WiseBlogging.com

The company that I’m working for often sends its employees to training programs, both internally and externally. I personally think that it’s a good long-term investment in the employees as well-trained employees are able to improve or at least maintain the company’s readiness to respond to the market. I was recently asked to attend a 2-day external training on “Handling Customer Complaints”. The trainer, Dr Allen, was indeed an experienced speaker and the content was very informative. I learned something new and during the whole course I was trying to relate it to blogging, hoping that it could add value to what I’m currently doing. To my surprise, the findings were of satisfactory and here are some points that I think you can apply to your blogging model.

1. Do what people don’t do
You probably remember Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart which generated $245 billion in sales last year. He was once asked what his secrets to building the multi-billion retail empire were, and one of the rule of thumbs that he shared was “What people do, you don’t do; What people don’t do, you do“. In today’s blogging world, it’s getting difficult to make money from it as it has become more competitive. What other bloggers are already doing is no longer as worthy because it doesn’t deliver the uniqueness of your blog. Therefore, if you wanna stand out of the crowd, then do something that other bloggers don’t do, this way you will most probably be the first to capture the major market stake. A very good example would be John Chow, he was the first blogger who gave away prizes while converting visitors into RSS feed subscribers, and it created amazing results in his feed count leading to an increasing income. So, start thinking something that the rest are not doing and be the first to do it. I’m yet to experiment this golden secret, let’s try it and let me know if it creates opportunities and increases your online income by any chance.

2. Help others help yourself
“When you help others achieve what they want, they will help you achieve what you want“. This is yet another important factor that should be added to your blogging model. It is extremely true that when you help others solve their problems by providing tips, how-to’s in your blog, they are inclined to like your blog, they bookmark your blog and they begin to visit your blog more regularly, thus, you gain the readership and automatically the money rolls in. Maki from DoshDosh is the best example in this aspect, it is not difficult to notice that most of his making-money-online blog posts are always full of unique information, tips, how-to’s that you hardly see elsewhere. Maki constantly does a thorough research on the topic that he’s writing about, and that’s why he gains the reliability, popularity and readability from his audience. In simpler words, do not hide what you know or are capable of, help yourself by helping the rest SINCERELY.

3. Be relational
Dr Allen also raised an essential point that we should really take note of. He thinks that today’s business models are moving towards a transactional mode. Take fast food outlets for an example, you go to the counter, the girl at the counter takes your order, you pay the ticket, leave with your food and the relationship ends right there while the girl at the counter yells “NEXT”. They are no longer serving customers, in fact they are “processing” customers, and they forget that a good service delivery is what keeps customers coming back. How does it relate to your blogging model? Don’t just write, post and hope to earn a fortune from your blog. You might get a few dimes from some random clicks, but your audience is not going to return for more. In fact, you should personalise your blog, your blog is not a robot. Care about your readers, reply their comments, ask what they want, appreciate their visit, they are your friends, they aren’t your competitors. According to a statistics done by Dr Allen, only 5% of the people who purchase your product or service would give you feedbacks, compliments and complaints, while the remaining 95% would be indifferent. Therefore, if you want to find out what you have done right or wrong, what you need for improvement, what you can do to gain more readers, how you can add value to your blog etc, you should also conduct surveys on a regular basis, ask your readers and get more feedbacks out of the remaining 95%. Be relational, not transactional.

These 3 tips may not earn you your first million, but they are of essential importance to building a different and popular blog. Tell me what you think and do let me know what you’ve achieved after applying these strategies to your blogging model.

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This is the best news ever to me and of course to all Malaysian. Malaysian can finally withdraw their hard-earned Paypal funds. Ever since Paypal was introduced back in year 1994 in Malaysia, we had been going round and round searching for the solution to withdraw our Paypal funds, we ended up paying more unnecessary fees for the access to US bank account, lot of time and money were spent in order to get the withdrawal work. Now, the withdrawal option is finally open to 26 more countries, including Malaysia.

Withdrawal limits and fees
There’s a minimum withdrawal amount of US$10. Paypal withdrawal to your Visa Debit Card costs US$5 per withdrawal and you can withdraw up to US$500 per day, meaning that you can withdraw up to US$15k per month, that’s good enough for me since I haven’t managed to earn that much in a month yet.

How to withdraw
According to Paypal, you can withdraw your funds to your Visa Credit or Debit card. However, I’ve tried and noticed that withdrawal to Visa Credit Card doesn’t work for us. At the time of this writing, you can only withdraw the funds to your Malaysian issued Visa Debit Card. Currently, there are only 3 banks offering Visa Debit Card, namely Public Bank (PBB), Al Rahji Bank and UOB Bank. Some bloggers have done successful withdrawals to Al Rahji Bank’s Visa Debit Card. So far, nobody has tried withdrawing to UOB’s Visa Debit Card as UOB Bank requires a minimum deposit of RM2,000 in order to open the bank account that comes with the Visa Debit Card, if you have tried it, let us know how it went. As for myself, I have eagerly tried the withdrawal to my PBB’s Visa Electron Card though.

Withdrawal to PBB’s Visa Electron Debit Card
In celebration of the Paypal withdrawal facility, I managed to make a test withdrawal. I withdrew US$25, and was deducted US$5 as a withdrawal fee, making the total withdrawal amount of US$20 only. (See the screenshot below, you can click to enlarge it)

In just 4 working days, I received the money credited in my PBB’s Visa Debit Card that reads “PAYPAL *WITHDRAWAL” followed by the reference number. (See below)

Total fund received was RM67.19, meaning, the conversion rate used was 3.3595, which was the exact currency rate of the day. I then transferred the fund to my PBB savings account, and it’s free of charge. In conclusion, it costs only US$5 for a Paypal withdrawal and you get your funds in 4 working days. Thank you Paypal.

The news is undoubtedly a good motivator for those who have been earning online for years and those who just started or planned to earn online. So, go get your own PBB Visa Electron Debit Card, it only requires a minimum deposit of RM25 and an annual fee of RM24, which is way cheaper than a US bank account that I previously opened to withdraw the Paypal funds. I hope in the near future, withdrawal to MasterCard will be introduced too.

*Important Notes*
Paypal only allows one Visa Card, one MasterCard and one American Express to be added to your Paypal account. If you added your Visa card but later lost or misplaced the card, you would not be able to add in another Visa card anymore, even though if it’s a replacement card or renewal card. Therefore, try not to lose your Visa Debit Card, make sure you lock it up in a safe place. Happy withdrawing.

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Your blog can be accessed either through www.yourblog.com or yourblog.com, how convenient it is! However, it also means that your blog has two different PageRanks. Go to SmartPageRank.com and see it for yourself. Google and other search engines often regard www.yourblog.com and yourblog.com as two different blogs, and therefore, some of the inbound links may point to www.yourblog.com and others to yourblog.com.

Example:

• www.rockyourvote.net has a PageRank of 4
• rockyourvote.net has a PageRank of 2 is having PageRank 4 now

People don’t always link to your domain in the way you want them to. From an SEO perspective, this could hurt your hard earned search engine rankings and link popularity. How to solve this not-many-people-know issue?

The best solution to this situation is to signal to search engines that both domains are the same blog/site by implementing what is known as ‘301 redirect’ or ‘permanent redirect’ from one of your domains to the other. By correctly configuring a permanent 301 redirect, the search engine rankings might improve as all inbound links are correctly counted for the website, thus, your PageRank is theoretically redirected too. It also helps to redirect your visitors to the domain that you want as well as to clear up duplicate content in search engines.

Before implementing a 301 redirect, you should decide which version you want it to be, www. or non-www, then stick to it. In my case, I chose the www. version. A 301 redirect can be done in many ways, but I’m going to only show you two simplest methods that I recommend:

1. Using a Wordpress plugin
2. Using htaccess

1. Setting up a 301 redirect using a Wordpress plugin

If your blog is on a Wordpress platform, you’re lucky! Justin Shattuck came up with a wonderful plugin called WWW Redirect plugin. This easy-to-use Wordpress plugin allows you to set up a 301 redirect few clicks away. Go to the plugin page here, download the plugin, extract and upload the file to your plugins folder, activate it in your Wordpress admin control panel, go to the ‘Redirect Options’ on the sub menu of the plugins menu and update your preferences. That’s all, you’re done. Your domain is now redirected to the other domain from now on. You can check your redirect validity on Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

2. Setting up a 301 redirect using htaccess

For those on blogging platforms other than Wordpress, don’t be disappointed, you can still set up a 301 redirect using htaccess. Doing it using htaccess is highly recommended as it’s easier to manage – copy, paste and save. It’s also the safest method without having to worry about being penalized by search engines. In my case, by adding the redirect code to the .htaccess file on my server, I redirect my visitors to reach my blog at www.wiseblogging.com instead of wiseblogging.com, and below is how I did it.

The 301 permanent redirect code:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^yourblog.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourblog.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

For Blue Host user

1. Login to your Blue Host control panel
2. Select ‘File Manager’ under ‘Files’ session
3. Click on ‘.htaccess’ and select ‘Edit File’ and you will get the screen below
4. Insert the redirect code into the field indicated, remember to replace ‘yourblog’ with your own domain and lastly save changes.
5. Done. Your domain is redirected to the other domain from now on. You can check your redirect validity on Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

For other web host user

If you are not a Blue Host user (advertisement : Reliable, Affordable Business Hosting from Bluehost.com.) , you should still be able to locate the same file ‘.htaccess’ on the root directory of your blog but if you can’t locate it, create one and name it ‘.htaccess’. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open up your notepad or any text editor that you prefer
2. Copy and paste the redirect code into the notepad, replace ‘yourblog’ with your own domain and lastly save it as ‘.htaccess’
3. Upload it to the root directory of your blog and make sure the name remains as ‘.htaccess’
4. Done. Your domain is redirected to the other domain from now on. You can check your redirect validity on Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

If you have a relatively large blog, you will likely not see the big shakeup overnight, as it takes time to move your rankings and pass your PageRank, however, implementing the 301 redirect is definitely going to benefit your blog in the long run.

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Link Popularity is becoming the determining factor for successful blogs because most of the top monetisation programs consider link popularity as an important ranking factor and it is also a dominant factor used by search engines in determining a site’s position in search results. Therefore, it is imperative to make sure that your blog get a good link popularity to achieve higher search engine ranking and PR value.

As explained in my previous post, Link Popularity is the measure of inbound links to your blog and the link text (anchor text) itself. Generally, a site with more sites linking to it will have a higher position as compared to another site with fewer links to it. Link popularity not only gives you improved rankings, it also benefits you through increased traffic.

Basically, to increase link popularity every blog or website needs inbound links by placing a clickable anchor text link on other websites. So, how to increase or improve link popularity? Let’s discuss some methods and techniques for link popularity development which you can use for your blog.

1. Write good content on your blog
This is a passive yet most effective method of improving link popularity. Articles are a valuable way to get recognition and gain reputation while increasing your link popularity. Writing good articles or providing useful information/tools will give you natural linkbacks leading you to a wealth of link popularity.

2. Submit your articles to article directories
After completing your article, submit it to major article directories to get more traffic and linkbacks. One link from an article directory can do much to increase link popularity. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. SEOresearcher has a very nice and complete list of article directories.

3. Submit your blog to blog directories
Getting listed in blog directories will also help to build the link popularity for your blog. There’s a giant list of blog directories available here. You will need some time to add your blog to each of them manually, but remember to add your blog to a relevant category, this helps targeted readers and visitors locate you easily.

4. Exchange links (reciprocal link exchange)
The next step after you have attained directory listings is to exchange links with other bloggers, which is known as reciprocal link exchange. You can email or leave a message to ask if other bloggers or webmasters are willing to exchange links with you. Make sure you get more relevant links of your niche because link popularity is also based on the relevance of incoming links and the number of good quality sites linked to yours. In other words, it’s not just link popularity, but also link relevancy and link reputation. Reciprocal link exchange is time consuming but when it’s done properly, it can be an effective way to increase link popularity and traffic.

5. Comment on other related blogs
One easy way you can start attracting linkbacks is by leaving comments on other related blogs, but make sure you post useful or at least related comments. People often will click links of others that have left comments and this way it’s likely that they’ll also be interested in your blog and might link up to you.

6. Participate actively in forums
You can improve your link popularity rapidly by aggressively participating in quality forums, if you include your blog’s URL in your signature. This way, your signature will be tagged along with every post that you submit in forums, and your incoming links will grow dramatically if you continue contributing to forums. 65% of my incoming links are from forums.

7. Join social bookmarking networks
Many online bookmarking or voting websites like StumbleUpon and Digg can give you a huge number of linkbacks and traffic. Integrate the social bookmarkers into your blog and let your readers submit and vote for your posts. Personally, I like StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us and Technorati.

8. Write testimonials or reviews
Write a positive testimonial about a product or service that you recently purchased or used, and include your blog link. Sometimes, the product owner or service provider will post the testimonial on their website and you gain a linkback already. You can even write a review about other blogs, email the blog owner and they might just link you back for the favor.

9. Get reviewed by other blogs
Invite other bloggers to review your blog and include a link to your blog. Blog like BlogsReview offers free review for your blog but does not guarantee a positive review. If you rather prefer a positive review, you can pay a blogger to write the review through websites like PayPerPost and SponsoredReviews.

10. Giveaways
Give away prizes to other bloggers if they link to you. The prizes should be something that other bloggers find valuable enough to want to link to you, but doesn’t cost you too much. You can even combine method 11 with this method – give away prizes to bloggers who write the best review for your blog. For example, JohnChow always gives away sponsored prizes for bloggers to write reviews about his blog and include a link in the reviews. JohnChow does this continuously and effectively increases his link popularity.

11. Press release
Press release distribution is also one of the most effective ways to increase link popularity as it gives excellent permanent inbound links. You can easily write a press release yourself and distribute it for free. Some of the popular press release sites that you can post your press release on are PRWeb, PRLeap and FPRC.

12. Purchase inbound links
The easiest way to improve your link popularity is to buy inbound links. You can buy one-way and targeted text links from established advertising websites like Text Link Ads, AdBrite and AdVolcano. This way you can establish your link popularity shortest time possible.

13. Start a referral or affiliate program
You can give other bloggers or webmasters the incentive to link to you. This way, you can get more valuable relevant links in your target niche. However, the affiliate program must be administered from your site because affiliates are going to link to the third-party’s site if it’s outsourced.

14. Spread your blog link
Just leave your blog address everywhere you can think of, like guestbook, your email signature etc. At the end of the day, you will be surprised with some unexpected linkbacks. However, do it with ethics and professionalism, do not spam or abuse it. Everyone hates spam.

15. Online link popularity service
If you prefer outsourcing the link building work instead of doing the hard work on your own, you can also hire internet marketing experts like AndyHagans and IntraPromote.

The results of your link popularity campaign usually don’t show until after many months. It is always advisable to set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines frequently to see if your link popularity has improved.

Building link popularity is not an easy task, it is both time consuming and laborious but it does bring its rewards. There are no easy ways to build link popularity, thus, be prepared to keep building links until you achieve link popularity stardom. Don’t expect to grow your link popularity overnight. Since link building takes time, the sooner you start the better, why not start building your link popularity today?

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Monetizing your blog simply means converting your blog into money or income. The only way you can earn from your blog is to monetize it, and the common way to monetize your blog is by joining blog monetization programs. There are many blog monetization programs available you can join, however, you should work on the following 5 elements that I’ve concluded before monetizing your blog. Most blog monetization programs will rate and rank your blog before your blog is accepted. The following 5 elements are the common factors used to determine your blog’s ratings and ranking. The better the 5 elements of your blog are, the higher your blog ranking is, and the more money your blog is going to earn.

Content
I always emphasize “Content is King”, content is the key to the success of blog monetization. The content of your blog decides the destiny and earning potential of your blog. Most bloggers tend to make mistake turning visitors off by giving contentless content with no substance. Visitors therefore never return. Your content must be valuable and of its specific niche, it should attract and retain readers. Always give your visitors good content and strong material that they want and they will automatically stay on. Bear in mind that you only get one chance to make a first impression, so make sure you show what you have to offer. Place stronger visual and mental emphasis on your content, which ultimately determines the size of your readership. By demonstrating emphasis of adding value to a quality content, it increases the objectivity, importance and weight of your blog. In the long run, you will receive a substantial level of traffic to your blog from new and repeat readers, allowing you to get the most out of your blog monetization. Always bear in mind, “Content drives Traffic, Traffic brings Profit”. Therefore, quality content is the first element that you should spend most of your time on before even thinking about monetizing your blog. “What do people expect when visiting a blog?” My answer is: current news, worthy content, valuable information, and at the same time also a space for writers to highlight their personal perspectives.”

Link Popularity
What is Link Popularity? Link popularity simply means how popular and visible your blog is in the online world. It is a measure of the total number of inbound links to your blog that most search engines have found and it has become the determining factor for a successful blog. Link popularity is relatively important as it is a major element used by most search engines in determining a site’s position in search results. Generally, a site with more inbound links will be positioned higher than a similar site with fewer links. And therefore, most blog monetization programs use link popularity as one of the factors to rank your blog. The more links to your blog, the higher your link popularity is, and the better blog ranking you will get.

How do you check your blog’s link popularity?
Websolucing.com has a handy tool on which you can check your blog’s link popularity.

PageRank
What is PageRank? PageRank is Google’s measure of search engine link popularity. Google ranks websites by the links and the quality from the links that point to a website. The PageRank provides a value between 0 and 10, meaning that the most popular websites have a PageRank of “10” and the least have a “0” PageRank. PageRank is one of the important measures of site’s importance and significance but Google only updates the PageRank once in every 3 months.

How do you check your Page Rank?
Google offers a wonderful toolbar for Internet Explorer users, you can download it here if you haven’t got one. For Firefox users, you can either choose to download the Google toolbar or there’s also a PageRank checker extension that you can download and install. After installing the plugin or toolbar, you will see a small green bar which displays the current URL’s PageRank level. Hover your mouse over it and you can see the numerical value, and that’s the PageRank.

Alexa Rank
What is Alexa Rank? Alexa Rank, a powerful and accurate measure of website statistics, is offered by Alexa Internet Inc. - a subsidiary company of Amazon.com. Alexa provides traffic statistics as well as page views of a website based on the information collected by their toolbar installed by several millions of users around the world. The lower the Alexa Rank number, the more heavily visited your website is. Many people dispute Alexa Rank is not accurate and that it should not be used as a tool to determine the value of a website because the tracking is only collected by browser with Alexa toolbar installed. However, as long as Alexa Rank is still taken into consideration by most blog monetization programs, we shouldn’t neglect it.

How do you check your Alexa Rank?
You can check your Alexa Rank directly on Alexa’s website at here, alternatively you can also install the Alexa toolbar for Internet Explorer or SearchStatus extension for Firefox that displays Google PageRank and Alexa Ranking at the same time.

Technorati Authority and Rank
What is Technorati Authority and Technorati Rank? Technorati Authority and Rank, offered by Technorati, are also the measures of how important and popular a website is in the blogosphere. Basically, Technorati Authority calculates the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months and the higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the website has. On the other hand, Technorati Rank’s calculation is based on how far you are from the top. The blog with the highest Technorati Authority is the number 1 ranked blog, and the smaller your Technorati Rank is, the closer you are to the top 100 blogs.

How do you check your Technorati Authority and Rank?
You can find it out on Technorati’s website itself, but before you can check your blog’s Technorati Authority and Rank, you are required to claim your blog – submit your blog to Technorati index. Upon claiming your blog, you will be able to see the Technorati Authority and Rank immediately.

Next, 15 Ways to Build Link Popularity

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