With many of today’s financial institutions providing customers with the ability to bypass the bank entirely with online banking options, the days of paper checks are numbered. When was the last time you paid your monthly bills with checks? If you can remember a time in the last six months where you paid all of your bills with paper checks, you’re definitely part of the dwindling minority.

Considering how many online tools are available to us, it’s foolish to not take advantage of these technologies. As the years have passed, we’ve seen these online tools evolve into well-rounded financial solutions.

With different tools available to tackle all of your financial tasks, you can have a flawless and secure online financial system working with you to manage all of your financials. While there are several alternatives to each type of technology, here are four online tools that will help you find the easiest and most simple ways to manage your finances online, whether individual or business.

1) Toshl

With mobile apps for iPhone and Android, Toshl is an incredible tool for keeping a log of your itemized spending. Helping you better understand your spending habits, Toshl will help you choose the right actions to take in order to change your habits for the better. But until you decide to make these changes, other technological options, such as the next tool we will discuss, you may find yourself in a cloud of confusion and frustration.

Check out Toshl’s tracker to help guide you to financial freedom.

2) Mint

When a complete financial management tool becomes available, people seem to be skeptical of the tool until it withstands the test of time. While there have been numerous companies that have had their systems hacked, Mint has passed this test with flying colors, providing a secure platform that makes managing your finances a breeze.

As you input your account information for all of your bank accounts, credit cards, and investments, you get an idea of your entire financial situation, and better yet, where you stand with each account you have. Offering applications for both tablets and smartphones, Mint provides you the ability to check how much money you currently have, your remaining bills, and a spending breakdown whether you’re at home on your computer or on the go.

3) CapitalOne 360

Formerly known as ING Direct, CapitalOne 360, the new owner of ING, provides users with above-average rates for their accounts, and are able to do so thanks to low overhead costs – no physical bank locations is a huge asset in this. The same industry-standard service as before, CapitalOne 360 helps you manage your account, and is about as simple as it is to update your account from any other banking service. Only with 360, you’ll receive APRs that are reasonable, if not well-above other top lenders’ offers.

4) WePay

While PayPal would have taken the fourth and final place on this list three to five years ago, we aren’t about providing you information on outdated services. While PayPal was one of the few ways one could send and receive money securely outside of their banks, there are more anti-PayPal websites and individuals than ever, and as a result, WePay was created to combat everything users dislike about PayPal.

While WePay makes it possible for freelancers and small businesses to create invoices through its online invoicing system, it handles your fees in a customer service-centric manner, something PayPal cannot claim. With fees at 2.9% for credit cards and just 1% for bank accounts, businesses and freelancers stand to save an abundance of money in their payment processing fees. With PayPal charging 4% for all transactions, it seems WePay has a legitimate chance of leaving PayPal in the dust.

The mobile world is not only young, but it is changing and evolving at a very rapid rate.  As a tech community, we are all still trying to figure out how to make the most of it with our unique businesses.

In this article, I will do my best to help you understand what I learned about making money from content-only and text-mostly mobile apps and how you should think about making money with your publication.

I realize that there is quite a bit of excitement about apps, but the simplest first step to monetize your content is to make sure your blog layout is responsive to mobile screen sizes when people are viewing your blog from their mobile devices. Since most blogs make money from ads, in a single-column mobile layout, ads within the content column make all the money so if your goal is to make money, consider adding at least one in-content ad in the main column.

Mobile Apps

Now lets discuss apps.  Contrary to what various app development consultancies my quote you, it should be pretty cheap and simple to create a content-only or a content-mostly app. In fact, you probably need to study how to make mobile apps for about a month or two before you can release your own app that you made on your own.

Once you have an app,  the common reader devices are the iPad, Amazon Kindle, all general Android tablets, and the NOOK tablet from Barnes and Noble. The NOOK and the Kindle both run on Android but sell their apps in their own app stores, so to be able to have your app on iOS and Android devices, you need to build your app on a framework which will allow you to create Android and iOS apps simultaneously.  Additionally, since even the phone screens are getting bigger, the difference between phone and tablet readership is also becoming less substantial. So while not everyone has a reader device, nearly everyone who is on the web, has a smart phone. So you would be opening yourself up to a very big market.

Monetizing On Mobile Devices

Once the app is built, you have two choices: give the app away for free and monetize with affiliate links, in-app purchases, or ads, or just charge for the apps upfront. Monetizing the apps with affiliate links or ads is brutally difficult on mobile and I would recommend you to stay away from those strategies.  One strategy which may work for you is to capture the many free users on mobile and try to drive them to your website which can monetize better. But that is a bit of a cumbersome strategy. The most common strategy is to get the people who read your content frequently, to pay for an in-app subscription.

The next best option is charging for the app.  Keep in mind that if you charge even as little as $0.99 for your app, only about 1-5% of people who would ordinarily have tried your app for free, would now pay for it. So for every 100 free users, expect two or three paid downloads.

Whatever the difficulties in the various strategies may be, because your blog publishes content regularly, you can create a loyal audience that will come back to your app on a regular basis.  On mobile platforms, that is extremely important because loyal app use is an important SEO ranking factor on both the Google Play and Apple’s App Store search.  And that will give you a competitive advantage over other apps which may not have that sort of a loyalty factor.

For our business apps for Android, iPhone and iPad the strategy that worked was to charge for the apps upfront since upselling anything within the app proved to be a great challenge.  Our users got what they needed from the free version and were able to avoid getting the premium version. Plus, we did not have enough new content to try offering a subscription service.  Instead, we wanted to focus on building a great experience for the few people who paid for the apps.

There are many reasons why consumers use the Internet. About 83% of US consumers go online to research before they purchase a product or service. Users can be researching product features, prices, reviews, select products and services, placing an order, making payments, among other things.

In most cases, whatever the reason for searching, users are usually looking for a solution to a problem.

As a small business entrepreneur, you need to discover what customers are searching for and position your solution in a manner that will make them buy. However, even with your marketing efforts, there are certain factors that can make your business fail online regardless of your target market. Here are our top 5 picks:

1. Perceived Risk

This refers to the amount of risk a consumer will have to contend with when buying your product. Many consumers shop online for products that do not require physical inspection. The customers cannot physically touch, see, smell, or taste your product. When the anticipated risk of buying your product is high, consumers may opt to buy from physical stores.

Risks, whether anticipated or real, can be caused by system failures or human errors. To minimize the perceived risk, have a clear shipping and returns policy on your website.

2. Consumer Attitude

Consumer attitudes are largely affected by their intentions and may determine purchasing behavior. In some markets, users have not fully embraced online shopping. Studies have shown that attitude towards online shopping determines online purchasing behavior. Therefore, inasmuch as your product may be outstanding, you have a professional website with great content and so on, your business can still fail if your target customers have a negative attitude towards online shopping.

3. Subjective Norms

Failure to understand your consumers’ purchasing behavior can lead to poor sales and ultimate failure of your business. Purchase decisions are emotional ones. You therefore must design and enable your website support system to perfectly suit the way your customers get information and their purchasing behavior. Visual stimuli, as well as sound and text communication, can significantly affect consumers’ actions. Subjective norms should be used to capture the consumers’ perceptions of how to influence family, friends, peers, etc.

4. Domain Specific Innovativeness

This refers to how quick your business is at adopting an innovation compared to your competitors. Internet technology is constantly changing, and sometimes consumers may need to stretch a bit off their normal shopping routine. New online shoppers have to get comfortable with searching, evaluating and purchasing products at your website. This new experience can be overwhelming and seem difficult to them.

Be innovative and make it easy for prospects to shop at your online store even if they are doing so for the first time. On the same note, adopt new technology to improve customer data security while at the same time facilitate an easy checkout process.

5. False Online Offers

Most consumers shop online because they want a discount. Although gifts and incentives are good promotional tools, you must deliver what you promise. Some businesses fail because they do not give consumers what they promise. This makes consumers lose trust in them and look for other businesses or even physical stores which are true to their word. If you promise discounts, money backs, warranties, free samples or other offers, make sure you stick to them.

The above are some of the factors that make most small businesses fail online. Some of the factors can be controlled while others cannot. To succeed in your business, give your target market a good reason to shop at your store instead of at your competitor’s.

If you have been an ElegantThemes member,  then probably you know about that ElegantThemes has been kicking ass for 5 years in the WordPress themes market. I’ve been promoting and recommending ElegantThemes since Nick’s early start, they never let me or any of my clients down, that was when they had around 9 or 10 themes.

Today, ElegantThemes became the best and most affordable Premium WordPress Themes membership in the whole WordPress market.

ElegantThemes celebration is here at FamousBloggers So, enjoy this cool ElegantThemes giveaway.

ElegantThemes Giveaway

We’ve done several ElegantThemes giveaways in the past a few years, Today’s giveaway is probably the biggest and it’s a little different because we are giving away 3 ElegantThemes developer accounts, which will put a huge resources in your hands, and probably help you do more in less time, and grow your development or design business.

We have 3 Accounts for 3 Winners, each account valued at $89, and it will be yours for free. These accounts get access to all of ElegantThemes products, including updates and support for a full year.

Learn more about ElegantThemes developer accounts.

So, make sure you participate in this giveaway, it won’t take more than a minute.

How to participate in the giveaway

Like always, participating in our giveaways is pretty simple, just follow the steps below (share & comments)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Yes, I want you to have a fantastic premium WordPress theme for your blog!

So, good luck!

It’s been more than a year since Google first introduced Penguin Algorithm Update. How has Google search result changed? Did Google Penguin kill off link spam as it promised? What makes site rank high on Google today (and what will cause penalty)? How do SEOs adapt to the new post-Penguin Google?

Last month (April), I took a deep dive into 280+ before- and after-Penguin results to search for some answers.

Post-Penguin Google Analysis infographic

The infographic below displays some of my key findings, you can check out my complete case study here.

Adapting To The New Post-Penguin Google

The purpose of my case study is to understand the new Post-Penguin Google and fine-tune my personal SEO strategy in future. Here are some of my tips on adapting the Google’s new pet.

Link Quality Is More Important Than Quantity

From now on, your primary SEO focus is to build a domain trusted by Google instead of back links.

In general, SEO thinks that all Google Penguin do is to catch link spam. However, things seemed a little different when I took a closer look. Penguin hurts sites with low Domain Authority the most and tends to be more forgiving to sites that run on a trusted domain. In other words, if a site that relies on low quality links were caught buying links, the punishment will be harsh; whereas many big names and well-established websites with lots of quality back links are able to escape with their questionable link building practices.

If I could only offer one tip for your future SEO campaign, it would be “Build Trust, Not Link‘. When you obtain a link (be it a link trade or a guest post link), ask yourself: Does Google trust this website? What will Google think of my site if I get a link from this website? A back link from an authoritative website is worth hundreds of low quality links.

Link Diversification

Diversify everything you can in regards to back links. Yes, I mean everything. Googles spokes person has repeatedly mentioned that the search engine wants to see a natural link profile. “Less SEO is better SEO”, as they said.

Admittedly, less SEO is not the best SEO tactic we see in the real world (com’on, you know how these PR people like to tweak their words and confuse us, right?). But then again, let’s sit in Google’s shoes for a while and ask ourselves: How does a *natural* link profile look? Isn’t the answer obvious?: Variety!

If you are using only one or two link building methods, change that now. In case you are focusing on the same set of anchor texts for the past 12 months, change that now. In case you only buy links from websites with high Google PR only, change that now. The idea, again, is to diversify everything regarding links – use different anchor texts, obtain links from different types of web pages with different TLDs, place your links at different locations (footer, sidebar, homepage, inner pages, header, comment section, in-content, etc), build links from directories and wikis and social networks (if you haven’t try it before).

Starting Over Again

If you’re not too concerned with branding, making a new site and starting over again might be the better option. According to a poll result at SE Round Table, more than 90% of the voters said that they have not recover from Penguin one year later. Webmasters who had that Penguin’s slap one year ago are still feeling the pain one year later. I have seen companies spend tens of thousands (if not millions) to build new content and back links to revive a Penguin-penalized site and get nothing back in return.

One of the fastest-growing niches today without a doubt is blogging. With an impressive over 180 million blogs and still counting, the blogosphere is surely one very crucial part of the Internet.

Anybody can create a blog on Blogger or WordPress. That’s the easy part. Maintaining it is tough. Nobody seems to tell you that.

Now, blogging blogs aren’t easy to find. These are different than your typical Internet marketing sites or “make money online” blogs. Blogging blogs focus exclusively on “blogging” tips, tricks or resources, and not fluff.

Copyblogger for example is a content marketing blog, not a blogging blog. The same with social media sites. They’re not blogging blogs, period.

That’s why my effort was directed towards finding only the best sites that fit the following criteria:

They had to be updated (quite) often, and have a Page Rank of 3 or more… some blogs were good enough to fit the list even if their page rank was less!

Their posts should get an average of 10 comments… it’s important to know that readers interact and like the post, and have something to say about the topics. It helps you get ideas about potential articles you may want to publish there.

They should have an established audience (RSS subscribers, FaceBook fans or Twitter followers) of minimum 500 members combined.

*** I’ve found some blogs easily exceeding 10,000 members and receiving 50k+ monthly unique visitors. Amazing, isn’t it?

Disclaimer: if it happens to stumble upon dead or outdated links, please notify us ASAP. I did everything  in my power to check all links were valid prior publishing the article.

Blogging Blogs

Here is the list. Enjoy and tell others about it:

1. www.allbloggingtips.com/
2. www.basicblogtips.com/
3. www.beafreelanceblogger.com/
4. www.bestbloggingtipsonline.com/
5. www.bivori.com/
6. www.blogandretire.com/blog/
7. www.bloggerdoc.com/
8. www.bloggerspassion.com/
9. www.bloggingbasics101.com/
10. www.bloggingcage.com/
11. www.bloggingpro.com/
12. www.bloggingtips.com/
13. www.bloggingwithsuccess.net/
14. www.blogingrace.com/
15. www.blogherald.com/
16. www.bloghover.com/
17. www.blogmarketingacademy.com/blog/
18. www.blogtrepreneur.com/
19. www.blogussion.com/
20. www.buildabetterblog.com/
21. www.capturedbloggingtips.com/
22. www.chrislema.com/blog/
23. www.comluv.com/
24. www.creativebloggers.net/blog/
25. www.dailyblogtips.com/
26. www.dearblogger.org/
27. www.emfastincome.com/
28. www.famousbloggers.net/blog
29. www.guideandnews.com/
30. www.hellboundbloggers.com/
31. www.hotblogtips.com/
32. www.iblogzone.com/
33. www.imjustsharing.com/
34. www.inboundpro.net/blog
35. www.johnchow.com/
36. www.kevinmuldoon.com/
37. www.kikolani.com/
38. www.letsbuildwebsites.com/
39. www.myblogismymoney.com/
40. www.neamatproblog.com/
41. www.performancing.com/blog/
42. www.problogger.net/blog
43. www.probloggingsuccess.com/blog/
44. www.probloggertips.com/
45. www.pushingsocial.com/blog/
46. www.quickonlinetips.com/
47. www.reviewzntips.com/
48. www.shoutmeloud.com/
49. www.seoallrounder.com/blog/
50. www.skyhitblog.com/
51. www/simplebloggingnetwork.com/
52. www.smartbloggerz.com/
53. www.successfulblogging.com/
54. www.successful-blog.com/
55. www.thebadblogger.com/
56. www.thesaleslion.com
57. www.thetopblogger.com/
58. www.thinktraffic.net/blog
59. www.technshare.com/
60. www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/
61. www.topbloggingcoach.com/
62. www.toughestblogger.com/
63. www.weblogbetter.com/
64. www.webtrafficroi.com/
65. www.wellplannedweb.com/blog/
66. www.wpdaily.co/
67. www.wphostingdiscount.com
68. www.wpmayor.com/
69. www.zenspill.com/

Bonus links:

www.blogbloke.com/
www.bloggingalways.com/
www.btwoweb.com/
www.guestbloggingtactics.com/
www.tipsblogger.com/

How to get the most out of this list:

#1 Get to know the audience

Blog commenting is all about learning about each blogger and their community, before you guest post to them.

What I do before I share my feedback on a particular article is nothing complicated. I ensure I read a few articles (latest 4 or 5 posts) and get a feel for the audience. I read the comments as well. I see what their issues are. What the most asked questions represent, and so forth.

Only then can I fully embark on a blog commenting trip. The majority of blogger or site owners who are dabbling with blog commenting are not serious. Their approach is half hearted, and it shows from a mile away.

You’ve seen those non relevant comments, or even worse, 2 lines of text, haven’t you? Don’t you think it sounds like spam?

#2 Guest blog

Next step after you learn about the audience and interact with site visitors in the commenting form and style, is to share your experience and knowledge in article format, also called guest posting.

Guest writing is actually the next logical step after blog commenting, an expansion of your comments. I highly recommend you…

Guest write premium content, as I like to call it. This article you’ve read so far is one example, as it’s so helpful for its audience. It saves them (lots of) time and frustration.

Do you have any other blogging related blogs to add to the list?

P.S. Not all sites publicly advertise guest posting opportunities. Thus, it’s your objective to ensure you first turn yourself into an active blog commentator and leave insightful feedback; only then can you propose a guest article, and usually be accepted.

That’s a proven technique I’m utilizing with great success.

Two years ago I wrote an article for MaxBlogPress about how I got 6000 visitors to my website, but now I am back with a new story. This article is about link building techniques I have used to get 10,000 visits a day to one website. After all, links directly or indirectly mean website traffic.

The best link building techniques all share one thing in common—they help other people. They may help other bloggers, they may help sponsorship companies, or they may help your readers directly. Helping other people is a painless way to get them to link to your site, so here are seven ways to help other people and get high-quality links out of the effort.

Link Building Techniques #1—Guest Posting

One of the most talked-about link building techniques is guest posting. Since everyone else talks about it, I won’t spend much time on it. In short, find another blogger in your niche and offer to write a post for his or her blog in return for a link back to your site.

It isn’t that simple, of course. Guest posting has become so popular that many blog operators receive dozens or hundreds of offers a week to guest post, so here are a few things you can do to make your offer stand out:

• Personalize your offer: mention details about the other person’s blog near the beginning of your offer. This helps prove you’re familiar with them and their audience, and that you’re not just an automated bot.
• Look for sites with roughly the same page rank as your site. Don’t target the major sites unless you run a major site.
• Consider posting insightful comments to the other person’s blog for a few weeks before you make your offer. If they recognize your name, they’re much more likely to accept your offer.

Guest posting is no joke for me, as many of you might know, as I have built entire websites on the back of this method alone!

Link Building Techniques #2—Link Baiting

If your blog is already popular in your niche—at least a little bit popular—you can attract links using the often-derided link bait technique.

Link bait is usually a controversial headline and blog post, and the best link bait is usually tied in to current news. Here’s a generic example headline:

“How ____ made the biggest mistake of his/her life.”

You can fill the blank in with any celebrity name when they come up in the news: Bill Gates, President Obama, Taylor Swift, etc.

Many, many more link bait headlines are possible, but you also have to follow through with a thoughtful article. You don’t have to be right—and your article can actually be more effective if you’re provably wrong—but you do need to be passionate.

When people read your controversial article, many will comment on your blog. Others will refute your argument on their own blogs—and link to you in the process.

Once you have your link bait article ready, a little onpage SEO would not go astray. This will help you get extra website traffic and more possibilities for link baiting.

Link baiting has three downsides:

• You need a fair number of readers to make it work. If nobody reads your link bait, nobody will link to it.
• You need to be good at writing controversial posts, and not everyone is.
• You also need an audience who will tolerate your shenanigans. If you post something your audience doesn’t care about, they may leave. Worse, if you take the side of something too controversial, such as advocating murder or rape or slavery, they almost certainly will leave—and never come back.

Link Building Techniques #3—Link Swapping

Link swapping or link trading has a bad name in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) community thanks to a few sites who used to accept any and all link swaps. But link swaps are still a powerful link building technique—you just need to be careful about where you link.

If you find a site in the same niche as yours, your readers will probably be interested in it. Better yet (for you) the readers of that other site will probably be interested in your site. This is the perfect opportunity for a link swap.

Send an email to the other site and suggest that you each put a link to the other site on your Resources or Links page. Google will not penalize you for this—it knows you both rank for the same basic keywords, so you’re both related sites which have a high probability for linking to each other.

You can link to as many related sites as you want—and receive links from them—as long as you ensure those other sites provide quality content similar to your own site. I know people will be groaning about this tip but I think we all need to get back to basics and stop doing things just because everyone else is.

See my free link building tutorial for more information.

Link Building Techniques #4—Commenting

A few years ago someone got the idea that you could drive a lot of traffic to your site by commenting on other people’s blogs. But that was a lot of work, so many bloggers contracted out commenting on other people’s blogs.

The result was ridiculous—many of these contracted commenters were commenting on stuff they didn’t understand, so their comments were vague and uninteresting. If you look at any popular blog you’ll see a number of these worthless comments all linking back to some other blog.

There’s a better way. Don’t try to comment frequently or on many different blogs. Instead focus on writing useful comments. Why? Because many blog authors will update their posts when someone offers very useful information—and they attribute that information to you, usually with a link to your site. I do this on my sites so be sure to drop in and make an awesome comment.

Commenting in the comments section by itself can’t help you—most blogs post links in comments sections with a rel=nofollow tag which prevents indexing by search engines. But links in the blogs themselves are usually regular fully-indexed links—just what you need.

Don’t get me wrong though, nofollow links are still good for traffic, so never discount them.

Link Building Techniques #5—Contesting

One of my favorite ways to attract links is to offer free giveaways. Everyone loves free stuff and if you hold a contest, not only will you make your readers happy, but you’ll get other people linking to your site.

How you run your contest is up to you. You can ask companies to donate giveaways, you can purchase your own giveaways, you can give away your own used stuff (noting it as such), or you can give away your own ebooks. In general, people prefer to win physical high-value stuff, so the more of it you give away, the more links you’ll attract.

When you run a contest, you do want to make sure the word gets out. Email your fellow bloggers and put several announcements on your site before the contest ends so there’s plenty of opportunity for other people to link to you.

Link Building Techniques #6—Press Releases

Press releases sound like an old, pre-web system, and they are, but lots of people still use them to good effect. Consider the contesting technique discussed above. You can use a press release to announce your contest so the word gets out much more quickly and much more broadly than if you used simple email and blog posting.

Press releases are relatively expensive —about $100 per release— so you don’t want to use them often. But when you do use them, you can expect a flurry of responses.

Link Building Techniques #7—YouTube

Videos and video tutorials have been the hot thing on the Internet for several years now, and they show no signs of slowing down. You can take advantage of this trend by producing a few videos and including links back to your website with an offer of more information.

Videos don’t work for every niche, so this is something you want to experiment with before investing too much time. But you might also find that videos are, for now, one of the best link building techniques. My best secret about YouTube traffic is that it is targeted and converts well and that is exactly what every site owner needs.

To get 10,000 visits a day I use these seven simple link building tips and I post fresh quality content on a regular basis. It is definitely not rocket science so anyone in a medium to large size niche can achieve this amount of traffic.

Tell me how your link building techniques get you more traffic?

It’s fairly simple to create a basic business website, but creating a business website that will increase your revenues and create a tribe of enthusiastic followers involves a continued effort.

One of the first questions you need to ask yourself – or be constantly asking yourself – would be about your market. Who is my website for and why will they want to come back to my site time after time again and, potentially, buy my stuff?

Who are you talking to – and how?

A business website has to be created with its target audience in mind. A website that looks great, but has little relevant content is doomed to fail. Content is the most important thing on a website – and, look who’s saying that, a web designer!

Work out what problems this target audience will have. How can you help them? Hang out in the places they hang out – forums, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook groups. You’ll quickly pick up an idea of the subjects that concern them.

So you’ve established the target audience and how you want to reach them. You also need to determine what their ideal course of action would be while visiting your website. This could be anything from ordering products or services to subscribing to a newsletter.

Another thing you need to be is unique! Don’t go out there and write about the same old boring solutions to the same old boring problems. Be distinctive, forthright and even opinionated. Try to find your voice. After all, doing what you want is one of the benefits of running your own business.

The Right Domain Name

The domain name is also important, and should reflect what your business is about, with some indication in the name itself, i.e. ‘Bill Whatsisname’s Flowers’ rather than just ‘Bill Whatsisname’.

The domain extension is also important, as it will indicate to visitors whether you are concentrated on your own country or have a global reach. The TLD (Top Level Domain) ‘co.uk’ should be used in the case of a business concentrating on UK customers, and ‘.com’ should be used if you are looking for customers both inside and outside of your own country. ‘.net’ was originally meant for sites that contained a “network” of other sites but now it serves as a useful second best to ‘.com’.

The Importance Of A Fast And Reliable Site

After acquiring your domain name, finding a suitable hosting package is the next step. For new business websites the amount of webspace is not going to be so much of an issue, but speed and reliability always are.

If your website is slow and is often unavailable then that is lost business, and those customers may never come back – even after any problems have been resolved.

Furthermore, Google takes the time your website loads as an important ranking factor so finding a good fast host is imperative.

Web Design

If you are looking to get a designer then look around for sites you like the look of and find out who designed them. Even if you can’t afford them, this list will provide a useful reference point for the designer you do use.

When it comes to designing the website itself, a logo can be a good starting point. Again, wander round the net taking screenshots of logos you like and make notes as to why you like them. You can use Pinterest boards to collect examples of typography, color schemes or imagery you think would work with your site. Your designer will love you for this!

From there the pages of the website can then be created. A good designer will show you a visual mock-up of how the home page will look on different devices at this point. This will significantly simplify the design process.

Business website basics

We haven’t got time to go through all the elements of a successful business website but here are the most essential points:

• A simple well laid-out home page that immediately shows the visitor what the business and the website is all about and how it can help them.
• An easy to navigate to “About Us” page which concentrates on the visitor not on the business
• An easy to navigate to contact page
• A regularly updated, relevant blog with numerous well-written articles both long and short (easier said than done, that one!)
• Small but well-positioned social media icons to enable the visitor to access the most important social media profiles for the business or “vote” for the site through social media.
• A website that’s responsive and looks good on smaller devices such as smart phones and tablets
• One obvious but understated call to action which enables the visitor to perform the one action that is considered to be the most desirable to the business.

Maximise Traffic

So, once you have your business website set up and you are writing great blog posts which are useful to your target audience, this is not all! You need to do a bit of work to attract visitors to read those blog posts.

If you do basic on-site SEO (a bit of keyword research and making sure you add keywords to the titles of your blog posts) you will find Google sends you a bit of organic traffic. You can supplement this by seeing what’s successful on Google Analytics and writing more of what your visitors want.

Read other blogs in a similar niche to yours and propose guest posts to the ones with the best reputation and traffic figures. Published guest articles on other blogs will expose you to a new audience within your niche as well as giving you much needed quality relevant links which Google look upon favorably.

Social media is also very important for traffic. Twitter and Facebook buttons make it easy for others to pass on info about your pages to their contacts as already mentioned. But you should also engage heavily with people in your niche through a small number of social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ being the most common). This will heighten your profile with your peers and make the sharing of your articles more likely.

You can do it

You can create a useful business website (with the business website essentials) that can gather a loyal following and generate income for years to come. It will take time but as long as you stick to your path and follow the above advice success will not be too far away.

Good content is the most essential key to internet marketing success. Without it, there is no marketing.  Whether you write it yourself, outsource it, or buy it (not recommended), you must have excellent content if you want to be successful.

Good Article Techniques

Articles should be short.  But, short doesn’t mean poor quality. You have to write articles that are informative and enjoyable to read.  They should, however, be short and to the point. As people get more and more pressed for time, they want the best quality article they can get so as to not waste their time on crappy stuff. Additionally, they want to get the content in just a few minutes.

To get good click through rates, you need to keep the article very short.  Experience has shown that articles of around 250-300 words get the best click through rates.  People want short, punchy, informative articles that they can read very quickly.  You want it long enough to portray the information you are trying to give, but short enough to keep their interest.

Some recommend articles of at least 400 words to give good content, however.  Around 400 words or so and attention begins to wander, so be aware you will have to have something valuable to say if you go over this word length.

There are many other technical things that can follow to really change your marketing techniques.

Here is an interesting link ( technical hacks for content marketing).

Personal Tone

When you write an article, in addition to being short and to the point, you need to write like you are writing a short note to a friend, trying to tell that friend about your idea.  Be aware that a blatant promotion of a product will turn people off. You can give valuable information, and then have them click through to more information and promote your product there.

Another point to note when writing articles is that, even though they are short, you include one really neat item of information, something of value.  The short, informative article with only one good tip that is covered well is much more valuable than a longer article that only recaps stale information.

USP

Give your customer something of value in exchange for their taking time to read your article. Try to find that unique selling point (USP) for your articles just as you do for your product. This means you should find that one item of information that is not common knowledge around the internet scene.

Publishing Your Article

There are several avenues for getting your article before the public. Of course, your own website is one area of publication. But, for this to work, you will need to promote your site and get good rankings. This can be enhanced by publishing on other places as well.

Another area where you can get your article published is with article directories. This makes a good viral marketing, as others get your article and publish it on their sites, etc. This gives you much more exposure.

A blog is another area where you can get exposure. Find an area that relates to your product, search for blogs, and then submit your comments and articles, with the bio box attached to get your exposure. Most blogs allow this bio box or at least a link to your site.

The Bio Box

The final hint for writing articles for marketing is to have an appealing bio box to draw your customer into clicking through to your site.  A related picture in your bio box adds a great deal of interest and can greatly increase your click through rate. The picture makes your content seem much more personal. Even if a picture is not allowed, try to give a personal approach by suggesting they click through to your site for further information about a particular topic or question that your post might generate. Always make an appeal for the click through.

Today, we are excited to spread the word about this awesome HootSuite discount. Yes, HootSuite is offering a huge discount off the Pro membership, this is a BIG 50% Off HootSuite Pro and HootSuite University for 60 Days, here is why you should take advantage of this offer.

Twitter has announced it will shut down the TweetDeck Facebook integration by May 7^th. But, it’s not just the Facebook integration that is getting the axe, TweetDeck’s AIR based version for desktop, Android and iPhone apps is also on the way out. This doesn’t come as tremor to industry watchers as Twitter was planning something like this for a long time now.

No reason has been given for axing Facebook integration, but I am sure, the next few weeks will bring with them the answers that we need. According to the company, it wants to focus on web and Chrome apps, which it believes provide the best TweetDeck experience. The company will also make sure that it’s the web apps that will be the first to get new features, followed by Mac and PC apps. It does look like the company wants TweetDeck to become more of a web based service than anything else, and don’t be surprised if the remaining native apps get the boot soon.

Now, we can discuss the reasons why Twitter’s shutting down TweetDeck’s integration etc. till the cows come home. You might come across some inventive answers like Twitter’s doing that to push Chromebook sales, TweetDeck was always going nowhere under Twitter and this news confirms the fact, Twitter is running TweetDeck into a wall and so on and so forth.

The point is we will be nowhere as far as the correct answer is concerned. Let Twitter come up with its reasons for choosing not to continue with TweetDeck Android, iPhone, AIR and more importantly, Facebook Integration.

This is definitely bad news for TweetDeck users, but good news for a big player in the same niche; yes I am talking about HootSuite.

HootSuite Says Thank You Very Much

Let’s take a look at this development from somebody else’s eyes, these eyes belong to HootSuite. The announcement from Twitter is really good news for TweetDeck’s competitor HootSuite, which now emerges as the most comprehensive social media management tool available on the market.

In the first Quarter of 2013, HootSuite had more than six million users. But it seems this growth will go northwards as users begin to discard TweetDeck and start looking for a better and more comprehensive social media management dashboard.

(Interesting Side Note: Even if its growth doesn’t accelerate any further, it still can add 3 million users to its kitty this year)

The Rise and Rise of HootSuite

HootSuite has always been an amazing growth story, and its recent achievements in user acquisition have meant that its user growth curve is as good as the top Software-as-a-Services players in Silicon Valley like Evernote and Zendesk.

It’s made some intelligent acquisitions in the recent past that has made even enterprise users choose HootSuite and what with Twitter’s recent announcements; it seems HootSuite’s popularity is all set to rise further.

Let’s take a look at this social media tool’s rising popularity and its significance in 2013 through some of its acquisitions.

HootSuite’s Seesmic Acquisition

Unlike its past acquisitions, which were more of a means to acquire new technology, HootSuite’s acquisition of Seesmic is more of a customer play. It got its hands on business users who migrated to HootSuite from Seesmic; in a single stroke it got rid of a close competitor and put its management tool in the hands of even more enterprise users. The idea is to enable Seesmic’s users to build their brand and social business using the diverse management tools offered by HootSuite.

By getting a large chunk of enterprise users on its side of the fence, it’s giving stiff competition to Twitter’s forays into the enterprise landscape. With Seesmic effectively out of the picture now, it’s a direct battle between TweetDeck and HootSuite for a slice of the Enterprise users market.

With HootSuite now planning to roll out new security and analytics features in the next few months it does look like 2013 will be the year HootSuite scores over TweetDeck in terms of getting attention from enterprise users.

HootSuite’s Splitweet Acquisition

HootSuite’s acquisition of Splitweet was aimed at acquiring corporate users who used the multi-account Twitter reputation management platform. Its integration into the HootSuite dashboard means that they can now manage multiple Twitter accounts, they can also track any brand mentions on their Twitter accounts and get the low down on all Tweets that are made by all the Twitter users that are followed by your accounts, all this through their HootSuite account.

The big idea here was of course to migrate Splitweet users to HootSuite and also to make sure that these corporate users migrated to the HootSuite Pro, meaning the paid version of HootSuite. So we are talking about more corporate users for HootSuite that are actually paying for the services they were otherwise getting for free on Splitweet. That’s double the benefit for HootSuite, another reason why 2013 look like the year of HootSuite.

The complete platform

HootSuite offers a comprehensive range of tools, features and plugins for businesses to manage their social media profiles. It keeps adding to its features and this in turn keeps adding to its growth. Let’s take a look at some of the other advantages it makes available to businesses in the form of features and plugins.

Evernote, Storify, Zendesk plugins are available on HootSuite, which allow users to send native content created for Twitter and Facebook. This is in addition to the support it already offers for managing interactions on an across the board range of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others.

Something else that it offers is a real time instant messaging service called ‘Conversations’.  HootSuite offers a product called Team, which enables businesses to group their HootSuite account holders for a more seamless and fast interaction. The ‘Conversations’ feature is a part of this product, which facilitates better and more controlled interactions between teams or groups.

2013 – The Year of HootSuite

It’s not only about TweetDeck getting rid of its Facebook integration and HootSuite still offering the same. Battle for consumer mind space is not won or lost by somebody being unable or being able to offer one or more feature more than its competitor. It’s won by making concerted attempts to better a product or service, which HootSuite seems to be consistently doing; and which many people feel, TweetDeck isn’t necessarily doing.

No wonder; it keeps adding to its user base, is exploring newer markets and becoming the super hero of 2013 in terms of the best social media management tool going around.

HootSuite Discount

Remember… HootSuite is offering a big discount off the Pro membership, this is a BIG 50% Off HootSuite Pro and HootSuite University for 60 Days, take advantage of this offer and get the HootSuite discount.

Here are only a few of the HootSuite features you will gain access to:

1. Price point – Over $60 of value at introductory price of $9.99. HootSuite Pro base accounts start at $9.99 and includes one team member ($10 value), and one analytics pack ($50 value).
2. Unlimited Social Profiles – Add as many Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ Pages as you like and access them all with one login using HootSuite Pro.
3. Bulk Scheduling – Schedule up to 350 messages across ALL your social profiles. This allows you to scale your social, save time and launch/execute campaigns across multiple profiles.
4. Analytics – Create custom reports to track campaign success such as:
   1. Facebook – Daily likes, reach, per-post metrics, page comparison.
   2. Twitter – Daily RT, mentions, follower growth, sentiment, mentions by influencers.
   3. Google Analytics – website visits, traffic sources and top content.
5. Teams – Add and assign team members to social properties to increase efficiencies and streamline social media management.
   1. Assign and respond to tasks from team members to ensure that no message goes unreplied.
   2. Share search streams for consistent management.
   3. Add multiple social networks to a team.