers Block.

Have a look and see what you think! Overcoming writer's block can be tough, and I believe that every writer can use a cheat sheet like this.