Just a quick heads up on a great contest that anyone can enter.
This contest ends on Sept 26th so you will need to be quick, but the long list of prizes will be worth the effort.
Its a great site if you miss the deadline.

Stumbled across this today when I should have been focussed on something else, but you know how it is!

David Airey’s Massive Contest
There are over 35 Prizes that will all appeal to any blogger.
USB Memory Sticks, Free Hosting, Blog Reviews, Consultation, Cash the list goes on…

I wont take up your time explaining it so you can head on over there and enter ASAP

Here is this list of 36 sponsors giving away prizes.

davidairey.com
natewhitehill.com
doshdosh.com
ilovetypography.com
lorelle.wordpress.com
graphicdesignblog.co.uk
randaclay.com
cornwallseo.com
problogger.net
smartwealthyrich.com
dailyblogtips.com
briangardner.com
makeitgreat.typepad.com
affiliateblog.co.uk
momgadget.com
terinea.co.uk/blogs/terineatechtips/
blog-op.com
milienzo.com
chilligavva.com
marketing-tools-review.com/blog/
queerchef.com
instigatorblog.com
wishfulthinking.co.uk/blog
caroe.typepad.com
lenski.com
designsojourn.com
businessblogwire.com
davidthedesigner.com
theblakeproject.com
edroachwatercolours.com
theblogexperiment.com
smartwealthyrich.com
blog-op.com
contestblogger.com
freelancefolder.com
andybeard.eu

Technorati Tags: Blogs-Contest

This is a Step-by-Step visual guide to setting up a Technorati account and adding tags to your posts. Once set up your posts will be submitted automatically.

Go to the main page at Technorati.com and click on the JOIN link.

On the next page enter your Username (Minimum 4 characters long), Email and Password (Min 6 characters).

Now being that it is a Social Media site, you can add details to your profile on the next page. But for now we are going to skip this and click directly on the BLOG link.

On this page you can Claim Your Blog by entering your URL

You should have 2 choices - depending on your blog type - as to how you claim your blog:

• Quick Claim is great if your are with a blog host like Blogger or TypePad, etc. You will be asked for your Username (if you use your google account to sign into blogger, include the whole email address, Username@gmail.com). Enter your blog password and then click the ‘Quick Claim Now’ button. If you have any trouble use the back button and retry using ‘Post Claim’.

• Post Claim, you will need to create a new post and copy in the simple HTML code provided. When thats done hit the ‘Release the Spiders’ button for verification.
  You can delete the post once this is done.

Now that you have proved ownership and claimed your blog you can customize your blog description, language and add some Tags. These are tags for your overall blog niche, have a browse around Technorati before you add these. I will show you how to add tags to your individual posts later in this tutorial.

On the right hand side you will notice your ‘Authority: 0′ in green, this is the overall number of blog back links that you have or how many other blogs are linking to you. This number will determine the exposure that your posts get on Technorati, there is no quick way to increase this just try to have quality content that people will want to link to. Click on the live ‘Authority’ link to see your current back links.

Scroll down and you will find some buttons that you can add to your blog posts or sidebar by copying in the HTML code provided.

These will make it easier for Technorati Members to add your blog to their favorites. Every Social Media and bookmarking site has a button or widget you can add, too many can quickly turn your blog into a mess so choose the best performers based on where your traffic is coming from. Read my article on Free Blog Stats for more details.

Click the ‘Save Blog Info’ button when your done.
To find this page later:

• Click the EDIT link next to your user name
• Click the Blogs Tab
• Lastly click the ‘Edit Settings’ button

Setting Your Blog To ‘PING’
You can do this manually from Your Technorati Settings page (Blog Tab), but I highly recommend setting your blog up to automatically Ping Technorati when you submit or publish your posts. This tells Technorati to index the tags on your post. All the details - depending on your blog - are in the following link…
Technorati Ping Configurations

For Blogger users this is set up by default, to make sure just go to SETTINGS / PUBLISHING and make sure ‘Send Pings’ is set to yes. Your blog must also be Public.

Add Tags To Your Blog
If your blog doesn’t support categories, you can add Technorati Tags to your posts manually. To associate a post with a Technorati Tag all you have to do is include a special link in the body of your post. Two word tags should be joined by a “+”.

Just copy, paste and alter the following code:

<a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/[tagname]” rel=”tag”>[tagname]</a>

<a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/[tagname]+[tagname]” rel=”tag”>[tagname tagname]</a>

The [tagname] can be anything, have a poke around Technorati.com for popular tags. Just make sure to include rel=”tag”.

Technorati Tags: Blogs-Tutorial-Technorati-HowTo-Tips-

It’s not going to bring in a flood of traffic unless you already have a lot of back links to your posts but Technorati is an essential tool for building a steady stream of traffic to your blog.

What is Technorati besides being a tag based index of the blogosphere and more importantly can it bring you a flood of new traffic?

Exactly what is Technorati?

• The simplest answer is to think of Technorati as an Internet search engine specifically for blogs.
• Technorati Tags are words that describe your individual blog posts in the same way that categories or labels do but more focussed and a lot narrower.
• On the Technorati home page, new blog post snippets scroll in every few seconds. You then have the option to go directly to the blog post, click a tag for related stories or filter the new posts by category or popularity.

So, what can Technorati do for you?

1. Technorati allows you to do tag based searches of topics and blog posts.
2. Technorati can give you some idea of what readers are interested and allows you to observe trends and patterns.
3. Technorati gives you the opportunity to participate in building a so-called ‘Tagged Web’ for your niche.
4. Most importantly… Technorati will bring you an increase in traffic directly related to:
   • The wording of your Title and Teaser text
   • Educated use of Technorati Tags
   • Quality of your content
   • Number of other blogs linking back to your blog
5. One more use of tags is to monitor a group of blogs without having to visit each individual blog.
   • This works if everyone in your group is signed up with Technorati and uses the same unique tag.
   • For instance you might run a competition and ask all the entrants to add a post to their blogs with the back link and anchor text of your choosing.
   • Add a condition that requires they tag it with “MyCompetitionFall07″.
   • Now you can track all your competition entrants via Technorati.

So YES! Technorati along with many other Social Media sites can greatly increase your traffic.
If you would like a hand signing up I will guide you through it… Click HERE.

Make sure you set up your blog to PING Technorati as soon as your posts are published (this is covered in my Sign-Up Tutorial.

If you have a Wordpress Blog you will want to check out the following plug-ins for Technorati:

• http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/BunnysTechnoratiTags
• http://www.broobles.com/scripts/simpletags/

Click this link for Wikipedia’s answer to, What is Technorati.

Here is a fantastic video introduction to Google Docs.
If you are already familiar with it and are now searching for information on Google docs and spread sheet problems, I have opened up some dialog on the subject via comments.

Here’s the video produced by Common Craft that explains how Google Docs works. At the time of writing this Google Docs is still beta so it comes with some bonus “Google Docs and Spread Sheet Problems”, Please add your Bugs, problems and solutions via comments.

I should also bring attention to the recent addition of ‘Presentations‘ into the mix.

I personally use Google Spreadsheets to carry out, store and share all my Keyword Research. If you would like to take advantage of my access to some great tools that are only available to exclusive members of Wealthy Affiliates? I offer my services free as your personal research assistant for one hour. All you have to do is join my mailing list via the Opt-In form at the top right of this page and email my with your chosen niche (when you get to that stage). You will then be invited to share the document.

I just ask that you report back to this post’s comments with your Google Docs and Spread Sheet Problems.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers.
All free - Send traffic to blog - Getting Started
These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - YOU. Maybe a few days later you received free traffic when you asked your family members to send some traffic to your blog.

Here are the top 10 ways to send traffic to your blog.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips To Send Free Traffic To Your Blog

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to send free traffic to your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how traffic finds your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more free traffic.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new traffic.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. Its free but to be honest this tip is not going to send a flood of new traffic to your blog, but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t send hundreds of new traffic immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will keep on sending free traffic to your blog.

I hope you enjoyed my list of free traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding free traffic streams is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and one of my blog mentors. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

Just in case you wanted one more easy to learn internet marketing home based business opportunity, here is the scoop on a chance to learn from 16 experts in a seminar format without leaving your home.
These internet marketing business gurus will be broadcasting over 3 days from the 28th to 30th September 2007.

Just wanted to keep you informed on a chance to learn internet marketing from 16 home based business opportunity experts.

Your virtual seat will cost you $97 and that will give you access to the live feeds with the ability to ask questions. You also get the ability to watch the recordings after the UK event if you can’t participate in real time.

Pretty cool idea, if you have the spare cash.
Click the following link for a closer look…
learn internet marketing home based business opportunity

Even if you only learn one internet marketing home based business opportunity, you should be able to quickly turn your investment into a thriving success.

If you can’t spare the cash or have missed the event, simply bookmark this site and check back as we bring you everything you will need to learn internet marketing or discover a home based business opportunity thats suits you best.

This Free Tool should be your first stop before you engage in any internet marketing.
This is the internet marketing niche tool the web has been hiding.

You will want to get on board with this on the ground floor.
It wont cost you a cent, its new and its the best internet affiliate program out there.
This is a two-tier system so you can earn money while someone else brings in the customers.

Up until a week ago I would have said that the best internet affiliate program would have been one of the big established players but if you really want to make some easy money this brand new internet affiliate program is truly the best and it was only just launched on the 18th of September 2007.

This is the link for my Best Internet Affiliate Program

Actually this is best internet affiliate idea I have come across and you get to be a part of its success. It costs nothing to join and the program offers you the possibility of lifetime, two-tier commissions.

So why is this the best internet affiliate program

Firstly, for buyers:

• The web site offers a new internet marketing product every day.
• The products are offered at a massive discount.
• The products are only available for one day.
• The deals are all quality products.
• These are not resell rights products that you can always pick up cheap.
• You get access to huge savings on products that really are worth buying.

But that’s only half of it…

The system has a built in affiliate program. So lets say you send someone to the site and they buy something, you get a 35% commission.

Now, let’s say that same person is a real buyer, and they pick up a few deals over the next few months. You will earn your commission on all of those purchases.

Ok. Heres the real gem…

Mention the website to your email list, website visitors or friends and they sign up as an affiliate and promote it on their website. If they send people to the program YOU earn 15% on their purchases… Forever!

Thats right, because people have to sign up, this is not one of those cookie-based affiliate programs that loose you sales because people have cookies turned off or the cookie expires after 14 days. Sign-ups are permanently tied to your account!

This affiliate program is pure genius because people will be logging into the site every day to see what great deals are available. If you send someone just once to the site, you could be earning on them for years!

Take a look at what I NOW consider to be the Best Internet Affiliate Program available.

You will want to sign up immediately because once a user is signed up under your name, you will always be the one who earns affiliate commissions for everything that person buys and again from every person they send to the program. So get in early and get the word out ASAP.

Here is the link again

The guy behind this internet affiliate program has spent a lot of time handpicking the best items, making sure they are good products and personally negotiating seriously good deals.

Good luck with this, I have already picked up a great deal on a Ebook I have had my eye on for a while. I’m pretty darn happy I got in on this at day one!

Regards,

JD
Talking about my pick for the Best Internet Affiliate Program

A simple ‘How To’ reference chart of the Basic HTML for search engine optimization. Use the following codes around keywords to get better search engine rankings.

To the average internet user the question, “How To Do Basic HTML?” is one they never want to ask. However knowing some basic HTML - or at least bookmarking this page as reference for when you need it - will give you the advantage you are looking for.

How will HTML Help?

Formatting a keyword - you want to get ranked in a search engine for - will boost your rankings, but don’t let this win over Good Writing, Content Quality and Readability. Spamming will quickly reduce your visitors and rankings, so use the formatting as it was intended.

Bold

How to properly format your keywords in bold.

Bold formatting is meant to emphasis an important word, phrase or sentence. Overusing bold can weaken its effect and confuse the reader. Most of your visitors will Skim over your text, use bold to direct their attention to the most important sentences and phrases. Italics was once the most common way to emphasis, although bold has become more popular on the internet it is still an acceptable way to emphasis certain text (just be consistent). Don’t use bold to markup a heading, use H1,2,3,4 Headers for those.

H1 Headers

How to format your keywords in H1 Headers correctly.

Headers are best used to break up your text into sections, you then give these sections and sub-sections labels or titles that describe what is contained within them. For search engine optimization it is important not to use H1 Headers on their own, they are meant to be used in conjunction with H2 sub-headers. This allows the reader to jump to the most relevant sections quickly. Don’t make your Headers to short, weave in some stop words (the, a, for, is …etc) with your targeted keywords to create short accurate descriptions.

Link Anchor Text

How to use keywords in links correctly.

The anchor text in front of your outbound links should be relevant to both the page they are linking from and the page they are linking to. If you are need to link to an article on your own site that is in a different category, link to its parent category page rather than the article itself (keep your themes isolated and highly relevant). The anchor text should accurately indicate where the link leads too.

Image Name

How to use your keywords in image names correctly.

Image names are meant to label an image correctly, placing your keywords in the image name should only be done if it matches the image subject. Use lower case and hyphens to separate the words (eg image-name.jpg). One way to ensure the relevance of your image name is to have your keyword in the site name, then label your images site-name-pic001.jpg (keeping your keywords towards the front).

Image Alt Tags

How to use your keywords in alt tags correctly.

Alt Tags are there for people that can not see your images. They may have images turned off for faster loading or using a text reader due to vision impairment or blindness. In Internet Explorer the alt tag appears when your mouse hovers over the image. Alt tags should be an accurate description of the image, it will appear in place of an unseen image and may prompt the reader to then load that image. Only use your keywords in the alt tags if they are relevant to the image description.

How To Do Basic HTML?