An exciting new ways for bloggers and social network users to keep their friends, families and email contacts up to date with their latest social pages and blog posts, is through wrapped emails.

Wrapping emails is an interesting concept where your regular outbound emails get surrounded by an interactive letterhead that could feature images of your social networks such as your blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ etc. This system, delivered by WRAPmail also allows for embedded links in the images so people who click get delivered directly onto your blog for example. The links are even tracked.

The creator of WrapMail, Rolv. E Heggenhougen created a quick email sample to show what you a custom wrapped email may look like. As you can see on the left side of the email, you also Rolv’s social links and other web site listings.

As a user of WrapMail, you can use their service for personal use, or business. They even have an affiliate program if you would like to start serving ads in your emails!

The main question to ask yourself is, how many emails are you sending daily/weekly/monthly, and can you benefit from having a custom wrapped email with all of your social links and favorite sites? If so, it might be a great idea to promote it with every email you send anyway.

Check it out for yourself, it’s free at www.wrapmail.com and let us know what you think as we haven’t found anything like it anywhere.

It happens all too often. While you may not think a business card is that important, it actually won’t cost you that much more to go with a creative design and leave a lasting impression. I usually change up my business cards every couple of years. The advancements in business cards can get quite crazy. I’ve even seen some metal die cut printed cards, which cost over a dollar each to print… but no one is ever going to forget or throw out that business card!

Now that you realize the importance of having a great business card, why not order a new set from NextDayFlyers.com. They have a ton of options through their web site, and their pricing isn’t bad at all. You can get 1000 business cards, printed on 14 PT Ultra-thick Cardstock for only $27.95. You can get smaller/larger amounts and your price will vary, but the more you get, the better the price. I’ve bought from a ton of business card sites before and this is a great price.

Let’s take a look at the different design options you have with NextDayFlyers.

Even if you are the type of person who like a plain white business card, NextDayFlyers offers the ability to print business cards with a rounded edge. This can really make your cards stand out and give them a smooth feel that everyone likes. If you really want to make an impression, go for the Fold Over business cards, which are almost like a mini brochure. Again, we can compare pricing and the cost of a regular business card versus going with the Fold Over design, it will cost you a little more than double.

NextDayFlyers Isn’t Limited to Just Business Cards

As important as business cards are to your business or web site marketing plan, NextDayFlyers has you covered for any type of marketing and promotions thinkable. Whether you are looking for custom flyers, booklets, postcards, booklet printing, door hangers, stickers and even magnets, NDF has them. You can take a quick look at the screenshot below from their printing services page, and you will just get an idea of what materials you can have printed with your logo or business address. Online or offline, there is something for everyone.

Trust Next Day Flyers with Your Next Printing Order

A few years back I threw a big Halloween party at my house and threw together a fun invitation card for the party, and sent them out through the mail. I actually ordered those postcards through NextDayFlyers and the card stock was nice and thick and everything printed out great. It was a really fun and creative way to bring attention to the party, while also making it very easy on myself and not have to deal with the actual printing of the postcards.

Whether you are throwing a party and need some cool invites, or just in need of some new professional business paper and letterheads, be sure to check out NextDayFlyers.com!

The reality is that you’ve probably read a lot of articles on traffic generation that have been misleading you. Most of these articles were written with good intention, but some of the advice aren’t that accurate and can put a dent on your career as a blogger.

Getting traffic to your blog is all about having a clear understanding of how traffic works, and as a result, I’ll be listing 4 common website traffic myths you should ignore below.

1. “X” Tactic is the Best Way to Generate Traffic to a Blog

You’ve probably heard that several times before, and if you read articles about traffic generation a lot there is every probability you come about that in every article.

There is always that new traffic generation tactic everybody believe is the best. If it is guest blogging today, it will be article marketing tomorrow.

Just think about it, if a particular tactic is truly the best way to generate traffic then it would never expire. If you really want to build a sustainable blog or online business you need to think beyond just one tactic, you need to plan your blog effectively and create a lasting foundation for it; and you can’t do that by relying on a tactic that can expire anytime soon.

I’m not against using tactics altogether. Instead, I think a smart marketer should have a solid approach towards marketing his blog, and one or more tactics should be used to effect that approach.

2. Traffic is the Single Most Important Thing Any Blogger Needs

You probably hear this a lot too, but if you’re not careful, it will be the worst traffic generation advice you’ve ever heard.

Traffic is important, obviously, and there is nothing you can do with your blog if you don’t have enough of it, but there are a lot of other factors that make traffic work. In other words, there is no point in getting a million visitors a day if they can’t stick, or if you can’t get them to do what you want. As a blogger, you need just more than traffic. You need a combination of great content, the right design, a system to help you get the best from your traffic and a lot more.

No single factor is the single most important thing any blogger needs, and traffic isn’t an exception either.

3. It’s All in The Numbers

I’ve probably heard this more than once, and it usually comes from the “traffic gurus” who start calculating how much you can make if you get X number of traffic.

The reality is that it is difficult to calculate the effect of traffic you’re yet to get, because a lot of factors have to come into place. Traffic is not all about the numbers, and thinking that traffic is all about the numbers can be really misleading. The only time you can get results from your blog is when you start to think about traffic as real people, and that means not everybody is equal – in other words, if your main aim is to sell high-end products, you wouldn’t want to sell to teenagers.

My point: traffic is not all about the numbers. Instead, it is about getting yourself in front of the right set of people, no matter how small they are.

4. The Best Way to Get Traffic is by Constantly Marketing Your Blog and Brand

Not true.

While constantly marketing yourself and putting yourself out there is important, you can only do so much of that for so long. Smart bloggers know that they can’t borrow other people’s audience for so long, and as a result it is an integral part of their approach to build theirs.

Ultimately, it’s all about looking for a way to retain your visitors in such a way that you will be able to get in touch with them over and over again. You can do this by building a subscriber list, by building your social media following, and by doing a lot more things.

Just so you have an idea, an active subscriber is worth so much more than ten ordinary visitors.

Image Credit

You can see some stats from the past few months of the type of free traffic you can receive from using traffic exchange networks. The stats below are from a small entertainment web site that I run, but you can clearly see all of the incoming new traffic that is a result of using these trade networks. As you can see from the stats, I’ve had the best success with Wahoha by far.

The majority of these networks drive nearly all of their traffic from entertainment based web sites. Entertainment based blogs will perform best, but I have also seen many tech/news/photography based blogs do extremely well with the traffic exchange networks listed below. Keep in mind, the results for your blog traffic will vary depending on it’s niche, but the use of attractive images and headlines will also play a big part in getting users to click on your links.

All of the networks are free to join, and offer paid advertising services if you are looking for even more traffic.

Wahoha

Zaparena

2Leep

MGID

Scribol

There are plenty of other traffic exchange networks out there, as there seems to be a never ending supply of web sites and traffic to go around. I have personally been using the ones listed above, and they are also the major players in the traffic trade space.

The Very First Things That You Must Know about Blogging  

There are a few essential things that you must understand about creating and running a blog. It is fundamental to know that you can create a blog within 15 minutes. This is possible as most services that ensure webhosting also deliver different tools that can help you to create your blog. Due to these tools, the entire process of designing a new blog is very easy. Furthermore, there are different free templates, which can help you to create a blog with a truly professional look.  Best of all, most of them are 100% FREE.

The Most Important Blogging Tips That Can Help You to Run Your Blog Professionally

After creating your blog, there are a few essential things that you must do. In order to help you with these, the following paragraphs present several blogging tips that can literally guide you towards the professional way to blog.

• Use Widgets: You are able to find numerous free widgets which you can add to your blog. You can use these tools to permit your visitors to post comments with regard to your blog posts. This thing will keep your blog very busy, which is auspicious for your search engine ranking.

• Monetize Your Blog: It is also very important to monetize your blog. You can spot a few monetization programs that you can find online, such as Google AdSense. In addition, you can also get affiliate marketing programs and add them to your blog. However, while doing all these, make sure that you concentrate on a specific niche so that your blog is really going to have a professional look.

• Add Feed Burner: The Feed Burner is an auto responder that sends your posts to subscribers. However, if you can afford a paid auto responder, you should definitely get such a tool. The reason for this is mainly because the free tools are not as good.

• Sell Space: If you have a decent number of visitors, you can try to sell advert spaces. In addition, different companies are willing to pay you money to post different articles, which recommend their businesses. You can find such requests as pay-per-post programs.

• Massive Traffic: In order to direct massive traffic towards you blog, you have to post some good quality content on your blog. Additionally, you should submit different articles to directories, while using social media websites and forums to present your blog. Another thing that you can do is to post comments and add links on different blogs with high traffic. In return, you can do the same thing for the correspondent blogs. This way, you can increase your ranking on different search engines.

These days, you can find many other blogging tips that can help you to run your blog in a professional way. The most important thing that relates to this post is the fact that you CAN make some nice money by simply running a blog within your favorite niche.  If you have questions or need some advice, leave your comment below and I’ll try and follow up to every blogging tips questions you put up!

You may have already seen these type of advertisements on BloggingTips, at first they look like your average link, except they are in green font and double underlined. When you hover or click on one of these links, it will appear like the picture to the right. In this example, hovering over the work “car insurance” would result in an advertisement showing for Geico. If you wanted to visit that advertiser, you could then click on the hover ad, or “learn more”.

Who is the leader in In-Text Advertising?

I first personally met with the InfoLinks team at BlogWorld in Las Vegas last year. We had a great dinner and a nice talk about what the company does and how they are growing their reach across millions of web sites online. Since then, InfoLinks is now serving ad campaigns across 250 billion pages and reach over 350 million unique visitors per month. As a web site and blog owner, I’ve been extremely happy with the progress and revenue that InfoLinks has been generating for my network of sites, while also not taking up an extra ad space.

Make Money as a Publisher or Grow as an Advertiser

InfoLinks is a two way street, and you are allowed to walk both ways. You can join their service as a publisher, which will allow you to place their in-text advertising on your web site, and you can start earning money in no time. Once you are setup with an account and your web site or blog is approve, you just need to add a small line of code to your site to start displaying in text ads. It’s also important to note that you also have full customization of how many links you want to appear on each page, what categories, their color and how you want them to look.

The other option is for you to become an advertiser, and have access to their massive 250 billion impressions per month. With their new InfoLinks market place, you can create your own ad copy and have everything running within minutes. There is no huge deposit to put down to get started, and minimum daily budgets for ad campaigns are under $2 per day.

InfoLinks’s New Self Serve Marketplace

As an owner of multiple web sites and blog, I appreciate the value that InfoLinks brings as an advertiser, but they have now stepped up their game to a whole new level by launching their own self serve marketplace. For anyone who is currently advertising through self serve social networks like FaceBook Ads or Plenty of Fish, you will already understand and appreciate the need to have a self serve platform. As an internet marketer, when you are in control of creating your ad campaigns, you are more likely to find success, and also not have to be a slave to customer support and wait days for simple changes to your ad campaigns.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what InfoLink’s new self serve platform has to offer:

• User Friendly – Create an In-Text advertising campaign in minutes
• Keyword Selection -Select and own your branded keywords across the Web
• Keyword Bidding - Segment your geographic and vertical market budgeting
• Advanced Optimization - Customize your reach and maximize ROI
• Real-Time Reporting - Monitor and continuously improve your brand lift

In all honesty, when I heard about InfoLinks setting up their new self serve market place, I setup a small test account and create an ad campaign just to see what would happen. I set my cost per click amount really low, at 02 per click, and targeted high end words like “make money online, affiliate marketing, blogging”. I just logged into my account and was surprised to see that I was actually getting clicks off these high end keywords for .02 per click! The volume is low, but there is definitely potential.

I’m targeting high end keywords at .02 each, imagine the possibilities on growing your blog audience or making money on sending traffic to your landing pages if you target more general keywords and at a higher cost per click rate. There is a lot of potential here, and you can start testing with a budget of less than $2 per day.

Now that I’ve seen these results in my account, I’m going to be setting up a few more sites and seeing how the traffic comes in for more generic keywords. I’ll be sure to make another update next month on my findings.

InfoLinks is the World’s Ad Network

To finish off my review on InfoLinks, I also want to stress that they are a global ad network. So many times I come across a great ad network that I want to share with my readers, but they are only accepting US affiliates and web sites, yet my readers are through out the world. This means if you have a web site in Spanish, or even if you live in Spain, InfoLinks is looking to work with you.

Be sure to check out their web site and leave any comments you might have and I will make sure someone from their company is here to answer any of your questions.

Join InfoLinks

Blogging Tips for You and Any Other Blogger

The following paragraphs are here to uncover a few important tips that can literally teach you how to make money with the help of your blog. Although many marketers already know that creating presentations, videos and articles represents a very important point of online marketing, they do not really comprehend that there are a few more things that they must do. In order to start, you should know that building a large customer list and driving traffic towards your blog are not enough to become successful and make money blogging. If you want to turn your blog into a money-making machine, you should:

• Get as many high quality backlinks as possible. You can achieve this goal by looking for blogs that operate within the same niche as you do. You can start commenting on their posts.  Make sure that you are adding your URL address in the “website” section, if the blogs allow you to do this thing. You will see that your rankings will improve in only a few weeks time.
• Give Something Away for FREE.  Giving something on your blog for free that creates value is a great way to get additional readership to your blog while creating a customer that now trusts every word that you say.  Once your readers trust what you say, they will buy anything you put in-front of them.

• Look for massive exposure. You can do this thing by using free syndication tools, which can help you to find different business prospects. And even greater is the fact that you can get most of these tools for free. Thus, you can finally promote you videos and articles on different social bookmarking and media websites in a truly professional manner.

• Choose pop-up autopilot formats. This can help you to get free leads through automatic tools. There are a few things that you can complete with the help of the automatic tools, including auto responses and pre written follow up messages. This way, anyone who subscribes for any items that exist on your blog becomes a new lead on your mailing list.  A good system for this is aWeber for an autopilot system.

• Have a professional header. Although most bloggers consider that the most important thing is the content that exists on their blogs, you must bear in mind that a professional image can always help you to get what you want faster than many other marketing strategies. For this reason, make sure that your blog is very appealing, with a professional header and the tools that you provide are fast and reliable. This is a great way to get new clients that will visit your blog over and over again.

You can implement these simple blogging tips right now and start reaping the rewards of your online business. Although it might take some time until you will get the expected results, you must know that the sooner you implement the aforementioned blogging tips, the faster the benefits will come along.  If you’re looking for additional tips on how to promote your blog check out “5 things you need to know about your website visitors” that will teach you what to do with your website visitors once you have them!

Have you ever thought about the possibility of the tactic working, but just one element missing?

If you haven’t, then you should! It doesn’t matter how smart you are as a blogger, or how many marketing techniques you have at your finger tips, there is always one element your blog marketing campaign depends on, and if you are not careful, you will end up losing at the end.

What is The Best Marketing Tactic?

This is often a question most people ask, but you might be surprised at the answer I have for you.

What is the best marketing tactic? Is it guest blogging? Blog commenting? Article marketing? Social media? or Quality content? You will be surprised to see that it is non of the above, as all those tactics work together and are also quite effective if implemented individually, as long as that one element your blog marketing campaign is subject to is respected.

I used guest blogging to build my blog to a stage in which it was getting 10,000 visitors in a month in approximately 8 months, and within that period I had to write almost 300 guest posts. I know people who spend the most of their time writing a lot of comments on other blogs before their blog picks up, and I know people who don’t go outside there to market their blog – they just write the content, and the links and traffic come over time.

What this proves is that no marketing tactic is superior. Not one. Guest blogging isn’t better than blog commenting, and article marketing isn’t ineffective. It is all about factoring in the one element that matters – I’ll be revealing that one element later in this article.

Why Some People Succeed Faster than Others?

I know you might actually have seen a lot of quick success stories, and I’ll be completely upfront with you.

The reality is that there are quick success stories, but very few of them are a result of luck. A large percentage of them worked their butts off, and they are still doing the same. It might not be obvious that they are working hard, but all those time they spend on their content, all those time they spend networking with influencers, and all those time they spend catering for their readers and marketing their blogs all add up.

While the element I’m about to reveal matters a lot, by working your butts off, and by being smart with your approach, you can easily bolster up your chances of succeeding faster.

What Could that One Element that Your Blog Marketing Campaign Depends on Be?

TIME!

We all teach tactics. We all create plans, and we do a lot of things we can to make our blogs succeed faster. But we can never overtake time, no matter how hard we try.

The reality is that we can still do some things to ensure our blog succeeds fast, but our blog is a business, and you can’t just build a business in one month.

I know a lot of people will debate my statement about a blog being a business above – but I think it depends on how the word “business” is used. We need to gain our readers’ trust, we need to be trusted in our niche, we need to understand how things are done in our niche, and we need to position and define ourselves, and our blog, as well as how we plan to help our readers. All these take time, and there isn’t a single shortcut to them.

So, next time you implement that tactic and it isn’t working, don’t for once doubt that the tactic is effective – realize that your efforts depend on just one thing, and that one thing matters more than every other thing. Even if you leave your blog in a state where it isn’t marketed, as long as you’re publishing quality content regularly, that one element, if allowed, will make your blog a success.

That one element is time, you can’t overtake it, and you can’t fall behind it. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and over TIME, you will get the result you so greatly desire.

Image Credit

How to Set Up a Successful PPC Program

A PPC campaign is an easy way to bring targeted customers to your website. But it takes a lot of time to make the campaign a success. There is a lot of trial and error method involved in the process. It is important to optimize your content of the advertisement so that users click on it. The optimization of PPC campaign works in three distinct steps

• Keywords: Firstly, you need to come up with the keywords which suit your website well and sign up for a PPC cost program. Only then your advertisements will crop up in the first page of the search engine result page. You need to keep analyzing and find out which keywords work best for you.
• Ad content: Each advertisement will have a unique message stated below the website name. Optimize the content well so that users get the information they need. You should try and minimize the number of words as much a possible because users do not have much time to read through lengthy content. They might be side tracked by other websites content. You only have two seconds to catch the user’s attention. So minimize the content length and explain about your website. If you are not good with content editing, you may need to recruit professionals to come up with this particular piece of information to have a successful PPC campaign.
• Landing page: Landing page is nothing but the web page the user lands on when they click on the advertisements. Many advertisers give their home page as landing page but creating a separate landing page is important to have a successful PPC campaign. When a user lands in the homepage, they are lost and have no clue what to do next, they may leave. It will unnecessarily increase your bounce rate. Create a landing page that gives the user some information about the website in a short and precise manner. Then give a link of your home page. This will help in reducing your bounce rate and help you in converting visitors to your customers.

How Important is PPC in Online Marketing

I believe that only 30% of your website visitors should be brought to your site through your PPC campaigns.  That being said, you shouldn’t let this deter you if you’re getting 60% of your website visitors through PPC cause it can be one of the best ways to get targeted traffic while you work on other things like SEO. PPC shouldn’t be ignored because it gives a head start in your marketing campaign. When you start a website, the ranking gained through other online marketing techniques are not enough to have decent amount of traffic. A PPC campaign will bring in target users to your website that are searching for what you have.

I’m giving away a $100 coupon to start your own campaign with Google Adwords.  Best comment below gets it!  I’d love to hear what your experience is with PPC.  If you have any questions about PPC please visit our PPC Tips page or leave a comment below.

In Free, Anderson breaks down the priceless economy into six broad categories, demonstrating how to make money in each:

- “Freemium”: Free Web software and services, and some content, to users of the basic version. (Think Flickr and the $25-a-year Flickr Pro.)

- Advertising: Free content, services, and software to an audience that advertisers will pay to reach.

- Cross-subsidies: Give away any product that entices customers to pay for something else. Example: It’s a free second-gen Wii! But only if you buy the deluxe version of Rock Band.

- Zero marginal cost: Anything that can be distributed without an appreciable cost to anyone, like online music.

- Labor exchange: Performing tasks to gain access to “free” sites and services.

- Gift economy: From Freecycle (free secondhand goods) to Wikipedia, money isn’t the only motivator.

Always give Away Something FREE

Your readers want to know that you care about them, so why not give them something free.  Not only does this show your reader that you’re giving them something free that has taken you a lot of time and effort, you also show them that you care about them.  This will inspire trust. This will give you more credibility.  This will break down the barrier that is between you and their information to re-market to them.

How Does Free Work?

Free breaks down the barrier between you and your readers.  If you are selling an eBook and you charge even $.01 you may get a small percentage of readers to purchase your product. But if you give it away for free you will quickly see that your numbers will increase, you’ll get more subscribers, and your blog will be more popular. People love something free, they don’t even think about it.  It makes it so they don’t have to think about the decision; it’s free, why not?

What Do I Give Away For Free?

Give away anything and everything. Just kidding, don’t get yourself into trouble.  I would personally go with what Zac Johnson, John Chow, and many others have done in the blogging space and give away an eBook.  An eBook is a great way to gain your readers trust while getting them to subscribe to your blog.  Use a service like aWeber to keep track and distribute your eBook.  It will keep track of your readers and let you email market to them in the future.  This will allow you to make money off your readers in the long run and keep them coming back to your blog consistently.  Make sure when you’re giving away something free that you don’t give away crap.  Giving away something free that is horrible will cause a bad taste in your readerships mouth.  Bad press travels much more quickly then good press.  If you put something crappy together and give it away for free it will damage your reputation.

I encourage all of you to read Chris Anderson’s book “Free – The Future of A Radical Price”  It will change your world and help you to understand free a lot more than you think.  It will help you realize how Google can give away 99.999% of it’s products for FREE and still make Billions Profit each year.  Please let me know below if you have read the book or have any questions.  I would love to help you out with and Blogging Tips that I have!

For many people, blogging represents a steady source of income. However, this activity can easily bring along not only a nice monthly income but also a great reputation. In this post we will go over thing that you should do to help you achieve online success, while making good money doing it. However, if you want to get some truly amazing results, you must consider a few important tips to help you become everything you possibly can.

The Most Important Tips for Successful Blogging

The most important element, which can help you become successful and earn money, is the traffic towards your blog.  Getting traffic and knowing things about your traffic will play a vital role. The more visitors you have, the better it is for your income and reputation. Furthermore, if you are able to write interesting posts in a truly unique manner, you can make a name among the other bloggers. Gaining a good online reputation will bring along important benefits to online success. But, in order to achieve this you must take into account the following tips:

• Time Management: Management of your time represents a very important aspect in the online world. Posting some truly interesting and high quality content on your blog, including posts, videos, and feedback becomes very time consuming and you can only do so much of it. Additionally, social media marketing and link building also require a lot of time. Thus, making a daily plan of attack can help you divide your time efficiently. If I have a plan, I find that I make better use of my time everyday. First step to doing this is to realize that your blog just like a full time job.  You have to put in daily work and work overtime some days to make it work.  I personally use Basecamp to organize my life and assign myself things to do.  It’s a little bit pricey ($100/month) but if you have people working with you it’s a great way to keep track of everything and assign yourself things to do, then mark them off.  Great for keeping track of clients as well!

• Build a List: Another thing that you must do is to build a list. This aspect is very essential especially because the list can easily help you double your profits. Building a list will enable you to properly communicate your readers whenever you need to. When you have a list you can send offers that will help your readers out while making money if they buy it.  We recommend aWeber for managing your lists.

• Build the Relationship: Keep in mind that building a relationship with your readers is the key to your success. Your readers and website visitors are who is going to be buying your products, reading your posts, telling other people about your site.  You must build this relationship, get to know them. You need to give them your attention. Most people want to know that someone actually listens to what they are saying and cares about them as a person. In order to build a strong relationship with your readers, you should start discussing their problems and help them find solutions to help them solve all those problems.

• Choose a Niche: This is the very first thing that you must do prior to creating your blog. In order to achieve some amazing results, you have to know what you want to write about. Furthermore, try to find a topic that is not very competitive but still has a lot to offer.  Make sure that you are passionate about this topic or you’ll blog for a couple months and get sick of it and quit.  Readers can always tell if you are passionate about something, it will show in your writing.

While considering all the topics above, keep in mind that blogging will take time and patience. Blogging can allow you to supplement some or all of your income from money you make on your blog. You can earn good money, become popular and even build a serious business. But until you can reap the benefits of this activity, be ready to put in a lot of time, dedication, and a lot of hard work!

That’s why you might be interested in Backlink Profit Monster, a software package that aims to “grab all the high PR backlinks you can handle on auto-pilot.” Let’s have a look at what this program is all about, how it works, and how you can get a copy to use for your business.

Get to the Top of Google Search Results

Search engine optimization can be a very tricky business, but at the heart of it, getting high quality backlinks directed back to your website are really what are going to drive you to the top of Google. Backlink Profit Monster helps you achieve that goal.

This “unique SEO program” is designed to “instantly boost your search engine rankings and increase your profits.” The idea here is to get as many of those high PR backlinks as you can, but without having to go about doing it in a manual fashion. You also don’t have to invest in paid links or other strategies that might elicit some Google backlash.

Checking Out the Competition

The first step is seeing what your competition is doing. After installing the software on your computer — there is only a Windows version at this point, so you’ll need Parallels or something similar if you want to use Backlink Profit Monster on a Mac — you can get started by checking out the competition.

And so, you enter your target keyword or keyword phrase into this SEO tool. It then see what websites are currently ranking at the top for that term. The next phase is that it analyzes all the inbound backlinks that these websites are receiving. This is critical, because you can effectively emulate what they already have, since what they have has proven to be successful.

From there, you can filter for only the dofollow links, since nofollow links don’t really help, and you can also filter for links only from blogs. By taking these two critical steps, you now know what blogs offer dofollow links and what blogs offer sizable “link juice” in your niche or industry. The software will also let you know about PageRank and other useful metrics.

Unleashing the Autopilot Monster

And this is where you can start to utilize this backlink-generating monster. You can watch the video on the main page of Backlink Profit Monster for an example of how this works, but the idea is that you can enter your target URL, your target keyword, your email address (or any email, for that matter), and some sample comments.

The system will then visit the blogs discovered in the earlier steps and start posting the comments you pre-write. The autopilot portion is really for automatic comment posting. Some people may argue against such a bot-based approach, but there’s a reason why people do it: it can be quite effective. Having it done automatically, including support for Disqus and Facebook Connect adds to this proposition.

How Much Does It Cost?

The regular price for Backlink Profit Monster is $247. However, they currently have a special where you can buy Backlink Profit Monster for $97.

This is for a lifetime license, meaning it is a one-time payment and there are no additional monthly fees or hidden costs. If you’re not satisfied with how the program works, there is also a 60-day money back guarantee in place.

One of the downsides to using something like this is that any new tagged photos will take the place of your banner photos. So, you’ll have to keep up with your tagged photos and hide them as soon as they’re posted. Another option is that you can simply stop them from showing altogether.

On the positive side though, Fbanners.com allows you to create your own banners which makes it a great tool for branding your Facebook profile. You’ll just need an image with the approximate dimensions 493 (width) x 68 (height) pixels. If your image is not around that size, it’s ok because you can crop and resize any image that you upload to the site.

You can then add any text that you want right from the site, though it’s probably a better idea to add your own text directly to your banner via Photoshop (or any other image editor) for a more professional look. The text that you add via the site can also be edited; you can choose the style, color and size of your text.

The last step is to simply click the “Upload Banner to Facebook” button. You’ll then see your banner at the top of your profile. How easy is that? The hardest part is coming up with the actual image that you want to use for your banner.

So if you’re looking for an easy, inexpensive way to promote your blog or website on Facebook, Fbanners.com is a good choice. Anyone who visits your profile will see it right away. Just make sure to add your URL somewhere on the banner because unfortunately, clicking on it will not direct them to your site (not yet anyway).

Blog Hints

A directory where you can submit your blog and get promoted via the latest blogs, popular blogs and top rated blog sections.

There are three pricing options: reciprocal (free); regular ($7.95); featured ($12.95). You may want to go with the regular or featured link since a free link is only active for 1 year and could take up to 30 days to get approved.

You can also use the search bar to search through the thousands of blogs listed. This is a great way to find great blogs that you may be interested in subscribing to.

BestBlogs

You can submit both blog links and articles here. In order to submit articles you must have an account and be logged into it. On the homepage you can view the latest articles, latest links, tag cloud and popular links; so there are many ways for your blog to get some attention here. They also have a search function which allows you to search through links, articles and categories.

There are four available link types: regular with reciprocal ($0.49/Unlimited); regular ($3.99/Year); featured ($19.99/Year); permanent ($49.99/Unlimited). Obviously, the best value here is a reciprocal link because it is unlimited (never expires) as long as you maintain that reciprocal link.

Please note that the first 20 submissions each day are free instead of the $0.49 fee.

Wil’s Domain

This is “a human-edited and well-categorized social/information network of blogs and Web sites in which trending topics are discussed.” You can submit your blog, RSS feed and web site (all at once). A unique feature you may notice is that at the top of the homepage they have a featured bloggers & tweeters section.

This directory is totally free and for a limited time they are randomly selecting blogs and websites to feature in their blog posts, thus even more free promotion and backlinks for your blog! To be considered for this you just have to leave a 200 word or less comment (on the submission form) telling them about your blog or website.

Blogarama

You’ll need an account to submit your blog here for a standard listing (which appears to be the only type of listing offered). The fee is $1.99/year, but you really can’t beat that compared to most other directories. Plus, I’m sure this fee helps to keep out most of the spammers.

You can also browse other cool, popular and top rated blogs that have been submitted to the site. As you’re browsing other blogs you can rate them on a 3-star scale. The search bar also lets you search through the nearly 199,205 (and counting) sites that have been listed. The Xfilter lets you remove or include adult listings in your search.

Lastly, not only is the listing fee a steal, but the site is very clean and loads very quickly.

Blog Rate

Along with submitting your blog, they also have blogger tools and resources plus a forum for networking and getting help with your blog. It’s totally free to submit your blog here. On the homepage you can view the newest blogs, 5 random blogs and a category cloud.

The process for submitting your blog is very unique and requires you to simply enter your URL and email. Blog Rate will then find your blog; various blogging formats are recognized (WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, LiveJournal and more). Once your blog is found you can choose the RSS feed that you’d like to submit, create a username and password, enter a description, etc.

If you’re looking for more places to submit your blog, be sure to check out 75 Places You Can Submit Your Blog To. The post is a bit dated, but there should still be some useful resources there for you. Good luck!

1. Interact on related blogs & forums. Simply find blogs and forums that are in the same niche or category as your site and start interacting with people. You can leave comments, offer helpful advice and suggestions or just get to know people.

2. Write and distribute to article directories. Writing an informative article is something you can do today. There are many article directories that will allow you to post your article for free. Not only is this a way to give readers pertinent information but you also get a backlink in your bio or resource box.

3. Guest blog. You may not get a guest blogging spot today, but you can write the blog post and start contacting blog owners to see if they are interested.

4. Create a compelling email signature. You need to do this in your autoresponder signature as well as your personal email signature.

5. Create videos and put on Youtube. Videos are getting more popular every day. You can create several short videos, upload them to Youtube and then share the links with your readers, in your email signature, on Twitter and Facebook. Don’t like seeing yourself on screen? That’s not a problem, you can create Power Point Presentations for the visual and then read from a script so all that’s “seen” of you is your voice.

6. Write a review. You can write reviews on products you’ve tried, ebooks you’ve read, webinars, videos, books you’ve read, affiliate programs. The list is endless on things you can review to help your readers and give you exposure.

7. Tweet to your followers. You don’t have to get on Twitter every single day and bombard your followers with tweets, but you can use Twitter as a strategic source to build your following, set up your personal brand and reach out to others looking for your information.

8. Share your stuff on Facebook. You can set your blogs to post on Facebook through Networked Blogs, you can set up plugins that allow you and others to share your blog posts on social networks. Utitilize these tools for yourself too. Your readers aren’t the only ones who can use them–you can too.

9. Email your list. This one is pretty self explanatory, you can email your list once or twice a week with updates, promotions and other stuff. If you don’t have a list, start a list building campaign and start sending people to your opt-in page.

10. Create a free report. You can write up a report to give away that contains relevant information to your website, product or service. Brand it with your website address in the footer so people know where to go to find more information.

These are all pretty simple methods you can start doing immediately to grow traffic to your blog or website. Do you have any simple solutions not mentioned here that you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you.